Lesley Boland #18 Flight Avoidant

I just want to take it. Put it in my mouth. Swallow.

If I only could! Everything would be alright. I’d be out cold for the duration and arrive like it all happened yesterday. But it wouldn’t really be yesterday. It would only feel that way. I am still here, arrival is ahead of me, ahead of the arc of this 8‑bit animated bee crawling across the world. Anything can happen. I’ll be groggy if I take it. I must stay alert.

I’ll need my wits. Wits might make the difference: when the seat-belt sign comes on; when the masks come down; when I have to brace. I can’t afford blurred vision in the smoke-filled cabin. I’ll have to climb between broken seats and insensible bodies to the emergency exit, following a flickering line of lights. I’ll have to open the over-wing hatch and deploy the inflatable slide. The instructions are pictorial. Panic will get me killed when I’m swimming in the ocean, searching for the life raft in the swell, or running through burning shrubbery without my shoes or eyebrows.

Terror!  Every moment is the moment before the moment before the moment. Terror with this pill. Terror without.  

‘Just promise me that nothing will happen.’  I squeeze the flight attendant’s smooth, impersonal hand.

‘It’s very unlikely that anything will happen.’