Part of the first chapter of the suspense novel Broken Memory
Tim opened his eyes. A clammy cold covered him like a blanket. Dazed, he wondered how on earth he’d been able to fall asleep after his bizarre talk with his in-flight neighbor.
He looked sideways, making his cervical vertebrae scream in protest because he’d fallen asleep with his head against the wall. The cabin was plunged in darkness, but by the spooky light streaming in through the small windows, he could see that the seats next to him were once again unoccupied.
His body felt incredibly stiff – almost heavy. He pricked up his ears as he stretched his arms and legs. Nothing. No murmuring fellow passengers or crying babies. No humming engines or the quiet hiss of the AC.
He carefully hooked his hands around the headrest in front of him and hauled himself to his feet. The seat squeaked quietly. With a frown, he looked around him. No one in here, as far as he could tell. He bent down and peered out through the small window next to him. Outside, it was dark – almost evening. It took him a while to focus on the shapes and contours before he realized why he didn’t hear anything. Have we landed?
From where he was standing he could see a landing strip. The gray, artificial runway cutting through the landscape looked abandoned. A bit further away, square buildings looked dark against the backdrop of the night sky – he couldn’t see lights anywhere. It had to be cloudy, because even the stars were invisible. Why had no one woken him up? Had they forgotten about him? That seemed unlikely. A plane was always submitted to a thorough final check before the cabin crew left the plane. They had to clean up. Besides, a landing always entailed quite some noise. He couldn’t imagine sleeping through all of that.
Eyes wide, he slipped out of his seat and stood there, in the aisle, completely disoriented. An eerie feeling came over him. He felt dizzy. One second he was hot, the next he was freezing cold.
A flash of pain lanced through his head. He cowered, pressing a hand against his temple. Black spots danced in front of his eyes. He took a few deep breaths. Slowly, the black spots dissipated, and so did the killer headache. With a relieved sigh he straightened his back.
He needed a smoke. His hands patted his pants pocket as if on cue. Smoking on a plane was forbidden, but it didn’t look like there was anyone left to stop him. His pants pockets were empty. No pack of smokes, no lighter. Which made sense, he realized. He’d put them away in his carry-on. Then again, his phone and wallet seemed to have disappeared too.
He cast a look around again. Not only was his stuff nowhere to be found, it also looked as though the plane had never carried any people. No baggage, no plastic bags, no pillows, no food waste. He stalked down the aisle and popped open a few overhead baggage compartments. They were all empty, which was ridiculous. If they made time to clean this plane, they couldn’t have missed him, asleep in his seat.
He noticed his hands was beginning to tremble, and he wondered whether it was caused by the whole absurd situation or the lack of nicotine. His knees buckled, and he slumped into a seat sideways. In order to calm himself down, he breathed deeply in and out through his nose. Somehow, he was hoping to catch a whiff of something. A lingering perfume, the smell of candy. Some kind of proof that he hadn’t been the only goddamn passenger on this plane.
He didn’t smell anything.
“Calm down,” he told himself out loud. “There’s a reasonable explanation for all this. The plane landed and everyone got off, that must be it.” His voice sounded hollow and echoed off the walls like it didn’t belong to him.
He cast a look out of a window facing the opposite side of the airfield. This time, he could see the terminal. Strangely enough he didn’t see any other planes on the runway. Startled, he stood up, painfully bumping his head against the overhead baggage compartment. He swore, rubbed his painful head but kept staring outside incredulously.
This plane – the 737 he’d boarded – had been traveling from Miami to San Francisco. He was going to board another plane here in order to get home, like he’d done a thousand times before.
This was not San Francisco.
A shrill cry came from the front part of the plane.
With a jolt he turned around. Everything was quiet, but just when he thought he must have imagined the high-pitched sound, it came again, from the direction of the cockpit.
He ran forward through the aisle, steadying himself on headrests to his left and right, and tumbled down, sitting in front of the cockpit on his hands and knees.
