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Saturday 6 July 2002

Nother dream of an aircrash [Am]

Slightly weird one here - ignore it please if you think it's arse. I seem to have these weird repeat dreams about plane crashes and then of course when they happen in RL shortly after one of these dreams then they shock you a lot. It's not related, I realise, but last week I had a dream that was so vivid I wrote it down. That's what follows - just oddness - no comment intended really. Just one of those things; this is what I wrote after I woke up;

I've been drinking bloody Mary's with the girl in the seat next to me. She's been laughing and there are dry roasted peanuts scattered around my tray, a dusting of brown powder edging the drink-doily shapes I have been making. Every time I have removed one from below my glass, the air hostess has been replacing it with a smile. The ones I'm taking are oregamied into cake and crown shapes and because they must be, dusted down with peanut dust and for the reasons these things always are, this is pretty funny. These things can be so stupid and so vivd. I am asleep and then there's a plane crash. For some unstable reason I have thought (when awake, I'm afraid), that if I was ever in a plane crash, I'd endeavor to at least remove a few seconds of misery for the passenger next to me. Considering the options, as you do if you're strange enough to spend processing time on planning your behavior in the event you should find yourself in a plane crash, I had gone for, but then reluctantly discarded, punching out the passenger next to me. Seeming initially fair enough in terms of reducing the terror, if not in fact a wholeheartedly selfless ideal, somewhere along the way I'd decided everyone should have the choice to face a death they knew was coming. It did of course leave them the option of beating themselves unconscious on the seat back. No, as a humanitarian, I'd settled for a distractor, a curve ball that might be just odd enough to relieve their brains for a few seconds. So the plan was, as far as it went, as soon as the crash was about to happen, when we were on the way down, I was going to shout as loudly as I could Oh no! Not again! And the person next to me might be shaken out of their fright, wondering what on earth I was talking about and there would be ten seconds less terror as we just treadmilled the strangeness of the comment. This was the plan. With luck, if I yelled loud enough, I had anticipated I might sort out a few of them at the same time. This was the plan when I was awake. I'm asleep and then there's a plane crash. Briefly before, I have been continuing to stack up my paper-cakes and brushing peanut dust from my fingers. The girl next to me is still laughing herself silly. The Bloody Mary's on our tray's are brimming with dark circles of Worcester sauce, florescent lemon eighths. The airhostess has been smiling. I think the plane is probably a 747 although with a mirror-reflecting-mirror effect, the aisle extends miles away from me. The plastic of my seat-back tray transmits through my fingernails as I tap rat-tat-tatatata-tat with a one-handed breakbeat. Someone else's hand, in front of me, clutching the closest seat-back slips slightly over the head-rest sheet. The captain is on the end of it, fifty odd although I can't make out a face. His features are obscured by the light of the stewardess button blinking furiously from above. 'You wanted something Sir?' he says 'The stewardess tells me you have been causing a bit of trouble' With intense irritation, the girl in the seat next to me leans right across me and shouts at him to piss off. 'I didn't say you'd been causing trouble madam' says the shape of the captain. She begins to argue with him across my front, her head twisted around so that she is practically looking up the precipice of the seat back at the face I can't see. The back of her hair is too close to my face and now unpleasantly aware of the constriction of the economy seat around my shoulders, I'm trying to lean out into the aisle to get away from her, to get a better look at his face. Down the aisle, all the stewardess lights have begun to be pushed, their light a catwalk runway hanging overhead. The girl next to me finishes a flurry of abuse and without further ado breaks off with a smile at me. We wait for a few seconds and then when the silence has built up, only the faint drumming of the engines in the background interrupting, the shape of the captain turns away defeated, the stewardess light burning away, playing down his receding shape. The girl next to me is beaming with satisfaction and throwing back the contents of her Bloody Mary. My back is aching. I lean out into the aisle again and watch as making his way into the distance, his feet kick up spurs of light from the clear liquid that I now notice has begun to stream down the aisle. I' m still asleep and even I probably know it. Then there's the planned crash. The air is dried out, cool. I'm tattoo drumming with my finger nails, brittle on the plastic, with the rhythm. The liquid that was flowing down the aisle when the captain walked away begins to make itself felt on the soles of my feet, in my socks. It grows damper, then is wet. I'm anxious, damp, wet. Through the thick windows there is an enormous crack from the wing. The girl to my right looks at out of the window and makes a moue. I'm looking at her and then back at my ankles, down the aisle. The silver liquid is flowing around us all, the hostess lights glancing off it, illuminating handfuls of fabric, parts of the ceiling, the side of the face of someone indistinct in front. 