Chapter 1
“What are you looking at, stupid?”
“What are we going to do?” Zeno asked, sweat covering him up.
“The fuck am I supposed to know? Where’s your genius—”
“Don’t worry guys,” Wolfram walked in. “We’re good.”
Wolfram threw two packages at his brothers. He held one for himself.
“What’s this? Oh shit. You’re kidding, right? No you gotta be kidding. It’s a fucking parachute?”
“A running para”—Wolfram scratched his head—“chute.” He said. Very faint voice.
“What’s that?”
“There’s no time to ask.”
“What are we gonna do guys? Guys I don’t like what I’m seeing. Guys…”
The three brothers put on the weird parachutes as they exchanged worried, confused looks at each other.
“Okay, what now? You got us all primed up, ready and lubed up, so what now?”
If you were to be to one side of the craft, through the tiny windows you will see the brothers’ erratic movements.
Wolfram walks to the door, stands there. Huxley sits down, hands covering face. Zeno walks back and forth, hands moving as he talks. Wolfram’s still at the door, sometimes seeming to read, sometimes seeming to understand nothing, sometimes budging with handles and parts. Then Huxley gets up and walks back.
And on the inside you would be able to hear their restless voices.
“
So…this where we at now?
Comin’ out the dark, here we at now
Balled up in chains, vow to make a vow
Make it now,
Heart up in pulse, now let’s take it down
”
Huxley, in standard fashion, rapped his way to the back of the craft.
“What are you doooing? Man what are you doing?” Zeno said to Wolfram, but after fiddling with something under one seat he had started to dislike what he had in mind. “So what am I doing?”
Then out from the sides, you can see Huxley coming back. Some shouting seams to be going on, some waving of the hands.
Anger.
Then punches.
Kicks.
Now it’s upfront WWE WrestleMania.
And then…
“You didn’t know that?” Zeno looked at Wolfram.
“Let’s keep our minds int—”
Another punch comes bloodying Wolfram’s nose even more. So in retaliation followed a punch, from Wolfram, to Huxley, right into Zeno’s face. You can’t direct punches too well with this kind of turbulence.
Circling degrees around, and to the back of the craft, what can you see right now? Nothing makes out. It’s…clouds.
At last.
Screaming at the top of his lungs,
covered in tears,
covered in sweat.
“Airplane doors don’t FUCKING open mid-flight motherfuckerRR!”
Chapter One
Hol’ up. Hol’ up.
“When
are we
arriving?”
That’s Huxley. 17 years old and always ready to rock and roll, and at full speed too. A decibel of the free verse movement. Before the paint had even dried posters of Tupac, Eminem, and “$aint and $in” had covered most of his room.
“The sun’s up boys. Are you ready?” Emelia, their mother and a doctor, said. Seated at 27E.
The sun was shedding it’s first rays at sunrise. The light penetrated through the windows, filled the place up from the back to the front.
“Yo 7 o’clock.”
That’s Zeno. A young boxer who loves it all so much. Maybe also an outlier. When he was a kid, the principal at school was doing a supervision walk. He noticed Zeno, back then a 7-year-old, shadow boxing. On asking him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said this: “I wanna get hit with a car and I wanna sow them—”
“You mean sue?”
“Yeah and make lots of money.”
Hm.
“And don’t go around breaking young girls’ hearts”
That’s Wolfram.
“Yo what the, I don’t mean that little girl you fucktard. The flight attendant, 7 o’clock.”
Wolfram was seated by a window. He looked at the moon still visible with the bright sky.
“You know, if you look at the moon…” Huxley talked to the girl to his left, who sat at a window. “…like, you feel it’s so close now, but still—“
“Huxley!”
“Shut up!” He turned his head to his brother and said solidly. “So yeah, what were we talking about?”
“The moon, yeah…”
“Yeah what’s your number like…”
“Huxley.” Zeno called on him again.
“Like what’s the digits... what’s the numerical what’s the…”
“Okay okay...” The girl, Italian, smiled.
They talked some more. They shared contact information. Then Huxley got up to go to the restroom.
