The Terminal Read online

  THE TERMINAL

  Amber Fallon

  For John

  and

  For Brian & Mary

  THE TERMINAL

  Little Miss Yoga Pants was annoying the shit out of me. It was just before 7:00 AM on Tuesday December 23rd. I hadn’t slept the night before. Hadn’t showered. Hadn’t shaved. My stomach had that hollow sort of empty feeling that comes with ignoring hunger pangs too long. To put it bluntly, I was a nervous wreck.

  Dylan kept failing at trying to reassure me. He didn’t know my family like I did. Or at least, like I had before they disowned me years ago. What would they think? What would they say? Would they make a scene, kick us out right on the spot? Disown me again? I wasn’t sure. But none of it was going to stop me. Not the fear, not the doubt, not the idea of facing those people again, nothing. Dylan wanted this. It was important to him, and he was important to me. He was the only thing I can ever say made me feel whole, human, the way I always thought I was supposed to feel but somehow never did. I was addicted to that feeling. Healthy or not, that’s how it was. Looking at Dylan made me feel like I was the person I had always aspired to be. Like maybe I’d really reached my full potential. If someone like him could love me, maybe my family had been wrong after all. Maybe...

  Maybe I was going to strangle that skinny little knock-kneed bitch with her own yoga pants. God, she needed to shut the fuck up. It was way too early in the morning for her incessant chattering. And who the hell was she talking to, anyway? It wasn’t even seven o’clock! Sane people were still be in bed, maybe having breakfast or a shower, maybe grabbing a quickie before heading to the office. Or maybe standing in line at the gate at O’Hare before heading home to introduce their boyfriend to the family they hadn’t spoken to in close to ten years, the family that didn’t even know they were gay.

  I was doing my best to tune out the inane chattering, but unfortunately the only other thing there was to focus on at this time of year was Christmas music. A jazzy, saxophone rich rendition of ‘Oh, Christmas Tree’ drifted from unseen speakers. Would my parents have a Christmas tree this year? Would they ask us to stay? Or would they see my face and throw home the deadbolt without even opening the door?

  “Tammy?” Yoga Pants squawked. “Tammy are you there? Tammy! Can you hear me? TAMMY!” I didn’t know who Tammy was, but I pitied her. Unless she was just like Yoga Pants, then I supposed she got what she deserved.

  Ms. Pants let out an exasperated sigh and glared at her neon pink iPhone. “What the fuck? How can I have no bars? Ugh!” She turned it off and stuck it into a transparent plastic purse. I could see everything inside pretty clearly, which I thought was incredibly stupid. What if, for some inexplicable reason, I desired a nauseatingly pink iPhone? I’d know right where to find one. And it wouldn’t take much to overpower her, either. I could just reach out and...

  She stood in front of me at Gate D 23, waiting to board the plane while absently fiddling with one of the many bits of metal in her ear. She wore, of course, a branded velour jacket that matched the afore mentioned yoga pants with the word PINK emblazoned over both her ass and her shoulder blades in six inch high letters. What kind of fashion statement was that? Yes, I could see that her clothes were pink. I had eyeballs that functioned. Maybe it was intended for the colorblind?

  She was twisting from side to side, shuffling in her pink flip flops and tossing her bleach blonde over processed pony tail as she moved. A vision flashed into my head—me, grabbing the ugly little top knot, yanking her off her feet, throwing her to the floor, and stomping on her until all that cheery bright pink turned blood red. In my vision, everyone around us panicked and cleared out, screaming like the crowds always do when there’s a gunshot fired in some action movie. I smiled.

  “What’s so funny?” Dylan asked at my elbow, having returned from the overpriced little convenience store at gate B16. He handed me a bottle of water and a bag of neon gummy worms—my favorite. “Nothing.” I said, shaking my head to clear the gruesome little vision, “Just day dreaming.” Dylan smiled that quirky little smile of his, the one that’s just a little lopsided in the most endearing way. I fell in love with him all over again right then and there. I felt better now that he was beside me. Even Little Miss Yoga Pants couldn’t sour my mood. Much.