A sound came through the cockpit door before it opened on squeaky hinges. The hairs in his neck stood up.
A girl appeared. She was slim, dressed in leggings and a red dress, and she had blonde hair down to her shoulders. She was protectively cradling a tiger cuddly toy against her chest, which stared at him with its black, beady eyes. Letting out a sigh of relief, Tim scrambled to his feet in the darkness.
The girl inched out of the cockpit one step at a time, stopping at a safe distance from Tim and eyeing him suspiciously. “Who are you?”
Tim took a few halting steps toward her. The girl back away. “Don’t be afraid.” He stopped, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “My name’s Tim. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
More light was streaming inside because of the cockpit windows. It lit up his hands, right in front of him. “Jesus!”
His hands! They didn’t look like his at all. His fingers were smaller than he was used to. His nails had a white edge, which was odd because he was a notorious nail biter. But that wasn’t even the most bizarre thing…
He completely forgot about the child as he staggered backward into the aisle. His left foot caught on one of the seats and he fell over. He was trying to break his fall, but his limbs were out of his control. Like a heavy log, he thumped down on the floor, his head hitting the armrest. Stars danced in front of his eyes.
Ignoring the pain, he inspected his body, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and pulling up his pant legs next. His mouth fell open.
All his life he’d been black. And now, he was as white as that girl.
“Are you okay, mister?”
The world spun on its axis. A silhouette looked at him, sitting a few seats down. It took him a while to recognize the girl. He put a hand on his forehead. Gradually, everything stopped spinning and the world went back to its usual shape.
He stood up and clambered over a row of seats to check his reflection in the window. The dull light didn’t help, but what he could see made his soul go cold. Apart from his black skin color, he’d always had a black beard. That had disappeared, too. And true, he’d had a receding hairline for quite some years now, but right now he was completely bald! His nose was bigger than he was used to and he didn’t just seem skinnier, but also taller.
Touching his clean-shaven face with both hands, he stepped out into the aisle again.
“Am I okay?” he repeated. “No, I guess not, little girl.”
“I’m nine,” she quipped. “I’m not a little girl.”
Tim loathed shrieking, overactive or know-it-all kids. “Whatever.” The words came out haltingly. “What’s your name, Little Miss Smartass?”
“I’m not a…” she started out, then anxiously took a step back while her gaze darted here and there, seemingly searching the plane. “Ella,” she finally replied. “My name is Ella.”
“Ella who?” Tim asked. “What’s your last name?”
The girl shrugged.
“You don’t know your last name?”
“Where are we?” the child interrupted him. “And where are the other people?”
Tim sighed, sitting down in one of the aisle seats again. “I don’t suppose you happen to know what’s going on here.”
Ella shook her head. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I woke up in the cockpit, but I have no idea how I got there,” she replied. “I know my name and how I am, but everything else…” She looked at the tiger in her arms, as though to find strength in its eyes. “I don’t remember a thing from before I woke up here.”
“You can’t be serious.” Tim shot her a baffled look.
The girl dejectedly sank down on an armrest, hugging the cuddly toy to her chest even closer. “What happened?” Her voice was like a whisper.
In the silence that followed, his gaze drifted from the girl to ‘his’ white skin, which couldn’t belong to him. He came to the conclusion he must still be dreaming.
A plaintive cry interrupted his train of thought. Tim looked sideways and saw that Ella had pressed her hands against her forehead. She was rocking back and forth. He felt the urge to get up and comfort her, but he didn’t know how to go about it. How do you calm down a frantic child? What to say? “Just take it easy,” he tried, his voice catching. “You’re not alone. We’re in the same boat here.” Only after the words left his mouth did he realize that they didn’t exactly sound comforting.
With a sigh, he got up and slogged over to the child. He slowly lifted his hand, gingerly placing it on the back of her head before pulling her into him. “Ssh,” he hushed. “Everything will be all right.” To distract her a bit, he kneeled down in front of her and pointed at the cuddly toy. The girl was holding the tiger so tightly she almost squeezed him to a pulp. “Who’s this?”
