This foray into straight horror ended up far more disturbing than anticipated. Influenced by Clive Barker and Brett Easton Ellis for sure, with a bit of Narnia thown in for good measure. Reader discretion is advised. Very much 18+
Fifty inch wheels punch the tarmac and the airliner slews to the right as the pilot hits the brakes hard. A child in economy squeals in terror. Frequent Flyer's mouth splits wide into a perfect smile.
Wrapped in the silk cocoon of his favourite sleep mask, his mind travels time. At tomorrow’s morning meeting, he listens to Global Head of Sales announce the contract win, then his promotion. Now he’s thinking about the monogrammed leather of the carry-on he’s already bought himself as a reward. The compliment it drew from the cheap-blonde stewardess as he slid it into the overhead locker. Then he's back between the thighs of the drunken realtor he picked up in Sacramento. He feels her freshly-shaved labia pressed hot against his cheek.
“Yes,” they sigh in unison.
The seatbelt sign pings and he’s standing in the aisle before the bloater in the window seat has even found his buckle. He retrieves his empty Louis Vuitton (careful not to scratch the leather) and pushes past an exasperated mum who’s struggling with a child’s safety seat. He thinks her and idiot: as if any seat could be safe in a plane crash.
The fake-blonde is waiting by the cabin door, flat faced and older than he remembered.
"Thank you for flying Pan-World," she says.
He’s still feeling horny so he hands her his business card as he steps off the plane. She takes it, but doesn't smile. You should be so lucky, he thinks.
Frequent Flyer sprints up the gangway and through the corridors to passport control. He likes to be first. His new carry-on is rolls at his heel like a faithful hound, but he lifts it for the travelator because he doesn’t want scratches on the wheels before he shows it to his wife.
He can tell there’s something about tonight and he just can’t stop smiling but when he turns the last corner the smile slides from his face like a wet rag.
The queue in passport control fills the hall from wall to wall. The priority fast lane is barred by a rope.
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” says a man in a uniform.
"Fuck off," says Frequent Flyer and hits the sad face on the customer feedback machine. A granny tuts at him and he shoots her a glace. He'd sack uniform man on the spot if he could, but there's no way around the queuing so he pops in his wireless earphones and dials up some classic jungle. The beats are fast but the queue moves slowly. The ceiling lights begin to hurt his eyes so he puts on his sunglasses. He can’t do anything about the sore throat, his itchy skin, the way his feet feel swollen like they're going to split his loafers. The true price of international travel, he thinks, and tries to ignore the smell of the tourists.
Jungle isn't helping so maybe something classical. He tries a bit of Mozart but its makes no difference. He isn’t really listening. He’s wrapped up in the feeling in his guts. There's a snake in them. It writhes, restless, loose and greasy then suddenly tight. The coils slide against one another. One too many gin and tonics with the on-flight breakfast, he thinks, but it’s no joke. He needs to shit and badly. He glances back at the man in the uniform. No point in asking him. He clenches his anus and the queue moves slowly.
At least border control know a real businessman when they see one. A quick stamp of the passport and he’s through but without much time to spare. The snake in his stomach has become an octopus. The carry-on bounces as he sprints full tilt through baggage claim and customs, his face as grey and pale as the fluorescent lights overhead. He dashes past the toys and flowers priced for the forgetful and guilty. He was planning on getting a bottle of champagne for the wife, to go with the take-away sushi, but that’ll have to wait. The line of expectant relatives and limo drivers holding up whiteboards dive aside as he charges in search of a washroom.
“Watch yourself!” an cleaner shouts in some African accent, and pulls aside her mop as he nearly upends her yellow wheelie-bucket.
Jesus fuck, five stalls and every one of them occupied. He imagines shitting in the sink (it’s that bad) and laughs through his pain. The sink’s taken anyhow. Some bloke’s shaving his face in it: black combat jacket and trousers but not police or special-forces – more like Sean Bean in a low budget action movie. Bald patch, ponytail, goatee beard. More like Steven Seagal. Dude’s got weird eyes though.
The man in black towels flecks of shaving foam from his cheeks and sets down a straight razor. You won’t get one of those through security thinks Frequent Flyer. There’s a flush, and one of the stall doors swings open.
