CHANTELLE MACKINTOSH
Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. There is some slight turbulence up ahead so we have turned on the seatbelt sign. Please remain seated until it is turned off. Thank you.
*
Seat 6D
The clouds pressed against the glass, fingers desperately clawing at the edges of the window. Their tendrils looked solid enough to reach in and drag her out, dooming her to fall. They filled the window until Evie could no longer tell where the plane ended and the clouds began.
She broke eye contact with them and looked up at the still lit seatbelt sign. Good. That light meant the plane knew what it was doing to her. It knew she wasn’t safe.
She tightened her grip around the armrest. The smooth plastic had lost its coolness beneath her palms, now slick with her sweat. She drew in a deep breath and counted as she slowly let it out.
One… A deep mechanical vibration travelled through the floor up the soles of her shoes
Two… The air smelled of recycled breaths, white wine and something entirely foreign, metallic even.
Three… The man across the aisle let out a large snort as he snored in his sleep.
The unexpected sound startled her from her thoughts. She looked over at the man as his head rolled against his neck pillow, his mouth hung open. He was completely out of it. How could anyone sleep up here? How could anyone even think of sleeping when the ground was so far below?
She regretted the thought immediately as her eyes subconsciously darted back out the window. Back to the clouds. Only clouds. No sign of the ground below. No houses or roads or even ant-sized cars whizzing along motorways. There was nothing to prove that the world as they knew it still existed beneath them.
She slammed the blind shut with too much force, the plastic rattled loudly causing the woman beside her to flinch. The woman sighed, and not for the first time. Evie could feel the woman’s annoyance radiating off her, hot and prickling against her side every time her breathing changed or her fingers dug into the arm rest. The woman closed her book with a soft snap and turned towards her.
‘First time flying?’
Evie shook her head. It was worse than that. If it was her first time it would’ve been easier. Her fear would’ve made sense. She could’ve blamed the unfamiliarity, the strange airborne sensation and the building pressure in her ears for the way she felt. People were more forgiving of that kind of fear. But she’d flown before. She lost count of how many times she’d flown, it should be second nature by now. That was the problem, she knew exactly what happened on planes. She knew what turbulence was. The screen in front of her told her exactly how high they were. She knew what cabin pressure was, what emergency landings involved, how aircraft were tested and maintained. She’d heard it all before, the statistics people liked to recite when they’re trying to comfort someone. None of it helped.
‘I just don’t like it,’ she muttered. It felt like a shameful admission.
‘Nobody does,’ the woman shrugged.
Evie almost laughed. That simply wasn’t true. Children pressed their faces against airplane windows, their palms leaving greasy handprints on the glass as they searched the clouds for signs of magic. Some loved the freedom of it, the strange weightlessness and detachment from their everyday life. Those that travelled for business probably enjoyed the enforced silence, a brief escape from the relentless barrage of urgent emails. Influencers capture the perfect angle of the sunlight as it hits the cloud, all to be posted for strangers to envy. They just wanted to be above it all.
Above. The concept was ridiculous. Humans weren’t meant to be above anything. They were meant to have something solid beneath their feets. Dirt, concrete, grass, carpet, sand, anything was better than nothing.
She closed her eyes again, attempting to shut out the world around her.
One… The engines hummed steadily beneath her.
Two — a laugh echoed from a few seats in front of her. Her eyes remained closed because she knew exactly who it was, the teenage girl watching some sitcom her brain didn’t have the energy to recognise. The girl laughed again.
Then the plane tilted. Her stomach dropped before the rest of her had time to understand what was happening. The seat seemed to fall away beneath her as her nails dug into the plastic leaving small crescent indentations. Somewhere in her chest, her heart kicked against her ribs.
‘It’s just turbulence dear, nothing to worry about,’ the woman said, reopening her book.
She felt like a small child being placated by gentle lies no reasonable adult would believe. When she was little, she remembered her father telling her that clouds were made of water. She hadn’t believed him. They just looked so solid. She’d asked him what would happen if she fell through one. ‘You’d just fall through,’ he replied.
Just. As though there was nothing terrifying about falling from the sky.