Ella lifted the toy away from her chest and caressed its head. “I found him in the cockpit. He was next to me on the floor.”
Tim wondered how a cuddly toy could possibly end up there, but he forced a smile. “And what’s his name?”
The girl genuinely seemed to ponder the question. She frowned and stared at the tiger searchingly. “Tiger,” she decided.
Tim pressed his lips together and nodded. “A fierce name.”
The silence between them turned awkward. Tim wanted to say something else to comfort the girl, but the words were lodged in his throat. After a few uncomfortable seconds he heard Ella whisper something quietly. She patted the tiger’s back and avoided Tim’s eyes. “Thank you.”
He looked at her curiously. “What for?”
“For being here, with me. Without you I’d have been all alone. I thought I was. That’s why I screamed like that. Because I was scared.”
He grimaced, taking her hand and pumping it lightly. He didn’t want to admit he was just as happy with her presence here. “This has to be some kind of misunderstanding, you’ll see.” But even as the words left his mouth, the shivers running down his spine called him a liar.
“So you can’t remember anything either?” Ella asked after a while. In the meantime the girl had calmed down somewhat. She was clearly trying to sound braver than she felt.
“I remember everything,” Tim replied. “At least, that’s what I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.” He didn’t feel like explaining himself. “How about we get out of here?”
For the first time, a smile broke through on Ella’s face. “Yes! I bet Tiger would like that too, wouldn’t he?” She turned the cuddly toy around to fix him with an inquisitive look in her eyes. She nodded at last, as though Tiger spoke a language that she alone could understand. “Yes, he would like that too.”
“Good.” Tim let go of her and pointed to the rear part of the plane. “Come on.”
Together, they walked past the rows of seats and the toilet, heading straight for the rear wall where they usually kept food and drinks. They turned right and hit a locked door. Tim put his hand on the handle and pulled to the right. He expected the door to swing open to the outside and an emergency slide to inflate and pop out if there weren’t stairs leading down. The door didn’t budge, though.
“Why am I not surprised?” He tried again, pushing the door with his shoulders. The only effect was that his shoulder now hurt.
“Are we locked in?” Ella’s high-pitched voice rose another octave. “What are we supposed to do now?”
Tim tried his best to stay calm. Something inside of him wanted to rage at her and shake her like a rag doll. Instead, he deeply breathed in and out a few times before turning around. He sank down to his knees and took her hands. “What did I promise you just now?”
“That everything would be all right,” the girl replied after a beat.
“Exactly. And I don’t break promises easily.” To underline his words, he squeezed her hands for a second. “Okay?” He held her gaze intently, until she reacted. Unfortunately, he couldn’t keep his hands from trembling slightly.
She nodded. “Okay.”
He got up and walked over to the door in the middle of the plane. With this door, the emergency handle was above it. The red iron felt cold to the touch. He pulled it to the right. This door also remained shut.
“Goddammit,” he swore under his breath.
Without saying a word, he stalked past the rows of seats toward the front of the plane and tried the door there. In vain.
His heart sank. In frustration, he threw his entire weight into opening the door a few times more, his feet kicking the exit and evoking a metallic, almost mocking reverberation.
“Now what?” Ella asked, a tremor in her voice.
Tim leaned against the open cockpit door and sighed. “I don’t have a clue.” He realized that this flew directly in the face of what he’d promised her just moments ago, but it was the truth.
What kind of sick joke was this? Who would do a thing like this to them, and why? His eyes frantically darted to and fro, looking for hidden cameras. At least that would be some sort of an explanation. It wouldn’t explain how he ended up in a white man’s body, though.
He tried to reason his way out of this and not just put up a brave front for Ella, but for himself. If he allowed the panic churning in his abdomen to bubble up, he’d tear this whole place apart. He cursed the fact that his cigarettes were gone – perhaps that was even worse than being locked up in here.
This time it was Ella who grabbed his hand and pumped it consolingly.
