BAYVEEN O’CONNELL
CW – aftermath of a plane crash
Sole Survivor
There’s silence where sound should be, now the ringing in my ears has stopped and the crackle of flames has burnt out. I’m strapped into my seat, the only intact thing in a field of debris, while people in masks and uniforms walk the periphery.
It’s like last semester when Mr. Cassidy cast me as Pandora in the 9th grade play, and as I opened the box, the scenery on stage moved all around me in a frenzy as I remained still. We performed it for the teachers and students, for the parents, for the mayor and his cronies. Mr. Cassidy told me to always keep working on my shock, my horror, the twist of my mouth when I opened the box in rehearsal. For the live versions he went method: putting a chicken heart, a live cockroach, and a necklace of teeth in the receptacle so I really screamed and turned away.
A guy in a hazmat suit hunkers down opposite me:
“We’re going to lift you out, honey. My name’s Daryl. Keep your eyes on me. Don’t look at the ground, don’t…”
His voice is a haze trying to lull me into anesthesia. He’s Mr. Cassidy’s antithesis, wanting to contain what’s already been spilt, to shield me from it. My whole being is numb, apart from my face: my cheeks and mouth contort, smokey tears stream down my face. I don’t need a prompt now. I breathe in the reek of charring flesh, and before me is a path of metal and plastic, red raw tissue and jagged bones. I am at the centre of nothingness, a wasteland of chaos.
After Mr Cassidy’s suggestion, we were on our way to Universal Studios for my 15th birthday and to have me audition for Zitzap pimple cream while we were there. But everything cleaved in mid-air and broke away from me: Dad beside me reading the New York Times, Mom across the aisle flicking through Marie Claire, my little brother Max jabbing madly at his Game Boy, the woman behind Dad who took twenty minutes to decide if she wanted the Chanel or the Tommy Hilfiger, her six year old asshole son that never quit kicking my chair, the bachelor party of drunk jocks who kept cat-calling the stewardesses, the woman behind Mom who howled Hail Marys until everyone’s screams drowned her out. All of them gone in seconds in a sick magic trick.
I see a flicker of red lights, and a team picks their way to me with a stretcher through the shatter of lives, the scatter of remnants of who we all were from our burst suitcases. I stop looking, close my eyes, and wonder if I really am Pandora now.
Bayveen O’Connell has words in or forthcoming in Ellipsis Zine, Sunlight Press, Scrawl Place, Maryland Literary Review, Ekphrastic Review, Reckon Review, The Forge, Fractured Lit, Janus Lit, and others. Bayveen lives in Ireland and loves folklore, history, art, travel, and being close to the sea. Twitter @bayveenwriter