thewaterwars - Tumblr blog

thewaterwars · 7 years

Text

4. The Boy with the Coin

Miracle of miracles, they landed in Columbus, Ohio, at the John Glenn International Airport. The Federal Air Marshal Service escorted Jamina off the plane, a strong hand on each elbow.

She waited in the detention room, sketching, and some airport official provided bandaids for the cuts opened up by the flight attendant’s claws. The officials at the airport had a lot more to worry about, what with the giant meteor fallout threatening life on Earth. Eventually a female marshal entered the room holding a cup of stale coffee.

“Hey.” She sighed and took a sip.

Jamina looked up, furrowing her brows, suspicious. “Hey.”

“You’ve got to be better, ok?”

Jamina tried not to smile at the big sister-ly tone. “Ok.”

“I’m serious. Shit’s hit the fan. Don’t start trouble if you don’t have to. Let people be. Take care of yourself, your loved ones.”

“Ok…”

“I’m kicking you out of here. We’ve got a lot of panic. Got to bring the people together. Fortify.”

The marshal had a strong midwestern accent. Her hair was blonde, pulled back in a bun. The uniform was a little too big for her, but she still looked authoritative as hell.

“Go on, get out of here. Be good.”

Jamina grabbed her sketch book and purse. “Thank you.”

The John Glenn airport was a typical American airport, renovated in the 80s, with long, curving lines and white-paneled everything. Random art poked up at intersections of terminal walkways. Jamina sniffed out the way to customs, and found the large room empty. Ironic that after jumping through so many fricken hoops to get a visa, she now strolled into the States like no one was watching.

But someone was watching.

Jamina ducked under the seat-belt separators and walked between the empty customs gates. The watcher followed her.

The energy in baggage claim was so tense you’d think every last person went all in on a bad hand. That was the end of this life: the stakes higher than anyone ever wanted to gamble, with a guaranteed loss.

“So what, are we just not getting our bags?” Jamina spoke to no one in particular, but she noticed a boy watching her from behind a pillar. He was a child on the cusp of his adolescence, black, more muscular than a 9 or 10 year old should reasonably be. The muscles were poking out around his skeleton, on display under a grey tank.

Jamina ignored him. She paced along the carousels, and one started moving. The hoarde pressed in, solidifying. The crowd was spinning rumors in hushed tones.

“The military’s taking over. It’s marshal law. They need the planes.”

“It’s going to be a nuclear winter.”

“Francine’s uncle’s neighbor has a bunker.”

“There’s a run on grocery stores.”

It reminded her too much of the Siege on Sarajevo. She was so young then, didn’t understand what it meant when the tensions were rising. Couldn’t prepare herself for fighting, for losing her humanity. But that was then.

Another miracle: Jamina’s bags made it. As she reached for the second bag, the boy who watched her appeared at her side and pulled the luggage off the conveyor belt.

“Thanks.”

He looked up at her with big dark eyes. A silver dollar pressed between his lips.

“Hey, where are your parents?”

The dollar fell out of his mouth, deftly caught by a hand waiting at his belly. “Brooklyn.”

“Did you come from Paris?”

“Yeah. I saw you.”

Jamina cocked her head.

“I saw you fight the flight attendant.” He laughed. “It was funny.”

She smiled. “Do you know how you’re getting home? Are you alone?”

“My brother’s here.” He pointed to a slightly older boy, more muscular, also clad in a grey tank, pulling luggage from the carousel.

“I knew this would happen.” He put the coin back in his mouth.

“What’s that?”

“The end of the world.”

“How’d you figure that?”

“God told me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he said it pretty clearly.”

Jamina smiled. “Did he say why?”

“He didn’t have to.”

The brother appeared behind the boy and smacked the back of his head lightly. “Stop bothering the pretty lady.”

“He’s not bothering me. Just, you know, putting the fear of God into me.”

The brother chuckled, “As one does.”

Jamina looked around, not sure what to do next. She had to get to Seattle. All flights were grounded, as far as she could presume. The airport was like a packed car with no one at the wheel.

