Shhhhhhhhhhh. That's the sound of a 757 gliding through the open sky, above a pillow of snowy clouds, at 50,000 feet. Thumbs snap-cracking open soda cans, beer cans, and the occasional cardboard scuff of a milk carton for the screaming kid in row 23. Jacob was having trouble with the noise, even in row 10, seat C. It was the isle. He had to pee a lot, and his balls itched from a blistery sore that wouldn't heal, only continued to ooze. It matched the one on the corner of his mouth.

     Seat D was a fat woman named Gertie with too much Tea Rose perfume; too much girth for the arm rests to hold in, overflowing into his own lap. Her gravity-enforced breasts nudged the edge of his tray table, and Jacob could see her nipples were hard from the friction, through her polyester Hawaiian print muumuu. He collected his limbs as tightly as possible so that his arms and legs would not feel her warmth--but she was sweating in her obesity, long rivulets of salty waste drip-dropping from her forehead down to the corners of her mouth, leaking in to the crevices so she made a slurping noise whenever she inhaled through her lips. She smelled like fish.

     His great-grandmother had smelled that way, when she became too old and lacked the motor skills necessary for proper reach when cleaning herself. Jacob suspected Gertie had similar trouble finding all the bacteria within the many-layered folds of her flesh. It was nauseating, but the flight from Florida to Seattle was nearly half over. Just a few more hours, and he'd be at home with his humidifiers and hypoallergenic bed linens.

     "Would you like some coffee, sir?" A too-happy dye-job blonde bent perfumed breasts into his field of vision. Jacob wondered why flight attendants all looked like big-haired mannequins. Were her boobs fake? He couldn't tell, but he suspected not. Flight attendants didn't make enough money for plastic surgery, if he recalled correctly. He read her name as Tina, on her plastic nametag. He imagined poking the sharp point of his fountain pen through the skin her would-be implants—just to see if they were real. He’d always wanted to see one pop and spew when ever he watched China on WWF Wrestling. She was his favorite.

     "No...Thank-you," said Jacob.

     "Can I get you anything else, Ma'am?" She was speaking to the sweating mass of heated flesh that was Gertie.

     "Yes, honey. Can you get me a few more napkins, and some of those peanuts?" She spoke as if her mouth was full of slugs, cheeks and tongue gluey with slug-slime.

     "Certainly." The mannequin walked away. Jacob could see her panty lines. When Tina returned, Gertie was given an economy size package of peanuts--the kind that are honey-roasted and littered with salt, giving off a pungent smell that didn't mingle well with her fishiness. He reminded himself not to remember this the next time he went for Thai food--but he knew it was a lost cause. He thought of eating curry, imagining the rich and creamy substance over steamed rice on his plate, lifting the forkful of it to his mouth only to find it had changed to a cheesy consistency similar to toe-jam with slug-sauce, and it was too late--he'd put it in his mouth.

     Gertie's odors accosted him with flavors of rancid milk, gritty spoiled tuna-melt and some sort of slobbery slime. He imagined the chefs laying her naked abed a cutting board in the back somewhere, scraping specimens of skin-cheese that smelled like feet and peanuts from within the folds of her belly-flesh. Then a hefty spoonful of yeast from between her legs, digging into the soft folds of her vagina for just the right amount of feminine juice. They’d attempt to turn her over, maybe, prop her up on her side: slice paper-thin hanks of fleshy, fatty skin off her buttocks to fry up like bacon in Gertie-greese. He wretched inwardly, and thought he might begin to dry-heave.

     Jacob reached for the barf bag, just in case. Gertie began blotting her forehead with a napkin. When it was drenched through with sweat, she placed it neatly on the top of the chair in front of her. She had been unable to let her own tray-table down, due to her size. As she turned to look out the window, Jacob dug a fingernail into the sore on the side of his mouth, and then nudged her.