But Zeno called on him again.
In front of him, that one row in the mid aisle only had a seat occupied. So he walked over the mid aisle, sprinkling a sorry or two, and all the way to Zeno’s seat at the right aisle.
“I’ve been calling on you man.”
“What’s up?”
“The sky looks so weird, I’ve been meaning to show you.” Huxley slanted over his mom and Wolfram to look through the window. “Woah. What’s that?”
“Yeah right? This is the first time I see it like—“
Huxley facepalmed Zeno, told him he’s being a dumbass, and walked on to the restroom.
“Jesus it’s been a long flight!” Trevor, their father, also a doctor, said. He had walked back from the front, stood at Emy’s seat. He was walking around to stretch his muscles.
“Yeah and the boys are getting rowdy here so I wish we land much too soon before they get in trouble.” She smiled.
And Trevor let out a laugh. He took his seat and buckled up.
Meanwhile in the restroom Huxley fiddled with the compartments, curious. He would open one thing, and be “Oooh what’s that” while his other hand is fiddling with another thing. It was just all too intricate and interesting. And he would do it with the idea of collecting details about lots of things, and maybe use these details in one rap or another. And to his seat he was back.
“You know what happened when you weren’t here?” The Italian girl asked Huxley. He no-nodded. “This guy was gonna take your seat by mistake and—”
“Who? Point at him. Where is he?”
“Oh”—The girl laughed—“Calm down calm down.”
As the sun rose higher, their conversing continued.
…
“What’s up with you?” Wolfram asked Zeno. 27G and 27F.
“What do you mean? I’m cool.” Zeno had his palms over his knees. He said that looking away in the distance.
“You’re normally not like this at all. Is something up? C’mon tell me, open up while we’re still in the sky.”
Zeno always seemed to have a conserved heart, but this time something was off, different. A different bell ringing a different tune.
“Chicken or beef?” The flight attendant had come over.
“I would say…beef for me.”
The lady arranged the meals and gave them out to Wolfram, Zeno, Emy, and Trevor. Huxley and the girl had already gotten their meals, being 2 rows back. At row 29.
“Yo, dig in?” Huxley looked to Zeno ahead. Zeno signed back.
“When I was young
I never needed anyone
And making love was just for fun
Those days are gone—”
“Why are you listening to such sad music?” The girl heard what Huxley was listening to. It echoed out of his headset. He unplugged the headset; the music instantly stopped.
“It’s just...I really like this song. It makes me feel some type of way.”
Claretta asked him to share the song with her.
He turned bluetooth on. She too did.
They started the file sharing process.
Claretta, the Italian girl, put her headphones in her ears. Huxley plugged up, put his headset on, and they both pressed play on their separate phones. Huxley and Claretta were still sharing looks as the song played on.
“You know, your eyes are actually really pretty.” Huxley paused his music.
“What did you say?” Claretta didn’t hear. So also she paused her music.
“Oh it’s nothing.” Huxley smiled hard at her. It felt heartfelt and really genuine.
She smiled back, reacting naturally. She wanted to ask him why he smiled like that but she chose not to.
“There is this Finnish comedy, I think Sunny Hazel Down. Do you happen to know it? It’s very famous…” Claretta asked Huxley.
“No…” Huxley looked away for a moment. “Wait, my brother keeps texting me for some reason.” He smiled at her, took off from his seat and walked over to Zeno and Wolfram.
“Finally, man…” Zeno was consumed at his phone screen. He looked up, found Huxley standing there.
Huxley focused on Zeno’s eyes.
“Why do you—”
“How is it going Husky?” Emy interrupted Huxley, nodded in Claretta’s direction. “She’s really cute, you know. Is she Finnish?”
“What? No! And Mom”—“Husky” smiled big at Emy—“you know I don’t like that name.”
Emy and Trevor faded back to their conversation.
“What smoke are you talking about?” Huxley referred to Zeno’s texts.