Her touch calmed him down. She didn’t say anything – she didn’t need to. The friendly look in her eyes did wonders.
He nodded. “There has to be a way out of here.”
“Can’t we contact the tower?” Ella suggested, pointing at the cockpit. “Isn’t that what pilots do, too?”
In surprise, Tim looked from her to the cockpit. Apart from a panel with a few hundred buttons on it, the desolate, gray compartment also housed some monitors and two empty pilot chairs. The window offered them a view of the terminal wall, which made it impossible to make out whether anyone could be in there – something Tim was seriously beginning to doubt.
A smile appeared on his face. “You know, you’re pretty smart for an eight-year-old.”
“Nine!” Ella protested. “I’m nine years old!”
Tim threw his hands in the air by ways of apology. He stepped inside the cockpit, leaning on one of the headrests and taking in all the controls. “The problem is, I don’t have the faintest idea how I should contact them, sweetheart.”
In the hopes of finding something he could use, he scanned the abbreviations above some of the monitors and controls. They might as well have been in Chinese. Besides, he wasn’t sure it would help if he did understand, because all the monitors were switched off and there were no activated lights on the panel. All life seemed to have drained from this aircraft. He felt like a castaway stuck inside the carcass of a sea monster.
“There has to be an emergency exit,” Tim said. “I mean – the pilots have to have a way out in case the cockpit door gets stuck, right?” He looked around for a hatch in the roof or the floor, but he couldn’t find anything.
“Tim, the side window!” Ella tugged at his shirt insistently, pointing sideways.
It took him a few seconds to spot the panel with controls for the side window – some sort of joystick which could be pushed forward from the back.
He quickly sat down in the chair and clutched the joystick with his hand. His fingers shook when he pushed. Immediately, the handle turned, allowing him to open the window. Squeaking, the glass slid sideways.
“Yes!” Ella excitedly clapped her hands.
Tim smiled vaguely. “I told you I don’t break promises easily?”
Listening intently, he leaned forward, expecting to feel at least a slight breeze on his face or at least a variation in temperature. Nothing. The total lack of sound from the outside particularly gave him the creeps.
Not important, he told himself. At least now we can escape from this prison.
The distance between the cockpit and the tarmac was considerable, though. The idea of simply climbing out the side window and jumping down was inconceivable. They’d break their legs.
He found the solution in the upper left area above the window. A thin, white rope, which had a knot at intervals of one yard, wound tightly inside a small compartment. Tim pulled it out and saw that one end was attached to some sort of hook. He tossed the other end out, where it flopped against the side of the plane.
“We need to climb out like that?” Ella’s voice caught when she saw the rope.
“Afraid so.” He saw the fear in her eyes and he quickly took her face between his hands. “You’ll be all right. I bet you climbed up and down ropes during PE class a few times, right?”
Ella shrugged. “I don’t remember.” She paused for a few seconds. “Tiger says he’d never do this.”
Tim sighed. “Listen. I’ll go first and show you and Tiger how it’s done, okay?”
Without waiting for her answer, he clambered over the chair, grabbed the thin rope, and flung his legs out the open window.
“Wait!” Ella called out to him, but he had already turned around and was trying his best to climb down. Don’t look down, he told himself. He tried to bounce off the side of the plane, but the hull was too slippery. Cursing under his breath, he sought purchase with this feet by using the knots in the rope, but unfortunately his shoes were too clunky for that.
He let himself drop down the last few yards. The touchdown on the asphalt sent a jolt through his body, almost throwing him out of whack.
He looked around. No personnel noticing his escape from the plane came rushing to his aid. No lights – no moving planes. The airport was deserted. The openings to the baggage belts reminded him of empty eye sockets filled with a cold darkness. And yet, he had to reconsider his earlier assessment – it wasn’t completely dark out here. A sort of foggy gray seemed to descend from the skies, blanketing everything down here. It was as though they were trapped inside a washed-out ink drawing. He inhaled. Instead of oil and kerosene, all he smelled was a moldy scent he couldn’t quite place.