     "Excuse me, but--could I have a peanut?" Gertie smiled and lifted her massive arm to hand him the bag, wafting the onion smell of her armpits up to his overwhelmed nostrils. He took the snack bag and thanked her, smirking as he fingered several peanuts inside the foil with the pussy finger he'd used to pick his sore. Forcing a smile he gave it back and watched her eat every one of them.

     "I just love peanuts on a plane," said Gertie, fanning herself with the open front of her muumuu, licking her lips.

     There was sharp thump and a grinding noise to the right, something mechanical whining as the wing tilted a little, then leveled out. Across the isle, beyond seats A and B and out their window, he could see a splattering of something greasy. Something a little like orange or red or reddish brown--clinging to part of the wing. A bird had probably flown into the engine, Jacob thought. He had to pee again and he fought the urge to stick his hands down his pants to scratch the more intimate sore. It scraped against the wool of his pants, where he’d fallen out of his boxers.

     A crackle-pop interrupted Jacob's uncomfortable shifting. He had to lift his butt off the seat to tug at his pants, hoping his penis would stop sticking to his left leg. Being under the influence of the urge to urinate made him painfully aware of his organs that participated in the function. The air was becoming bumpy. It didn't help. The walls of his bladder felt as if they would expand no further, and there was that itch...

     Crrrrrrrrkkk. "Uh, folks--this is your captain speaking. We're coming up on some air pockets that are going to cause a little bit of turbulence... I'm going to turn on the fasten seat belt sign for just a moment. We ask that for your safety, you remain seated until the fasten seatbelt sign is turned off." Crrrrrrrkkk.

     Great, Jacob thought. Have...to...pee. The kid was screaming again in row 23. The vibration of the child's voice penetrated his skin, sunk into his bladder and vibrated the walls. He felt a flood welling up in him, like a balloon whose rubber was stretched too taut, soon to burst at any moment. He must not rupture... It's bad for the kidneys. He unbuckled his seat belt. What could happen? It's just a trip to the lavatory. None were occupied... So he quickly rose and went to one.

     Jacob was about to put pressure on the part of the door that said 'push', when Tina, the blonde mannequin--smile gone--snapped at him, "Sir--the Fasten Seatbelt sign is lit. You must return to your seat." Her mouth was a thin, hard, line. Do lips bruise from pursing, he wondered?

     "Look, this is an emergency. I've got to use the restroom and I've got to do it NOW."

     "Can't you wait--"

     "NO. I've got to do it now." He opened the door and shut it, as he heard her say, not without an edge of anger, "Fine--but you do so at your own risk. I warned you."

     As Jacob unbuckled his belt, he found it hard to do the pee-dance in such a tight space, with the bumps and shifts of the aircraft ruining his aim as his stream hit seat, wall, and floor. He felt like Niagara Falls, smell of fermenting urine, long cooped up, filling his nose. He didn't mind. It was his urine.

     A bubbling gas pain gripped him before he finished, and he decided it might be best to unload his breakfast in the crapper, too. He might not get another chance to go. He sat down, wincing at the wetness of his own miss-fire congealing with the hair on his legs, mingling with bacteria unseen on the seat--penetrating the cells of his flesh, possibly giving him some unnamed disease--and began to splatter a very runny load into the vacu-flush system.

     Something was wrong, though. The cramps kept coming, making his temperature rise and he could feel the heat of his soft pillows of loose poop radiating against his buttocks. He was defecating a heavy load--and worried it might soon reach his recoiling testicles. He couldn't allow the poop to touch his balls--if some of it got into the sore, it would never heal.

Wincing at the thought of having to clean runny shit off his intimate skin, maybe even hemorrhaging the blister on his balls, not possibly even reaching all of the runny parts and consequently smelling like toilet pudding for the rest of the day--made him decide he must flush to clear the pot.

     Jacob reached for the button, found it, and pushed... Just as the plane lurched and bumped again. There was a slight delay before the vacuum system activated, and just as it did, he realized he shouldn't be sitting at that moment--shouldn't be on the can as it sucked his bacon greased, corn infested, runny, rotten-egg-scent fortified feces down into an unknown refuse tank. But it was too late. The flap had opened, and the suction was coming...

