Aviophobia
By Derek Harmening
Simply reading the invitation, its gilt calligraphy shimmering like sun glitter, makes your palms sweat. The cardstock, stiffly elegant, dampens with each passing second. Save the date! Vast chasms yawn before you, howling with low-pressure wind, eager to swallow you up before you’ve even preheated the oven.
As you chop the woody stems off asparagus, calmed by routine, you evoke a mental map of the United States, linking Chicago to San Francisco by a series of small red dots, cinnamon imps scattered by Hansel and Gretel during their teenaged Kerouac phase.
You try several lies aloud, explore them for texture. Client deadlines. A scheduling conflict. Chronic sinusitis. That last one’s good––have you used it before?
That night, in bed, you ingest poison capsules through your phone screen: Daily Mail headlines, disaster film clips, wreckage photos. These images are always the same: uniformed men combing through debris, poking at charred suitcases and flaccid life vests with the languid, clinical air of sleep-deprived pathologists. Seized by self-torment, you replay the passengers’ final moments, visualize the stratus wisps shrieking past acrylic windows as lights flash and warning tones trill. Briny, shark-infested waters envelop you. Your breath quickens: a series of shallow waves plashing your ribcage at low tide.
You decide to make an appointment.
Benzodiazepines may cause somnambulism, the doctor warns, and you wonder if your insurance pays her by the syllable. She senses your animal fear (or so you imagine), drifting upward like radiator steam, and for this reason takes pity. “It’s a five-hour flight,” she says, passing you a script for Xanax. “This’ll tide you over.” She holds your gaze, hands enfolded, as though attempting to psychically transfer her calm, her rationality, her unwavering stability. “Oh, and one more thing,” she says. You cling, childlike, to whatever spool of impending wisdom she’s about to unthread. “Give my best to the bride and groom.”
You walk home, hugging the curb, Rx note tucked inside your coat pocket like a dirty secret. What’s wrong with you? If passersby could look into your head, they’d flee to the other side of the street. It’s not healthy, harboring these malnourished thoughts, providing refuge, nurturing them until they are strong, self-reliant, as capable of bringing you to your knees as Oedipus to Laius. These babes you must abandon to the dark woods.
Night. A glass of Pinot Noir, brim-filled to fortify. You book your flight, numb with unreality. It’s happening. This is real. The doctor’s words drift through your mind in spins and loops, a plane circling the tarmac. What a funny thing, to sleepwalk on the red eye. To mistake the narrow cabin for your own portraited-lined hallway, faceless passengers merging into those of relatives frozen in time. To open the overhead bins, feeling blindly for the kiln-fired mug you sculpted and glazed in tenth grade. To comb the cockpit for a coffeepot. To feel at home in the object carrying you away from it.
THE END