by Zachary Howe
“Oh you know,” he paused for effect, “just this girl I met the other day.” He was surprised by his own audacity, and gave himself another mental high-five for his impeccable flirting skills.
“You are such a jerk!” she said as she smacked him on the arm.
“I’m kidding!” he protested, feigning pain in his arm. “Easy slugger—I might need you to kiss that to make it better.”
“Okay, but you only get one more so choose wisely,” she said before Gordie wheeled her around again, pulling her into another cinematic embrace. A middle-aged woman in a power-suit towing a wheeled carry-on bag swerved around them as they stopped in the middle of the concourse.
“Watch it, morons!” she said as she bustled off in a huff. The two young paramours pulled away from one another, laughing like the oblivious sixteen-year-olds they were. Even her laugh turned Gordie on. He wondered if that was weird.
They fell back in line with the many harried faces of the airport. Gordie no longer envied them. In fact, he now thought he was the luckiest man in the world.
After ten minutes of idle chitchat and sickening flirting, their gate came into sight. He became acutely aware that he could see her parents now and they could definitely see him holding hands with their daughter. A wave of hot and cold washed over him, starting at his hairline and traveling to his toes. Bridget seemed to sense his distress as she whispered in his ear that she would visit on the plane, and dropped his hand with one last tantalizing squeeze.
They broke apart and headed towards their respective families. Gordie sat down next to his mom and, as Bridget walked past their seat, she looked back over her shoulder to give him a parting smile. This did not escape Atalo’s notice.
“Oho!” he said, his features illuminated by a triumphant smile. “Looks like that little honey has a thing for m’ boy here.” He reached around his daughter and slapped Gordie on the shoulder. Ellie shook her head for the umpteenth time that day.
“Be cool, Grandpa,” Gordie hissed through gritted teeth, a flush creeping up his face. He watched Bridget as she interacted with her family. Her mom appeared to be questioning her and she just shrugged. Her dad sat by reading the paper, ignoring them both.
After her mother gave up the interrogation, Bridget caught Gordie looking her way and narrowed her eyes into the smokiest, most sensuous gaze with which any human had ever held another. She capped it off by pressing her lips into a kiss—Gordie’s head nearly exploded. She grinned and turned her attention towards her cell phone, leaving him to drown in a deluge of hormones.
He passed the next twenty minutes playing a game on his phone, grateful for a distraction from what his biological makeup was imploring him to do. Finally, the woman at the gate desk made the announcement for people to start boarding. As they were in first class, Bridget’s family rose to join the throng of elites and handicapped. The row Gordie’s family was sitting in was the closest to the queue to enter the jet-way, with the back of the chairs forming a barrier against which to line up. After a few minutes, Gordie felt a hand brush the back of his neck. When he turned, she was already beyond him with the bright pink waist band of her painted-on black pants at eye level. Gordie’s synapses exploded once again. This girl is going to kill me, he thought to himself.
He could not believe how much had happened in such a short window. What had compelled Bridget to so drastically change her view towards him since last they met? Then he began to wonder if she would feel the same way when he returned from Greece. Who knew how long he would be gone? Months, maybe. She would definitely move on by then. Guys wouldn’t be able to stay away from a girl like her. This thought threatened his will to continue on his journey, and he started to struggle with what lay ahead. It was too late now, though. He supposed he would have to make the plane ride count.
The next announcement was for their group. They released a collective groan as they shouldered their bags and rose to join the crowd bottle-necking onto the aircraft. A little boy behind Gordie in line was whining for his mom to return his hand-held game.
“Just wait ‘til we get on the plane,” she whispered.
“But I want it now!” He stamped his foot on the tile. Gordie bit his cheek in an effort to abstain from turning and punting the brat.
“Have a nice flight. Enjoy your flight. Have a nice trip. Enjoy your vacation.”
Gordie was impressed with the ticket taker’s ability to say the same thing in so many different ways, all while maintaining a broad smile. After about ten minutes of being herded through a stifling, rickety hallway, they stepped onto the plane. Gordie’s jaw dropped at the sheer size of it.
