It was always the same fantasy. An engine exploding, the plane veering suddenly at take off, a crash, an explosion, screams and keening. Smoke and blood and void.
He flew into the west...going home, a place he never thought he'd return to...trapped in the wrong century of iBooks and juice cleanses. Andrew Tisher: intellectual and American primitive shot into the setting sun, racing time and memory.
As the plane leveled out and the captain droned the ineffectual itinerary his mind wondered. Would the kiss of the western sun be as gentle? The blue calm of the Pacific as forgiving? The grape vine wrapped hills like milk filled breasts be as comforting? He did not know. Home. The word had lost its meaning. The unknown was where he sped and where he thrived.
He dreamt of dark halls crisscrossed with spiders webs. Of haggard witches knitting and spinning and cutting and clipping. Of hairy things in corners with sucking teeth. Of shadow and mold and dankness.
Claire, his seat mate, jostled him awake with an elbow reaching for her complimentary Fanta. She didn't excuse herself or apologize. Trash, he thought. He ordered two cups of ice and crushed them one by one between his back molars. Enjoying the sharp vividness of the sound in his muffled ears. The biting cold on his sleepy tongue. Claire interrupted his pleasure.
"I've never been west of Kansas." She was strikingly fit, 45ish he guessed, in a slick somewhat dated business suit. He noticed a tan line on the ring finger of her left hand but no ring. She exuded a desperation he found appealing and a sense of unfulfilled sexual desire which was common to divorcees. He briefly imagined screwing her in the air plane bathroom but the thought of the smell- sanitary and base- quickly dissipated any arousal.
"That's tragic." he sighed closing his eyes in hopes Claire would take the hint.
As the plane landed he wished the landing gear would fail. He imagined being the sole survivor of a pointless catastrophic accident. An idiotic massacre which would cause Boeing's stocks to plummet.
His mother was waiting for him at the baggage claim. She was getting older. Still spry and sharp but aging. Slowing down.
On the ride home they spoke little. Tisher filled the silence with a list of things he was doing knowing that's what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear he was busy, that his time was taken up, he wasn't going to burden her with how he was actually feeling. Feelings were something they seldom spoke of.
They got home late and went to bed after sharing a stack of carrot sticks with fat free ranch dressing.
He trudged up the stairs to his room knowing and fearing that it hadn't changed. It hadn't. His bookshelves were lined with his former heroes: Proust, Sartre, Gogol. And his twin bed was freshly made, he grimaced.
He undressed and got under the covers, his feet hanging a good six inches off the end. He looked up at the glowing stars that peppered his ceiling, his father had spent a weekend when Tisher was twelve making an exact replica of the summer night sky.
Tisher lightly traced Cepheus while his eyes closed. And welcomed the dark.
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