martinsmithstories

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

I am trapped on my back with my knees pinned against my ears, and all that lies between my shrivelled manhood and the jagged jaws of a Customs dog is a thin layer of polycarbonate. The travel agents never mentioned this in their glossy brochures. All I wanted was a holiday, lying on a banana lounge under a warm Caribbean sun and sipping an Aguapanela con Limón while the azure, warm waters surrounding Isla Grande lapped at my feet. Rest and relaxation. Recuperation. Maybe even a little romance. Reward for fifty weeks slaving away in a claustrophobic cubicle, doing Capitalism’s dirty work.

Two months earlier, after I had researched dozens of websites and brochures, I purchased my accommodation, flights and traveller’s cheques. All paid for by my shiny, new Visa card with an exorbitant credit limit way beyond being serviceable by my pay grade. I submitted buttock and biceps for all the shots, then bought a pair of swim trunks and a matching swim vest to hide my pale, scrawny frame and a beachcomber’s straw hat to protect my thinning locks. I even splashed out on a Samsonite on special.

I trained on the red-eye from Wickford Junction to JFK Airport and arrived at 4 am, thus avoiding the check-in crowds. Bleary-eyed and buggered, I made my way to the Departures lounge, where, armed with a flat white, I wandered about the bookshop to kill time until my 5.30 am boarding call.

I stood before the bestsellers section, keen to learn what the common bibliophile was currently reading. As seems the way these days, self-help books dominated the top shelf. At number 2, displaying a blood-red severed heart set between silver-service cutlery and with a dust jacket of a deathly black, there sat The Cannibal’s Guide to Health and Wellbeing™, a thin volume penned by some shamelessly self-promoting smart-arsed scribbler from Down Under. My interest piqued, I reached up to grab a copy to thumb through to garner a few anthropophagous tips from our antipodean author, when I spied the number one bestseller: Preying Mantis: The Beginner’s Guide to Getting Your Man and Chewing His Head Off, a bulky, suffrage-white tome authored by a Wake Woke-Woken. Ah, yes, I thought, the sisterhood, in all its glorious hyphenated phosphorescence, saving humanity (at least half of it anyway) one royalty cheque at a time.

Tempted as I was to flick to the end of the Woke-Woken chef d’oeuvre to see whether the happy-ever-after fairy-tale ending panned out with the heroine choking on a sinewy bolus, alas, my boarding call came, and grabbing another coffee, this time with a double shot, I made my way to the boarding gate for my flight to Miami.

I couldn’t believe my luck when I buckled up in my window seat overlooking the greying tarmac. The two seats next to me in Economy remained empty as the otherwise full plane settled and the cabin crew handed hot, moist face towels to the passengers. Fantastic, I thought as I lifted the two armrests, I could stretch out over three seats and snooze, thus avoiding the contorted human origami normally required when trying to sleep in cattle class.

But the plane began to shake as booming footsteps approached and stopped at the end of my row of seats. A mountain of a man—whose head, capped with snowy hair, threatened the roof of the cabin and whose enormous hand held a now familiar death-black/blood-red copy of the next-to-bestseller—paused and, with much wheezing, checked his ticket.

A similarly snow-capped woman of equal height to the man mountain, but thrice his girth, stomped up behind him. Over her left eye she wore a black eyepatch, and in her hands she clutched a green neck pillow and a bulky, white book. Ah, yes, I thought, a disciple of the gospel according to Woke-Woken.

‘We’re here, Kaytu,’ the man said.

‘You take the aisle seat, honey. You’re bigger than me.’

That depends on which perspective you’re looking at, I thought.

After much grunting and groaning and pushing and shoving, and a flushed flight attendant almost having to apply a well-placed heel upon Kaytu’s profuse posterior, my neighbour for the flight landed and—for want of a better word—oozed.

Her thighs, her hips, her butt, her waist, her bust, her arms, her neck—all sank in her seat and spread. And half of all that bulk made its way my way, and before I knew it, she had me pinned: my left knee and shoulder jammed hard and immovable against the interior wall of the plane, and my flushed cheek pressed flat against the cold glass of the cabin window.

‘All comfy, Everest?’ she said with a butt wiggle and a girlish giggle.

Not really, I thought.

The plane taxied and took-off, and still my captor locked me in the prison that was her corpulent flesh. Losing all hope and feeling, I, like all who face adversity, prayed for salvation. Please, God, I prayed, let the plane bank right and provide blessed respite. Please, God, let the plane bank right. Please, God, bank right.

The plane banked left.