“Tim?”
He looked up.
Ella stuck her head out the window, looking at him in doubt. “I don’t know if…”
“You can do it!” Tim tried to sound confident.
“I’m scared.”
Annoyed, he clenched his fists. “No, you aren’t. You can do it.”
“But…”
“Ella, it’s quite simple, really,” Tim explained. “Either you climb down here or you stay up there. Alone.”
Silence.
“Come on, sweetheart.” He tried to sound calmer than he was. “You can do it! Drop Tiger from the window and climb out here.”
“He’s scared too!”
Tim had to try his best to contain his impatience and not snap at her. “I’ll catch him, nothing will happen to him.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. Now come on!”
A brief silence. “Okay then.”
She dangled Tiger from the window and hurled him out, one eye closed and the tip of her tongue poking out from the corner of her mouth. “Catch, please.”
Tiger’s big adventure ended well – in his hands. Landing on the asphalt wouldn’t have hurt him much, though, which sadly didn’t apply to Tiger’s owner, who was now staring down at Tim from above, her face pale and drawn.
Tim put the cuddly toy on the runway. “Good girl. See? Tiger’s safe. Your turn!”
Anxiously, Ella grabbed the rope and cast a look downward. “What if I fall?”
Even in the dim light he could see her face looked serious and tense. “I’ll catch you, but you won’t. Just hold on tight to that rope and climb down slowly. It’s like the jungle gym.”
“Huh?”
He threw his hands in the air. “Jesus. Don’t tell me you never went to the playground before.”
“I wouldn’t know.” As though to encourage herself, she started to mumble to herself, slowly edging out of the plane window. She glanced down one more time before she awkwardly started to climb down. She exclaimed with fear when her hands seemed to slip on the rope halfway down.
“Steady! Don’t let go.” He maneuvered under her with his arms spread, ready to catch her, but she recovered quickly. Only when he could touch her feet did she let go. Relieved but shaky, she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“See? That wasn’t so hard,” Tim whispered in her ear.
She punched him playfully and shoved him away. With a smile, he set her down. She snatched Tiger off the ground, wiping some dust off his fur. “What do we do now?” She looked around her anxiously.
“There’s only one thing we can do,” Tim replied. “Find a way in.”
He suspiciously eyed the terminal, which was shrouded in darkness. The matte windows stared back at him like a gigantic spider’s dead eyes – a spider whose deadly web was still waiting to snare unsuspecting passers-by.
2
Since the plane wasn’t connected to a jet way to let passengers off, the baggage belt was their only way into the terminal right now. Had the airport been bigger, they would most likely have had real trouble getting in. Often, the automated subterranean systems for baggage handling spanned several football fields. This seemed more like a local airfield.
Tim led the way as they approached one of the belts. A small maintenance car was parked next to it, which contained a flashlight that – typically – didn’t work. He did find a box of matches in one of the overalls inside the car. Colorful letters spelled out the name of a bar or restaurant, but he’d never heard of it. It was half-full.
It took him a while to convince Ella to crawl into the baggage belt opening, but frankly she wasn’t the only one who needed convincing. He wasn’t exactly eager to do this either. The dim light didn’t reach all the way inside and the air smelled stale. Every sound they made, echoed off the walls of the otherwise dark and gloomy space.
It was crazy. The room was enormous, but because the darkness seemed like a cocoon around the small refuge of light emitted by every match Tim lit, he almost felt claustrophobic. The entire setting felt like a zombie movie. Everything seemed to be quiet as long as the match was burning, but there was a sense of wrongness in the air. With each new match he struck, Tim expected some half-eaten face to emerge from the darkness, jaws open and at the ready to maul him. Ella could feel it too – her grip on his hand tightened with every step.
At long last, after a final ascent, he helped her and Tiger off the belt. A few seconds later, they were walking through the abandoned main terminal. The odd, grayish light that was visible in the night sky outside trickled in through the gigantic windows, shining a dim light on where they needed to go.
