Member-only story
Nightmare Fuel
Window Seat
“He felt the initial annoyance quickly dissipate when he noticed how cute she was. He wasn’t proud of this.”
A sudden spasm of turbulence shook Kyle from his sleep, drumming his head gently against the plastic sheen covering the window. He opened his eyes to peer out across the expanse of night sky from 30,000 feet up. His view was dominated almost entirely by an enormous cumulonimbus cloud about a hundred miles out, towering hundreds of stories, a storm gathering within and illuminating the cloud from the inside out with quick, near-constant bursts of lightning. To Kyle’s eye, it resembled something out of a movie, a giant indestructible Toho monster ambling across the landscape. As his consciousness came into focus, he studied the storm, concentrating on it, his imagination making out giant monstrous limbs half-concealed by the cloud. He was fully lost in the moment, until his phone buzzed on the tray table in front of him, a text from Stacey. He leaned over to receive it, when his left elbow plunged hard into a passenger in the middle seat who hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep.
“Jesus!” he gasped.
“Sorry, I’m sorry!” a woman’s voice pleaded in a hushed, equally alarmed tone. “The flight attendant said I could sit here. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m so sorry.”
As Kyle’s heart raced from the initial shock, he turned to face his new neighbor. He felt the initial annoyance quickly dissipate when he noticed how cute she was. He wasn’t proud of this. “It’s okay,” he chuckled. “I just didn’t know anyone was sitting here. Startled me.”
“I was toward the back, seated next to a big guy. Dead asleep, fully hunched over into my space, drooling, snoring, the works. Bad situation,” she said.
“Ah, yeah, I’d probably pick a middle seat over that, too.”
Kyle and the woman sat smiling at each other. “Okay, well, I’m officially awake now,” he sighed. “I’m Kyle, by the way.” And he extended his hand to hers.
“Nice to meet you, Kyle. LAX your final destination?”
“Yep. Home. You?”
“Not home, but… maybe?” she thought out loud. “Eventually? Someday? I’m just gonna…