The man who’s finished his business is wearing the same daft outfit as his mate. A full head of hair but he still looks like a twat. A militant hippy paintball team. An awful smell wafts from the stall as he joins his mate at the sink. Not shit, something worse, but there’s no time for Frequent Flyer to be choosy because the octopus in his guts is more alive than ever and in another five seconds he’s shitting his pants.
"Proceed," says the man at the sink and gestures towards the empty cubicle. Weird fucker.
-
Frequent Flyer’s belt buckle chimes on the tiles as he pushes his trousers down to his ankles. His arse hits the seat and his shit fills the bowl in the same instant. He groans in relief. He realises the seat is wet but it's too late to do anything about it. The pain recedes. He still feels awful but he’s finally able to start thinking about something other than the need.
The cubicle is splattered with graffiti:Pentagrams. Runes. Scary faces.
Stupid Goth rubbish. EMO. That’s what they call it nowadays. Still rubbish. Must be freshly penned because the Airport people clean that stuff off in minutes. Toilet graffiti: something else to add to the endangered species list.
Down below, the shit's still flowing, but that's OK. Better out than in.
Then the music starts. Ominous music. Pipes or something experimental. Thinking he’s bum-dialled a tune Frequent Flyer reaches for his earbuds and realises he’s already taken out. The music is coming from the lavatory. It’s not the sort of ambient nonsense that airport management think makes the toilets seem cleaner. More like Temple of Doom business.
There's a smell too. Burning. He sees a curl of smoke and looks down. There's a bundle of herbs under the stall door, and they’re lit at one end, like incense sticks. Militant hippy must have dropped it or dumped it but it doesn’t smell like any drug Frequent Flyer knows. He toe-pokes the bundle back out with the tip of his loafer.
A black boot pushes the herbs back in and holds them down. Then the chanting begins.
-
This has to be a wind up. Global Head of Sales is goosing him ahead of his promotion. But ohm, ohm, ohm and it doesn’t sound like a tape. Frequent Flyer laughs hard so that everyone knows he’s onto the joke but the laugh comes out too loud and the shit just keeps on pouring out of him.
He hopes it's not the whole office outside. He’s embarrassed by the splattering noise. Everyone shits so there's no reason to be embarrassed so why do I feel embarrassed like a child? There's no satisfactory answer, which annoys him, and his eyes are watering from the stupid herbs.
The chanting gets louder, stops being yoga class/terrible spa and becomes proper: loud and scary: And the shit is pouring now, he’s shitting like a burst sewer. Frequent flyer starts to wonder how ill he is, if he’s picked up a real nasty from the in-flight catering or the realtor. Dysentery. Salmonella. Some new kind of AIDS. He thinks about tomorrow’s morning meeting. The Global Head of Sales. The contract win announcement. Please. No. Not tonight. Another stab in the guts and he punches the cubicle wall in frustration.
Now all he can hear is chanting and the lights are dimming or maybe it’s his vision and he thinks he can feel a breeze under the stall door and he’s still shitting and even he can’t see anything funny about the situation any more. Time to dial 999, he thinks, and reaches for his phone.
It’s gone. Not just the phone. Everything. The light. The pain. The shitting. His trousers. Frequent Flyer is stark bollock naked, on a toilet, in the silent dark. Naked feels colder than he would have guessed and a breeze against his ankles makes him come out in goosebumps. A breeze? When he listens hard he can still hear the chanting, but it’s distant.
“Very funny,” he says. "You can stop now."
Silence.
"Five million dollars," he shouts, to no reply.
Frequent flyer flinches as a drop of water splatters on the tip of his nose. Another taps the top of his head. A leak, he thinks and looks up, sees stars and clouds, constellations. He screams inside like that child did in economy and grabs hold of his toilet seat with both hands but nothing happens for a while and then more nothing and eventually fright gives way to dread.
He's hallucinating, from the dehydration. From whatever's in his gut. But this doesn’t feel like a hallucination. It feels real. And now that he comes to think of it, his gut has settled. It doesn't even hurt any more.
This is not real, he thinks, and feels the grass between his toes. The wind-up merchants from the office have pushed things way too far because they didn’t know I was sick with this bug and they made me breathe their drugs and now I am lying on the floor of a toilet in a pool of shit and an ambulance is on the way. This looks bad for everyone. He smiles. It looks so bad that it will never be mentioned back at base so in a way, it’s not such a bad result. And they're going to have to promote me now, or their getting sued like they wouldn't believe.
