"Aaaa!" he yelped, putting her burnt thumb to her mouth and then waving it jaggedly in the air.
"Hold your earlobe," her mom said. "It's one of the coolest parts of your body."
She brushed aside her hoop earring and squeezed her earlobe. It felt cool.
AnonymousMarch 13, 2003 at 9:16 AM
Part 2
She wasn't too happy about that bumbling flight attendant, to be sure. After he'd poured coffee on her hand while trying to offer her a moist towelette, he had panicked, swearing mildly in Swedish, and rushing to take charge. He had grabbed her thumb, shoved it into her mouth, screaming the whole time. After he rather manically realized his new error and removed her thumb from her mouth, he had taken it and begun shaking her whole arm with the sort of violence that would have, well, quite possibly wrenched her arm completely loose from her body. Her mother, in a bizarre mixture of shock and disinterest, had simply told her to clutch her ear,and, not knowing what else to do, she had complied. Her father, sitting a seat over, hadn't even looked up from The Times. She felt a little violated.
And confused. As they were flying out of London, she couldn't make any sense of the fact that both the entire flight crew spoke in Scandinavian languages. She settled back into her reading, every so often dipping her thumb into her 7-Up.
The next few hours of the flight were relatively uneventful. The groveling of the still incomprehensible but now contrite steward had become background noise, and the 7-Up, tepid but still bubbling seemed to have done the trick. Her father dozed, lightly snoring as her mother completed a word search in Det Basta.
It wasn't until hour four, over the atlantic, that she and the other passengers began to realize what was amiss. The periodic cheerful messages from the cockpit in Swedish became more and more frequent despite the lack of a non-cloud-related view. A chemical and smoky smell started to pervade the cabin. And the beverage service had stopped entirely, no matter how many times her mother rang the little buzzer above her head.
She proceeded to divert her attention away from the rustle of the cabin, which was making her nervous. She reached into her tote for an old cd player that featured a blend of Billie Holiday and Buddy Holly, and promptly covered her ears with a pair of the unfashionable headphones from the 90s that were supposed to be easy on the eardrums.
With each passing tune, she found the bumpy transition between Billie Holiday's eerie crooning and Buddy Holly's light-hearted rock and roll to be more and more satisfying. She closed her eyes.
A few minutes later, when she had almost completely convinced herself that she was anywhere but in that wretched plane, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
AnonymousMarch 19, 2003 at 12:25 AM
'care to join the mile high club?' billyjobob the builder asked.
Comments (6)
"Aaaa!" he yelped, putting her burnt thumb to her mouth and then waving it jaggedly in the air.
"Hold your earlobe," her mom said. "It's one of the coolest parts of your body."
She brushed aside her hoop earring and squeezed her earlobe. It felt cool.
Part 2
She wasn't too happy about that bumbling flight attendant, to be sure. After he'd poured coffee on her hand while trying to offer her a moist towelette, he had panicked, swearing mildly in Swedish, and rushing to take charge. He had grabbed her thumb, shoved it into her mouth, screaming the whole time. After he rather manically realized his new error and removed her thumb from her mouth, he had taken it and begun shaking her whole arm with the sort of violence that would have, well, quite possibly wrenched her arm completely loose from her body. Her mother, in a bizarre mixture of shock and disinterest, had simply told her to clutch her ear,and, not knowing what else to do, she had complied. Her father, sitting a seat over, hadn't even looked up from The Times. She felt a little violated.
And confused. As they were flying out of London, she couldn't make any sense of the fact that both the entire flight crew spoke in Scandinavian languages. She settled back into her reading, every so often dipping her thumb into her 7-Up.
The next few hours of the flight were relatively uneventful. The groveling of the still incomprehensible but now contrite steward had become background noise, and the 7-Up, tepid but still bubbling seemed to have done the trick. Her father dozed, lightly snoring as her mother completed a word search in Det Basta.
It wasn't until hour four, over the atlantic, that she and the other passengers began to realize what was amiss. The periodic cheerful messages from the cockpit in Swedish became more and more frequent despite the lack of a non-cloud-related view. A chemical and smoky smell started to pervade the cabin. And the beverage service had stopped entirely, no matter how many times her mother rang the little buzzer above her head.
She proceeded to divert her attention away from the rustle of the cabin, which was making her nervous. She reached into her tote for an old cd player that featured a blend of Billie Holiday and Buddy Holly, and promptly covered her ears with a pair of the unfashionable headphones from the 90s that were supposed to be easy on the eardrums.
With each passing tune, she found the bumpy transition between Billie Holiday's eerie crooning and Buddy Holly's light-hearted rock and roll to be more and more satisfying. She closed her eyes.
A few minutes later, when she had almost completely convinced herself that she was anywhere but in that wretched plane, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
'care to join the mile high club?' billyjobob the builder asked.
[Ryan]
He perished promptly and disappeared.