The Flight

Orma had never been satisfied with being human, not that she had ever voiced this sentiment to anyone, or to herself; and if at times she acknowledged a certain feeling of superiority, a not quite thought-out sense of immortality, she would acknowledge also the possibility that such feelings were present in all minds, and thus meant very little at all. But still she lived her life with the half-realised belief that one day a door would be opened to her, and through this she would enter another world entirely - an existence in which she would be freed from the overwhelming smallness, the incredible insignificance of being a person.

This belief gave Orma a certain recklessness; something which was expressed not in any active risk-taking, but rather as a peculiar capacity for neglect. It showed itself in just about all she did, but was perhaps most apparent in what some might refer to as her failure to grasp opportunities. For example, there was the incident which occurred the day before her 24th birthday. She had spent the previous two days visiting her grandmother in Suffolk, who for as far back as Orma could remember had been beset with an uncountable and changing list of minor illnesses, but who she nonetheless feared might not be, in her grandmother's own words, long for this world.

It was her first visit for some time, and like any departure from familiarity had brought about on her return a subtle change in mood, and she walked the mile from the station to her house with a contemplative calm. From this rather meditative state she was, quite suddenly, interrupted by a woman with whom she was sharing the narrow street, and who she would have passed without acknowledgement had the woman herself not stopped a few feet in front of her and asked with an 'excuse me' for Orma's attention.

It should be explained that Orma was no stranger to vanity. No less than her peers she valued appearances and took pleasure from any complimenting of her attractiveness, but unlike her friends she did little to further her looks. The occasional unplanned purchase of a new outfit, or a rare, lazy half-hour in front of the mirror - the intent of which was usually playful rather than serious - were the extent of her efforts.

On the morning in question it was with a little surprise that she listened as the woman told her she was from the marketing department of a well known food company, who had been looking for some time for a new 'face' for their advertising campaign. She had always been one to grasp opportunity when she saw it, and for this reason had stopped Orma rather than letting her walk on past. Orma, she insisted, was it.

Orma herself knew she did not have the face of a model. Asymmetry, though argued by some to be essential for beauty, in her had been exaggerated to give her features a quirkiness which trumped what may have otherwise been classical good looks, so that had her personality been less than equally definitive one would probably have pitied the near-misses at perfection with an 'if-only'. As it was, her smile, with kitten-like scrunching of eyes and nose, beneath short sleek curtains of almost burgundy hair, sometimes left the observer with a warmth that could be mistaken for love.

The marketing woman, as Orma later referred to her, described her as distinctive, and left her with a card and insistent instructions to ring and ask for her by name as soon as she had made up her mind. And Orma, as always suffused by her casual ability to neglect, never rung.

This might sound like ordinary laziness, but the truth of the matter was that rather than simply not getting round to these things Orma was constantly, if not always consciously, distracted, as if a glimmer of light was reaching her through that door to the other world and she could not quite bring herself to turn away and concentrate on the things around her. It was possible that there was also an element of fear - a worry that by involving herself too fully in these other pursuits she might forget altogether about the door, and veer off in a direction where the light would not reach her and the opportunity to pass through would never occur. But with this sense of something greater existing only in the background of her mind, never really coalescing into something as concrete as words, Orma could be forgiven for not turning her full attention to it. Not, that is, until an incident in the June of the year she turned thirty-three.

The afternoon of the flight was a sunny one. She had again been visiting her grandmother, who rather than dying when Orma had feared, had instead left her Suffolk bungalow two months later and moved to a ground-floor apartment on the Costa Calida in southern Spain. In the clean air it seemed her migraines had all but disappeared, and her arthritis and bronchitis were greatly improved. Orma had enjoyed the visit. She liked the warmth and her grandmother's new-found sense of freedom, and she liked also the solitary outings to the beach, challenging the other sun-bathers to question her own freedom by running recklessly topless at the sea.

When she boarded the plane after a week in the sun she felt very good - a physical healthiness combined with a sense of duty not only well-done but enjoyed. It was invaded only slowly by a tingle of nerves as she anticipated the three hours ahead. An incredibly fearful flyer, her one consolation was that she forgot how afraid she was in the days before and after a flight, so that the horror of the journey never spread itself beyond those few hours in the air. Consequently, she could promise herself each time that she would never again board a plane, and yet still book herself on another one some time later.

On this occasion the fear got its grip only as they taxied the last corner and the plane hit the runway. As always it came as an unbidden increase in heart rate - a sudden awareness of approaching panic and incredulous surprise at having again managed to forget. The plane picked up speed and her anxiety mounted yet further in anticipation of the roaring launch into the air. How could she have forgotten this horror! As it surged within her to near hysteria she realised she must take a hold of herself or risk something bursting inside that might leave her a senseless wreck long after the source of panic was over. This thought, as it sometimes did, lent her a momentary ability to transcend her fear and find above its roaring surface a fragile layer of calm, where she remained even as the wheels lifted and the plane began its ascent. It was only when she felt the first stomach-lurching loss of gravity, as the plane levelled itself before recommencing its climb, that she sunk briefly back into fear. Glancing about frantically she searched the faces of her fellow passengers for any echo of her thoughts - any sign they believed the aircraft might indeed be in trouble; then when only partly comforted by their oblivious and preoccupied expressions, resorted to an old tactic, revealing anxious body-language to the man on her left in hope of reassurance. He smiled at her and dipped a hand into his bag for a packet of mints, which he offered to Orma with another smile. She took in his cool, unflustered expression, accepted gratefully and settled back into her chair.