“You don’t smell it? Dude, something it wrong with your nose. Everyone can smell it. Even Uncle Ronnie…”—Huxley faded away for moments: Uncle Ronnie who?—“…was panicking. You don’t see what’s happening? Dude…”
Huxley fades away again, now rubbing a hand over a hip. He wide-eyes the plane left to right. Saw children screaming, women crying, men…
Then he faded back in.
“…Huxley. Hux?” Zeno nudged at Huxley’s waist.
There were no children screaming.
And there isn’t an Uncle Ronnie, neither on the plane nor in the whole family to begin with.
Huxley is either panicking or he’s on drugs.
“Finnish? What does she mean by Finnish?”
Huxley, at this point, is completely trapped inside his mind. The words “Finnish comedy” and “Isn’t she cute?” started appearing as pulses inside his mind. The words melted together. “Isn’t she a cute Finnish comedy?” Then everything turned black, even though he—or at least he thought—had his eyes wide open. He started connecting the dots.
“Mom asked if Claretta is Finnish.”
“Claretta asked if I knew a famous Finnish comedy.”
“Claretta isn’t famous. Or is she?”
“Sunny Hazel Down?”
“Is Claretta a Finnish actor?”
“There’s no TV show called Sunny Hazel Down.”
“Claretta is a spy, oh my God, and Mom is in on it.”
“Oh how I always saw this coming.”
“If not, why would she ask about Sunny Hazel Down? Why not Sunny Hazel Up?”
“Oh my God they want me down.”
“But I’m not famous…what’s in it for them?”
“Am I Finnish?”
“Wait, am I Finnish?”
“Am I Finnish?”
Am. I. Finnish(ed)? Oh my God. They want to Finish me; I mean finish. Finish me. Fin. Ish. Fins? Sharks? We’re on top of the Dead Sea? Oh my God. Finish. Claretta. Famous. Fins. Sharks. Spies. Dead. They are gonna throw me in the Dead Sea. Or the ocean.
Flush, flush, flush.
Huxley’s now sitting on the toilet; he reaches with his hand around to the flush. He escaped to the restroom to try to gather himself up. “All that has happened, all that has gone, rhymes that’ve gotten blackened, by that deep blue sun.” Words that appeared in Huxley’s head. All that has happened, basically, is this:
Huxley left Claretta and walked over to Zeno.
“What smoke are you talking about?” He asked Zeno, who had texted him a couple of times about “some smoke smell.”
“You don’t smell it? Dude—”
“Oh yeah.” Huxley realized the smell when it finally came to him, and then it finally came to him. “What’s up with that?”
“You didn’t have it over there?” Zeno asked, leaning right, over Wolfram, and looking from the window. “Is it just this side or what? Our engine be broke or what?” He laughed as he leaned back into his seat.
Huxley nods in agreement; there really is “some smoke smell.”
He stands there for a few seconds, while Zeno gets back to his phone, and Wolfram gets back to shuffling through the entertainment screen fixed to the back of the seat in front of him. After that, “Okay, I gonna go now.” He looks at Emy. “No more ‘Husky.’” He then winked and tsk’d at her, and walked back to his seat.
So what’s he flushing? Snap back.
“Sir, what are you doing?” A middle-age man, in a black shirt and blue jeans, responded to this weird teenager, in the seat in front of him, who reached around with his hand to tap on top of his head.
Huxley snaps back.
“What are you doing?” Claretta got confused, with a little hearty giggle or two.
“Argh.” He smiled.
“Oh my God.” Then covered his face with his hand.
“Did I…Umm…I’m such a dweep.”
From behind the palm of his hand, a teardrop fell, on the carpet floor beneath.
Huxley knows himself. He knows what he has done. And even if no one knows him better than himself, he still sees it all and likes none of it.
“Huxley…” Claretta looked worried now. “Are you okay?”
“Hold up hold up I gotta…” Nike shoes, threaded “Never Cut Myself” bracelet on one wrest, Huxley took to the restroom. He’s gotta throw up, and he certainly cannot do it in a paper bag in front of Claretta. And there in the bathroom he has some time to go over things, have a talk with himself to see what’s up.
