“Excuse me, sir. Would you mind if I sat next to you?”
Putting my book down on my lap, I looked up at the woman standing in the aisle. She was dressed in a typical business woman’s suit, light grey with a cream colored blouse or shirt under the jacket, and she was looking longingly at the open window seat next to me. I had just been congratulating myself for being lucky enough to get a seat without any neighbors so I could stretch out and relax for the 5 hour flight, but of course the Gods Of Aviation could never let that happen.
Sometimes I truly hated the gods’ sense of humor.
“Sure, ma’am. Let me just get out of your way…”
“Thank you very much! I just couldn’t take being stuck in the middle seat of the middle row for the entire flight, made me feel a little claustrophobic, you know?”
She gave a nervous laugh as she squeezed into the seat.
“My name’s Lois.”
“Hi, Lois, I’m GeekMan.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, GeekMan. I hope I didn’t disturb you. Are you going to read the whole way, or will you sleep?”
That was an odd opening question.
“I don’t sleep on planes. Ruins my internal clock and gives people jet lag. I plan of reading this book. How about yourself?”
“Oh, I’m too nervous to sleep. Are you sure you won’t be sleeping?”
Curious and curiouser.
“Well, unless you’re planning on slipping me a sleeping pill, I’m positive that I’ll be awake the whole flight.”
“Oh. Well then, is that a good book?”
“Yes, actually. It’s a great book and I’d love to get back to reading it…”
No matter how many hints I gave her about wanting to get back to my book, she kept on talking to me. Cursing the gods for their mean streak, I made a silent promise that I would hunt them down and kill them if she turned out to be one of those talkative passengers that never let their neighbors relax on a flight. As if in response, I heard a deep chuckling sound in the back of my mind.
Stupid gods.
At a break in the conversation I glanced back at Lois and noticed that she wasn’t looking in my direction anymore. In fact, she seemed to be scanning the plane as if looking for someone. Or something. Suddenly, she went rigid in her seat and a look of immense concentration came over her face and I heard her make what sounded like a whiny grunt. Looking in the direction of her stare I saw nothing out of the ordinary on the plane, nothing that would make anyone make a noise like that, anyway. In fact, as I looked at her from the corner of my eye once again, she didn’t even seem to be looking at anything. She was just kind of staring into space and perhaps getting a little red in the face…
That’s when it hit me.
It was the smell of death and decay. A six-month old corpse sprayed with skunk juice and vomit left rotting in a sewer would have smelled better than this. I gagged and my faced pinched as if trying to protect my nose and mouth by sucking them into my skull. As it was, all the hairs in my nose burst into flame and my uvula instantly dried up like a raisin and a softly groaned “Oh, god…” escaped my lips.
Lois’ face was flaming red and she couldn’t meet my eyes when she next spoke.
“I… uhm, I think I see another, ah… open seat up there. With a gentleman who appears to be sleeping. Uh, maybe I should…”
“Yes! Yes, what a fabulous idea! Why don’t I just flee to the back of the plane get out of your way so you can get there as quickly as possible?”
Under my breath I muttered, “Don’t forget to leave a note for the authorities so they can contact you when that poor, unfortunate soul doesn’t wake up.”
Lucky for Lois, the guy did wake up when we landed, but not before.