  I picked up my bag as the line began to move. Dylan still wore his blue backpack slung over one shoulder. His wavy, carefully tousled sandy brown hair grazed the collar of his pale green polo, the neck open to showcase his leather cord and puka shell necklace, a souvenir from our trip to Hawaii the previous year. He was about a head shorter than my 5’10”, with warm chocolate colored eyes and a complexion that never seemed far from sun kissed bronze, even in the dead of winter in Chicago, despite the fact that he never went tanning. Part of me hated him for that, just a little bit. I think maybe that’s the real secret to a great and lasting love—a tiny bit of jealousy or hatred, just to keep things interesting.

  He grinned at me. “So, what do you think they’re gonna say when we ring the doorbell on Christmas Eve?” he asked. I shook my head. “I shudder to think.” I said, barely covering the nerves belying my joking tone. “Aw, come on.” Dylan soothed, rubbing my bicep, “I’m sure it won’t be that bad. I mean, what’s the worst they can do? Kick you out? They already did that. The way I see it, they can’t exactly hate you more, can they?” I had to admit there was a certain logic to it. “No, I guess they couldn’t.” Dylan’s signature smile quirked up at me once more. “See?” he asked, “What have you got to lose?”

  Ahead of us, Yoga Pants flipped her pony tail aggressively as she turned towards the window, nearly brushing the straw-like clump of beauty products against my face. I was about to open my mouth and tell her where she could stick her pretty pink iPhone when I felt Dylan’s hand on my arm. Yoga Pants had gasped during the hair flip, but I didn’t think much of it after a nanosecond’s worth of annoyance. Only now did I notice that a collective silence had fallen over the airport, a busy space that had been bustling and noisy only moments before. I directed my gaze towards the huge windows designed to let passengers watch airplanes arrive and depart. What I saw took my breath away.

  There was an airplane headed for the tarmac at an off angle, its nose too far down for it to have any hope of recovering before it collided with the runway, which it was approaching much too quickly for it to have been intentional. Ignoring all of that, the plane was corkscrewing in a downward spiral its captain couldn’t possibly bring it out of in time for any kind of survivable landing. As I stood, slack jawed and staring, my eyes roved over the rapidly descending aircraft as if I were subconsciously trying to memorize every detail. Maybe so I’d have something to tell the pretty reporter woman who was sure to want to interview me as an eyewitness at some point. As the plane spiraled, the side that had been facing away from me came into view. It was missing its wing, gone as if it had been snapped off by some monstrously-sized child playing Godzilla. Where the wing should have been was a smoldering car-sized hole, spewing a plume of fire capped in a long ribbon of greasy black smoke that trailed into the sky.

  The crowd seemed transfixed, hypnotized almost, staring at the impending doom of whoever was on board. We all seemed to be holding our collective breath as if some kind of magical thinking might help to avert the catastrophe we were sure to bear witness to, like a sports fan wearing his favorite unwashed shirt to every home game. Then Yoga Pants screeched, breaking the spell and sending everything into chaos. Goddamn, she was annoying even in a crisis situation. Her piercing shriek was like some kind of signal to everyone else. People screamed, cried, and ran for cover seconds before the plane hit the ground, exploding in a ball of gas and fire, sending the glass in those gigantic windows towards us like pretty little gems
of shrapnel.

  Dylan took my hand, his fingers squeezing mine, vice-like, as the shards rained down around us and people went into hysterics. I think we might have been the only two who saw them.

  Everyone else was so preoccupied with the plane crash or with their families; we seemed to be the only ones looking up at the sky, seeking the source of whatever had happened to that plane. In the seconds I had to observe it, I noted that the sides of the hole bore inward—if there had been some sort of explosion on board, the hole would have been blown out. Something had hit them. Something big and moving very, very fast. At first I thought it might have been some kind of missile. A terrorist attack, maybe. But now things began to make sense.