“Where the heck is everybody?” Ella whispered.
“That’s what I would like to know.” Tim had seen quite some bizarre things in his lifetime, but this was the icing on the cake. Not only were all the restaurants, shops, offices, and the car rental unmanned – they were completely abandoned. No lights anywhere, and the monitors that were supposed to display the arrival and departure times were blacked out.
They rounded a corner. Again, Ella slipped her hand into his. She was shivering and her skin felt cold.
He wanted to comfort her and tell her everything would be okay, like he’d done on the plane, but the words caught in his throat. All he could do was pump her hand lightly.
He broke into a cold sweat. It was as though everyone at the airport had just up and left in a calm and orderly fashion. No signs of panic or disaster striking. Everything and everyone was just – gone. And then there was the issue of his new body. How could he make sense of things if nothing made sense?
Again, his hand trailed down to his pants pocket. Only when he touched it did he realize – again – that his cigarettes had disappeared, together with all his fellow passengers.
Abruptly Ella came to a stop. She frantically tugged at his shirt and demonstratively put a finger on her lips. “You hear that?” she whispered.
He looked at her with a frown before pricking up his ears. For the very first time, he heard a sound that didn’t come from either of them. Groaning. Metallic clangs, muffled cries of pain. A feral growl.
“It’s coming from that direction!” Ella pointed in front of her, into the hallway that would take them to the check-in desk. She took a step backward, her eyes wide.
He shot her an uncertain look. “It’s the first sign of life we’ve heard. I – we have to.”
The girl let go of him and took another step back, hugging Tiger close to her chest. “No. Whatever that is, it sounds… wrong.”
A stomach-turning shriek bounded off the walls.
‘Wrong’ seems to be the right word for it, Tim thought to himself. But I have to know what’s going on here. In silence, he approached the sound. Like some dumb teenager in a slasher movie, he thought, as his stomach turned with fear. He’d always thought scenes like that were unrealistic, but now he might be headed for certain death himself.
Behind him, Ella’s panicked voice piped up. “Tim, wait!” The words were followed by her echoing footfalls on the linoleum floor.
In the semi-dark, a shady figure disengaged itself from a body hanging limply across one of the desks.
Tim squinted his eyes while his throat swelled up with nerves. Had the figure heard Ella? Only when the sounds continued did he understand the scene that was unraveling in front of him.
The body was that of a naked woman, her legs spread. In between them was a man, also naked. His hips moved wildly, slamming the metal table that the woman was lying on against the desk again and again. It had an ominous ring to it, like a faraway army marching toward them. Thunk… thunk… thunk. The man groaned like an animal. Two shadows moving in the night.
The woman turned her face toward him. When Tim looked at her, his breath hitched. That expression, those eyes… could it be true?
No, of course it can’t be true. Don’t be ridiculous.
It was Jill.
His ex!
Part of one of the first chapters of Broken Memory
Tim opened his eyes. A clammy cold covered him like a blanket. Dazed, he wondered how on earth he’d been able to fall asleep after his bizarre talk with his in-flight neighbor.
He looked sideways, making his cervical vertebrae scream in protest because he’d fallen asleep with his head against the wall. The cabin was plunged in darkness, but by the spooky light streaming in through the small windows, he could see that the seats next to him were once again unoccupied.
His body felt incredibly stiff – almost heavy. He pricked up his ears as he stretched his arms and legs. Nothing. No murmuring fellow passengers or crying babies. No humming engines or the quiet hiss of the AC.
He carefully hooked his hands around the headrest in front of him and hauled himself to his feet. The seat squeaked quietly. With a frown, he looked around him. No one in here, as far as he could tell. He bent down and peered out through the small window next to him. Outside, it was dark – almost evening. It took him a while to focus on the shapes and contours before he realized why he didn’t hear anything. Have we landed?