The intercom dinged. She flinched. The seatbelt sign flashed off as the plane leveled out. Around her, people exploded into a flurry of movement. Tray tables were opened, toilet doors were locked and unlocked. Someone behind her stood too quickly and bumped against her chair, further jostling her nausea.
Just like that, everyone had returned to normal. But Evie didn’t. There were still five more hours. Five hours of clouds. Five hours of pretending that being thousands of meters above the earth was a normal thing for the human body to endure.
She closed her eyes. Breathed in. Breathed out.
One…
Two…
Three…
*
Seat 3H
I could feel him simmering beside me. We are as far apart as two guys squished into economy seats can possibly be, but somehow, the distance between us has never felt greater. Outside the window, clouds stretch endlessly across the horizon, shapes blurring effortlessly together, their ends inseparable from their beginnings. I wonder when we stopped being able to do that. When did the lines between us become so sharp and jagged we no longer knew how to cross them.
I shift, accidentally knocking my knee against Jamal’s.
‘Sorry.’
Jamal doesn’t look at me. He just shifts further towards the window, his shoulder pressing against the wall of the plane. He looks like he’d rather be sitting anywhere else right now, even if it means sitting on the wing of the plane in the freezing cold.
The seatbelt sign is still on. Three hours into the flight and we had barely said twenty words to each other.
This trip was supposed to fix everything. Fix us. Take us back to our honeymoon days when we were so in love and couldn’t keep our hands off each other, even with the glares.
But there were always going to be glares. That’s just what happens when you are two guys in love. You hold hands in public and people’s brains break, trying to fit you into their version of reality.
Jamal has never cared. Well, he used to say he didn’t. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know him anymore. Jamal stared out at the clouds like the entire world beneath us was more interesting than his husband sitting beside him. I wonder if Jamal feels as far away from me as the ground does from here.
I look towards the window. The clouds have thickened into dark gray heaps, blocking out the meager sunlight that existed at this time. I want to tell him that I never mean to hurt him, but I know it won’t change anything. That whatever lies beneath our clouds is still there, even when I can’t see it. As the plane dips and shudders beneath us, I can’t help but wonder if this is the end of us.
The seatbelt sign finally flicks off and the drink cart finally starts coming around again. The flight attendant pauses at our aisle with a bright, practiced smile.
‘Something to drink?’
‘Whiskey. On the rocks. Please.’
Jamal turned towards him raising his eyebrows, ‘Seriously?’
‘What?’
‘You know you shouldn’t drink when you’re angry.’
‘I’m not angry.’
‘Jamal laughs as the flight attendant looks between us, her smile frozen across her face.
‘I’ll get the same then,’ Jamal says. That surprised me, he wasn’t a big drinker. The flight attendant, Sarah, quickly pours us both a cup before quickly moving on to the next row.
‘You did it again. The thing.’
‘What thing?’
‘When you pretend you’re calm so I look unreasonable.’
‘I’m not trying to make you look unreasonable.’
‘You don’t have to try for it to hurt.’
‘I didn’t mean it. What I said at the hotel.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you tho?’
‘I know you didn't mean it, and that's worse. You think saying you didn’t mean it will make it disappear? You think that this cycle we find ourselves in is okay? You get angry, say something you don’t mean and I always forgive you. It’s not fair.’
‘No it isn’t.’
The man in the seat next to me shuffles nervously. The movement snaps me out of it. Now is not the time for this. There were too many strangers around us, each with their problems and here we were, making ours public for their awkward entertainment.
All I want is to reach across the tiny space between us and take Jamal’s hand the way he has hundreds of times before. I want to trace symbols of love and forever across the back of his hand, my little way of reminding us both that it was going to be alright.
But it will have to wait. I have a lot to make up for. We don’t need a second honeymoon to fix us. We just need time. Together.
I rest my hand on the armrest between us, palm up. An open invitation. Jamal stares at it for a long time. I know this small moment won’t make or break us, whether he chooses to accept my hand or not. I know a single gesture can’t undo what I’ve said or the hurt I’ve caused. I just hope he knows how much I love him, even when I struggle to show it in the ways that matter.
Slowly, Jamal moves closer. Our fingers touch and intertwine. Neither of us speaks. It isn’t forgiveness. It isn’t a solution. It’s a promise to work through it, together.