     Jacob felt a wash of crisp, cool air fluff up his scrotum. A droplet of water, most likely sanitary blue, mingled with countless other people's feces and urine, now dotting his precious balls, stinging the open sore that he knew was oozing--could feel was oozing.

     He cringed, holding onto his penis with one hand (he liked holding it when he sat down). He felt the suction as much as he heard the roar of the whoosh it made in his ears, but something else was wrong.

     The sucking kept coming. It tugged on his testicles, at first like tingling fingers, and then more insistently like angry forceful ones. Suddenly it was pain, licking at his anus, licking not like water but like fire--and something was moving inside him, something snakelike and coiling and it hurt so bad, Jacob thought he was being ripped in two. And he was... sort of.

     Letting go of his penis, he tried to lift himself from the airplane toilet, but he couldn't. It was still bumpy from the turbulence. The suction was so strong it had locked his butt cheeks to the can, and the pain was ripping, burning, searing. Something was slithering out of his asshole, agonizingly slow. It was long and slick, and as the plane jerked from side to side he screamed, "Help me! Someone help!"

     Jacob reached between his legs desperately, and found his hands full of his own intestines dangling from his anus down into the vaccu-flush system that yanked, pulled, sucked at his ass with a big mouth that had metal-flap teeth and blue sanitary lips.

     The pain brought a feverish sweat on his brow, wetness and slime filling his thoughts and fingers as he slowly lost consciousness, coiling ringlets of intestine around his fingers. Jacob slumped on the toilet; spittle escaping his lips only a little, next to a thin greenish line of bile.

     When Tina had finally broken in, she smirked, as the brunette flight attendant behind her stifled a scream. Jacob was half-naked, pants around his ankles, one arm winched disparagingly between his legs into the commode. The other arm was perched against the cramped cabin sink, holding up a rope of slick, leathery white innards. He'd pulled some of it out of the toilet, and it was caked in poop. The flushing had stopped.

     Bits of corn and congealed fat clung to his fingers and intestines themselves. There were sections that were torn open, making the whole thing look like a segmented tapeworm. He'd vomited a little, chunks of airline egg on his chin.

     "I told you not to go in there when the fasten seat belt sign was on," Tina the Mannequin said.

     She picked the egg off him with her sharp-nailed finger, and put it on the tip her tongue, licking the bile marinated morsel off her index finger as if she were licking the rim of his hard-on, encrusted with puss that oozed from his sore. She sucked, giggling, and pulled out a pair of crude utility scissors from her apron, which she often used to open things more quickly.

     The brunette's eyes dilated, mouth-dropping open in a forgotten "O" as she watched Tina begin snipping sections of Jacob's intestines into palm-length chunks. An audible crrrrrrkk sound came over the comm system, as the captain spoke again.

     "Ah...good evening folks. Looks like the turbulence has passed. I'm going to turn off the fasten seatbelt sign in just a moment, after our flight attendants prepare your lunch. Today's menu is Menudo--or for those of you who don't know--that's tripe. I understand a vegetarian alternative might be available in the way of curry over rice with a peanut-cheese sauce. Mmmmm-mmm, folks. You're going to love these meals." Crrrrrrrk, and he was done.

     Tina looked at her watch, wondering how much time she had until the poisoned peanuts kicked in for the fat woman that had occupied the seat next to Jacob, so she could begin scraping the folds of her skin for the cheese-sauce. Perhaps she'd carve a cutlet or two--after all, there was plenty of meat to go around--and some people just didn't care for tripe.

She fingered the blades of the scissors, and smiled at the brand name.

     "Never leave home without your Ray Gartons!" She said, grinning at the shocked brunette. The scissors made a snick-snick noise, as she said,   "You're new here, aren't you? Get me a bowl to put these in, will you?" And she waved the cut-bowels at her in happy flight-attendant glee.

*copyright 2002, Rain Graves. All Rights Reserved.