Writing Prompt: jetplane

The plane lifted off the runway and into the air. The person next to you turns and quietly whispers in your ear, “I know I’m supposed to keep this a secret, but I absolutely must tell someone.”

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I looked up from my newspaper and eyed her suspiciously. "Oh, really." I was torn between not caring and the instinct I`m sure every human has to know other people`s business.

She nodded but said no more.

I went back to my newspaper realizing that she was good. She was going to wait until I asked. Well I wouldn`t. Let the teenage girl in need of a sandwich go back to her issues well I returned to... I had been reading the paper absently since taxi-ing and couldn`t really register what i was reading. I sighed. I hated planes. I hated random strangers. I hated her awkward bubble that had somehow reached out to embrace me. "What."

"This plane won`t make it to Toronto."

I let the words sink in. Maybe she was the nut job I so badly wanted to write her off to be, or maybe she hated planes as much as me and was trying to drag someone else into her phobia. And then I was able to catch her in the lie, I turned my head only slightly, not wanting her to see any fear on my face, and looked only at her out of the corner of my eyes, "then why did you get on?"

"Because, I`m not going to die. And neither is the person sitting next to me, except you all would have died if I wasn`t here."

Who can just go around talking like this I wondered as I leaned forward and inspected the rows before, beside and behind us, looking for her care-taker. "So you got on board, a doomed plane to save me?"

"Yes."

"And the plane is going to crash somewhere between Vancouver and Toronto."

"Yes."

"And everyone is going to die."

"Yes."

"So why didn`t you tell someone and prevent the plane from taking off?" By this time I had folded my paper and put it in the pouch behind the seat in front of me praying that no one was overhearing this conversation. I was sitting back in my chair with my arms crossed, despite that being the reason my best suit was now wrinkling, but hey, good news, I wouldn`t have to worry about that interview now that my plane was going to crash.

"Don`t think I haven`t noticed how well you are taking this, how do you think airport security would have taken it?" she had adopted my pose with her legs and arms crossed in the safe stiff manner of my own. "They would have thrown me out or worse in jail and then you would have been doomed as the rest of them!"

"Could you lower your voice?" I hissed, terrified that we would be overheard. This was not a good day and age to talk about being doomed on an airplane.

"What difference would it make now? I know how fate works."

What exactly did a teenage girl know of fate? I chose not to believe in it. I felt better not believing in it for if I did that would make the fact that I was aging, unemployed, living alone and now doomed to be in a fiery crash all that more miserable.

"Excuse me," a soft voice that grated with controlled agitation pulled me back from my thoughts. "Is there a problem?" the flight attendant asked with a smile painted on her lips that failed to reach her eyes.

"No." I replied with a matching expression.

"Because a passenger said the pair of you were having a," she paused, "unsavory conversation."

"About?" the girl next to me asked in an innocent voice.

"Never mind." I watched the flight attendant walk away, she hadn`t wanted to ask anymore than we wanted to be spoken to.

"Don`t just walk away!" My neighbor in front suddenly shouted out to her. "They said we were doomed and that the plane is going down!" Hysteria was settling into his voice as the flight attendant rolled her eyes and calmly walked back to him.

"Sir, it`s not like that, please just calm down and enjoy your flight." She leaned in and we both saw her sporting some cleavage. I think he and I were both wondering if this was going to be our last pleasurable sight and we both took a moment to enjoy it until I was hit by the girl next to me.

"It`s going to happen soon," she whispered but it wasn`t quiet enough.

"Soon!" the man snapped his eyes from the crest of the shirt and twisted in his seat to stare at my companion. "They are terrorists!"

"No we aren`t!" I shouted but it was too late. Again, not a good day and age to be using such words. I glared at the girl who was in her own world looking horrified.

"We can`t let them turn this plane around," she gripped my arm and gave me a long pleading look. I would have agreed, whether the plane was going to crash or not I at least wanted a chance to get this job, but it was too late for that, everything she said was just making it worse until suddenly a man in uniform appeared to escort us forward.

I panicked. I had not avoided the wrong crowd as a teen myself to end up arrested because some teenage girl had undiagnosed issues.

"This is your captain speaking," a voice crackled over the speaker. "we have to make a landing in Calgary due to an unforeseen... circumstance. Please be assured that the problem is under control." When he repeated it again in French I began to hear the nervousness in his voice when he slipped up on the translation.

I glared at the girl. She remained looking like she had swallowed a scalpel. The man escorting us waited until a curtain over the food area was pulled closed before handcuffing us and then it happened.

Later, when I was sitting in my hospital bed, I remembered the look the girl gave me before she was engulfed in flames. I remembered what she said when the metal twisted on impact and everything, passengers, staff, the engines, the flames, the wreckage, the single serving peanut packages puffed up from the air pressure so the popped on impact, screamed with all they had and all I did was hold the terrified teenager to my chest and listen to her last words.

"This was why I was always supposed to keep it a secret."

I was the only survivor. Everyone on the plane died along with everyone in that convenience plaza we hit, and everyone in the cars as the wreckage dragged us through a bypass. I reflected for many days on how if I had just believed her in the first place if we could have at least prevented people on the ground dying. And... I never got the job.