Snowbird Gothic Stories 9 - Fat Man On An Airplane
Today's piece is "Fat Man On An Airplane", originally published in Sinisteria: Horror for the Hellbound. This is the latest in the series of stories-behind-the-stories in my collection Snowbird Gothic. I'm on the road now for work, so this particular tale seemed reasonably appropriate.
As always, if you enjoyed the collection please take a moment to leave a good review at amazon or goodreads. Thank you!
***
Airplanes are, at best, temporary communities. The people on the plane are united by precisely one thing – the desire to get to the place on the other end of the flight. Sure, sometimes people travel with friends or loved ones or teammates or whatever, but odds are good that any given air passenger is flying solo, wrapped in a personalized cocoon of of oh-God-just-get-me-on-the-ground-before-the-guy-in-front-of-me-shoves-his-seat-back-again. We have no reason to get to know our fellow travelers. We have no reason to want to get to know our fellow travelers, and there is almost no chance that we will ever see any of our fellow travelers again. We are not flying together, we are just coincidentally flying next to each other.
Except, of course, for the guy who’s sitting next to you and wants to chat. We all know this guy; we on occasion may have been this guy. Occasionally, he’s interesting or funny or amusing, or thoughtful. More often, hes annoying and omnipresent, and there’s no way to detach yourself from the conversation short of a thinly painted “Could you please just shut up?”, because you’re on a plane, and darting for cover in another corner of the room ain’t an option. And at that point, the ride devolves into one long, endless loop of pleaseshutuppleaseshutuppleaseshutupwpleaseshutup.
But there’s one other thing – these conversations never carry off the plane. You touch down, you shake hands and say “nice talking to you”, you maybe exchange business cards, and then that’s that. They’re out of your life forever, you’re out of theirs. It’s like it never happened.
I spend a lot of time on airplanes. I’ve had a lot of these conversations. Some of them – the time I taught the drummer for a British rock star how to play Carcassone on the iPad, the three hours spent chatting with a former air traffic controller – have been fascinating. Many more…have not. But always, once the flight ends, the conversation ends. No consequence, no followup, no meaning.
Which is where this story came from. What if one of those conversations really did have meaning? What if it had power? What sort of change could it make?
I don’t know what’s after the guy on the ground. I don’t think he’ll ever know, either. I don’t think the people chatting on the plane will ever understand what they did. Then again, that’s our world – distant effects of small things, consequences for strangers, keeping your life at a safe distance from those you affect intentionally or otherwise.
I fly home from Toronto on Friday. I’m hoping no one’s sitting next to me.
As always, if you enjoyed the collection please take a moment to leave a good review at amazon or goodreads. Thank you!
***
Airplanes are, at best, temporary communities. The people on the plane are united by precisely one thing – the desire to get to the place on the other end of the flight. Sure, sometimes people travel with friends or loved ones or teammates or whatever, but odds are good that any given air passenger is flying solo, wrapped in a personalized cocoon of of oh-God-just-get-me-on-the-ground-before-the-guy-in-front-of-me-shoves-his-seat-back-again. We have no reason to get to know our fellow travelers. We have no reason to want to get to know our fellow travelers, and there is almost no chance that we will ever see any of our fellow travelers again. We are not flying together, we are just coincidentally flying next to each other.
Except, of course, for the guy who’s sitting next to you and wants to chat. We all know this guy; we on occasion may have been this guy. Occasionally, he’s interesting or funny or amusing, or thoughtful. More often, hes annoying and omnipresent, and there’s no way to detach yourself from the conversation short of a thinly painted “Could you please just shut up?”, because you’re on a plane, and darting for cover in another corner of the room ain’t an option. And at that point, the ride devolves into one long, endless loop of pleaseshutuppleaseshutuppleaseshutupwpleaseshutup.
But there’s one other thing – these conversations never carry off the plane. You touch down, you shake hands and say “nice talking to you”, you maybe exchange business cards, and then that’s that. They’re out of your life forever, you’re out of theirs. It’s like it never happened.
I spend a lot of time on airplanes. I’ve had a lot of these conversations. Some of them – the time I taught the drummer for a British rock star how to play Carcassone on the iPad, the three hours spent chatting with a former air traffic controller – have been fascinating. Many more…have not. But always, once the flight ends, the conversation ends. No consequence, no followup, no meaning.
Which is where this story came from. What if one of those conversations really did have meaning? What if it had power? What sort of change could it make?
I don’t know what’s after the guy on the ground. I don’t think he’ll ever know, either. I don’t think the people chatting on the plane will ever understand what they did. Then again, that’s our world – distant effects of small things, consequences for strangers, keeping your life at a safe distance from those you affect intentionally or otherwise.
I fly home from Toronto on Friday. I’m hoping no one’s sitting next to me.
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