The Aeroplane

'I expect no less,' he screamed, 'I've paid for the privilege.' But the Other was no longer answering, standing somewhere behind his head smoking a cigarette. 'Talk to me,' he pleaded, 'just say something.' But the Other stubbornly refused to make any further sound, content to fill the room with bluish smoke.

The ward was silent except the occasional nurse pacing the gloomy corridors. He'd been awake all night, simply miles from sleep ' at first he'd listened to some craziness a room or two down, a one-man auction, the prices going down not up. Afterwards there'd been screaming a long way away, the other side of the hospital, the basement perhaps, and he knew it was torture and they'd be coming for him.

'Shut up,' shouted a large male nurse, banging on his door, 'I don't want to come in there.'

'Of course, of course ' terribly sorry.'

He forgot about the Other in an instant when he saw the sleek shadow of the aeroplane hanging by a thread from his ceiling. It was moving slightly in an invisible breeze, the light catching on its wings and plastic propellers creating an emptiness in the cockpit. He craned his neck forward, fighting his bonds, and managed, with great effort, to place his eye beside the cockpit and saw the seat empty and rows of controls. He broke his bonds like they were paper and stepped into a shrinking world, climbed into the plane and buckled himself in.

His room lay below him, in all its massive dullness; strangely a figure was still lying on the bed, but it was not the Other. He grasped the stick and fired up the engines ' they roared into life, a sound that was pure excitement ' the plane shot forward with such acceleration that he was pinned to the back of his seat. The thread broke and the plane hurtled towards the wall, just missing destruction as he violently tugged the stick to the left sending the craft into a spin and straight at the door. With perfect timing the nurse came in and the plane flew not an inch above the man's head, making him dive to the floor in fright.

The semi-lit corridor stretched for fifty doors ahead, lined with wooden benches and meshed windows. The plane covered the distance in seconds, banking heavily at the end to make a hard left, heading for the stairs ' he felt as if he was barely in control, letting the machine make all the decisions and guide his hand on the stick ' they flew down the stairs in a whistling dive arriving in the main lobby at five hundred miles an hour; the security gate was open and they shot past the guards.

He'd escaped again, he thought, looking down on the hospital receding beneath him. The plane was taking to the clouded skies and growing all the time. It parted the air like a knife and covered huge distances in seconds, taking those seconds and making of them hours where the world passed below in incredible detail, the roofs of houses opened to show those who slept inside.

Giant birds were flying and the plane was amongst them, dodging huge wings the size of football fields; it dived down breaking through the clouds to a noon on the other side of the world and an ocean that was clear as glass and teemed with silver fishes. Boats skimmed the surface manned by dark women who jumped into the waters to retrieve black pearls from the mouths of the fishes, coming back up hung with green seaweed, the waters glistening on their bare skin. The plane went ever lower until it was touching the tips of the waves drawing the women closer in their wooden boats. There were islands everywhere: monkey islands, coconut islands, banana islands, peopled islands. All the women were sisters and their father the king.

The plane rose again into a cloudless blue, another sea that swamped all his vision leading him to blue thoughts and necessary blue conclusions. It was everywhere, bright and confusing, the whole cockpit shone in this wet sky and he thought he'd never understand colour again, his eyes having been destroyed, else converted, to this new hue that was heaven in a seasky.

But the plane moved so quickly, at speeds unreckoned, it broke free of this place and came upon a continent below. There were wide deserts fierce with storms; there were mountains like myths, grown from earth's first seeds and terrible in their raucous weathers and razored rocks; rivers webbed the land giving forests and fields, in their waters children were swimming centring all the land's attention upon them. It was on this continent that the plane descended and slowed ready to land, taking aim at a high plateau of grassland, bumping down and drawing to a stop beside a cliff.

He opened the cockpit and jumped to the grass. His feet were bare and felt the green under them, were soothed by the softness. He became embarrassed by his clothes that looked so grey and shed them upon the ground, letting the sun touch his pale skin and the breeze remove his hidden layers, baring a soul to the cliff's edge and beyond to a land of wild things and joy, his voice having been renewed and mind healed.

