On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 148, of 240 so far.

The Quiet Carriage

It’s like they just don’t want to stay clean, Fletcher thought.

He was sitting in seat 17B, and while he had the extreme and unlikely luxury of no other passengers to his left or right, there was the unfortunate matter of the mother with two young children in seats 18A–C just in front of him.

The kids were aged perhaps three and five respectively, two boys, and though the plane had only been in the air for forty minutes, it was already their second snack break.

From the smell of it, the woman had brought some kind of pungent and preservative-loaded junk for them to consume, and by the incessant crinkling he heard, he could all too readily picture the dust and the grease that was being spread around the seat-back tables, armrests, and everything else. It made him feel nauseated.

Twenty minutes earlier he’d been subjected to whatever cartoon nonsense the children were watching on their tablet devices, without headphones of course, and five minutes before that they had just been fighting with each other while the plane reached its cruising altitude.

Fletcher already had a headache, and he found himself praying for the arrival of the drinks trolley, and wondering how much they’d let him buy all at once.

The next half hour wasn’t any better, and several times Fletcher had to restrain himself from asking the woman to control her children. It was common sense that anyone who allowed their offspring to behave in such a way would also be lacking in social graces themselves, and would probably respond furiously and conspicuously to any such attempt to procure some consideration. And everyone was carrying a video camera in their pocket these days, so you could never be too careful.

Instead, he closed his eyes, and strangely enough it seemed to help a little. He wished that he’d bought himself the pair of noise-cancelling headphones on his wishlist, realising all too late that they would be cheap at twice the price if they even muffled the animal-like sounds from the row in front of him sufficiently for him to nap.

Fletcher sat like that for a few minutes, and he was surprised to note that the kids at least receded into the background a little. It was like a television being on nearby, maybe one from back in the day, when it wasn’t quite tuned in properly, or maybe during a snowstorm. It was tolerable, and he was starting to think that he could perhaps even nod off without recourse to alcohol, when there was a huge thud from what seemed like just beyond the end of his nose.

His eyes flew open, just in time to see a small head disappearing behind the top of the seat in front, and a stick-like arm flailing in the direction of the other child. The mother was saying something about not fighting with your brother, but her tone was one of disinterest, and through the gaps between the seats Fletcher could see that she was reading a magazine and not even looking at her sons while she said it. He closed his eyes again, willing his pulse to slow.

Please let all three of them just choke on their food or something, he thought uncharitably. Just give me some peace and quiet. Make them go away.

He took a deep breath, focusing on the rise and fall of his chest, and after a few cycles of respiration, he started to feel calmer. He also belatedly noticed that the noise had stopped entirely. Fletcher opened his eyes.

The seats in front of him were gone, along with their occupants. And the subsequent rows, all the way to the front of the plane.

Fletcher squeezed his eyes shut again, his calmness evaporating instantly, then he opened them once more. The seats and other passengers were still nowhere to be found.

He stood up, or tried to, but was held back by his seatbelt, and he had to fumble with the mechanism to open it and free himself. Then he really did stand up, turning to look towards the rear of the plane. It was the same as the rest of it; empty of seats and people. A wide open space, with only the thin carpet and inlaid fixing tracks where the seats once were.

“This isn’t… I can’t be…” he began, but he didn’t really know what he was trying to say. Several different thoughts overlapped in his mind, and all he could really do was stare.

The curtains were drawn at the front and back of the suddenly too-big area, and Fletcher’s immediate thought was about whether the crew had also disappeared. The plane seemed to be flying normally for now, with clouds still visible outside, but he knew that aircraft could be put on automatic pilot for much of their journeys, requiring human intervention only for takeoff and landing. He pushed that particular thought away for the moment, and started to walk slowly towards the front.

He stopped after a few paces, noticing something that hadn’t been there before. It was a large sign attached to the wall above the windows, where storage lockers had been but were now absent.

QUIET CABIN, it said.

Fletcher read it again, just to be sure. He realised that he’d been thinking about this very thing a little while ago, when everything was normal and loud and crowded. He’d petulantly wondered why they didn’t have an aircraft equivalent of the quiet carriage on a train, where you could pay extra to enjoy a more civilised environment. And of course they did have such a thing; several of them. But it didn’t look like this.

He resumed course, and in a few moments he reached the very front of the cabin, taking a breath before the pulled back the curtain. The toilets weren’t there, and nor was the galley, or the cabin crew, or even the door to the cockpit, with its little retrofitted peephole. There was nothing there at all except another plastic bulkhead, with a rack of newspapers attached to it. The papers were obviously not entirely new, bearing the tell-tale signs of having been handled, and re-folded a number of times, but they were arranged neatly enough.

Fletcher read the date on one of them, and he found that he couldn’t recall whether it was today’s date or not. The primary story was a full front-page takeover, which was a rare thing. He pulled the paper from the rack and allowed it to unfold so he could read the story’s lede.

Stroke kills man on passenger flight.

Fletcher’s photo was comparatively small compared to that of the airport tarmac with ambulances driven right up to the plane. There was also a picture of the woman and her two sons, and the accompanying text indicated that she had found the event incredibly traumatic, and would be seeking compensation from the airline. Fletcher stopped reading at that point, and he folded the paper once more before returning it to the rack and drawing the curtain.

He stood there for perhaps a minute, then he turned around to look at the almost empty space. It was silent, and peaceful, and the only object was the single set of three vacant seats that formed row 17, A to C. Nothing in front, and nothing behind.

Fletcher made the short walk back to where he’d come from, and sat down.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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