Catalogue magazine

Turbofan engines ran efficiently twelve thousand meters high up in the exosphere of the earth, running still, surrounded by bright sunshine and comically fluffy clouds.

“Dead. Engines dead! We’re hanging on the air with dead wings!” The woman with a ragged expression screamed, almost as if she were in pain.

The catalogue magazine was bundled up with a tight rubber band and was stuck out of the back of the chair’s pouch, staring at Julissa.

Her mind was blank, a wall that felt like endless static as silent tears ran down her pale cheek, as the crisp outside ran along like a red classic Viewmaster she thought she might’ve had as a kid(but she didn’t think so), clicking along with just tiny shots of sky that looked glassy, far-away, fake. The tiny window next to her was an hourglass filled with sand, and she was waiting for it to fill up, as she was restrained and unable to move.

Click. Click. Her eyes didn’t blink but the area of the inside of the passenger area in the airplane seemed to fade in and out like a longer timed blink. Or a camera shutter.

She shuddered, her pale pink lips dry and chapped.

The other passengers were looking at her, concerned and scared.

To go from LA to Australia was a very long trip, and to be on such seriously arduous journey, one had to be prepared.

Reading materials, music, snacks, writing paper and pen, your phone or lab top and a whole lot of patience.

Sometimes… you couldn’t always think of everything…

Time got the better of you.

That bunched up catalogue, had the painting of the clouds. Sky Mall, or something.

When Julissa had come upon it, something in her snapped.

“Dead. Engines dead! We’re hanging on the air with dead wings!” The woman with a ragged expression screamed, almost as if she were in pain from her scrunched up expression.

She started rocking back and forth, almost foaming at the mouth, her long blonde hair tumbling crazily as she bumped along the window and seat in front of her. The passengers nearby called for immediate help, with the man seated next to her hurriedly unbuckling his seatbelt to get up in order to not get slammed by her incessant movement. The man had an instinctive arm wanting to go around her and pull her into his arms, but he stopped himself.

‘How can I do something so familiar? She doesn’t know me that well….’ He thought sadly, feeling bad for her.

Her wails of agony hit all the way to the cabin of the captain of the flight crew, and they called upon the assistance of what was luckily an United States Air Marshal on board, to help restrain her.

Handcuffed and restrained, she was checked by the marshal for ID and passport.

“This woman has no identification on her, whatsoever. It is likely she either lost it boarding or she is an invalid,” the marshal indicated to the flight attendant who then brought the same strange alarming news to the attention of the captain.

Julissa, no last name, only known by this by the man who had been sitting next to her, looked wildly concerned, was nervously touching his face and facial hair with something that felt like fear. He kept staring at her, especially her emerald green eyes. ‘As far dead eyes go,’ he thought, ‘they are so beautiful. She is so beautiful. They remind me of something. Someone.’

He had been talking to her before and they had been having relatively normal conversations, but something about her felt very…. Safe. Very strangely addictive, like he felt like he must keep talking to her, and that it was home.

“Crispin, such a regal name, you must have gotten your share of teasing as a child!” She laughed with a good natured tone, her smile making his heart flutter into a soft sort of way.

“Not as much as Julissa! I’m sure..” he winked with his light brown eyes and she blushed.

She was eyeing the catalogue and running through the pretend play castle.

“Just like home, eh?” She said offhandedly, her shoulder gently knudging his.

He looked over with a smirk and played along. It was too long of a flight not to have this kind of droll frivolity to pass the time, he told himself. “Yes. Like our castle in the clouds.”

She nodded and chuckled, but then he noticed her staring at it longingly, harshly, then painfully. Using a rubber band to bunch it up and put it in the pouch in front of her, she looked ahead, silent.

She seemed to have a dazed expression for a while, and they didn’t talk.

But, she suddenly had looked around confused, looking at the catalogue, frantically trying to take off the rubber band, screaming and jerking about, almost as though she couldn’t control it.

“Please fasten your seatbelts and remain seated. There is nothing to be concerned over, but we are experiencing some electrical disturbances and a bit of turbulence is to be expected,” the announcement came over the speaker and Julissa suddenly stalled down to a silent stuttering calm.

“What did you say you were going to Australia for?” Crispin asked, his long black bangs covering his eye.

She leaned in and moved the hair, pulling it over his ear. “To remember how much I keep forgetting,” she said mysteriously, and he laughed, but his heartbeat was pounding manically in his chest.

In the pallid blue sky, the oxygen low and the cartoonish looking clouds high, the 220.1 ton weighted aircraft stalled in a heavy storm of electrical crackling, sitting in the atmosphere without a single indicator of gravity.

Julissa was no longer shackled or restrained.

She stood up and went over to Crispin, taking his hand. She was wearing an elegant gown with a silver crown perched upon her golden curls.

Suddenly, the inside of the airplane was changing. There was something lusciously warm hitting their face and below, it was a nebulous feeling of weightlessness. Watery and floating. Like clouds.

“Was it true, my love? Is our home just like the catalogue?” Crispin whispered, and they embraced, his memory seeping back in layers as it has begun to when he first sat down next to her on the plane. “Is your fear erased?” He started to cry, the sinking feeling he had all along now turning into heaven.

She sighed a long and painful gulp of breath, her green eyes narrowing in grief and anger, “I have been riding on that excruciatingly long plane ride for centuries waiting for you to board it. Those people… the marshal and the flight attendants.. all warlocks and witches sent by my horrible step-mother to keep us from the throne..” she said, her voice trembling. “I finally found one who would get you to join me. And I got the others to unwillingly break the spell by convincing us of our love.” Her eyes light up as they gaze at each other, their memories of their childhood together and growing up, playing at the creeks with the frogs and fish (not a very lady-like thing for princess Julissa to do with the young prince, but it was fun!) and learning and falling in love—-all of it, came bursting back into their minds.

Crispin noticed the bunched up catalogue in her tight fist and he closes his hand over hers.

She lets the magazine go, and the pages unfold as it falls, disappearing into the mist. They are suddenly back in the castle above the clouds, with the step-mother now in chains, and Julissa and Crispin back where they belong.

They reminded themselves often now that they could fly together without wings.