Revision
About 8:33 am EST
The wind thrashes past me fiercely and I get the feeling my hair is not as it should be. Biting cold percolates through my skin, all I can hear is deep howling, that and the high pitch of my wife's voice skipping across the walls inside my head, whining how we need to decide, by today, whether to go with Town Taupe or the Oak Moss carpet for the guest room.
Not even two minutes ago, the Bostonian's colostomy bag overflowed and the newly freed shit threatened to add its own vibrant flavor to my pleated khakis, reactionary Jesus Christ whispered his direction brought Aswad's undivided attention upon me. And today was off to such a fantastic start.
About 5:15 am EST
The wailing alarm clock tears me from a saucy dream featuring my neighbor's sixteen year old daughter. Feel my way to the bathroom in a series of right angles and leave my wife a nice surprise on the toilet seat, scour my teeth with bristles that feel like metal, skip the shave. Shaving is dangerous these days. I'm tempted to play a little game I like to call Guess the Prescription but I'm afraid I'll live through it. Back to the bedroom, I throw on the ugly clothes my wife laid out for me last night. I slip a Bukowski novel into my bag, just for shits and grins, you know, to fuck with those peoples in security, then I redo the buttons on my shirt so they're on crooked, you know, to fuck with those peoples' insecurity. I kick the bed to see if she'll stop snoring; she rolls over and, though the accident has brought nothing but asspain, I'm still thankful I don't have to see the monstrous transformation she undergoes with each sunrise.
Two apples later I wake her ass up to give me a ride.
About 6:46 am EST
The noise of a hundred voices weaved across the cavernous expanse of the room wraps around me, yet I could hear a ninja's footsteps, a butterfly landing. It's hospital bright here, annoying, and my wife cleaves a corridor through the bodies attached to the noises, dragging me behind her as through she has my trust. We make it to the counter and I pray for a miracle, something like spontaneous human combustion to erupt in the heap of skin and hair to my immediate left, think maybe if she ate more calories it could possibly come true.
But the lady working, with the thick Jersey accent, squares us away, very accommodating, excessively affable though, like some corporate evangelical cheerleader, and despite her noble intentions, I feel very uncomfortable during the whole transaction. In fact, she could burst into flames as well and I wouldn't care.
Try to convince my old lady that I can handle it from here, that an employee will assist me, but no, the bitch is too intrinsically helpful, my suffering ensues.
About 7:38 EST
I take a seat and reach into my bag for the Bukowski book, pretend to read so people leave me alone. No doubt the book's presence confused the security personnel, wondering what a guy like me was doing with a thing like that. Somewhere to my right a baby starts to shriek and I wait, wait, wait for it to stop but it's a persistent little bastard so I choke the sound off with the help of James Taylor, iPod headphones pumping my head with music, go 'head and fill her up. Someone sits next to me, the piercing smell of Vitalis and cough drops orbiting his head like a swarm of invisible flies, skittish satellites.
There's nothing I can do about that, the smell.
Someone comes by to check on me and my fetid neighbor, I wonder what it would be like to fuck her, if my condition would enhance the experience or if the results would be tainted because she's just really good. For a brief instant I catch a whiff of her underneath the haze of my neighbor's, and I have to adjust my package to compensate for sudden changes. I can't wait for her to return, but in the meantime, I figure since this guy is making me so uncomfortable, I can at least return the favor. I twist my head in his direction and begin.
"I meet with Dr. Talmage again in about eight hours and my featureless existence will be as it once was," I tell him, trying to sound creepy as possible. "He'll perform the penetrating keratoplasty this afternoon, an outpatient procedure, and I'll be able to see immediately after, though with corneal transplants like this, the best vision isn't for another six to twelves months usually." Then I lean in to talk softer, invade his space some more, "It's hard for me to sit still because of the anticipation. It's happening to-day." A whisper, "I'm so giddy." I wish I could see his face.
"At first they said that was it, though," I whistle, "I'd been done in by the chemical burns," grip his shoulder open my eyes wide, "no hope." Swallow hard, turn away. "Referral after referral, second, third, fifth opinions, and finally Dr. Talmage tells me he can help me." Pause for effect. "I'm going to be healed."
I can hear him breathing heavily, oblivious to the rotten atmosphere he's perpetually encased in, and he replies, "Well I hope everything works out okay, for ya buddy. Ya lucky, cause they couldn't do nothing about the perforated diverticulitis. That's what they said I had, and," he inserts a light chuckle here, "they had to explain it to me, too. It's an intra-abdominal infection, that's all. Gave me a colostomy bag and sent me on my way."
And I immediately regret saying anything, begin to wonder if they've nested us in some macabre handicapped section we're not supposed to know about. I nod and put the headphones back on.
About 8:15 EST
And we're among the clouds now, and if I plug my headphones into the armrest I can hear the pilots talking on channel 28. I lean my seat back and try to fall asleep, but I keep thinking of that flight attendant and what her tits might feel like, taste like, when all of a sudden this guy starts yelling, "My name is Aswad Faqir Mohammed, my name is Aswad Faqir Mohammed," and I jerk upright in my seat when the Bostonian clutches my arm all of a sudden.
Several women scream and the infant flares up and the prayers of one devout believer float up to God and I hope they don't interfere with the navigation systems of this plane. Asswad, or whatever his name is, says something like, "Allah Akbar," and I thought, "This is just typical, isn't it?" and then he commanded us to remain silent and that there was a bomb on the plane, yadda yadda yadda.
I know we're all gonna die.
The baby is still wailing, which just causes Aswad Faqir Mohammed to speak even louder, which I'm not listening to, and the Bostonian is still clamped onto my arm, and I hope the flight attendant is okay, because they're usually the ones examples are made of, which is what he's talking about now, killing anyone who does anything foolish, which is when my neighbor's colostomy bag leaks out all over the place, and I mutter Jesus Christ to him and then suddenly Aswad is there, right in front of us, screaming, the hotdog smell of spit and wet warmth upon my face in a thousand shards, and he sees that I am blind, picks up the Bukowski book. He laughs to himself as though I was almost clever, for an infidel, and throws it.
Then he says I shall be his example.
And just like that some Arabic rolls off his tongue, almost beautiful, that language, and somebody who had remained quiet this whole time grabs hold of me and uproots me from the seat, drags me up to the front of the plane and Aswad Faqir Mohammed continues to say that this is what happens.
The rest makes no sense to me.
Here I am, plummeting down, down, down through the atmosphere, the wind thrashing past me, cold, and I don't understand how this is happening. Perhaps it doesn't matter if you can open the plane door during flight or not, all that stuff about uneven pressure and sucking and wondering what happened to the door, cause they're probably all gonna die anyway. The shitty part for me is not the fall, not the freezing cold, not knowing that I will collide with the unforgiving ground in some mystery place, but that I don't know when this will happen. In times like this, I tell you, it doesn't help to wonder if you'll land in a marsh somewhere and escape the Hand of Death unscathed and live forever in legend. It doesn't help to wonder if a leather bomber's jacket will help take the edge off the icy blast. Nothing makes sense, and it's fruitless to even care.
But I do think we should go with the Town Taupe for the guest room.
Dan Donche is a writer who can't get enough weirdness in his life, so he makes it up. He can be reached via his website, www.dandonche.com.