And as Newton’s law of universal gravitation worked its magic, the apple of Everest’s eye—indeed, the whole orchard—bore down upon my pulped self and flattened my nose against the cold glass. I looked out at the pre-dawn lights of old New Amsterdam Town, crowded with its houses and people, and envied the elbow room that blessed their lives.

I may have perished then and there had not the pop of a blister pack come from my right. Kaytu’s podgy arm rose, followed by a prolonged gulping. Never one to look a gift hippo in the mouth, I rejoiced as my captor released her fleshy hold over me, and I unbuckled and dived forward and curled myself into a ball on the floor and savoured my newfound freedom.

Kaytu was not idle either during my escape, for following a belch, she donned her neck pillow, adjusted her eyepatch, laid her head back and relaxed. And her flesh filled my now vacant seat and, in accompaniment to her resonant snores, buffeted the cabin wall.

And there I would have happily stayed until we landed in Miami had not Nature, that most capricious of beasts, come calling, for my bladder joined the party and betrayed me. I cursed the double shot before boarding.

Jiggling, I scanned for an escape route. Bags blocked the path under my seat and the seat in front of me. The tree trunks that were Kaytu’s and Everest’s legs stood as an impenetrable forest between me and the aisle. I raised my eyes to the heavens for guidance, and tears filled my eyes, for God’s benevolence shone down upon me. The dim glow of a reading light revealed the narrow yet harrowing path to salvation.

I would need to ascend Kaytu.

Ever the gentleman, I started with diplomacy.

‘Excuse me, madam,’ I said.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz came her response.

I released a polite cough. ‘Excuse me, madam.’

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz continued her response.

I upped the ante with a gentle tap on her arm. ‘Excuse me, madam.’

And Kaytu upped her ante with another Zzzzzzzzzzzzz, followed by gurgling, phlegm chewing and then apneic silence as her jaw unhinged.

Kaytu 1, Diplomacy 0.

Time for Plan B, I thought.

I pressed one hand against the back of the seat in front of Kaytu and the other in what I thought was the vicinity of her pudgy knee, and aided by neither crampon nor icepick, I took a deep breath and began my ascent.

Fingerhold by fingerhold, toehold by toehold, I inched my way up and up the mountain that was her flesh until I paused with my chin resting upon my knees and my knees resting upon Kaytu’s chest and my face before the slumbering giant’s face. On and on she snored with her mouth agape and … Good God! Her unpatched eye open! Open and death-staring me!

I froze, fearing a Wake Woke-Woken beheading was just one sinewy snap away. Kaytu’s left eye stared at me with unblinking menace. She had gotten her man, and his head was on the chewing block. I cursed my fickle fate, my pending premature death, my—hang on? I thought. Wasn’t the patch over her left eye when she arrived? A whirl interrupted my thoughts, and her exposed eye swivelled with unblinking steeliness from left to right. I waved a surrendering pale palm, but the steely eye ignored it and continued a whirling swivel from side to side. I extended a pointed finger, touched the eye and gasped, for it was not of human flesh but acrylic plastic. Good God! She was a Cyclops, a one-prosthetic-eyed carnivore. But blind to my escape! If I could hold my nerve and apply a subtle touch, I thought I might just survive with my neck intact.

Then it happened. A reclining seat struck my buttocks and propelled my body forward until my forehead kissed the tip of Kaytu’s nose and my eyes stared into her foul mouth, for into the depths of Hades I looked. Her breath reeked of the foetid stench of rotting flesh; meaty chunks festered in the gaps between what remained of her teeth, and her uvula dangled like a hanged man. Good God! I thought, was this woman the daughter of Polyphemus? Were those the bygone fleshy remnants of the headless men of Odysseus?

Had she woken at that moment, I might have offered her a Tic Tac or ten before she tore my head off, but on she slept, oblivious to my fear, my repulsion and my traverse.

And so I summited Kaytu, but my quest was not even half done. I paused to regain my breath and steel my resolve. Then I turned my attention to conquering Everest.

***

I just made my connecting flight to Cartagena, and when I arrived, flustered and sweaty, at my allocated window seat, I saw my neighbour for the flight, a tiny, stooped old woman dressed in mourning black. Her gnarled fingers clutched rosary beads, and as her shoes floated halfway between her seat and the cabin floor, she mumbled prayers to herself, pausing only to make the sign of the cross. I, too, prayed, given the travails of my previous flight: O Lord, let her be bean-eater, not beef-eater.

With a ‘Disculpe’ and a smile, followed by a ‘Gracias’, I squeezed past a young woman in the aisle seat and then the old woman. I settled, and our plane was soon airborne above the Straits of Florida.