“Do you guys have a plan for getting back to New York?”

“Try to find a bus. Convince someone that money still means something, give them cash.”

“I don’t have any cash. I was going to exchange my euros at JFK.”

“You’ve got something else you can bargain with.”

Jamina’s skin pickled. “Excuse me?”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that. Look,” the brother reached down to his shoe, lifted up his pant leg, and pulled a small wad of cash from a strap around his ankle. “Here. This might just be fire tinder at this point, but maybe it can get you closer to where you’re going. As far as I can tell, not everyone believes it’s the end of the world, yet.”

“Why do you carry cash like that? What were you doing in Paris?” She took the bundle, a bit wary.

“We’re street performers.” The brother stood up taller. The boy with the coin, too. “Pretty famous actually. I’d say check us out on YouTube, but, well…I guess lucky for you, your little stunt isn’t going viral any time soon. The world’s a bit...preoccupied.”

“Thanks for the cash. Good luck.” Jamina grabbed the handles on her luggage, her purse strung over her shoulder, and stomped toward the exit. Something about that interaction got her angry.

A line of people snaked along the airport arrivals sidewalk, boarding onto a greyhound bus, which was at the front of a line of buses. Jamina started asking people what was going on, and gleaned that the Columbus Greyhound fleet was scattering to various cities. Turns out a lot of people want to be somewhere else when shit goes down, and the airport is where you show up when you want to get particularly far away.

“Any for Seattle?”

Luck struck again, and Jamina divided her wad of cash in half and held it above the crowd, trying to catch the attention of the Seattle bus driver deciding who was worthy of a seat. His gaze followed the cash down to her face, and he nodded. She pushed her way through the crowd, but there was no way she was getting both bags onto the bus. It was too chaotic to put either in the cargo compartment. She chose one, not remembering what was packed in either, and left the other on the sidewalk.

A tiny voice called out at her hip as she stepped up through the bus door.

“Fighter girl! I want to come with you.”

She turned around. The boy with the coin had slithered through the crowd to be next to her.

“Stay with your brother. Go find your parents.”

“You’re gonna keep us alive.”

“What?”

Another passenger pushed on Jamina’s back.

“You’re an important one. God said.” He reached up, handing her the silver dollar. “Don’t forget.”

The pressure from the rest of the Seattle-bound, panic-stricken Columbus defectors was so much that Jamina was nearly carried to her seat. She settled in and pulled out her sketch book, waiting for the bus to depart. She drew a circle around the coin, then kissed it, and put it in her purse.

All she really needed now was to sleep.

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Text

3. Back of the Napkin

Solo turned over a coffee-stained napkin on his desk and started to do some rough math. A meteor hits somewhere in the far east. The immediate vicinity is toast. There’s no one with enough time to get out even a tweet. Seismic waves travel at about 1.5 to 3 miles per second. Fiber signals move at 200,000 kilometers per second. He converted the units to match and pulled down the global map from his wall, kneeling on the ground to stick various items onto the map representing the origins of the first news posts.

How long would it take someone to upload a video vs tweet 140 characters? Didn’t matter. Assume 5 minutes from observation of event, such as mushroom cloud, to post. How far away did one need to be to see a mushroom cloud?

The earth is about 25,000 miles around. That means for the seismic impact to travel to the other side of the globe would take about 70 minutes...if it still had any juice by the time it got to Seattle. The debris storm kicked up by the impact would probably take 3 to 6 days to cross the Pacific and reach the west coast. That’s how long it took dust clouds filled with pollutants from China to get here.

On his knees, he reached up to plop his hands on his keyboard and google, “How big was the…” And Google auto-completed for him, “meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs?”

7 miles.

That’s it.

That’s...tiny.

Solo could run 7 miles in 45 minutes.

Realizing that he didn’t even know what he was calculating or why, Solo stood up and looked out the window. The night was calm, the moon glistening on Puget Sound below the hill atop which his house was perched. Who else knew what was going on? Who else had alarms sounding as satellites were ripped out of the sky? Who else was phoned by a mother so that her last breath was a love-soaked whisper?