He vomits.
“That’s just a first things first man.” He looks at the mirror. He looks deep into the reflection of his own eyes. It looks scary. He remembers playing the guitar next to Luis, Summer, Henake, and Joe, all on the beach.
“All on the beach of your own eyes,” he takes up his phone and starts typing. He sits down on the toilet.
All on that beach of your own eyes—he types on—and that one morning…a robot woke up from a deep, deep sleep. The robot found a deodorant on a tabletop, called Fa. Under “Fa” was “Men.” The robot had heard the word “famine” before, and when it read these two words together…they gave the same sound: It’s a message, then, all on the beach of your own eyes. “Is it a message?” The robot asked itself. It looked at the far, never-ending horizon of that one beach. The beach reflected through its eyes. Eyes made of silicone and metal, lustered. And, then again, it was always, always on the beach of your own eyes.
Knock knock. “Sir…”
Huxley put his phone quickly back into his pocket, and stood up to wash. “Yeah, one sec.” He quickly said. He turned the knob, unlocking the restroom’s door, smiled at the FA. “Excuse me.” He smiled again. “Some turbulence or what?”
“Yes, sir, you’ll need to be seated. There’ll be some turbulence.”
Emy cheeky-smiled at Huxley while back to his seat he slowly walked.
“Can I ask you what’s up with you?” The moment Huxley was back, Claretta didn’t waste a moment to ask him the question.
“I’m not well.” Huxley looked deep into Claretta’s eyes, as deeply as he had looked into his own eyes back in the restroom. “I’m just not well.” He shrugged with a calm looking face. He looked away from Claretta. His heart started soaking his face in features of sadness and despair. “What do you call a man who just doesn’t know what’s going on?”
“I call you not gullible.” Claretta placed her hand on Huxley’s shoulder. “People are so sure about everything.” She continued in her faintly Italian accent. “But you’re not. And I think that means you’re unique, right?” She smiled.
“Take your hand OFF me, Claretta.”
Time stops for a second.
Out and away. Out of the craft: It’s speeding at hundreds of miles every passing hour, with a foam of clouds trailing around its body. Out and far, zooming out, back to the North American continent, and back to the family’s home. But shift away—through the asphalt roads, and the concrete pavements—from that as well, and move on to the Rock Creek Road Cemetery. There, on the south west ward, lies a headstone. It says: “She…never knew when to stop smiling.” The name?
It’s that season.
Between winter and spring.
It must be that one season.
Summer.
Back again.
Claretta takes her hand off. Huxley wipes some sweat off his face.
She doesn’t understand, and she doesn’t know what to do or say. The first thing that springs up in her head is the song, that song she and Huxley were listening to moments ago. Don’t wanna be all by myself, she thinks to herself. And the tears, she thinks to herself: This man has something very hard, incredibly painful lying inside of his heart. Claretta’s next move, that seems very natural to her, is to put back her headphones and listen to the song from the start.
She presses play. Huxley can hear it quietly echoing out.
He doesn’t look in her direction. He just rests his head over his hand, resting that over the arm of the seat, and looking away at a diagonal angle. The tiny windows spread along the flank of the aircraft like beads. He can see nothing but blue, and even if some shades of pink cross the view here and there, often and often not so, he dismisses them: It’s just blue. Everything is blue. And even if it’s bright blue, it’s still blue. He slowly closes his eyes, being tired and all.
When he closes his eyes, he slowly floats his soul away, as smoke, smoke that spreads and exits through all of the tiny windows he had just been looking at. His soul, floating as smoke, feels the winds and the cold outside of the airplane. And from outside he can see himself on the inside: A seemingly broken man, hand over face, eyes dreary and reddened.
Suddenly he’s not following the airplane anymore; it passes in front of him as he gets fixed into the same spot of space. He was flying side by side with it using the force of his own active imagination. Thing is, he just fell asleep inside of the airplane. Inside, his body, his mind, his eyes, his heart—they continued flying away. He falls into a dream.
The smoke vanishes.
But we don’t.