'It's fuel' she says with a rueful mouth, her index finger tipping like a metronome from one edge of her glass to the other. 'Fuel?' I'm yelling 'Fucking fuel! That guy in front's smoking!' She looks me in the face and drags my gaze to the wing. It's falling away, bits dropping off it, a sub-sonic leper discarding paint and wiring. The nose of the plane, like a sigh, begins to tip towards the earth. The fuel begins to washes around my ankles. 'Jesus' I'm yelling rather hysterically 'Fuel! Theguyinfront. If he drops it we're dead' The turbines have begun to pitch up, their whine extending. In front of me, legions of hands are reaching in the air, pressing off their stewardess lights and even though the strip lights have failed, they are pressing off their reading lamps . I look at the girl next to me. She fixes me with her lake eyes. 'I don't think it matters' she says. I'm struggling to breath, panicky, flecks of fuel beginning to fly towards my face. The nose of the plane tips forward again and with the click of a lamp in front of me, finally only our seats remains lit. My plastic glass has tipped up, the tomato juice and vodka separating, spreading over the seatback, the crisp packets and paper shapes creeping to the top of the seat. The engine noise is pure metal, a ton's weight just below the speed of sound, friction, air resistance, superheated grease and electricity. There are no lights on, only mine. I feel I have something planned, some phrase to relieve her anxiety, 'Don't worry' she says in my ear 'It's not like it could happen again' The fuel laps around my shirt collar, the engines at the edge of audibility. The girl next to me offers me a cigarette. It hangs freefall as we plummet downwards. My ears are popping and compressing with the noise of the metal and the sheer speed. Droplets then gouts of fuel flick by either side of my head, a smell like vodka, the somehow separate sparks of light from my overhead light fizzing into each particle or ricocheting with added energy into the recesses of the cabin to leave the bereft drops like chromium, moving without the benefit of the speed of light, With the spark of her lighter, somehow we are still intact and I inhale. Where there should be hysteria from the passengers as we begin to approach vertical, there is absolute silence, noticeable against the pressure of a tidal wave of air, the smell of children's vomit, breaking plastic, broken electrics, above it all, fear. I'm falling forward into my seatbelt, the girl next to me is smiling like she's coming over the lip of a rollercoaster's drop. The fuel is in solid flow past my face, I am face first, underwater. She looks at me askance. 'It will ignite if you drop it' she slurs kindly 'You'll kill everyone'. From the darkness, streamers of clothes and duty free are flying past, ruffling cardigans, smashing bottles, silent in the din of the failing mechanics, shooting by for all the resistance of the flying liquid. I want to say to her, Jesus, can't you see what is happening, what's going to happen, the wings are coming off, it doesn't matter what kills us first now, these aren't the sort of things that are going to happen again. 'There's still no reason to drop it' she says 'Or at least, if you do, it will be your fault.' We are almost totally covered by the streaming fuel but I know she's right, if I drop it then with dream logic we will ignite. I won't do it - I have been magnanimous to know that given the chance, we all have the right to face our deaths awake. We are vertical. Somehow an emergency circuit fires through the sound and the pressure and the fuel. One by one, the cabin lamps begin to light up, one by one, hesitant voters, building, then burning against the hammering of the rushing air. A computer voice begins to intone slowly 'Pull up.,..Pull up...Pull up...Pull up,,,' I hang on to that cigarette, the tip streaming coals as we hang vertical. Piped music is playing. The girl next to me is smiling.

4 comments:

  1. I have the phear. Madness isn't hereditory is it, I'm worried about your nipper as well.

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  2. Night before last I had a vivid dream of having someone holding a gun to my head, and then torturing me and the group I'm with with the sort of metal instruments that only someone very fucked up could have. We all died. Then I woke up.

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  3. I thought if you died in a dream, you died in real life ??

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  4. Yes but I reckon you've walked off the path and not got eaten by a wolf in RL too eh?

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