His eyes lingered on the Sound. Something in his heart skipped.

“Political Leaders Urge Earthquake and Tsunami Preparations”

That water was going to rise.

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Text

2. As Luck Would Have It

Portia’s trusty orange Adidas running shoes scuffed the pavement only slightly with each footfall. Mile 18. Saturday was the long run. Four miles ago, she started feeling really quite nice, the endorphins bathing her body in natural painkillers.

She ran without water, relying on the public fountains at the parks located strategically along her route. Approaching one now, Portia slowed and her joints knocked about a little more than usual. She couldn’t help but smile at her body’s efficiency and its breakdown in the face of so many miles. “Just a few more to go. Don’t get sticky on me now,” she whispered under her breath, throwing an ankle up into her palm to stretch the front of her quads.

As Portia came into view of her car parked in the hills along Malibu Creek State Park, her heart startled at the sight of a man leaning on her hood, but her mind caught up quickly to recognize her boyfriend Umar. Suddenly conscious of her stilted gait and the sweaty salt crystals on her forehead, she tried in vain to increase her sex appeal but instead stumbled as her legs failed underneath her.

He ran to catch her, laughing.

“Surprise!”

“Umar! How did you know I’d be here?”

“It’s long run day!”

“But…”

“Last time we climbed here, you said it was your favorite long run. I took a gamble, and saw your car.”

Malibu Creek was a haven nestled in the Santa Monica mountains that streaked to the ocean from The Valley, (San Fernando Valley, home of Burbank, Van Nuys, Industrial Mall Complexes, sprawling suburbs, and the valley girl). Bizarrely unpopulated already, the community’s access to a state park further propelled this region to a stratum outside of the second largest metropolitan area in the country; it was like walking through a portal into golden rolling hills, steep blue pocketed volcanic rock, and a meandering stream with pools deep enough to backflip into.

“How long have you been waiting?”

“All my life.” He smiled that killer smile and her knees weakened further.

“Umar! Sorry, I’m out of breath.”

“I have that effect on people.”

“Stop it!” She laughed and rested her head on his shoulder as he hugged her.

“You thirsty? Hungry?”

“Of course!”

Umar reached into the front seat and held up a red gatorade in one hand and a blue in the other. “You can either take the red, or the blue. You take the blue one, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.”

“I’ll stay in Wonderland.” Portia smiled and reached for the red one. As she guzzled, Umar put his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

“So Portia, I’m here because I have a surprise for you.”

She could barely stop the flood of that sweet sports drink satisfaction to choke out, “This wasn’t the surprise?”

“Far from it. I just couldn’t wait to tell you.” He pursed his lips together, and the sun filtered through the crisp, dusty leaves of the grand oak tree shading them from the Malibu sun.

“What is it?” Portia took another sip, even as she felt her stomach sloshing with each breath.

“I’m going to take you to your favorite vegan restaurant to do it.”

She forced herself to smile casually. “And keep me in suspense?”

“It’s worth it...believe me.”

“Are we going now?” Portia reached down to feel the crunch of her running shorts, and with back of her other hand wiped at the salt crystals on her forehead.

“I brought a change of clothes.” Umar reached into the back seat and pulled out a Gucci bag. Portia looked inside to see the intricate detailings of a gold lace dress. He couldn’t afford this.

“Umar…I can’t accept…”

“Just wait.”

Portia eyed him suspiciously, her heart pounding. Just a high heart rate from the run. This is normal. This isn’t creepy.

“I think I should shower first, I don’t want to ruin…”

“I told you I can’t wait! Let’s go! I’ll drive. We’ll come back and pick up your car tomorrow.”

All through the hour drive to Crossroads Kitchen in Hollywood, Umar sang along with eighties rock ballads. The 101 had the usual traffic, and Portia tried to consciously reduce her anxiety, while also replenishing her electrolytes. This wasn’t necessarily out of character for Umar…

After they sat down at the restaurant, Portia spotted a celebrity seated at the bar and grabbed Umar’s hand, trying to play it cool.

