The missed flight to London’s Heathrow and the many adventures that befall the as-yet-unidentified Belfast man from Kyiv, both before and after
Yet another illegal piece
The Kansas relative, the Belfast man from Kyiv, is on a big, strangely empty plane on its way to London’s Heathrow, from where he will connect for the last leg of his wondrous journey home… to Kyiv, Ukraine.
But it’s not the British Airways flight he was supposed to be on yesterday, but a Delta substitute the next day – thanks to the terrorists of the New Nation delaying him at the airport with an arbitrary last-minute interrogation lasting hours, forcing him to miss his flight.
Because of this, he’ll now be cutting it awfully close with the keynote address he was invited to give at the Kyiv Poster’s Third Annual Minotaur Sessions, this year dubbed “Hooking New Markets” for the “Disinformation Wars” part of the event, as the publisher – well, all right, what the fuck, co-publisher with Sweaty Tank Top – of NAP Publishing Works, and all-around expert on the wartime uses of the media as a propaganda tool.
Thankfully, that part of the KP’s Minotaur Sessions is not scheduled to start until later tomorrow; nevertheless, his forced delay in getting home has thrown a wrench or two in his works, as he will now have to work on his speech on this plane, and will in all likelihood have to rush directly to the event in downtown Kyiv from Boryspil Airport – no rest, no shower, no shave… well, the people will understand.
All annoyances aside, he admits it will make him look something like a conquering hero… braving all those harrowing adventures… he imagines his entrance into the large conference hall: somewhat harried and tired, but steely-eyed and determined, jaw set firm as he clutches the handwritten speech and makes his way toward the stage, propelling his body catlike forward, a fierce and wild hunter beast, beautifully savage yet controlled, angel-white mane raging, closing in on his kill, cutting the air like a fire-sword, the flaps of his jacket fluttering behind him… And then his handsome, disarming smile slowly spreading across his face as he begins his measured graceful turn from behind the dais toward the audience, who, in their appreciation and respect, and probably even unbegrudged awe, move their arms as one into warm, heartfelt, sustained applause…
One consolation is he’s flying first class, luxury class, better than business, way up front, in a large, swiveling, fold-out bed seat next to the window.
Next to him is some ugly girl with greasy, pulled-back dark hair in a big, bulky sweater, heavy, dark-frame glasses, and suffering a protruding overbite that makes her upper lip jut forward and unable to close her mouth.
She keeps trying to make conversation with him with that funny overbite speech affliction and he keeps grunting and giving her the cold shoulder, lifting up his head to torment her with his handsome profile and then turning away to the window, or feigning reading the onboard magazine. Just to make sure, he asks the stewardess for copies of all the news publications she has on the plane.
The girl’s told him her name is Jennifer, but that he could call her Jenny, and – get this – that she’s from Kyiv, Ukraine! A native! Ha! Yeah, right! No one is named Jennifer in Ukraine, unless it’s Jenny the dog, which, in her case, well…
Just forget it, he says (to himself, of course), and hopes she’s not on his connecting flight to Kyiv from Heathrow, trying to sit next to him again – dork chick, goofy-assed bitch.
And which oh by the way, where the hell did she get the money to sit up in luxury class? And then again, why next to him? How did that happen? With all the empty seats throughout the entire plane, it had to work out that her boarding pass just happened to indicate the very, and only, seat next to his. Why?
But the Belfast man from Kyiv senses he’s ignored her demonstrably enough that she’s gotten the message and has finally decided to leave him alone.
He remembers back to the Atlanta airport, the terminal… yesterday…
He rushes and wades through crowds that are almost hysterically pressing through the terminal to board flights – any flights, it seems; first-come, first-served; the survival of the fittest. In all the flying he’s done, he’s never seen or been in anything like this before – the suffocating crush of it.
He has hours to go before his London flight, but the Airport Authority is now under the New Nation, and he braces his tired mind for paranoiacally heightened security. As he moves down the long corridors, huge nebulous hologram portraits of Jeb Davies peer down at intervals from the terminal heights.