Outside the window, the clouds begin to thin, revealing the sun again. The sun is still shining despite the storm. The sun hasn't disappeared, and neither has the hurt we’ve caused each other, but light still exists beyond the clouds.
For the first time since we boarded the plane, the distance between us starts to feel a little smaller.
*
Seat 4F
Sam laughed. Something was happening on the screen in front of her. A random episode of a random season of The Big Bang Theory was playing on the screen in front of her. She remembered this episode from when she first watched it with her dad. She’d always loved Raj, which her dad (who was more of a Leonard man), could never understand. They’d always argued about it, all in good fun.
She laughed again. The sound came out brighter than she expected, almost convincing. Almost. For a moment, she believed this was what happiness sounded like. More clouds rolled past, hiding the world below from view. She wondered briefly whether happiness was something like that, something that looked peaceful from a distance, while everything underneath was a mess. ‘Happy’ was no more than an old sit-com and the sound of laughter… right? She could laugh. She could smile. She could watch a comedy on a plane like everyone else. Like everyone else on this plane, she was fine. She hadn’t spent the last few months of her life basically glued to the bathroom floor.
The plane shuddered gently beneath her feet. She adjusted her headphones, their noise cancelling effectiveness diminishing as she did so. For a second, the roar of the plane covered her thoughts before all she could hear was the sound of canned laughter telling her when to laugh.
Her dad sat beside her, watching the same episode as her. They’d tried to sync their screens but hers was just a few seconds behind so she watched the characters laugh on his screen before the joke even sounded on hers.
Tap, tap, tap, went her father’s leg. He was restless. He had been for days, since he’d found out. She watched him move from the corner of her eye, the nervous movement jostling her nerves and making her more and more irritated, even though she had no right to. He was worried. Worried about her. It was her fault, her body, her brain. That's why he was restless. That’s why he’d asked her if she was okay every time the flight attendant came with meal service, as if drawing attention to it was going to make it any better.
Sam wondered what he saw when he looked out the window. Did he see the same darkening clouds masking the world below, or was he too busy worrying about everything they needed to do once they were below the clouds again. Was he worrying about where they were going, all the paperwork they still had to fill out, all the ways he couldn’t make her feel better.
It was all her fault he was anxious. So she laughed. Loudly. Louder than the guy snoring a few rows back. A woman reading a book looked over at her but Sam didn’t look away quick enough. The lady smiled at her tightly before returning to her book.
Good. That was good. People were believing her. She turned the volume up. Her headphones pressed against her ears in an attempt to drown out not only the noise of the plane, but also the thoughts inside her head.
But it wasn’t enough. The clouds outside blurred into a gray smear pressing against her window, trapping her breaths in her chest. Tap, tap, tap. That’s all she could hear. She was back on the bathroom floor. Her chest tight, her head thundering alongside every heartbeat. She could feel it in her gut, the absence of food. The pain she felt at all times. She didn’t know why she did it, so when her dad found her on the bathroom floor she didn’t know how to explain it. Why she couldn’t eat. Why her brain refused to let her be full in peace. Her brain clouded her thoughts, telling her not to eat. She knew it was wrong, but who was she to fight against clouds? They were just water after all…
She snapped back to the plane, her breathing heavy. The plane. The real clouds. This trip her dad was making her take so she’d feel better. Whatever that meant. He was convinced a change of scenery would help her, but she wasn’t so sure. He seemed to think that getting away would make everything clearer, but dark clouds followed her everywhere; she couldn’t escape them. But she couldn’t think of that now, not when she was trapped on this plane.
She returned back to the screen and laughed that same bright laugh that fooled those around her.
She laughed…
And laughed…
And laughed…
She laughed until it hurt, because pain was all she would ever know.
*
Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. We are beginning our descent into Sydney Airport now. Local time is 4:46pm. The weather is 27°C with slight showers. Thank you for flying with Qatar Airways.
CHANTELLE MACKINTOSH
Chantelle Mackintosh (she/her) is an aspiring book editor who can often be found on long walks with no destination, her head in the clouds as she imagines the inner lives of each individual around her. She is finishing her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and English before she spends the foreseeable future reading books, people-watching in cafés, and occasionally remembering she has laundry to do.