From where he was standing he could see a landing strip. The gray, artificial runway cutting through the landscape looked abandoned. A bit further away, square buildings looked dark against the backdrop of the night sky – he couldn’t see lights anywhere. It had to be cloudy, because even the stars were invisible. Why had no one woken him up? Had they forgotten about him? That seemed unlikely. A plane was always submitted to a thorough final check before the cabin crew left the plane. They had to clean up. Besides, a landing always entailed quite some noise. He couldn’t imagine sleeping through all of that.
Eyes wide, he slipped out of his seat and stood there, in the aisle, completely disoriented. An eerie feeling came over him. He felt dizzy. One second he was hot, the next he was freezing cold.
A flash of pain lanced through his head. He cowered, pressing a hand against his temple. Black spots danced in front of his eyes. He took a few deep breaths. Slowly, the black spots dissipated, and so did the killer headache. With a relieved sigh he straightened his back.
He needed a smoke. His hands patted his pants pocket as if on cue. Smoking on a plane was forbidden, but it didn’t look like there was anyone left to stop him. His pants pockets were empty. No pack of smokes, no lighter. Which made sense, he realized. He’d put them away in his carry-on. Then again, his phone and wallet seemed to have disappeared too.
He cast a look around again. Not only was his stuff nowhere to be found, it also looked as though the plane had never carried any people. No baggage, no plastic bags, no pillows, no food waste. He stalked down the aisle and popped open a few overhead baggage compartments. They were all empty, which was ridiculous. If they made time to clean this plane, they couldn’t have missed him, asleep in his seat.
He noticed his hands was beginning to tremble, and he wondered whether it was caused by the whole absurd situation or the lack of nicotine. His knees buckled, and he slumped into a seat sideways. In order to calm himself down, he breathed deeply in and out through his nose. Somehow, he was hoping to catch a whiff of something. A lingering perfume, the smell of candy. Some kind of proof that he hadn’t been the only goddamn passenger on this plane.
He didn’t smell anything.
“Calm down,” he told himself out loud. “There’s a reasonable explanation for all this. The plane landed and everyone got off, that must be it.” His voice sounded hollow and echoed off the walls like it didn’t belong to him.
He cast a look out of a window facing the opposite side of the airfield. This time, he could see the terminal. Strangely enough he didn’t see any other planes on the runway. Startled, he stood up, painfully bumping his head against the overhead baggage compartment. He swore, rubbed his painful head but kept staring outside incredulously.
This plane – the 737 he’d boarded – had been traveling from Miami to San Francisco. He was going to board another plane here in order to get home, like he’d done a thousand times before.
This was not San Francisco.
A shrill cry came from the front part of the plane.
With a jolt he turned around. Everything was quiet, but just when he thought he must have imagined the high-pitched sound, it came again, from the direction of the cockpit.
He ran forward through the aisle, steadying himself on headrests to his left and right, and tumbled down, sitting in front of the cockpit on his hands and knees.
A sound came through the cockpit door before it opened on squeaky hinges. The hairs in his neck stood up.
A girl appeared. She was slim, dressed in leggings and a red dress, and she had blonde hair down to her shoulders. She was protectively cradling a tiger cuddly toy against her chest, which stared at him with its black, beady eyes. Letting out a sigh of relief, Tim scrambled to his feet in the darkness.
The girl inched out of the cockpit one step at a time, stopping at a safe distance from Tim and eyeing him suspiciously. “Who are you?”
Tim took a few halting steps toward her. The girl back away. “Don’t be afraid.” He stopped, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “My name’s Tim. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
More light was streaming inside because of the cockpit windows. It lit up his hands, right in front of him. “Jesus!”
His hands! They didn’t look like his at all. His fingers were smaller than he was used to. His nails had a white edge, which was odd because he was a notorious nail biter. But that wasn’t even the most bizarre thing…
He completely forgot about the child as he staggered backward into the aisle. His left foot caught on one of the seats and he fell over. He was trying to break his fall, but his limbs were out of his control. Like a heavy log, he thumped down on the floor, his head hitting the armrest. Stars danced in front of his eyes.