  Meteors? Is that what they were? I squinted at the dark shapes coming towards us, growing steadily larger in my vision as they approached. “What the fuck?” I thought. Meteor showers of this magnitude don’t just happen, not without days’ worth of warning at least. We had all kinds of technology in place for just this reason, so we flat footed, weak little humans wouldn’t be caught unaware whenever bits of space rock or rogue Russian satellites rained from the sky. So what the hell was this? How had several dozen meteors the size of goddamned minivans just gotten through all that satellite-NATO-spy shit without anyone noticing?

  There was a noise like my soul being ripped in half and Dylan and I, along with everyone else in the terminal, toppled to the ground, blown off our feet by some kind of shock wave. My ears rang. I choked, trying to catch the wind that had been knocked out of me, staring wide eyed at the smoking ruin that had been gates D1 through D3 mere seconds earlier. I saw the sky through the hole the meteor had made and it held me transfixed as the world swam out of focus.

  Then Dylan’s face was in mine. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I got the intent. He lifted me up by the front of my shirt and screamed at me in wide eyed horror, spittle flying from his lips. I noticed the bits of glass still in his hair, the way the flames in the distance reflected in them like tiny flickering diamonds. I loved Dylan.

  “... HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!” he screamed, red faced from the strain. I nodded, my wits coming back to me as I got to my feet, Dylan pulling me back the way we had come, towards the illusion of safety the TSA guards represented. I hoped one of them had radioed for back up, or whatever it is they do to communicate. Even if that weren’t the case, surely at least some of them had guns. Maybe they could save us from panicky crowds of gibbering idiots trampling us to death. Then I recalled a news story I saw somewhere about a girl who had survived a plane crash, only to be killed when a fire truck carrying her would-be rescuers ran her over. Maybe we should just try to get somewhere safe and relatively out of the way. Captain’s club? Pete’s Portuguese Pavilion? A payphone? Did those even exist anymore?

  Dylan was still dragging me behind him, his strength seemingly enhanced by adrenaline. I struggled to keep up, not sure where he was heading, but not sure I really cared. As the saying goes, “Anywhere would be better than here.”

  We scrambled around a bank of iPads with a big sign that read Traveler Information over them. Behind the iPads was a juice bar. One of the big tanks of liquid refreshment had broken, spilling sticky red punch everywhere and making the place smell like a mai tai. Behind the counter, the cashier crouched, holding a rosary and whispering frantic prayers, God help her. God help us all.

  I glanced back over my shoulder as Dylan yanked me through throngs of frightened people. The agitator in the drink machine was still spinning in its corkscrew cycle, pushing more of the red gunk onto the counter, where it spilled down onto the floor in puddles that looked like cartoon blood. I could barely contain a chuckle as I thought “Somebody’s going to slip and break their neck.” As if that was the worst thing that could happen to them, or even a major concern at this point.

  People were screaming and running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Most of them didn’t seem to have any sort of evacuation plan or destination in mind; they were just consumed with panic and not dealing well with the rush of adrenaline that had flooded their systems. Fight or flight or freak the fuck out, I thought. It was like being stranded in a sea of cattle who have gained just enough sentience to figure out what the man with the nail gun intends to do to them. Clueless, aimless, afraid. No real sense of direction, no idea what they were doing, just the panic-driven need to do it now.

  One guy appeared to know exactly what he was doing, however. He smashed in a glass display of electronics inside a Brookstone with a fist wrapped in a fleece blanket and began grabbing things and stuffing them in his coat as we passed by. He made eye contact with me for a fleeting moment and goddamn if the bastard didn’t fucking grin. What a psycho.

  We made our way out of Terminal D amid the cacophony of screams and hysterical sobbing. Every few seconds there came a sound like a bomb going off as meteors crashed through the airport and into the ground beneath it, jostling everything like miniature earthquakes. There was no glass left intact in any of the storefronts or exterior windows. The floor was littered with sparkling shards of it and here and there I saw dabs and smears of blood—an obstacle course of baggage; duffel bags, purses, laptop totes and several of those rolling suitcases everyone seems to have these days, all left abandoned by their owners, leaving us to dodge or jump over them as we made our way out of the terminal.

