Lucky Guy

Walking through the debris, the twisted and burnt remnants of technology and humanity, I didn't feel lucky. In the newly cratered field, littered with nothing but fragments no larger than a wallet, there could be no survivors.

‘Mr. Saunders, you look like you could do with this.’

An emergency first responder, covered in smoke and oily filth, held out the British cure for everything.

‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the mug of tea.

Sharing an unspoken understanding, he trudged back towards his colleagues still damping down the aircrafts burning wreckage.

A lone tree stood amongst the devastation, scorched but otherwise untouched. Burnt but alive. I felt a kindred spirit. I sat down. Against my back it afforded some respite as I gulped in air, vainly forcing my heartbeat to slow. Above me, bare branches hung with pieces of aluminium, paper and body parts. I didn't look up. I'd seen something like it too many times before.

Dark shadows flittered in the sky above, cast by the rescuers back-lit from harsh emergency lighting. The tiny figures looking ghost-like in the drifting smoke. Fate left me alive for some purpose. I had to believe it. Maybe find a cause, maybe stop the next disaster.

A lifetime ago, or just something like fourteen hours, I'd been, if not exactly happy, as content as a cat with a bowl of cream. Two bowls of cream.

As my breathing calmed, I allowed my mind to drift, reviewing the past hours that had changed so much of my life. Shutting out the horror surrounding me, I went back to the calm greyness of a London dawn filtering into a bedroom through carelessly drawn curtains.

Head on my thigh, MeeHow, kissed my flaccid penis much like an acquaintance might kiss the cheek of a friend.

‘Poor baby,’ she'd purred, ‘it must be very tired. Nick?'

'Yeah?'

'Will you be screwing Tessa this weekend?’

‘Yeah,’ I'd said, with as little interest as my dick showed for further sex.

She knew that Tessa was coming back from New York. Tess had needed time away. Away from me. She'd found out about MeeHow and the argument between us had been fierce. I would be seeing her later, sort things out. So I imagined.

'You fuck around too much, Nick.'

MeeHow had been reading my mind again. Damn. She always wielded that perceptive insight of hers like an assassin’s knife. Even as she snaked up beside me, wrapping herself around the wounded, ugly side of my body, the area kissed by flame, she twisted the emotional blade.

Through numb scar tissue, I sensed rather than felt her lips brush against my neck. As I breathed in the scent of her, the sweetness of jasmine leavened by the acidity of sweat, I'd decided it suited her perfectly.

I'd first met MeeHow at a party just a week earlier, where those dark oriental eyes of hers had sliced through the crowded haze and fastened upon mine. She had reeled me in like a helpless fish.

‘So you’re the famous “lucky guy” are you, Mr Saunders?’ she’d said to me after I'd somehow gravitationally found myself by her side.

‘Well, I'm not so sure about that, but yes, I work for the AAIB.'

'Ah yes, the Air Accidents Investigations Branch. Based at Farnborough, isn't it?

'Yes, that's right. Call me Nick. All my friends call me Nick. You are?

‘Please to meet you. You can call me MeeHow. But I’m not one of your friends, Mr. Saunders,’ she’d replied casually, with a slight emphasis on the word friends. Seductive not dismissive. But she wasn't looking at me directly. She was looking at my burns.

Had I misread her? Was she just another person simply fixated on my disfigurement? My “story”?

‘Well, you know about me, it seems.’ I'd said a little defensively. But of course she knew me. After all I was a ghoulish celebrity within aviation circles, and the party was primarily for those type of people.

‘Oh yes. I know you survived an air crash as a boy. Amazing. You are a real lucky guy, no?’

‘Ah.’ Here it comes I'd thought. I'd never got used to the morbid interest of some people. Bracing myself for all the usual questions, but they hadn’t come.

Instead she'd said, ‘Your girlfriend's very beautiful,' and looked over to where Tessa was standing some distance away.

Following her gaze, watching Tessa laughing with some Delta airline executives. Noticing how her hand kept touching the forearm of Delta's pilot, Don Winston, it wasn’t by coincidence that MeeHow had drawn my attention towards her.

