Liftoff

Short story written at the request and prompt of Kat.

Danielle didn't tell anybody before she left, because after all, she was trying to disappear. And it's not very well a disappearance if everybody already knows, now, is it?

When the idea had first occurred to her, she'd wanted to take off now, now, now. But then she'd probably have to just come back after a month or two, because she hadn't planned; and returning from a mysterious disappearance after anything less than a year behind her seemed a bitter defeat, slinking back with her tail between her legs. No, this was going to be a triumph, and for that she had to plan. No, to scheme.

Soon the wait had become fun, because she was keeping this delicious secret, adding all the time to her strategy. First she decided, in order to get to that all-important one year mark, to get a job, so she did not find herself running out of funds. Of course, moving to another country just to start more monotonous work wasn't quite the idea, even if doing so when nobody knew you were leaving and nobody knew where you were did have a certain charm to it. But mostly it was a start, a warm-up, and it was insurance.

She'd taken almost a full year to work everything out. She wasn't sure how she felt about this. On the one hand, it took away much of the whimsy, the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants spontaneity.

On the other hand, she'd kept the secret all that time, letting on to nobody, not to her brother, not to her best friend, that she would soon dissolve into thin air.

And now she was boarding the plane.

.

Four weeks ago she'd taken a little trip to the airport and bought a ticket with cash. At 10 o'clock that morning, her lease had been up, though nobody else knew it besides her landlord, as they'd all assumed she'd renewed. And thirty minutes ago, as she sat in the terminal waiting for the plane to come, munching on the McDonald's which she bought only when she was in an airport, but every single time that happened, she sent an email to everybody in her address book:

Hi everyone.
I'm safe. I'm just taking off for a while. Don't worry about me.
I'll see you when I see you!
--Danielle

It would satisfy nobody, but nonetheless they would not be panicky. She'd have rather not tell anybody she was leaving, but she also didn't want anybody to worry too much, so she had to strike some sort of compromise between the two.

And now, she was standing in line, waiting for her seat (section B, row 37) to be called over the loudspeaker.

Excitement welled up within her. It was happening! She had been planning this moment for nearly a year, and finally, finally it was here!

It took most of her willpower to keep herself from skipping to her seat when it was called.

She had a window seat, which she loved. She stowed her backpack (filled with everything she would need; she had a suitcase in checked luggage as well, but it held nothing essential, for she knew eventually she would be leaving it behind, somewhere or other) in the overhead compartment, and sat back in her seat, watching everybody else file in and get situated.

"I'm free," she whispered, and in that moment she truly felt it. Years of anxiety, of expectations, of monotony and domestication, felt as though they were just falling away from her, and she was shedding the weight of her stressful life and all that was left, as she lifted into the air, was herself, pure and unburdened.

The plane lifted, and her heart lifted, and the way she felt, she was not inside of a man-made metal contraption, able to fly through the application of science and engineering.

No, she had been so filled with joy that the buoyancy lifted her right into the air, and twirling and laughing in sheer exhilaration, she was now dancing her way across the sky.

A Rainstorm: A short story

A Rainstorm

He stepped out onto the porch and found her, finally.

Helena was standing there, in the pouring rain, her red hair drenched and her curls matted against her back and cheeks as raindrop after raindrop pelted her face, arms, neck, shoulders, hands, legs. Her eyes were closed, and her arms were spread away from her gently, palms facing up and fingers curled towards the sky.

“Helena?” Kenneth called. Her white cotton blouse was sticking against her like a second skin and her jeans were several shades darker than they were when dry. “You should come inside. You’ll become ill.”

“I won’t become ill,” she told him, her mouth widening into a smile of pure joy as her eyes remained closed.

“You can’t know that,” he told her sternly. “You need to be careful now, remember?”

This had become an old argument by now, and he waited for the usual reply—that she couldn’t live life afraid of everything, that locking herself in a safe little box was worse than any fate that might result from failing to do so—but to his surprise, this time, she simply said nothing.

“What are you doing out there, anyway?” he tried again.

She took several deep, reverent breaths. “Being,” she answered.

He never quite knew what to do when she entered this sort of flight of fancy.

“You can ‘be’ just as well inside,” he offered.

She lifted her eyelashes, and as she looked at him her eyes twinkled, as though she knew some delicious secret that he did not.

“Yes, I can,” she agreed, but she made no move to step out of the rain.

Kenneth wished that he knew how to reason with her.

Helena held out her hand to him invitingly. “Come and join me.”

He shook his head. “I have no intention of getting soaked to the bone. This is madness. Please come inside.”

Helena lowered her voice conspiratorially. “If you let it, the rain will whisper the secrets of life, of love, of pleasure and pain onto your skin, and it will sink into your soul.”

He wondered, with a sudden pang of alarm, if perhaps Helena had lost her tender grip on reality, had finally gone insane.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” he asked.

She laughed a tinkling wind chime in a leisurely summer breeze. “I’m better than okay. I’m better than amazing. I’m not crazy, Kenneth, I promise. I think maybe I’m saner than I’ve ever been before. Everything’s clear now. I can’t believe how simple it is. I understand.”

“What do you understand, then?” he asked.

Her eyes shone and she beckoned to him. “Come here with me and I’ll tell you,” she whispered, so softly that he could barely hear her voice over the roar of the rain on the roof and the wooden deck.

He reluctantly stepped through the doorway into the downpour. She took his hand and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay,” she promised him. “We don’t have to worry anymore.”

“So you’ve decided what you’re going to do?” he asked as he suppressed a slight shiver. Even in the tropics, the air was chilly during a storm.

She giggled and shook her head. One of the curls held back in her hairclip fell past her shoulder. For some reason, Kenneth found himself transfixed by that curl, and he focused his eyes on it instead of on the woman in front of him. Despite the heavy rain, the lock of hair was dripping slowly, almost methodically. It reminded him of the hospital room, of the IV.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

His own hair had been thoroughly pounded by the rain by now, and it stuck to his forehead and neck as he felt water trickling down his ear.

“But you said everything was clear,” he reminded her. “You must know what you’re going to do.”

“That’s just it!” she cried, grabbing his other hand as well. “You see now, don’t you? You feel it too. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or where I’m going to go, or what’s going to happen next. It could be anything. Isn’t it beautiful?”

She leaned in closer to him as she spoke. Her hands tightened around his, and when she looked into his eyes, she was so radiant, her eyes were so filled with the conviction that whatever she felt was the answer, that shining beacon of universal meaning they’d been searching for, that Kenneth did not have the heart to tell her that all he felt was cold, and wet, and rained upon.