I've always preferred red-eye flights for more than their price there's this atmosphere of tranquillity mixed with mild despair that just sends me straight off to sleep until we land. Makes those long flights to-and-from the varying office branches so much easier.
I try to get an aisle seat after my first flight experience left me a tad shaken, and by a tad shaken I mean I didn't stop shaking until my fifth shot of The Jilted Bottle's finest off-brand whiskey. To begin with it was your average red-eye flight. Everyone was tired and a little grumpy and me being naive at the time decided to get a window seat so I could fall asleep leaning against the cool glass instead of accidentally drooling on a stranger.
It must have been three or so hours into my twelve hour flight when I woke up sharply. It felt like someone was watching me. Closely. Like so close I could almost feel their breath against my face and after a few minutes of squinting around the dimmed seats I realised where the warmth on my cheek was coming from.
The window I'd been resting my head on was fogging up, fading to normal and fogging up again at steady intervals like someone was breathing against it. Of course when I looked someone actually was breathing against it, their face was pressed so harshly against the glass that there was a thick trail of saliva sliding down the corner of their mouth and into the wind as the plane carried on regardless of its extra passenger.
They looked so normal out there, just a normal old man with his face pressed against the window of a plane that was over 30,000 feet above the ocean. He wasn't smiling, just staring blankly like he didn't even realise where he was.
It never occurred to me to check the planes history until we landed and he slid off the wing and scuttled across the tarmac like a crab that just shat itself. The article had his face on it, the headline dated back five years and went on to say how the plane had crash-landed in the same ocean we flew over. The old guy had gotten stuck on one of the wings somehow and died of hypothermia.
Ever since that trip I've demanded aisle seats, I'm not going to risk seeing a dead man again.
I try to get an aisle seat after my first flight experience left me a tad shaken, and by a tad shaken I mean I didn't stop shaking until my fifth shot of The Jilted Bottle's finest off-brand whiskey. To begin with it was your average red-eye flight. Everyone was tired and a little grumpy and me being naive at the time decided to get a window seat so I could fall asleep leaning against the cool glass instead of accidentally drooling on a stranger.
It must have been three or so hours into my twelve hour flight when I woke up sharply. It felt like someone was watching me. Closely. Like so close I could almost feel their breath against my face and after a few minutes of squinting around the dimmed seats I realised where the warmth on my cheek was coming from.
The window I'd been resting my head on was fogging up, fading to normal and fogging up again at steady intervals like someone was breathing against it. Of course when I looked someone actually was breathing against it, their face was pressed so harshly against the glass that there was a thick trail of saliva sliding down the corner of their mouth and into the wind as the plane carried on regardless of its extra passenger.
They looked so normal out there, just a normal old man with his face pressed against the window of a plane that was over 30,000 feet above the ocean. He wasn't smiling, just staring blankly like he didn't even realise where he was.
It never occurred to me to check the planes history until we landed and he slid off the wing and scuttled across the tarmac like a crab that just shat itself. The article had his face on it, the headline dated back five years and went on to say how the plane had crash-landed in the same ocean we flew over. The old guy had gotten stuck on one of the wings somehow and died of hypothermia.
Ever since that trip I've demanded aisle seats, I'm not going to risk seeing a dead man again.
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