Angels on a Plane
If they offered you heaven, could you refuse?
“Can I get you anything?”
Sandy glanced up at the attendant and mouthed, ‘no thank you’.
“You’re low maintenance,” the woman laughed, subtly flicking her eyes aft, where a privacy curtain failed to hide ongoing sounds of tipsy merriment.
Sandy understood. For the attendant, the hockey team back there were surely not ‘low maintenance’.
“I’m going to try dimming the main lights,” the woman went on, with friendly exasperation.
“Oh, and the captain mentioned to expect some bumps.” She smiled warmly. “I’ll let you have some rest — but do buzz me.”
Sandy smiled in response. She couldn’t help feeling empathy for the beleaguered attendant, and not just because they were both on duty. They were the same age, with the same severe, military approach to makeup and plait, and even similar uniforms.
At least Sandy’s charge was quiet. She glanced with mock affection at the plain but solid briefcase in the other rearward-facing seat beside her. Advantage, security courier.
Unfortunately, that win still did not mean she could sleep. She raised her eyes to the window, knowing it would only contain impregnable blackness, but allowing herself to picture the savage grandeur of the nighttime Himalayas somewhere below.
As promised, the cabin lights softened; and as they did so, Sandy thought she saw a flicker of white fire outside. Almost in response, the Gulfstream’s invisible near wing subtly dipped. Sandy’s mouth flattened to a lipless line as she quashed a memory — of staccato lights in the windows of a much noisier, more utilitarian cabin, reflecting in the frightened eyes of her once-teammates.
There was no evidence that the girls beyond the curtain noticed any of the changes: the faux-delinquent banter went on unabated. It grated on Sandy’s nerves in a way that she hated to find in herself. Five long years had passed since Afghanistan, since those closest of close friends had disbanded, had drifted apart into their own lives. She had no right to begrudge these girls their own camaraderie.
The aircraft banked further, no doubt working around a thunderhead, and the cabin bounced gently as the wings loaded and unloaded on the thin but agitated air.
Sandy lifted the briefcase from the seat and tucked it behind her calves; then fastened her lap belt. She knew the sky here; perhaps too well. The pilot was manoeuvring to find clear air, but with storm clouds to avoid there would be no flightpath that was actually calm.
Distant arcs of white flickered again in the window, panning down in her view as the pilot levelled the wings; and Sandy sighed to clear an intrusive stab of adrenaline. Lightning, she found herself insisting in her mind. Not muzzle flashes.
The plane was jostled again, eliciting some excitable squeals from aft — and then again, much harder.
The cabin lights stuttered with startling brightness, and went out.
Strangely, all Sandy could focus on was the hush — and with it, the sense of sudden genuine fear from the other, invisible passengers. She fought an urge to rise and join them; to offer reassurance. We’re too high for small-arms fire. We’ve just gone dark to hide our approach. Sit tight.
Just like she had once said to the girl beside her, in the Atlas. One of two Geographic Technicians newly assigned to Sandy’s team — whom the others had quickly dubbed the Lost Boys. But from the moment Sandy first caught the eyes of impossibly pretty Angeline, back in Cyprus, there had been electricity.
It had nearly ended both of their careers.
Sandy shook her head in annoyance, and deliberately cajoled her mind to notice what was important: the continued thrum of the jet engines, the undiminished airspeed and altitude. Just an electrical fault — not surprising with the huge voltages discharging not far away.
The moments dragged on in complete darkness, with only minor bumps. Mobile phone lights appeared beyond the curtain, dancing to nervous whispers and laughs.
Then once again, the cabin lights flashed fully on; flickered; failed.
Sandy had gone rigid. In the brightness she had seen something impossible.
In the aisle in front of her, two figures facing rearward, hand in hand. Statuesque and lithe, like swimsuit models.
And utterly naked.
She was holding her breath, her heart in her mouth. She could not process what she had witnessed. Was it only in her mind?
No — among the afterimages, she could still see silhouettes interrupting the glow behind the curtain. There was a faint clatter as it was pulled aside, and the shadows moved through.
Surprised gasps and curses. Sandy’s instinct was to act. She tried to rise, forgetting the lap belt; swore at it.
Then: one delighted titter; two. The word: “strippers”. A sudden swell of excited voices.