Ignoring the pain, he inspected his body, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and pulling up his pant legs next. His mouth fell open.
All his life he’d been black. And now, he was as white as that girl.
“Are you okay, mister?”
The world spun on its axis. A silhouette looked at him, sitting a few seats down. It took him a while to recognize the girl. He put a hand on his forehead. Gradually, everything stopped spinning and the world went back to its usual shape.
He stood up and clambered over a row of seats to check his reflection in the window. The dull light didn’t help, but what he could see made his soul go cold. Apart from his black skin color, he’d always had a black beard. That had disappeared, too. And true, he’d had a receding hairline for quite some years now, but right now he was completely bald! His nose was bigger than he was used to and he didn’t just seem skinnier, but also taller.
Touching his clean-shaven face with both hands, he stepped out into the aisle again.
“Am I okay?” he repeated. “No, I guess not, little girl.”
“I’m nine,” she quipped. “I’m not a little girl.”
Tim loathed shrieking, overactive or know-it-all kids. “Whatever.” The words came out haltingly. “What’s your name, Little Miss Smartass?”
“I’m not a…” she started out, then anxiously took a step back while her gaze darted here and there, seemingly searching the plane. “Ella,” she finally replied. “My name is Ella.”
“Ella who?” Tim asked. “What’s your last name?”
The girl shrugged.
“You don’t know your last name?”
“Where are we?” the child interrupted him. “And where are the other people?”
Tim sighed, sitting down in one of the aisle seats again. “I don’t suppose you happen to know what’s going on here.”
Ella shook her head. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I woke up in the cockpit, but I have no idea how I got there,” she replied. “I know my name and how I am, but everything else…” She looked at the tiger in her arms, as though to find strength in its eyes. “I don’t remember a thing from before I woke up here.”
“You can’t be serious.” Tim shot her a baffled look.
The girl dejectedly sank down on an armrest, hugging the cuddly toy to her chest even closer. “What happened?” Her voice was like a whisper.
In the silence that followed, his gaze drifted from the girl to ‘his’ white skin, which couldn’t belong to him. He came to the conclusion he must still be dreaming.
A plaintive cry interrupted his train of thought. Tim looked sideways and saw that Ella had pressed her hands against her forehead. She was rocking back and forth. He felt the urge to get up and comfort her, but he didn’t know how to go about it. How do you calm down a frantic child? What to say? “Just take it easy,” he tried, his voice catching. “You’re not alone. We’re in the same boat here.” Only after the words left his mouth did he realize that they didn’t exactly sound comforting.
With a sigh, he got up and slogged over to the child. He slowly lifted his hand, gingerly placing it on the back of her head before pulling her into him. “Ssh,” he hushed. “Everything will be all right.” To distract her a bit, he kneeled down in front of her and pointed at the cuddly toy. The girl was holding the tiger so tightly she almost squeezed him to a pulp. “Who’s this?”
Ella lifted the toy away from her chest and caressed its head. “I found him in the cockpit. He was next to me on the floor.”
Tim wondered how a cuddly toy could possibly end up there, but he forced a smile. “And what’s his name?”
The girl genuinely seemed to ponder the question. She frowned and stared at the tiger searchingly. “Tiger,” she decided.
Tim pressed his lips together and nodded. “A fierce name.”
The silence between them turned awkward. Tim wanted to say something else to comfort the girl, but the words were lodged in his throat. After a few uncomfortable seconds he heard Ella whisper something quietly. She patted the tiger’s back and avoided Tim’s eyes. “Thank you.”
He looked at her curiously. “What for?”
“For being here, with me. Without you I’d have been all alone. I thought I was. That’s why I screamed like that. Because I was scared.”
He grimaced, taking her hand and pumping it lightly. He didn’t want to admit he was just as happy with her presence here. “This has to be some kind of misunderstanding, you’ll see.” But even as the words left his mouth, the shivers running down his spine called him a liar.