‘Yes, she is,’ I'd replied flatly, the old insecurities never far from the surface. Maybe she was suggesting he was 'lucky' to have a girlfriend at all, considering his injuries.

‘She’s very fortunate to have you, you know.’

Could she read him that easily? I just shrugged, ‘I really haven’t known her all that long.’

‘Long enough for me to think she is perhaps a little in love with you, Mr. Saunders. And you in her, maybe?' Then she'd laughed. 'I wouldn’t worry, a little flirting is normal.’

‘What makes you think I'm worried?'

‘I’m very good at reading signs, Mr. Saunders.’

‘Body language you mean?’

‘Something like that,‘ she'd said with a smile. 'Have you never been in love before, Mr. Saunders?’

‘I’ve avoided it so far.'

‘Well, maybe that's a good thing. In our line of work, at least. I fly with Gulf Air Executive.’

‘Ah, as a hostess?’

‘If you like, Mr. Saunders, but don’t you think that terminology is outdated and just a little sexist of you?’

'Maybe, maybe not,' I'd said, giving her a knowing look.

Her smile vanished for a second, then returned smoothly. Closing the small distance between us, she took a deep breath as if making a decision. Dangerously close, she didn’t look up and I found myself holding my own breath. Finally, she exhaled a question: ‘May I touch you?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t be offended. Of course you can refuse, but... I just want... to touch you here,’ her hand hesitant, ‘where you were burned.’

My heart dropped. Damn, she was one of those weirdo ghouls. I started to back away, but something in her voice made me pause. Those dark eyes had lost their sharpness, were almost pleading.

Dumbly, I'd allowed her to continue. She rewarded me with the slightest of smiles, then dropped her gaze to intently follow her right hand as she placed it slowly and delicately upon my ravaged skin.

I watched spellbound as her head tilted slightly back, eyes closed. It was the briefest of moments, the slightest of touches, yet the noise and the room itself faded away to nothingness as she whispered into my ear: ‘Such a lucky man, yet you suffer from guilt, don't you? Survivors guilt.'

Her insight stunned me. The only other person I'd shared that torment with was Tessa.

Then she added, 'I'm in room 401 at the Carlton. Give me a call. Come and see me. Now, your girlfriend is coming over to rescue you,’ she'd said without breaking eye contact. ‘I’d better leave you two alone. Catch you later?’

And just like an angler leaves a line baited and dangling in the water, she'd drifted away.

‘Having fun?’

‘Hi Tess, just mingling.’

‘Is that what you call it?’

Believing attack was the best form of defence, I'd questioned her tactile fondness for Don.

‘Don’s harmless. That MeeHow however, isn’t.’

‘You know her?’

‘Know of her, more like,’ Tess had replied tartly. ‘She’s what they euphemistically call, a “special-services operative”, for the more wealthy clients of the airline.’

‘Ah, yes, I'd suspected as much.’

‘Ah, indeed. So, unless you’re feeling particularly flush with money, you can forget her.’

‘She’s forgotten,’ I’d lied.

‘I’ll bet,’ Tess said. ‘Let’s go back to your place. I’ll take your mind off her.’

But it was too late. I’d already taken the bait. A week later and MeeHow was in my bed.

Her flawless body against the ugly skin of my own was somehow obscene. Yet MeeHow seemed to love my burnt and ravaged side. To her, it was an external reflection of my inner self. Knowledge, she'd told, she'd gained the moment her fingers had touched my neck that night. Lovely MeeHow, beautiful, intriguing and as intense as a volcano. And just as dangerous.

‘You fuck around too much, Nick.’ she'd said again.

I'd ignored the comment the first time, but now my mood wouldn’t let it pass.

‘That’s rich, coming from you.’

MeeHow immediately woke from her drowsiness, drawing up her head, cobra-like.

‘You have some problem?’

I wanted to say, “Yes, I have a problem.”

Instead, I took the coward’s way out, swinging my legs off the bed and stalking to the bathroom in silence. Her eyes burned my back until I closed the door, shutting her out.

In the bathroom mirror, I cursed the world silently. Cursed the burnt half of me and my two faced behaviour. It wasn’t her fault. She’d made no secret of her profession. “It’s just sex, Nick,” she'd told me. Except now I'd decided sex was no longer enough. I wanted more. I wanted Tess. The calm over the volatile. I couldn't have both.