Move along, budkins… Hey! Was he just jabbed in the ribs with the butt of a rifle?! Yes, he can’t believe it – that gutter scum just jabbed him in the ribs with his rifle and strutted smugly on his way, chewing gum broadly in his immense open fat grease-gleaming wiseass thug mouth, a glint of cruel merriment in his eyes, yelping orders at people and having the time of his life. The canal sludge odor of him remains in the Belfast man’s nostrils and sickens him.
He dares look around, and yes, the terminal is thick from wall to wall with armed flak-wearing bozos covering all the passages and doors.
Remarkably, he’s somehow made it to the waiting area, with a whole two hours to go before his flight, and he sees his gate and the flight number right there, above the portal doors, good old British Airways, ostentatiously draped with the Union Jack, as though to complement (and compliment) the New Nation flags hanging down all around from the glass and walls. Now, when the time comes, all he has to do is move, unassumingly and humbly, with his head down and his eyes watching his shoes, toward those doors, and once he’s on the gangway, he’s outta there, in the air… and finally, finally safe.
But he has not been harassed by arbitrary detentions, groundless questionings, strip searches, flashlights stuck up his ass, vicious slavering German Shepherds barking at his balls, multiple baggage checks, being forced to wait just for the sake of being forced to wait… He’d been spared… he’d been spared!!!
An intrusive but insistent finger pokes him a few times in the shoulder. The Belfast Man looks up. He is annoyed, but of course he knows, under these circumstances, he should hold his cool and let it pass.
It’s Ned Davies, whom the Belfast man doesn’t know, and he pushes a letter into the Belfast man’s hands that says on the envelope, From JD To JD.
Boy, I sure am glad I caught you just before your flight. Just deliver that to Josh Davies in Kyiv when you get in, will ya, and everything should be all right. The From is Jeb Davies himself. Well, thanks – gotta go…
Jeb Davies, the Belfast man thinks to himself despite his surprise and bewilderment: cloistered in some high castle God knows where, completely out of reach for the masses, except by messengers such as this Ned Davies, some weak-willed relative, and evil incarnate in this world; the embodiment thereof on Earth.
Ned Davies had said that he had to go. While appearing completely unpretentious, sincere, and quite affable, thus helping greatly to relieve the Belfast man of the sudden tension provoked by the situation, for some reason Ned Davies stays put, as if waiting to see what the Belfast man would do. His anxiety starts showing, he gets nervously breathless, then desperate, then clearly afraid.
The Belfast man suddenly raises the envelope to the light, automatically and without thinking – almost instinctively – and discerns therein a lot of thick black handwriting on lined paper. But he cannot quite make out the words. Ned Davies silently panics. The Belfast man quickly desists from his indiscreet intrusion, now realizing he could have checked the letter on the plane. The Belfast man bends down and slides the letter into a pocket of his carry-on bag and, looking up, had not seen Ned Davies leave.
It is just then that it happens – that which the Belfast man had feared and dreaded all along. A couple of armed goons lead him off to a room for questioning. Boarding for his flight has just begun. The terrorists say it won’t take long – but that turns out to be a lie, as the Belfast man knows it was bound to.
Several hours later, as he is released back into the waiting area, he finds it strangely empty, much like the airplane he’s on now, with just a smocked washwoman pushing a pail and mopping the floor. Her jackbooted foot toe-butting the pail forward echoes off the tiles and walls of the endless halls. Gray mop water slops out onto the floor.
The once great city of Atlanta is within arm’s reach, but New Nation sticks the Belfast man into an armored personnel carrier and drives him out into the country where it drops him off at a roadside motel, controlled, of course, by terrorists, well beyond the city’s limits. In the morning, before being picked up for the airport again, he crosses the road to eat at yet another terrorist-controlled diner.
Back at the airport, he finally gets on his flight, obediently entering the gate he’d been directed to, and boarding the plane, without checking any of the flight details. He has been assured that his onboard baggage had been removed from yesterday’s flight and transferred to the one he’s presently boarding and that he should have no fears of not claiming it at Boryspil Airport, his final debarkation.
Filed February 24, 2015