“You’re so gay.” “Oh my god, what a birthday.” “Coach, I love you!”
It made some sense. Sandy was stilled, listening, fascinated.
The banter continued, boisterous in proportion to its nervousness. The team had obviously been completely blindsided; and despite the surface excitement over this apparent ‘gift’, Sandy could feel every individual’s inner discomfort.
Through a gap that had been left in the curtain, she could see phone-torchlight picking out patches of bare skin; and slowly the shapes resolved. The ‘strippers’ were entwined with one another, standing centrally among the seats.
In the blurred darkness and the quiet of the aircraft rushing over the storm, watching snippets of what could only be a sex show, Sandy’s pattering heart was still in the RAF transport. She had daydreamed then, illicitly, of the lips and body of the woman beside her. Her rational mind had been ashamed; and rightly afraid of what might come. But nothing could have changed that future, not then, not ever.
In her peripheral vision, lightning flashed; and the cabin lights followed suit, painting glaring colours onto Sandy’s retinas. Turbulence of vision and memory had flown her mind to a place where there was no thought, only feeling.
She was afraid. She was aroused.
There was a change aft: one of the voices reached a pitch of uncertain excitement, the others raucously encouraging.
The curtain rings jittered against the rail again.
“Oh my god,” a voice was saying, now wholly unable to hide its nervousness. “Oh my god.”
In the darkness and Sandy’s mind, it was Angeline. Those were her words, when they made love, in their secret place on the base. She was always sweetly astonished by everything that Sandy did, and even at the things she did herself, in return.
The voice was stilled but for some muffled moans; and Sandy pictured why, as surely as if the lights blazed. A private dance. But no music, no theatrics, no teasing. It was wrong, wrong, wrong! screamed some futile part of her. But the combined silhouettes had chosen her compartment to dance, and she could only be a powerless, sightless spectator.
And then she did see something, and it stilled her heart.
Eyes.
Shining eyes. They looked on her, tilted at an angle, sometimes occluded as bodies moved: the eyes of someone engaged in a kiss; but looking emphatically at Sandy. They seemed to have their own light; or perhaps they gathered and reflected the distant lightning —
— which crashed and roared, close by, flooding the cabin with harsh whiteness.
Sandy saw the hockey girl sandwiched between the two others, caught in snapshot, their hands pushing at her casual sportswear as if to dismiss it from her body.
But still, as the light vanished again, the eyes remained. They had reflected the flash as though in perfect affinity with it, so that in the afterimage they were pure flames.
The athlete had use of her voice again, but she only whispered ambiguous profanities. Sandy remained paralysed, unable to process the scene into a reason to act. Nothing in her experience or training could apply to this. She tried to focus her mind with questions: who were these ‘strippers’? Where had they been hiding?
But under the gaze of those gently shining eyes, she could find neither reason nor answers. The creatures were apart, numinous, irrational. They invoked only feelings: of faraway places and times, of the love she once had; of heaven on earth.
How she yearned for those times! The eyes seemed to come closer, tentatively, blinking, now detached from the other bodies; and Sandy remembered Angeline’s tears.
They had been discovered together; of course they had. Fortunately, their commander had reason to keep it hushed up. Angeline’s almost-forgotten application for retraining came through, with expedient suddenness. Heaven departed the world.
The eyes seemed to understand. They were close enough now for the ambient flickering of lightning and shadowed torchlight to silhouette the girl’s head and body — she was standing slightly turned, unthreatening, with her head cocked curiously. Sandy watched her with detached fascination as she leaned still closer, and despite the wild beating of Sandy’s heart she was no longer afraid.
Was it the power of her memories, or the implicit licence of a ‘stripper’, or the sounds of the hockey player finding ecstasy close by, which allowed their lips to touch?
And at once tears sprang from her own eyes. The girl’s lips were as gentle as Angeline’s had ever been, as sweetly hesitant; and as quick to respond when Sandy pressed forward, deliriously, hungrily.
The kiss broke suddenly, because Sandy had cried out with her confusion, her conflict, her loneliness. Five years of pain had found focus in that one moment. When Sandy had returned from her tour, Angeline had vanished — leaving nothing but a record of discharge and weird rumours of a fall into sin.