  That god awful noise came again and once more Dylan and I were flung to the ground like rag dolls. The impact was much closer to us this time. Coughing, I got to my hands and knees, blinking my eyes and trying to focus. The ringing didn’t seem as loud. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? I wasn’t sure. I began looking for Dylan, but even before I saw him I knew something was wrong. More wrong, I mean, than the chaos all around us.

  I have never believed in any of that ESP/psychic phenomenon mumbo-jumbo. All that horseshit about twins being emotionally bonded, mothers and children being psychically linked, or lovers having some sort of sense that the other had died or was in grave danger, that was just romanticized movie bullshit, I thought, just more Hollywood hoopla designed to sell tickets. I didn’t think any of it contained a grain of truth until I felt the floor of my stomach drop away and my heart plunge through the hole it left in its wake. I didn’t need to look over to know that he was dead. I probably didn’t want to, anyway. But I couldn’t stop myself. Could you? He was the man I loved. He had part of my soul inside him for Christ’s sake; of course I could feel it the moment he died.

  Dylan, my beloved Dylan, was flung over a bank of those horrible stuck-together airport chairs. His back was bowed, his ribcage pushing out the front of his polo like the way kids sometimes shove basketballs down their shirts to pretend to be pregnant. His eyes were open, those warm brown eyes I had first stared into over the cash register at Starbucks, where he was working when I first moved to Chicago. Now the light inside them had gone out. Why did I have to love him only to lose him?

  I went to him, hoping I was wrong, that he wasn’t dead, that we could somehow make it out of this halfway OK, maybe even still make my parents’ house for Christmas. But the second I touched him, I knew I wasn’t wrong. Those silly little hopes shattered when I felt his skin. It wasn’t cool yet, it was much too soon for that, but it felt hollow somehow, like touching a doll. I knew I had lost him forever. His inherent Dylan-ness, everything that made him what he was and made me love him with every part of my being, had left his body the moment those fucking chairs had broken his back and taken him forever from me.

  Blood leaked from the corners of his mouth, coloring his teeth red like that time at the fair we’d gotten snow cones before riding the Ferris wheel. But there would be no more snow cones for my Dylan. No more Ferris wheels. No more making fun of bad movies and sleeping in on Sundays. No more late night Netflix sessions spent snuggling on the couch with pizza and beer. No more hope. There was no more Dylan. What would be left of me without him?

  I let out a strangled sob, looking down at his body as a
young mother yanked her two small kids past us, tears staining all three of their faces. I wondered what they had lost in this nightmare.

  Dylan. My Dylan. Why had he made us buy those tickets in the first place? I tried to close his eyes the way they do in movies but they wouldn’t stay closed. More Hollywood hoopla—a romanticized view of death. They never talked about bowels or bladder letting go either, but there it was. I trailed my finger down his cheek before ripping the puka shell necklace from his throat. A reminder. Something to keep with me, should I make it out of this nightmare. I knew I’d never forget my Dylan. Hell, I had a whole apartment full of reminders waiting for me in Berwyn to make sure of that. The necklace was different, though. Something I could hold with me right now, when I just might need it most. I took a moment to carefully wrap the leather cord around itself, curling it into a tight little coil as a tear slid down my cheek. I tucked it into my pocket before turning my back on the body of the man I loved forever.

  I looked over at the hole in the floor where the last meteor had crashed. The meteor that had taken Dylan from me. What had felt like the longest year of my life had really only amounted to a matter of seconds. Funny how time works like that. My ears were still ringing. People were still crying and screaming, smoke and dust still clouded the air. My world had been fundamentally changed in the blink of an eye.

  There were a few people in front of me, gathered at the edge of the smoking crater. The floor sloped dangerously downwards into what I was sure was an abyss of ruin and debris. I noticed with not a hint of disgust that Yoga Pants was among them. God, really? Again, after all this? What were the fucking chances? I wasted another moment on envisioning her death. This time her yoga panted legs were sticking out from beneath one of the meteors. A small fire smoldered on the K in “Pink” written across her ass. It provided a tiny measure of comfort, if not quite distraction.