“I love this place so much! What are you getting? Why didn’t they bring us menus?”

“I called ahead and asked Chef Ronan to make us something special.”

“What?” Portia squirmed visibly in her seat. Please don’t be proposing. He knows it would be insanely premature to propose right? We’ve only had sex, like, four times.

“Umar...this seems like an awfully expensive surprise.”

He laughed. “Don’t you know you’re worth it?” His grin told her more than she wanted.

“Umar. I know we’ve been friends for, well, ever. But we’ve only been dating for a couple weeks…”

“Oh geez! Portia!” His laugh boomed across the whole restaurant. “I see the misunderstanding. That just makes everything so much better.”

At that moment the chef appeared at Portia’s elbow and she jumped.

“Oh, excuse me, miss Portia.” He smiled as waiters piled the table with plates. “Here we have our classic seafood tower, with artichoke oysters, hearts of palm calamari, tempura-battered lobster mushrooms, smoked carrot lox with kelp caviar, and this delightful bread. And here, is the dessert you requested…” He pulled his arms out from behind his back to reveal a golden onion-shaped tower dusted with sugar. “An aquafaba tiramisu meringue, dusted with real gold flakes.”

Portia’s mouth dropped open and her eyes found Umar’s as the chef and his staff faded away.

“Life is short, eat dessert first,” Umar smiled that mile-wide grin.

She reached for her dessert fork and sliced through the soft meringue until her fork hit something hard.

“Oh what is that? Buried treasure? We better excavate!” He plunged his fork into the puffy cloud of a dessert and shoveled spoonfuls of golden cloud into his mouth.

Portia felt light headed and went through the motions of taking bites, but her mouth wasn’t actually moving. She stared on, a sense of dread rising.

Umar triumphantly scraped the rest of the dessert off the top of a little box. He lifted it out of the meringue and wiped the excess on his napkin. It was a little treasure chest, like what goes into a fish bowl. He held it out to her, the gold trim flickering in the dim candlelight of the restaurant.

Portia reached for the tiny prop chest, hand shaking. Before she could grab it, Umar popped it open. Inside was a folded piece of paper. All the horror that had been building under Portia’s sternum fell to her seat and sunk her deeper into the chair. Confusion replaced anxiety. She grabbed the paper and opened it very slowly, glancing up once at Umar’s face, which shined back at her expectantly.

It was a lottery ticket. A super lotto ticket. For the 260 million pot whose numbers were just read yesterday.

Portia stared at the sheet, eyes going over the numbers. The numbers of her birthday, and then….the day he first kissed her. She knew because it was on the same day as her father’s deathiversary.

“Umar…”

“We won.”

“My god…”

She screamed as a bottle of champagne popped open behind her. The rest of the restaurant seemed to think he was proposing.

“You’re a millionaire!” She jumped off her chair and ran to his side, kissing his cheek. He pulled her back into his lap and planted a real kiss.

“I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he said, his gentle smile and kind eyes scrunching up with genuine gratitude and glee.

Portia’s appetite shook her chest, and she stared longingly at the tower of vegan seafood. Umar snatched an “oyster” shell made of an artichoke leaf and scraped it with his teeth. Portia chomped on hearts of palm calamari. While they smiled at each other like idiots, their mouths full, an impeccably casual mother, with perfect beachy hair, tapped on Portia’s shoulder. Dangling from her left hand, a pig-tailed little cutie was biting her lip, looking with admiration at the gold lace of Portia’s gown.

“Excuse me, Portia? I wonder if we might be able to get a picture with you? My daughter is a huge fan.”

Portia hastily ran a finger through her sweat-caked hair. “Of course!”

Umar held the phone horizontally and all three of the women posed with giant smiles. The beautiful mother put her hand on Portia’s shoulder. “I saw you speak at Veg Fest. Your story is so incredibly moving and tragic. We’re all pulling for you to make it to the podium this year.”

