No one survives a mid-air disintegration. Let alone the fall that follows. Nobody. Ever. The blast, the sudden decompression, the fire, the exploding cabin, seats, struts, aluminum shards, carry-ons, bodies: it kills, instantaneously. No one survives.
But I did. Maybe ten seconds ago. How far have I fallen? We were, what, around thirty-some thousand? Well, I’m no good at math and I’d rather not think about it too hard. Live in the moment, that’s the watchword for right now.
And brother, am I living! Falling through great heights feels both exhilarating and oddly peaceful. Like suddenly, nothing matters. Living in the moment of right now, I’m thinking: I’m free! Fuck you, job! Fuck you, bank! Fuck you, world! In fact, I’m laughing, actually laughing. I haven’t laughed so hard in ages.
The ground still looks so far away, but I know I’m kidding myself. It will come up to me very quickly, and then I suppose I will be suddenly unaware of it or anything else. I see odd glints in the sky and assume they must be pieces of the plane. I hope nothing hits me, like a turbine blade or hunk of wing. That could be nasty. I realize I don’t see any bodies, and that seems weird; after all, I’m just a body like they are, you’d think they’d be all around me. But I guess they’d mostly be in their seats, which would make them heavier and therefore faster to fall. (I think.) After a few seconds the glinty stuff all blows away from me and disappears. I’m alone.
Now I realize something else: it’s goddamn COLD! My shirt was blown off and my pant-legs are funneling icy air in. I mean, we’re not even supposed to be able to live up here—what is this, anyway, the stratosphere?—without a space-suit of some kind, are we? How can I be this cold and still be alive? Why wasn’t my skin ripped from my bones and my lungs imploded when I burst out of the plane? Nevertheless, here I am, cheerfully defying all odds.
It had been a nice flight, soaring up happily from bone-dry thin-lipped rock-ribbed Wichita into the azure heights, free of strip malls and sprawl and flags. Then—blam! Was it a bomb? Did somebody actually blow us up? The thought makes me furious, I want them punished, flayed alive. Maybe right down there in Wichita. Shit, you could sell turns on the cat-o-nine tails and pay the state school budget for a year. We were all so happy, flying along, reading, eating, sleeping, talking, laughing, copping feels. We didn’t deserve this. Nobody does. How will we survive the haters? Maybe we won’t. Does this mean they win? No. Fuck them. I piss on their shadows and curse their nasty little cojones with infertility. Take this curse and spread it around the world, right now.
I can see the curve of the earth, and directly beneath me forest, vast and lush and—well, soft, maybe? So good and gentle the trees look down there, standing there just as they have been for thousands of years. They have no clue what’s falling toward them right now, and no care. Maybe they’ll be nice to me. I wish Earl could see me now. I’m pretty lucky—at least, I’ve been pretty lucky. Earl is tall and sweet and tousle-haired and devoted. We were going to go to France this fall, we’ve been discussing making career moves and maybe getting hitched and even having kids.
Hey, Mom and Dad! Can you see me now? They’re both in Heaven, themselves, so at last we have something in common. They always thought I’d make some big splash—and I may, yet—but never lifted a finger of assistance or offered anything more than great expectations. Think of all the anger caused by expectations! Why couldn’t they just wish me happiness and leave it at that? I had some things on my desk, a pretty nifty workup on a job, that I think would have landed me a promotion. The word “landed” makes me feel like laughing in bitter irony, but the rushing wind sucks it all–laughter, irony, worry, vanity, horniness—right out of me. I’m truly in the moment, and what a moment it is.
Down there are patches of meadow, little lakes, and I wonder how branches and water compare for cushioning falls. I suppose the very best outcome I can hope for will be to survive landing but be so injured that I’ll be unable to move and so never be found. Very possibly I’ll go into a lake and be drowned, or be eaten by bears or wolves. God, I wish I could write this down. Writing is my life, and I’ve got a lot more to do. They say your whole life flashes before your eyes, but right now I’m pretty much living in the moment, as one might expect of a person free-falling toward earth and lacking any definite sort of landing plan.
Okay, so: I may have survived the disintegration, but I haven’t survived the fall. Not yet. And, not that I’m any expert, but it feels like I’m speeding up. I know this is an illusion—we hit terminal velocity and that’s it. I must be falling at hundreds of miles an hour, inconceivable speed for a human body. I feel like yelling Wheeee! but this is no time for frivolity. I’ve got to try to slow myself down, increase my air-resistance. I force my arms and legs out as far as I can and get perpendicular to the fall. Maybe, just maybe! God, it’s cold! I manage to spread myself out into something like a skinny flying squirrel. It doesn’t feel like I’m slowing down much. Shit. Be nice if we had some extra little folds of skin for just this sort of situation, but I suppose we’d only try to get rid of them if we did. Silly us. Fuck it, it’s too cold. I curl up into a ball.
Not to borrow trouble now, but I’m just passing what I estimate is about the fifteen-thousand-foot level, or maybe ten, or who knows, the point is I am by no means out of the woods, here. Oh, it looks pretty soft and cushy and green and foresty, and I may just land in some nice soft tree branches. Faster now, picking out individual trees, another lake, a nice, shining lake. Seems like I’m heading toward it. Yes, maybe. How hard is water when you hit it at a hundred mph? Yeah, I thought so. I look around for birds—ducks—but don’t see any, but I’d like to see the look on their faces when I drop in. That makes me laugh again, but not for long, and it comes to me that I just might pull this off, or else it might come to my having to accept a new state of being. The lake and the trees are getting larger fast and I’m thinking maybe I can manage to bounce from one tree to the other, each one sort of cushioning the landing, or slice into the water at just the right angle. It’s a nice thought, it’s a thought I guess I always sort of had at the back of my
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