His flight information told him that this was a Boeing 777. The stewardess checked his ticket and directed him to walk through to the far side of the plane. The spacious first class cabin seated six across with two aisles on either side of the middle two seats. Bridget was in a window seat next to her mother on the opposite side of the plane. Gordie gave her a sheepish smile (which she returned more expertly) before he stepped through the portal to the economy class.
As he entered the coach cabin he could see that the seating was more tightly packed. The rows were divided into three sections with three seats on the left side of the plane, five in the center, and two on the right. Gordie was in seat 40J, which was in the very back of the plane against the window.
He was pleased that he was in the two seat section, but he did not like the idea of sitting next to a stranger. His mom and grandpa were in 38G and 38H, respectively, so Gordie pressed further on when they stopped to stow their bags. Ellie watched him with scrutiny, but when he reached his row, Gordie gave her a placatory nod and told her it was okay before she reluctantly sat down. After he did the same, his fantasies took over as he awaited departure.
The plane steadily filled, and Gordie realized that he still did not have a riding companion in his row. He started to hope against hope that no one would take up the seat, allowing Bridget to join him uninhibited. He knew the plane was supposed to be full, so his only chance was for the person sitting next to him to miss the flight. He felt bad hoping that that would happen, but not so terrible that he reversed his wishes. Just then, he got a text from an unknown number.
“Hey where are you?” it read.
“On a plane. Who is this?”
“It’s Bridget doofus. What seat are you in?” Gordie’s heart sprinted out of the blocks, feeling like an idiot.
“I’m in 40J. How’d you get my number?” He knew he hadn’t given it to her, and he admonished himself for not doing so.
“I got it from a friend at school. I’ll come back there in a bit.” Reading these words felt like reading the numbers of a winning lottery ticket as he burst with excitement. This jubilation was compounded by the pilot’s announcement that the doors had been closed despite the fact that Gordie still had no passenger next to him. He could not believe his luck!
“Sounds good ; ),” he sent back to Bridget.
He heard a ding as the ‘Fasten Seat Belts’ signs illuminated and the corresponding announcement from the stewardess chirped overhead, directing all to find their seats.
Gordie now truly believed he was home free, and he was about to do a jig, when one more passenger came sidling through the drawn curtains that divided first class from coach. His heart sank. Her gray hair bobbled as she waddled her way down the aisle, carrying nothing but knitting equipment. He frantically looked for open seats ahead of him and saw the back of a head peeking over every last one.
“Crap,” he whispered, as the old lady shuffled towards him, her eyes engaged with his like the cross-hairs on a targeting system of a fighter plane locked on an enemy bogey. She was now within ten rows of him. His stomach plummeted through him and dropped out the bottom. This could not have been any worse. Not only was he supposed to have an open seat so Bridget could come join him, but the worst possible substitute was closing in on him with an absolute and horrifying surety. Gordie tried to get himself to calm down. It c
ould be worse, he comforted himself. It could be Zeus. He chuckled in his head before he met the little old lady’s eyes again.
And fear erupted within him.
This old woman was not all she appeared. There was something about that stare. It was just too knowing. Gordie started looking around for someone to notice that there was a problem. He could see his grandpa in his aisle seat two rows ahead, but Atalo did not appear to be disconcerted by the old bat. Gordie began to question himself.
What am I so afraid of? She was an old woman with knitting needles. He thought he could handle her if she tried to attack him. Maybe he was just jumpy, and there was nothing to fear. When she reached his aisle, she looked down at him for a minute. Even standing she was barely taller than Gordie in his seat, but she was imposing all the same. They held each other’s gaze for close to ten seconds, and he flinched when she finally addressed him.
“I think you are in my seat, dear,” she said, as gently as any grandmother. She had a European accent, the origin of which Gordie was unsure, but he had a sneaking suspicion that it was Greek.