Descending down from the same spot, onto the heart of Zaragoza, Spain, lies a foreign branch of a company called Swiss Sanna Maltova Portovana Inc. “Recuerda el nombre, hijo, mi padre era un fabricante de túnicas, y nunca hizo un nudo equivocado.”
That is: Remember the name, son, my father was a robe maker, and he never tied a wrong knot.
So, recuerdo el nombre.
~ ~ ~
“I goin count ten.” A tanned man, with a visible pinkish scar across his face, stands a few rows from the back. “Tell them, Miro, tell them what Sandji do to loco.”
“He do bad, bad, ba”—He opens up the storage compartment above—“aaad I don’t explain you don’t understand.” He laughs hysterically for a moment, then in a flash turns serious. “Loco horn goes Boom! Boom!”
“Tell them, Sandji, do we forget MH17? They took Rosa from us. They keep her done and makes us mourning—”
“Every morning, Miro—”
“Sir, can you please return to your—” The flight attendant’s neck is penetrated with a sharp, hot bullet before she finishes her sentence.
Everyone starts to panic.
Miro has a shotgun in one hand. “Every day, tell ’em Sandji, every day was hell…”
“They took Rosa, Miro, they take our Rosa and they leaves us with nothing.” Sandji walks through the rows, while Miro seems to keep fiddling within his bag. Sandji takes a child as a get-outta-jail hostage.
From an angle of death, every line is so cross. Wolfram had written in his journal. It’s not a coincidence that Huxley and Wolfram and Zeno all write; their mother, Emelia, along with their father, Trevor, had taught them way early on to take an hour of the day just to write out their hearts. To this day the habit had stuck with them. Even though each has his own style, but to each one of them this habit has been a deep, long friend, just like a dog to a child, just like a parrot to a pirate, and, even more in likeness, just like the big dipper to a lone way-finder. They each got their special notebooks. One with “4H,” for Huxley. “4W” and “4Z” were for Wolfram and Zeno, respectively. Whenever one of them had finished his notebook he would be given another. Zeno was the most colorful; Huxley the most poetic and solid; Wolfram was the most incredible. Zeno would write everything and then pour glitter sometimes in order and sometimes chaotically on the page, and he would cut out pieces of the pages, and he would draw over and behind the writing. That just was Zeno.
From an angle of death, every line is so cross. “Eist” sours me. “Eist” brings the devil in me…
And that is when Wolfram stopped.
“But Sandji,” Wolfram stands up. Emy and Trevor keep scream-whispering to him to just SHUT IT and get back into his seat. Everyone’s trembling. “Do you think Rosa deserved all that love?”
Miro was closer. That question, to Miro and Sandji, doesn’t even mean anything but the death of the inquirer. He stopped fiddling in his bag, and the smaller bags within that bag, and walked severely angrily toward Wolfram. He now hates everything about Wolfram. Wolfram is a stupid, disgusting, horrendous, even cheap Western mouther that’s gonna get gotten now.
“It’s just his fate, Sandji…” He reaches and grabs Wolfram by the neck. Wolfram, who stands rigidly in his spot, reacts by grabbing the man’s forearm. Zeno stands up, between the man and Wolfram.
One sec.
Take a deep breath. Therapeutic break for what’s ahead. Inhale the dust. Exhale it back into seams.
Ready?
“Just calm down and listen to me.” Wolfram talks quietly to the man.
“You know Rosa to talk about Rosa? You know—” A flaming hot jab lands Zeno’s clinched fist right into Miro’s nose. The first drop of blood from a broken nose doesn’t get time to hit the ground before the first shotgun bullet is fired. The child is thrown away. No need for the baby, now: it’s time to get too rough. Now they gotta end these “mother—”
“—fuckers, you know what’s gonna be happeny”—Sandji utters saliva, can’t talk properly from the magnitude of anger that blossoms as adrenaline through each of his connected blood vessels. He walk-runs to the scene. They did a number on his brother.