-
He waits, but nothing changes. The grass remains wet between his toes. The gentle rain soaks his clothes. The soft chanting continues in the distance. He's getting cold. Bored. Even curious. It’s inevitable without pain to distract him.
Frequent Flyer thinks, If I'm going to be in Narnia for a while, I might as well enjoy it. His hand goes to the latch. Engaged becomes vacant.
He stops out into a moonlit moorland. The toilet stall stands alone upon on a platform of loosely piled flint. Frequent flyer circles it in disbelief. All around him, hillside slopes into dark, wooded valley. In the middle distance he can see a small pyre raging within a circle of standing stones.
Frequent flyer stares at his hands, his body, as if to confirm that it is who he inhabits. He sees that he is naked. Gym toned and bronze, there’s no question that the body remains his own, but it is covered in swirling blue tattoos and he is surprised to see that despite the cold his penis is engorged.
-
Chanting drifts from the stones, calling for him. Frequent flyer looks over his shoulder at the stall and shrugs. Why not? He advances, crouching low. He has no reason to recognise these slopes – East End born and bred, he can’t stand the muck and stink of the countryside, yet his feet seem to know every step and foothold before it is taken and his heightened senses can name every sound and smell. He runs, vaulting boulders and branches with an ease which makes him laugh. He has never felt so strong or so alive. The hallucination is exhilarating: better than PlayStation, better than drugs. Better even than a drunken realtor in Sacramento. He lets loose a wild howl. Whatever the office lads have him flying on, it's good stuff.
Peering around an outer sarcen, he sees the dancing silhouettes of men around the flames and he knows that they the hippies from the toilet. No longer dressed in black, they are robed in white and garlanded with flowers. Once a hippy always a hippy, he supposes.
He watches them dancing, faster and faster. He hears the song they sing, and knows it is he who they have summoned. He has been chosen. Why? His pride is edged with caution. Ten minutes or less into this dream and already he is unsure what is real. Memory tells him one story, emotions another. Does it matter?
The dance ends and a white robed man comes to the edge of the dolmens, and signals to him that all has been made ready. Frequent Flyer rises from his haunches and enters the ring, sees the contorted figure bound to the cutting stone, straining against her bindings. Her poses are unnatural: her spine is bent backwards and she strains languidly as if sedated.
Frequent flyer feels a twitch in his groin and thanks his imagination for what it has delivered him. He didn’t know he had it in him.
The white robed man hands him a knife made of black stone and retreats expectantly. Frequent Flyer doesn’t need to be told what to do. He studied history at school. He’s seen the movies. He holds the knife aloft and it reflects the flames like a shiny piece of plastic.
“Proceed,” say the dancers.
Frequent Flyer approaches the sacrifice and plants his hand firmly across her brow, stretching out her neck.
“Watch yourself,” the sacrifice slurs in an angry African accent and he feels resistance under his palm. He turns to the priests.
“Proceed," they repeat.
His cock is rock hard now, curving towards the heavens and: “sorry for the inconvenience,” the sacrifice complains. Frequent Flyer pushes the point of the knife hard against the girl’s trachea. “Thank you for flying Pan-World,” she chokes. He drives the point to the base of her neck and rips sideways. “Yes,” the sacrifice sighs in a Sacramento accent. Dark blood soaks his forearms. He turns to the dancers, and shows them.
Frequent flyer is blinded by light. He reaches out and hits his hand on a wall. The whiteness overhead resolves into foam tiles and strip lights and he is sat on a toilet in his suit his and his forearms are covered in blood. His shirt and his tie and his trousers are covered in blood. But there is no graffiti on the walls and there is no pain in his stomach and seat isn't even up on the toilet.
A trail of blood leads out under the cubicle door.
Vacant is back to engaged again and he hasn’t touched the latch so this must be another dream. A dream within a dream, he thinks and he unlocks the door for a second time.
The cleaner has her head down in a sink but she’s not washing her face. Her arms are spread wide and her wrists have been bound to the faucets to either side. Blood drips from the edges of her yellow jacket. Blood drips over the edge of the porcelain. The sink is full of red.
Resting beside her lies a straight razor.
Frequent flyer stares into the mirror which walls the room. His cock stands proud and he is covered in swirling blue tattoos. Scraps of sod and grass decorate his bare feet. His forearms are covered in blood. In the distance, he hears screaming and his mouth splits wide into a perfect smile.
© A.M. Steiner, 2018