“I think I’m supposed to have the window seat,” he said. “But you can have it if you’d like.” Maybe Gordie had been wrong about her, but at least this way he would have an easier escape route should it become necessary. But she dashed his hopes.
“No, that is all right. It is better that I should have the aisle seat. I am very old.” She smiled and chuckled. Gordie laughed nervously in response. Her teeth were hideously discolored, like they were covered in moss, causing him to cringe in spite of himself, but he managed to transform his revulsion into a weak smile. She sat down next to him and began to knit. As he heard the needles click together, a powerful drowsiness crept over him.
His sleep had not been restful the night before—it had been disturbed, and disturbing—but he had not been nodding off to this point in the day. The urge to rest was becoming overwhelming though. Unnaturally so. Gordie looked at the old woman with a rekindled fear that struggled to remain alight in the fog. She smiled at him again with those fuzzy looking teeth. “You look tired, dear. You should rest.”
Gordie wanted to argue, to tell her to leave him alone, but she was right: he was very, very tired. Trying to fight with every mental faculty he had, his eyelids began to droop. He pushed back to force them open, but it felt as though he no longer had control of his body. Against one last flicker of defense, his eyelids met in the middle, and for a moment, all was black. Serenity washed over him and he wondered why he had put up a fight in the first place. Despite his unconsciousness, Gordie was somehow aware that this was the most refreshing sleep he had ever had.
Until he awoke in a cave.
Lucidity slowly returned to him. At first, all seemed fine, but then he became increasingly aware that all was not fine. There was a solid rock wall in front of where he was unfurling from his fetal position. He could make out the contours of the wall, visible in the glow of a pale light. The rock curtain curved around him like a horseshoe, and he realized that he was at a dead end. Panic began to seep into all of his thoughts as he leapt to his feet.
“Where the hell am I?” he asked the gloominess as he groped the cold onyx.
“You are on an aeroplane, child.” The old woman’s response made Gordie wheel around in horror, searching for the voice that had arisen behind him.
Opposite the wall he had been staring at when he had awoken, there was only never-ending darkness. It was a blackness so deep that Gordie believed if he were to walk into it he would disappear forever. He gasped as he stared into the abyss, only broken by a single figure just above his eye level.
Atop a little peninsula of rock, jutting over darkness concealing who knew what, the old woman sat at a large contraption with her back to him—her bare back. A ghostly lantern floated above her head, the only apparent source of light in the vast emptiness.
“What did you do to me?” Gordie yelled. “Where have you taken me?” He was glued to his spot in fear.
“He’s a whiney one, isn’t he?” A gravelly voice with the same accent emanated from the old lady’s location, and Gordie’s fear doubled as he realized that he was apparently outnumbered, though he could not find the source of the other voice.
“He is only a boy.” A third voice joined the chorus. Although this one was less harsh than the last, it was not quite as sweet as the old woman from the plane. It was more earthly; ancient and full of wisdom, but not exactly warm. Regardless of the tone, Gordie was now overcome with terror.
“Seriously, who the hell are you?! Take me back to the plane!” He tried to sound forceful and demanding, but his voice quivered and broke like a child who had lost his teddy bear.
“What are you going to do, boy?” the gravelly voice challenged him.
“You– you don’t know what I’m capable of!” The threat sounded empty because it was. This was not one of those days where he had awoken feeling invincible, and he was hopelessly aware of it.
“Oh, yes we do,” the wise voice responded. “But do you?” The tiniest hint of curiosity pierced through Gordie’s fear, and he began to wonder what these women were.
“Why don’t you come here, dear?” the sweet voice addressed him again. “We have no intention of hurting you. We only wish to show you.” Her voice was pacifying and his horror defrosted into a lukewarm disquiet. Show me what? Gordie thought. He allowed his feet to begin the assent of the narrow rock bridge before him, but he remained alert, cautious.