The moment Miro recovers from the bunch and looks back with focus on both Wolfram and Zeno, is the moment Wolfram looks away at Sandji, who’s approaching quickly with a 12-gauge black-and-brown shotgun. “Listen to me.” Wolfram said. “Do you ever ask yourself why Rosa didn’t love you as much as Miro?”
Her head away from the scene, a passenger, rows away, murmurs: “This kid is gonna get us all killed.”
Miro takes a deep breath, catches a warm, wet rag that Sadnji took from on top of someone’s seat table and threw in his direction.
He wipes off the blood.
“You don’t dare touch my brother.” Zeno looks Miro dead in the eyes.
Miro can’t keep himself from laughing. So he opens up. Wolfram keeps his focus on Sandji.
“Think about it, man, why did she name your brother Miro? Mi. Ro. She put a piece of her name in his name, man. I bet she put a piece of her heart in the idea of him too. And besides—” Wolfram stops for a moment, tilts his head, just as an imitator dabbles with a cobra. Sandji, for the first time, looks at Miro. That remark hit home—right where it hurts.
“Sandji, what we do with cute American boy here?” Miro laughs on. “That MOTHERFUCKER punch me!” He maniacally turns sharply serious.
“You know what I say we do…” Sandji checks the shotgun’s compartment.
Wait a moment, Wolfram thinks. Looks like Sandji needs more work; he’s still driving a one-track mind.
“Listen, man, just listen to me. I’m appealing to your logical mind here. If Rosa really loved you both so much how could you be in such a bad state right now?”
Miro walks back to his bags.
“Like, if she really loved you how could she have made you both so dependent? That’s not love! That’s possession, and I’m sure she made you work early on too, to get her—”
Miro takes a knife out of his bag.
“Wait what are you doing?”
What are you doing, though? How did you get this knife, or that shotgun over onboard? It’s a good question.
“Sir…”
What’s going on…?
On his shoulder he feels a tap.
“S—”
“What’s up? What’s up?” Huxley, just as a spring, bounces from sleep to wake. Startled and his eyes now blood red.
“You need to fasten your seatbelt.” The lady said with a look. She had already told him before and he didn’t comply, apparently.
The lady walks on.
“So I’m awake, apparently.” Huxley says before he looks to his left. He doesn’t find Claretta, so he places the palm of his hand on her seat. He finds it to be warm, and that, for one reason or another, makes his heart warm. He wants to apologize to her. And he feels this sudden rush of good feelings. The smoke of that burning soul has settled. As Huxley waits for Claretta, he cannot stop thinking of her, and it baffles him a little.
Because saying I’m wrong justifies many things, Huxley brings out his iPhone and types down. It also outlines a need—the need for change, which is the greatest need of all. The need is change. Change compounded is evolution. Evolution aggregated is greatness. And greatness is a life worth living.
I know, Summer. I know you cannot possibly want me to be like this. I know I haven’t been living right for you, and I’m really sorry. Summer G. Where are you now? I know your amazing soul, and I know you would never want me to be miserable or broken. That’s just how amazing you were.
Huxley closes this note, and opens a new one.
Today I met Claretta, and I feel like I pushed her away a little, and I wasn’t too good, yes. But this girl is actually so beautiful, and I feel like she’s so kind and simple like me on the inside. Life, when I see it in her eyes, looks so livable. Good feelings. Good feelings, Claretta. Let’s see.
The restroom door light switches from red to green. The door’s opened.
Huxley looks. And then he dismisses. It wasn’t her.
But before Huxley takes a moment to think about what he will tell Claretta, he notices what appears to be a disaster: The other restroom is not red; it’s green. Which means there is no one there.
And the other problem is that, that person who had just come out from the restroom is walking right toward Huxley.
The person comes to the row and stops, smiles at Huxley.
“What?” Huxley looks at—wait for it—him, not her.
The man gestures at the seat next to Huxley.
“What?” Huxley simply does not budge.
“That’s my seat, sir.”
That person was Kevin Clander-June: A 39-year old branch manager at Macdonald’s.
A switch and a color were all it took. That’s how Huxley will forever remember how important switches and colors actually are.
~ ~ ~