With the release of tension came weariness, and Orma found herself drifting off into excerpts of dream that surprisingly had nothing to do with flying. Occasional bumps and dips of the aircraft woke her with a start, chest thumping, but each time some careful reasoning allowed her to regain her fragile state of calm, within which she could again lapse into unconsciousness. From one of these lapses she was woken fiercely - a hefty jolt of the plane that produced a gasp from the man beside her, and somewhere up front she heard a mutter of "air pocket", and some laughter. Her neighbour met her gaze with a small smile and she saw him release his grip on the arm-rests. Then as she looked down at her own white-peaked knuckles the plane gave a second lurch and this time someone screamed.

Dramatic events attract in their telling certain words, phrases, clichés I mean, and it takes a really good storyteller to side-step these very ready, and very excellent, therefore overused descriptions and string together something entirely new, yet with this fresh thread still lead the reader to the desired climax. I am not an experienced story-teller but still I wish very much for you to have some idea, an inkling, of what Orma felt as she realised her worst fear had come to pass. Her heart did seem, though she had no space in her thoughts for this extra registration, to be on the brink of bursting from her sternum; her life, a succinct summary of its major events, did indeed flash before her mind’s eye. Yet this crushing chaos of image and sensation was accompanied by a terrible vacuous awareness of space, of emptiness; it was a tugging at her temples, a drawing-away of the substance of her skull so that within there seemed to be a growing hollow - a void whose negative pressure was a ringing in her ears and a stinging blindness behind her eyes, as of an intense desire to cry. It was the shocking sadness of seeing, quite suddenly, in the clear horizon of her life, the terrible ripping stabbing betrayal of a death that just could not, could not be hers.

It was Orma’s belief that few people are scared of dying. She always felt it was an inappropriate and strange choice of words; surely people were not scared, but sad about dying, and any fear was not of the death itself but of realising fully the inevitability of one’s death and of being overwhelmed by that incredible sadness. That is not to say terror did not have her in its grasp as the plane lurched for a third time, and with a shudder seemed to bounce and skip across the sky. But this was an inevitable, instinctive terror - an evolved physiological response to a situation where the resulting rush of adrenaline may precipitate escape, and was exacerbated by the rapid, uncontrolled movement of the plane, and of course by the wild screams of her fellow passengers. And perhaps some would agree on hearing what Orma did next, that she was as deep down she always knew, an extraordinary person. Extraordinary in her ability, amid the screaming and pushing and shoving, and the hurtling of the aircraft, to again emerge from her fear into a place where she heard only the sadness. The words which pulled her, which she clung to as a guide in her need to burst through the terror and realise the possibility of escape: last chance.

As through the window the tip of the wing cut and jabbed at flashes of blue and white, and under her gaze the ground came into view and dipped away, in her calm she felt the full pressing heaviness of a regret that only slapped at the panicking minds of the other passengers. And this, this two minutes, one minute maybe, was her last chance, before opportunity was snatched away forever. As if looking for inspiration from the skies her gaze remained fixed on the window, on the snatches of ground, on the solid grey line with its little faithful light still glowing bright as it fished about for a grip on the unforthcoming early morning air. What must she have looked like to the other passengers - calmly watching their progress as if nothing had changed. Her face, with parted lips for she was breathing through her mouth, showed nothing of the mental process. Although she knew she must do something, her concentration was not a narrowing but an opening up, a widening of glance with its only direction being a need to encompass. She thought she could make out, as the floundering plane sunk deeper towards land, lots and lots of tiny people. Lots and lots of tiny people - the words became a point of fixation, a mantra. Tiny tiny people, the world was covered in them, she smiled. People. Sprouting up and sinking back into the earth. Ashes to ashes. Sprouting up again somewhere else. On Mars. She giggled. My sprouting waving walking giggling brothers and sisters. And she saw the validity of this moment, and all the moments before. She didn’t need to do anything. She closed her eyes.

When it came Orma was not waiting for the crash. It was the noise that hit her first. Never had she known such a noise. It went on and on - screeching and tearing till the screaming of the plane and the passengers merged into one long sound that seemed to come not from outside, but from somewhere within her head. Then, after minutes or maybe it was only seconds, the noise began to break down and screams came only from one or two mouths, and finally there was silence. Lifting her eyelids she became aware of the chaos; bags and suitcases from overhead lockers strewn among the passengers, most of whom were wearing oxygen masks and still seated. Their strange momentary stillness suggested a stage - a scene just cut but not yet dispersed or brought back to order. Through the window she could see trees - the dry brown and olive-green of pine, a branch pressed against the glass - and the mutilated strip of metal with its light still blinking. A plastic mask was dangling about her head, nudging gently at her bangs of hair. The silence hung there, then a baby’s little cracking cry prompted murmurs of reassurance. Followed by the click of the tannoy which startled her, and a voice giving jumbled instructions. When a door was opened people came into action again, talking and crowding forward. The man who had given her a mint was crying shaking tears, a life-vest clutched in one hand.

As Orma shuffled down the centre of the plane behind him she thought how odd it was that this bit of the journey didn’t change; people still waited impatiently for their chance to squeeze into the aisle, and some were reaching overhead for those belongings still locked away. The air-hostess was a little brisker in removing people from the plane, the ‘thank you for flying’ was missing, and the emergency slide was present, but somehow even these changes had a strange sense of normality about them. Orma removed her shoes and peered though the opening at the pine forest that had helped break their landing. There was laughter and someone patted her gently on the back, inching her through the exit: "Go on love, it’s only a little slide". As she stepped through the door the air was biting fresh and it was another world.