Standing under the shower, I'd let the water wash away my mood. By the time I'd finished, I was clean and re-invigorated. Decision made.

Walking back into the bedroom, I'd called out. ‘MeeHow? Listen, I’m …’ but stopped. The room was empty.

She was too perceptive to be messed around. I'd flopped onto the bed and swore at the ceiling. I was still swearing when I fell asleep. It had been a vigorous night.

In moments, I found my skin itching. It was crawling with insects. They were busy tearing into my flesh, a million fangs slicing, burning. No, not insects. Fire! The people next to me on the flight consumed in flames, melting. I tried to free them, my skin tightening and cracking from the heat. Blow-torch flame melting muscle down to the bone as shards of hot metal lanced across my face. A metallic scream, the sound of disintegrating jet engines were bursting my eardrums, a crashing crescendo as the plane tore itself apart. NO! I had to get away, get out, leave them, leave them to burn...

I screamed and woke up, sitting bolt upright in bed in another cold sweat. So long ago, the memory and guilt of survival fresh. Why not me? Why did I survive? It never left, always returned.

But the noise, the banging continued. Someone was hammering at the door.

‘Yes! Okay! Okay! I’m coming,’ I'd shouted, the nightmare finally fading, for now.

Through the door a voice responded: ‘Mr Saunders, open up, it’s the Police.’

Checking the spy-hole, two large policemen were stood impatiently outside. I'd opened the door.

‘Yes?’

‘Get dressed, Mr. Saunders, we’ve been sent to collect you.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘There’s been an incident, close to Heathrow, your department have sent us to escort you to the scene.’

I'd clambering into my clothes, grabbing my ‘incident bag’ always nearby and fully prepared. As I did so, I also switched on my phone. The urgent texts I'd missed spilled out in a stream. The first one told me everything I needed to know: “Where the bloody hell are you, Nick? Another Boeing 767 has gone down, same type you’ve been working on. Crashed on approach. Get over there as soon as you can.”

In a quiet suburban area just east of Windsor Castle, it was a mess. Pieces of broken aircraft lay around, fragmented, fires burning amongst the wreckage. I felt the scars on my skin tighten.

The flight was from JFK, New York.

A knowing sickness crept like frost into my heart. Tessa. No passenger list yet. It might not be her plane. It couldn't be. Most of the fire was out yet the heat remained. Fire services were still damping down the wreckage. I'd flashed my credentials and walked past the police cordon and entered the accident scene.

The usual catastrophic disintegration surrounded me. One misshapen lump in the debris became a foot. Another became an arm, a glint of gold between outstretched, clawed and blackened fingers signified a wedding ring.

Placing the usual small red flag markers next to each piece of bone and flesh, I refused to think. Working blindly, automatically. Stepping through the wreckage, looking, checking, placing an ever growing number of the red flags against each and every body part found. Only one way to positively identify how many souls lost, was by counting up the genitals.

It was too much. Too much had happened. I needed a short break. To sit alone against this tree, nursing something safe, like tea. My heartbeat had slowed, my breath had returned. I opened my eyes at the chime of a text.

Would this be the passenger list? It was. I scanned the list. It was there. Her name. No mistake. No error. Certainty. But I refused to believe it. I had to focus on the job at hand. I didn't want to think of the horror. That I'd already found her. Placed one of those red flags on a part of her. I didn't know. Didn't want to know.

The stench of aviation fuel mixed with burnt flesh stung my nostrils. I was going to be sick.

My phone rang, a call this time. I flicked it open.

‘Yeah?’

‘Nick? Nick, is that you?’

‘MeeHow?

‘Yes Nick. I just heard the news,’ her voice strained and tense. ‘Your phone is always engaged … I couldn’t get through to you.’

‘Yeah, I’ve been busy...’

‘Nick, listen, I’m sorry, I think…’

‘Yeah, I know. Tess was on the flight.’

Saying it out loud, it became real.

‘Nick …’ MeeHow started to say, but I closed the connection and threw the phone away.

Then I emptied my stomach.

Yeah, I was a real lucky guy.