But the eyes would not allow her to suffer. Delicate fingers slid behind Sandy’s neck to encourage lips back to lips, and the girl’s mouth opened to let Sandy’s tongue fall helplessly within.
Her own hands were raised to the sides of a long, lithe torso; one finding smooth, muscular abdomen; the other higher, fingers among ribs, and heel against a pure softness that felt like the warm, electric air of the thunderstorm.
The girl’s taste was slightly bitter, like freshly-fallen snow, made human in form if not in aura. All doubt fled from Sandy’s mind. She was pulling at the body before her, she was arching against the lap belt, she was frantic for that remembrance made real, hiding in darkness.
The hockey girl’s gasps, from diagonally opposite, were suddenly stilled, and in that moment Sandy noticed, too late, the depth of her own delirium. Under her arousal there seemed to be nothing: an empty chasm, and to the exploding cries of orgasm nearby she found herself falling, falling, to dark storm-wracked clouds far below.
Sandy’s eyes opened; then squeezed involuntarily shut as daylight assailed them. Through a blinking squint she gathered she was still in the aircraft; and in the seats opposite, two silk-robed women watched her with a little amusement, but no unkindness.
“Good morning,” said the blonde one, gently.
Sandy’s hand had fallen automatically beside her knee, and she was surprised to find the leather-bound corner of the briefcase still there. But when she reached for the latch of the lap-belt it was somehow locked against opening.
“Sorry about that,” continued the woman. “We’ll let you up in a moment.”
Sandy fought the brightness to look out of the window. The aircraft was on the ground, on an expanse of lined tarmac; and beginning to move, the jets spooling softly to overcome the tyres’ friction.
But the scene nearby quickly caught Sandy’s attention: a grey-uniformed woman was walking, identical briefcase in hand, to one of a pair of dark, unmarked cars, escorted by a pair of similarly-clad men.
It only took a moment for the pieces to fall into place.
“The attendant,” Sandy sighed. She looked down at herself, unsurprised to see she was no longer wearing her jacket, with its identifying badge. “She looked just like me.”
“Yes. They won’t know anything is amiss until we’re well away,” confirmed the other woman. “And our girl too.”
Sandy regarded them both. They were fully as beautiful as she had imagined. She felt no malice whatsoever — this was just business, for all of them.
“I guess I’m impressed,” she conceded. “Nice sting. Weird, but nice.”
The jet had already reached the runway, and began to accelerate. The rearward-facing seat and the tight belt made her unusually nauseous, and she touched her own lips.
“The drug was in your mouth,” she observed to the blonde, and then raised her eyebrow. “You had an antidote I guess.” The woman hinted a smile. “And reflective contact lenses, for effect.
“But the hockey team must have taken some arranging. With a gay birthday-girl?” Small shrug.
“Very elaborate. Not sure my consignment was worth that much execution.”
The blonde felon smiled fully now. “You’re probably right.” She looked at her partner. “We do enjoy our jobs to the full. But,” she went on, “you’re wrong about the value at stake. Actually, the briefcase isn’t that important to us.
“This was more of a demonstration,” she said, as the plane rotated, gracefully coming aloft. “You might call it a recruitment advert.”
Sandy was surprised. “To who?”
“A very talented kisser,” was the response, which elicited a mock look of shock from the other woman. They exchanged a fond glance, and the blonde reached to take the other’s hand.
“But actually, it’s our captain who recommended you, and your relevant experience,” she went on.
Sandy was baffled.
The woman smiled. “She never got over you, you know. She loves this life. But in the end she wanted you back.”
The realisation was sudden and raw. There was only one person who could have so perfectly crafted what Sandy had just experienced. Now, she remembered the moment they had parted.
“I’m going to be a pilot,” that person had said. “One day, I’ll fly you away.”
Sandy had laughed. She laughed now, as that sweet voice appeared, hardly changed, from the intercom.
“Ladies, welcome aboard this Angel Airlines service to Never Never Land.
“When we have descended to our cruising altitude of about five hundred feet — to avoid radar — I’ll extinguish the fasten-seatbelts light. I apologise for the delay to your flight today.
“Oh, and… I still love you.”
Hi! I’m Cody Kmochova, and I write romantic lesbian tales with a twist. Would you like something even further out of this world?