It was evening, the distant mountains trailing long shadows over the landscape. The plateau was beautiful, empty of everything but cool, green grass, high above the world and lonesome, an unattainable woman or a silent statue. Beyond its edge the rivers spread across the land, turned orange by the setting sun. He noticed that the children had left the waters, but saw villages clustered in the folds of the land, built beside high hills draped with ancient terraced fields, and smoke was rising from the wooden houses and lights shone in the windows. The animals were lying down in the pastures, the birds, lower than the plateau, were calling in the evening and addressing the owl who lived in the woods and was waking.

The evening was cool though not cold. He stood on the cliff's edge and watched the land succumb to night and the lights slowly disappear in the windows, the rivers remained and were silver bands in the moonlight, decorating the land with filigree. The plateau must have been exceptionally high, for the stars appeared so close, so bright and numerous, that even when he closed his eyes their light penetrated his eyelids.

Eventually he grew tired and left the cliff, taking a blanket from the plane and laying it on the grass to sleep, and no sound disturbed him till the morning awakened the birds and the sun crept over the cliff and made the grass stand straight. Dew had collected over his whole body, but the morning was hot and the sun soon burnt the moisture away. From the cliff he saw the rivers golden in their new day and the children in the waters, their parents working in the fields or sending cooking smoke from the chimneys. He longed to be down there amongst them, away from the lonely, beautiful plateau, but understood he could never and climbed back into the cockpit and strapped himself in.

The plane rocketed back into the air and soared a million miles up so the earth was a tiny ball and nothing mattered but the hugeness of space and the void. His mind was replete and ceased to think, his eyes full with wonder refused to see, there was no sound in space so his ears forgot how to hear. It was the sight of the hospital that roused him from his stupor, as the plane began to shrink. It was night, though he could not tell which ' how many had passed since he'd left?

The plane rushed through the corridors and sideways scraped through the door that the nurse was closing. It buzzed about the room in ever slowing circles until the thread caught hold and it was pulled back to its plasticity.

He turned over in bed and saw the Other standing by the window. His whole shape was contorted, stretched and bent like a huge letter 'C', so he must have been ten feet tall standing straight.

'Thank you,' he said to the Other, 'you can go if you like.'

'Is that what you expect then,' the Other hissed, '' that banality; that triteness?' standing straight, he let his body contract to a normal height, and moved over to the side of the bed.

He was terrified of the Other and shouted at the hidden face: 'I've paid enough, have I not? ' so much more than most. I deserve to have what I want.'

'More? ' you think you've paid more but know nothing of suffering. The tributes I've received span centuries and are beyond your imagination. What you've given is pitiful, a worthless splash of time, no more.'

'I've given everything,' he screamed, lifting his tethered hands as evidence. 'I have nothing and yet you still expect.'

The Other soaked up the little light in the room, spreading the darkness about him so the features of his face, masked in night, gradually began to appear.

'Don't,' he screamed, trying to cover his eyes. 'What do you want? What?' And he saw the bitter line of the mouth take shape, the sunken cheeks and blank eyes; he jerked his head from side to side, trying to break free of that face he was drawn to. The nurse was banging on the door, ordering him to be quiet, but the face was becoming clear and the fear was in every part of him. He shouted over and over, that he'd given everything, that there was nothing more, and the other chuckled coldly, drawing his dead lips over inhuman teeth, revealing a maw that was deep as death and poisonous.

The nurse thrust open the door and came storming in, two others not far behind. They were furious and the Other receded to the darkness by the window as they drew out their sticks and beat him on the arms and legs. His bonds cut against his wrists as instinct made him fight to protect his face. It went on for a long time, until he no longer moved. He thought he was dead when the battering finally stopped, but his heart still beat and his mind registered the pain.

The nurses left but the Other remained, concealed in the darkness.

'Speak to me,' he begged, fighting against agony. 'I need you.'

'You need me? Are you asking for my help, or still ordering?'

'Please, it hurts so much. I have paid again, haven't I? This is your doing?'

'It is.'

The Other lit another cigarette and stepped beyond the wall, causing a book to fall to the floor, open on an illustration.

He forgot all his pain as he rose from the bed and stepped into the page, feeling a new painted sun heal his broken bones. He saw a vast island drifting across the sky, covered with enormous trees whose roots broke through the underside of the miracle and trailed down half a mile to lick the tops of the earthbound hills. There were creatures with beautiful eyes looking out between the trunks and some marvellous race had constructed castles upon castles in the highest eaves of the hugest of the trees.