Portia’s pleasant countenance belied professional gratitude. With a legacy of tragedy, a celebrity fretted to grief, she could never quite celebrate her own accomplishments without a stabbing reminder of the loss she endured.

Umar and Portia spent the rest of the dinner in delirious chatter. He detailed the financial team he was putting together to help him manage the winnings. The organization that handles winnings distribution was swift, and that morning arrived on his doorstep to assist with depositing his funds in bank accounts, bonds and stocks.

Umar listed all the things he had ever dreamed he’d do if he won the lottery. Most importantly, he wanted to pick one of his film ideas and actually fund it. But that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be time for a few vacations. He always wanted to trek across Australia.

Back at Umar’s West Hollywood apartment, he mused about whether he’d buy a house in LA, or whether he wanted to move somewhere else with a thriving film industry, like Paris. Portia lounged on his couch, still in her gold Gucci gown. He poured a scotch and raised a glass to her.

“On the rocks?”

“With just a little bitters, please.”

“Portia, you have to learn to appreciate whiskey on its own.”

“I’m almost there!”

“What am I saying? You can drink nothing but champagne for the rest of your life, if that’s what you want, babe.”

She giggled. “Ok, no bitters.”

“If we live in Paris, you can have real champagne. And we’ll eat baguettes and vegan cheese all the live long day. You can run along the...oh what’s the river in Paris, again?”

“The Seine.” Portia bit her lip. “Umar, I can’t go to France.”

“We can relocate your coach out there.”

“He’s not just my coach. It’s the U.S. team.”

“Alright - just an extended vacation, then. I could probably wrap a film out there in three months.”

“The timing’s just not right. We’re going up to high altitude in a couple months to prepare for the trials. I can’t lose momentum now.”

Umar sat on the couch next to her and handed her a cold glass that smelled fragrant and musky.

“Ok, I’m not going anywhere. I got ahead of myself. I’m a producer now. I’ve got the cash, and in Hollywood, cash is king. Why don’t you go shower, and then we can really celebrate.”

After the shower, the fatigue from the day’s run and spiked stress levels set in like a dense fog. Portia collapsed on the bed face down. Umar laughed and patted her wet hair.

“You sleepy, babe?”

She nodded into the comforter.

“Ok, let’s just snuggle. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep. I’m so wound up. Our lives are going to completely change. I think I always somehow knew this was going to happen. I’ve always just had so many ideas, you know? And now they finally have a chance to be real.”

Portia realized her mouth was open as a string of drool pooled on the bed. She smacked her lips and wiggled under the covers.

“I’m so happy for you, Umar. You really deserve this,” she said groggily, drifting off.

It seemed her eyes had only just closed when his hand squeezed her shoulder, hard. It was tight, urgent. Uncomfortable.

“Umar, what are you…”

“Portia…”

She looked up, blinking through the runner’s dehydration hangover, mixed substantially with a real hangover. Umar’s eyes were white all around the iris. He was lit only by the light of his iPad, which he offered to her, trembling.

“Umar, you’re scaring me.”

“Portia...it’s all over…”

Tears welled in her eyes and she didn’t even know why yet. She grasped the iPad and looked down at an image of the sky on fire.

METEOR STRIKES PACIFIC OCEAN. ALL HUMANS ADVISED TO SEEK SHELTER. MASSIVE FALLOUT EXPECTED. MILLIONS PRESUMED DEAD.

“I don’t understand.” Her voice was small, caught in the back of her throat.

He choked on his words.

“We’re all going to die.”

