October Flame

This is what happens when I combine a lack of sleep, an hour long commute, humidity, and just enough caffeine to stir my senses... As always, your comments are appreciated!

_______________________

October Flame

            By noon it would be an unseasonably warm day for early October. At seven o’clock in the morning, however, the air was just cool enough to allow a humid condensation to hang in the air and blanket the morning in a thick fog.

            “Keep clear of the moors,” he mused aloud, reciting one of the lines from the campy, classic horror film An American Werewolf in London. It was little things, like quoting from his favorite movies, or counting the number of a certain car he saw while driving, that kept him conscious during his daily commute. Otherwise, the sound of his tires spinning on the monotonously flat highway generally tended to lull him to sleep.

            On more than one occasion, his heavy eyelids had flapped open like window shades as he drifted the car to the right or left just enough to catch the rumble strips at the side of the road. This was one of those mornings. After a night filled with what he could only generously describe as fitful slumber, it was all he could do to stay awake. Even the bitter, black coffee he drank didn’t help. And he still had about forty miles to go before he reached his exit.

            In his exhausted condition he at first thought that the orange glow he saw up ahead was simply the sun trying to break free of its hazy, atmospheric prison. Something was strange, however. Even rubbing his eyes failed to clear his vision of the phenomenon he was witnessing. If he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that the sun was setting, not rising, and was doing so far more rapidly than physics would allow. It wasn’t until the nose of the Boeing 757 punched through the haze that he realized what was happening.

            The aircraft was clearly plummeting from the sky, and the orange glow he had noticed emanated from the massive Rolls-Royce RB211 that hung beneath the plane’s right wing: it was completely engulfed in flames. Time seemed to stand still as he watched the plane soar barely five hundred feet over his head, the roar of the engines deafening in his hears. It passed over him like a bullet before impacting the ground in the sparsely wooded field to his right with a thundering boom. In a fortuitous bit of luck, the right wing sheared off on impact, taking the flaming engine with it cascading out and away from the plane before the engine exploded.

            When he would later look back on that day, he would have no recollection of stopping the car at the side of the highway. Nor would he ever know what compelled him to get out of his vehicle and run into the debris-riddled field. Perhaps it was instinct. Perhaps there was some greater force that drove his actions. By all rights, he had no right or reason to be there. The closest he had ever come to being a doctor was removing a roofing nail from the back of his right hand, and then driving himself to the hospital, after an untimely sneeze cause him to jerk the nail gun he was operating.

            He vaguely remembered sprinting towards the downed aircraft, tripping twice: once, he collided with a piece of luggage that had been thrown from the wreckage and into the tall grass. The second time he caught his foot on the severed leg of a passenger he prayed had died without having to feel the pain of the injury. It must have been his shock that bolstered his intestinal fortitude, because the gruesome discovery would have otherwise caused him to vomit.

            When he reached the plane he discovered that it had broken apart into three pieces consisting of the nose, cockpit and a portion of the forward cabin; the plane’s midsection, with the stump of the shattered left wing still intact; and the rear third of the cabin and tail section. He could hear the survivor’s screams, but they didn’t register. Without thinking, he rushed to the nearest section of the fuselage and climbed inside.

            He had been stoned once in his life. The experience was surreal, sounds muted, his vision obscured at the edges. What he experienced now reminded him of being stoned, only tenfold. He had no idea how many he had helped from the wreckage. At some point he had removed his belt to use as a tourniquet on a woman’s leg, and had used his necktie as a makeshift sling for a man who had clearly separated his shoulder.

            The smell and smoke of burning jet fuel and charred metal filled the air and clogged his senses even further. Holding his shirt sleeve over his mouth and nose didn’t even come close to sufficing to prevent the caustic air from searing his lungs. Nearing the point of losing consciousness, he finally decided to turn back. That was when he heard her.

            She was still in her seat, the seatbelt holding her petite figure in place, sideways. She had a small gash on her forehead, left there by a piece of falling baggage, but otherwise appeared to be unharmed.

            “Help,” she whispered softly, her energy and will depleted.

            He climbed over the several rows of seats that separated him from her location until he was perched beside her. She looked at him and smiled.

            “It’s you. Thank God it’s you,” she said, appearing clearly delirious.

            “Its ok, I’m going to get you out of here,” he replied, ignoring her babble as he undid her seat belt and eased her into his arms. Carefully, he shifted her body so that he could carry her out and climbed back over the seats towards the gaping hole in the belly of the aircraft.

            “I knew you’d come,” she repeated, nuzzling her head into his neck. There was something strangely familiar, and comforting, about the young woman he carried.

            “Shhh, it’s ok. You’re going to be fine,” he told her softly.

            “I know,” she answered. “Because of you.”

           

            He looked down at her and smiled, noticing for the first time her piercing, crystalline blue eyes. Captured by them, he swore he had seen them before. Looking back and deciding that they had travelled a safe distance from the plane, he finally collapsed to his knees. He could hear the wail of sirens in the background and the whirring of helicopter blades above him, but ignored them all. Gingerly, he set the woman he carried down on the ground, and collapsed onto his back beside her. She rolled towards him and draped her left arm across his waist, leaned in, and kissed softly kissed him on the cheek.

            “I missed you,” she said softly before drifting off.

            Bewildered and overwhelmed, he never heard her confusing words before slipping into oblivious exhaustion himself.

© J.J. Goodman 2012. All rights reserved.