As Gordie crept towards her he took in her body. The gray skin stretched over her back was mottled with patches of pale spots like fresh mold cropping up across a brick of cheese. Each vertebra was visible through the thin epidermis, encased on each side by the outline of rib bones wrapping around her body. She looked as if she hadn’t eaten in centuries. Her hair was a coarse gray tangle of curls with strands fleeing for their lives in every direction. Her appearance nauseated him and he had to take long, controlled breaths to keep down his breakfast.
“Who are you?” Gordie whispered when he was within five feet of her, watching her weave at what he now recognized was a loom, with the litheness of a concert pianist. Her hands were working so deftly that he was surprised the mechanism didn’t produce music.
“We are the Moirai. The ‘Fates’ in your tongue,” the wise voice responded from the front of the decrepit seamstress before him. His brain began to whir into action as he searched his encyclopedia of the Greek mythos.
“Clotho?” Gordie was still whispering, though he was not sure why. He knew there were three Fates, but that was the only name he could remember.
“That is me, dear,” the sweet old woman responded.
“Don’t forget me, you little koprophage,” the gravelly voice said. Gordie ignored the insult (mostly because he didn’t understand it). “I am the most important of the three. Atropos is my name. I decide your death,” she cackled.
“And I am Lachesis,” the third voice rang with dignity. Something told Gordie that she commanded the authority, regardless of what Atropos claimed.
“I don’t understand. Where are the other voices coming from? Are two of you invisible?”
“Not at all,” the gravelly voice responded. And with that, the old woman spun around in her stool, sending a fresh wave of horror crashing over him.
Where her breasts should have been, there were two small heads, each with a set of arms protruding from where a neck would be. Gordie became extremely hot and lightheaded before he fell to all fours. He stared at the solid stone beneath him, trying to regain composure.
“What- what is this place? Is this a dream?” Gordie breathed, still studying the floor because he did not think he had the steel to look at the disfigured creature yet.
“Yes . . . and no,” Lachesis said. “You are both in this place and not. But you needn’t understand. That is not why we have brought you here. Rise.” Her commandment was unwavering. Her voice had a magical quality: it coursed through Gordie like dish soap th
rough the pores of a sponge; it gave him the strength that he did not believe he had, and he obeyed without question. Planted firmly on his feet once again, he was able to face his elders with a shiny new resolve.
“What happened to you? Why are you like this?” Gordie asked the left chest-head, easily recognizable as Lachesis. Upon closer inspection, Atropos was as ugly as she was cruel. Her teeth ware disfigured and uneven, and her brow overhung, Cro-Magnon-like, shadowing her jet-black eyes. Lachesis was not beautiful, but power radiated from her despite her incomplete form. Her features were smooth, as if she had been carved out of marble. Her eyes were a billowy gray, like storm clouds trapped inside snow globes. The wisdom contained within those eyes was inescapable. Clotho, the host body, looked the same in this place as she did on the plane. Benevolent wrinkles were crocheted around her gentle features, almost as if they existed solely to frame her glowing eyes. Gordie now realized that her gaze contained none of the hostility that he had previously imagined, only concerned contemplation as she smiled at him—it almost felt as though she truly cared for him.
“How should we be?” Lachesis asked.
“Well . . . I dunno, ya know . . . like, three whole bodies.”
“How is it that we speak better English than this fool?” Atropos asked.
“Quiet, Atropos,” Lachesis commanded. “It is true we were once three separate entities,” she addressed Gordie. “We have power over all—you know this. We control fate, destiny, moira. We see all. We know all. Yet recently, our power was challenged.”
“I’m sorry, but what do you mean you have power over all? What if I don’t believe in destiny?” Gordie said, resentful of the notion that he did not have control over his own life.
“Oh, he does not believe! Shall I make him?” Atropos was now holding a large, jagged pair of scissors in her hands; where they had come from Gordie did not know. She was snipping the air with a crazed gleam in her eye.
“Enough.” Lachesis’s voice cut more definitely than those scissors. “It does not matter if you believe. It is so. You ask why we are in this state and I will answer, but I do not wish to be interrupted again.”