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Quote

A surprising use of an elephant

the blind lady mumbles

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Quote

When you regret the choice to commit

the blind lady mumbles

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Photo

Not the most companionable sidekick

#bruce

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Photo

Bruce

#bruce

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Text

Ella and Bruce

Ella had not anticipated this. Nuclear fallout she’d anticipated, a civil war had seemed almost inevitable, a zombie uprising she was prepared for. But now her eager preparations, her years of stockpiling, of spending weekends at the Army Supply Store, of cancelling plans and avoiding friends and here she was, still fucked, floating 100 feet or more above her carefully appointed bunker. Bruce stared back at her from the other side of the small boat, disdain painted in his eyes. He considered her, seemingly making judgment of her stupidity and blindness to this outcome. He flapped his tail and gently raised his paw, which he began to lazily clean. Ella sighed and began once again to consider how high above the bunker she might be. The rope tethering her boat to the shelter far below was about 150 feet long. She estimated about 50 feet of slack based on how the boat was drifting. But her head was foggy and she was far past dehydration. She dipped her hands into the saline mess that was the ocean that had washed over her house, scooping some of the cool water over her shoulders and down her back. She dripped a bit of it into her mouth but she knew better than to deplete the remaining fluid in her body than by ingesting in all this salt. She thought of Peter, how he’d warned her that when damnation came it would be a flood. How Jesus would come save them all and take them to heaven. Whether Peter was in heaven now she couldn’t say but he sure as fuck died when the flood came and smashed him and all the other believers in her nowhere-ass town to their watery deaths. Ella could feel the spray of the water on her skin as she remembered it sweeping towards her, ripping up the surrounding houses. Bruce was now loudly meowling, breaking her out of her memories. Ella fixed him with a stare, the fact that he was still alive was a big enough annoyance. She did not plan for the neighbor’s cat to jump in the boat that would float her to safety. But now she saw the source of Bruce’s concern. It was raining, matting his coat down with thick droplets. Ella’s brain buzzed with exhausted confusion, what was she supposed to do now? The best she could come up with was to remove her shoes, which she now shoved to the middle of the boat, watching fat droplets land and pool in the heels. She waited until there was enough to slurp out of what was by now a very smelly and unappetizing vessel. But it was the sweetest drink she’d ever tasted. Even Bruce, who was still perturbed by his inability to avoid the wet even after the flood, yowled and opened his maw to the sky and let some of the water drip in. How long would this sustain them for Ella wondered? She hoped that, at least for Bruce, not very much longer.

#ella bruce prepper

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Photo

As the oceans acidified, the jellyfish expanded their range, the only creatures equipped for this new environment. Rumors of a long lost race of jellyfish mermaids, returned to the sea, to castles built around deep volcanic vents, were now emerging and exploring the sunken cities in the shallows.

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Video

youtube

Love is a button you push

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Link

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Quote

What the sea spat back out

the blind lady mumbles

0 notes

thewaterwars · 7 years

Text

1. Thunk

He was alone when the meteor struck. The shockwave spread out from the impact site nestled between the Nakdong and the Geum rivers in South Korea, sending debris into low earth orbit and taking down half the communications systems. The alarm on his desktop crowed like a cruel rooster, rousing him to half attention. Solo Lakapati Johnson made a sound not unlike a bat’s scream as he scrunched his face and stretched his jaw. He smacked his hands to his face and rubbed the palms against his eye sockets as he violently flipped his body onto his stomach, wrapping himself more tightly in a blanket shroud.

With the sheets still coiled tight like a burrito, Solo hopped in his socks across the hardwood floor and landed in the rolling chair at his desk, sliding a few feet across the room. Futilely flailing his frictionless feet across the slick wood floors, he eventually wrangled enough momentum to wheel up to his keyboard and log in.

The GUI for the network monitoring system he had designed and implemented was bleeding with red text as satellites lost communication one after another. Solo had never seen anything like it and immediately assumed a bug in his software. He pulled up the git log to see what the last commits had been and who was to blame for the failures.

That’s when the phone started ringing.

The binary clock on his desk showed an array of blue lights that even Solo had trouble reading at this hour. He counted on his fingers - 0, three 1’s, four 10s... 3:48am. Expecting his boss’s name on the cell screen, Solo paused when he saw the smiling picture of his mom buzzing at him. It would have been just after dinner for her, so she may have expected to just leave a message. That wasn’t really like her.