Having not eaten during my first flight, and with the rush to board my connecting flight, I found myself hungry, so I leant forward to grab the in-flight menu. I flicked through the contents of the seat pocket but found only the in-flight magazine, the safety instructions and a sick bag. No menu. I bent down and searched under my seat.

‘Buscando a Dios?’ a voice croaked near my ear. I looked up and saw the old woman with a look of hope in her eyes and a set of ill-fitting dentures in her gaping mouth.

‘Sorry,’ the young woman next to her said. ‘But my grandmother wants to know if you are looking for God.’

‘No, just the in-flight menu, thank you.’ I returned to my search, only for the old woman to croak again.

‘Excuse me,’ the young woman said. ‘My grandmother would like to know if you wish to have your fortune told.’

The old woman shot me a gummy grin and nodded.

‘How much?’ I asked.

The old woman raised her wrinkled hands.

‘10,000 pesos,’ the young woman said.

Having crunched a currency conversion in my head, I thought, why not? Five dollars seemed a cheap investment in my future. I took a 10,000-peso note from my wallet and handed it to the granddaughter. The old woman took my hand and ran her gnarled fingers over my palm. She mumbled something to her granddaughter and rapidly crossed herself three times.

‘My grandmother says everyone on this plane is going to die.’

‘Oh God! Die! What, now?’

The plane dipped and rattled as turbulence struck. Some passengers screamed and others gagged as oxygen masks dropped from overhead.

‘Oh God! No, not now. I’m too young to die. There’s so much I haven’t done. Please, is it now?’

The old woman mumbled.

‘My grandmother asks for another 10,000 pesos.’

I fumbled in my wallet and handed over another 10,000-peso note.

The old woman mumbled.

‘My grandmother says not today. Only when God says so.’ And the plane settled.

‘Hey, that’s not predicting the future. That’s just relating a certainty.’

I berated myself for falling for such a scam and resumed my search for the in-flight menu.

As I looked under my seat, a cold, clammy hand grasped my wrist, and I looked up and saw the old woman giving me the old death stare and muttering an incantation that sounded like she wanted to boil me in a cauldron.

‘My grandmother says you soon no longer be virgin.’

I sat up quickly and hit my head on the armrest. ‘What?’ As I rubbed my head, I felt my face warm, and in the zealous eyes of my soothsayer, I saw my cheeks redden and my eyes water.

‘My grandmother says you soon no longer be virgin.’

‘I thought I was paying her to predict my future, not recall my past.’

The old woman mumbled to her granddaughter.

‘My grandmother says no way you not a virgin.’

‘Yes, yes. All right. I’ll admit I’ve been saving myself. It’s not like there hasn’t been the odd opportunity. It’s a self-confidence thing. So, who is she?’

‘She?’

‘The woman to whom I lose my innocence.’

The old woman whispered in her granddaughter’s ear and cackled.

‘My grandmother asks what makes you so sure it will be to a woman.’

‘What?’

The young woman smiled and said, ‘My grandmother is only kidding. It’s an old Colombian peasant joke.’

And the wrinkled oracle released another cackle.

‘Oh, ha-ha. You got me there.’ I shot daggers at Baba Yaga next to me. ‘So … who is she?’

‘You want to know?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, yes.’

The young woman nodded at her grandmother, and the old woman shrugged her shoulders and raised her hand and rubbed her thumb against her index and middle fingers.

‘My grandmother asks for another 10,000 pesos.’

Of course, I thought, scam away, but, hey, she had me by the short and curlies, for who doesn’t want to know about the nitty-gritty of their future love life?

‘Oh, all right. Here.’ And I placed my last crinkled note on the palm of the old woman’s hand. ‘But it’s the last one.’

The grandmother mumbled to her granddaughter.

‘My grandmother say your lover, she beautiful woman. She The One. The One of your dreams. But your path to true love will be hazardous. You must overcome greatest rival and greatest fear to win her heart.’

‘What rival? What fear?’

The granddaughter looked at her grandmother. I looked into my wallet. Not even a moth remained. I regretted not having time to visit the ATM at Miami Airport.

‘Please tell me,’ I said.

The old woman shook her head, and the granddaughter said, ‘No pay, no tell.’

‘Oh, come on. I’ve been pretty generous already.’

‘Sorry, no pay, no tell.’

I tapped my pockets, hoping for loose change. I cursed my traveller’s cheques being stored in my baggage. Again I looked in my wallet.

‘Do … do … do you accept Visa?’

The young woman spoke to the old woman.

The old woman pulled a phone from her handbag, held it in front of me and said, ‘Toca y listo.’

‘What? What did she say?’

And the old woman smiled and said, ‘Tap and Go.’