at a table all alone. She fluttered her fingers
and mouthed the words, “Get to work” as
her eyes filled with pure black.
Lyle wasn’t sure what being cursed by Mara
meant, but he knew he wanted no part of
it if she had turned Ben into an alcoholic. A
couple of frat guys walked in just then, asking for some lame and cheap beer. He complied with their order and without thinking
started talking.
”She had the most beguiling smile…“ ✻
.......................................
Spook Fifty
Colin Braun
“A haunted airplane?” you’re probably asking yourself. “Who’d ever heard of a haunted air plane?” Lots of people have, but I
only know of one haunted air plane myself.
Her name is Spook fifty, 0050, and she is an
angry bird with a mischievous spirit running amuck inside of her.
Mind you, that mischief isn’t anything particularly villainous or evil or anything of the
sort. Just bizarre. Spooky. Mischief, such as
still having electricity on wires that were
cut off from power sources. That was a
shock. One of my workers was investigating
a light on a wing that wouldn’t come on.
They pulled the circuit breaker to that particular light, but the moment they jammed
a screw driver in the screw holding the wire
to the socket, POP! Sparks splintered in every direction, and suddenly we had a screw
driver welded to a screw.
Needless to say, that shouldn’t happen. Af
ter further inspection, we discovered there
was still ample electricity going through
that wire, a wire that physically was disconnected from all sources of power.
So, what is the story of Spook fifty? Back
before the days of computer guided autopilot, a navigator was assigned to heavy air
planes. That navigator would sit behind the
pilot and copilot, and using a pair of windows in the roof of the plane and a special
devise called the sexton mount to make
fine calculations, this aviator would guide
the plane by the stars.
During one fateful trip across the Atlantic,
this air plane decided it didn’t need a navigator. While performing some of those fine
adjustments I just mentioned, the navigator noticed a crack in the right window, and
before his eyes, it began to spider web out
into a clearly disastrous structural anomaly.
Just after he made a plea to the pilots to
decrease in altitude to prevent the pressure
in the plane from blowing out the window,
the window shattered, and the navigator
was sucked up to his shoulders into the
hole. The pilots, panicked and fear stricken
could do nothing about it.
If they pulled his body down, they ran the
risk of being sucked out themselves, and
seeing as they were in the middle of the
Atlantic Ocean, they had no choice but to
complete the flight. They were forced to
make that frightening flight with the navigators’ still swaying body hanging behind
them until they made it back to the continent US. Those pilots never flew again, but
it is told that the navigator is still flying to
this day, creating little malfunctions and
mishaps on the jet to remind those who fly
it and those that fix it, that he’s still there. ✻
October 2015
INSIGHT