“Kamusta Mama,” he said through the sleepy stress haze as he scrolled down the failure logs looking for any snippet of error message that would point to the massive network loss.

“Mahal kita,” she said, her voice shattered by sobs. “Mahal kita, hijo mio, my baby, my bunso. I love you.”

“Mama?”

The call dropped.

Solo stared at his phone, his eyes burning with tears at the fear in his mother’s voice. He opened a browser and googled “news.” The algorithm returned nonsense at the top of the page - Florida man loses house to bats: 17 hours ago. Democratic primaries reveal fraud: 22 hours ago...but a few headlines down.... Massive Network Outages Across China, India, Russia: 18 minutes ago. Nuclear Strike in Far East: 12 minutes ago.

Solo refreshed the page.

Shocking Video of Mushroom Cloud from Bangladesh: 1 minute ago.

Solo refreshed.

Eerie Photos of Dust Cloud Blocking out the Sun.

China Launches Counter Strike.

UN Advises: Strike not Nuclear, but Meteor.

Political Leaders Urge Earthquake and Tsunami Emergency Preparations.

Air Unsafe to Breathe in Egypt.

Jamina rested her elbow on the armrest from her window seat, trying to get a better angle for her charcoal sketching. She filled in the shading from memory of a small girl she had outlined at the gate in the Sarajevo airport. The hardest part was getting the plush elephant the girl cradled to look just fluffy enough. The page was riddled with stray scratches after the slew of violent turbulence spells, first as they passed over the Dinaric Alps at the beginning of the flight, then suddenly with no warning over the Atlantic about an hour back.

The seatbelt sign dinged, and the pilot’s voice came over the speakers.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I regret to be the one to inform you of this.”

Jamina’s hand froze mid stroke. A pilot’s message starting with regret? Nothing good could come after that.

“While we’ve been in the air, an act of God has endangered much of the eastern seaboard, and it is no longer possible for us to land at JFK, as was previously scheduled. We’ve got a strong tailwind and we’ve calculated that we may have just enough fuel to make it to Denver, but we’re going to see how far we can coast.”

Jamina looked out the window, down at the sprawling Atlantic beneath them. The pilot crackled back over the system.

“The event is suspected to be a meteor strike.”

Jamina turned to the middle seat passenger, a chic middle-aged woman with sparkling bracelets, and demanded, “Aren’t we supposed to know when meteors are going to strike?”

The woman despondently shrugged her shoulders, her eyes glossy like the diamonds on her wrist.

Jamina huffed. Good-for-nothing bourgeois bitch. She unbuckled her seatbelt and motioned for the old lady to let her pass.

“The seatbelt sign is illuminated.”

“I’m going to vomit. You can keep me here if you want to participate.”

The aisle and middle seat occupants hurried to let Jamina pass, and she thumped down the rows, past the families and solo travellers, Bosnians and Americans, young and old, collectively losing their shit. Imbeciles.

Jamina knocked on the wall next to the flight attendant who was making hand gestures indicating Jamina better take a seat, or else.

“Excuse me,”

“Ma’am, you’re going to have to sit back down.”

“I would like to speak with the pilot.”

“The seat belt sign is on.”

“I’m not sitting down until I get a little more information about the fucking meteor that just hit this planet, you know, the little blue ball we’re soaring above at 30,000 feet.”

“I’m sorry, miss, but the captain doesn’t have any more information at this time. Please--“

“My ass!”

The passengers in the first few rows looked terribly uneasy, and Jamina wondered whether a fire marshall would take her down.

“Alright, fine! If you want to incite a panic…”

The flight attendant unbuckled her restraint and stood up, towering a good foot over Jamina’s curly-topped head.

“You listen here, you little brat. I have hundreds of hours of training under my belt. I know how to get you out of here if there’s a fire, if oxygen depletes, if we land on water, if we crash into a mountain. I have listened to the goddamn September 11 tapes and know how to disarm a man with a shoe bomb. If you think I’m going to take one more second of your shit, you better be ready to lose your fucking teeth.”

0 notes