Your Luggage, Sir.

         Joe was glad that the screaming kids were all behind him in Coach. Kids got under his skin. Period. Couldn’t ever stand them. He shuffled sideways down the narrow aisle in the plane, finally he made it to his seat. Window. Only way to fly. He released his carry-on from swinging on his love handles and clicked open the overhead compartment. His reflexes made him jump. Something black. It almost looked like an old trash bag, but liquid. It jerked out of the light and shrank back into the depths of a long slit behind the overhead compartment.
         “What the fuck?!”
         “Sir, please watch your language. There are children on the plane,” a nearby stewardess smiled.
         “Huh?” Joe stammered in surprise, “Oh, fuck them!”
         The stewardess lost her smile and shuffled along down the row looking apprehensively at him.
         He was seeing things. That had to be it. It was nothing. It was simply a trick played on his eyes by the lack of sleep and an overactive imagination. He threw his carry-on bag into the compartment and slammed it shut. He sat down and tugged the seat belt until it fit around his jiggling belly. Shortly, the stewardess gave her stupid presentation of how to survive a plane crash and the pilot announced take off. The plane taxied the runway and then burst into acceleration as if prepared for lift off. He would be home soon enough.

———-

         Ernie was enjoying his twentieth year as a baggage handler but, he had never seen a container like that one before. He didn’t lift up the tarp that was covering the object as instructed. He wanted to. He didn’t dare. He could swear that something was alive in it. The weight in the box had shifted; quite rapidly, when he moved it. He undeniably pissed off whatever might have been under that tarp. He didn’t want to know. That was it.

         He took a drag from his cigarette and stared out the window and watched the plane disappear. That container was very different. There was a feeling he was in terrible danger around that thing. Simply put: it scared the shit out of him.

———-


         Slobber was slowly inching down the side of Joe’s mouth when his head dove forward in alert. Someone started screaming bloody murder in the Coach section. In fact, several people began to join in and Joe rumbled around trying to unhook his seat belt.
         “Wha… what the hell?!” He stammered. “Stewardess!! What’s going on?”
         “Stay in your seat please, sir!” She answered.
         In typical fashion, Joe didn't pay her any mind. He tore free from the infernal seat belt and dashed to the back. People were pushing past him from Coach trying to get into Business class. His curiosity always got the best of him. He needed to see what was going on. If it was something serious, chances were that running to the front of the plane wasn’t going to save anyone anyhow.
         Joe soon regretted his curious nature. He saw what everyone was running from and couldn’t understand it. There was a man, at least he guessed it had been, sitting in a seat. Seatbelt still intact, but his head was nothing except for a bloody skull. Grinning stupidly. The eyes were missing and other than the traces of red, all the contents were absent as well. Joe’s lungs tightened, he hoped it wasn’t his heart, as he stomped backwards in awe.
         “What… is THAT? What happened?” He said.
         A lady behind him spoke up. She was from Coach. It was obvious by her cheap blouse.
         “He was sitting there snoozing and…. it just dripped out of the overheard compartment. It looked like an oil slick er’ somethin’ like that. It poured over his head and then it just slurped on back into that compartment as quick as it came out. It… it took his face with it.”
         “It took a lot more than his fucking face, lady!” Joe said pointing at the gruesome site in the distance.
         “Alright, everyone. Remain calm! I am US Marshall Charles and I am going in charge here. I need you to remain calm and stay where you are.”
         A young man emerged from the front of the plane and stepped towards Coach. He strategically had his hand resting on his hip, a gun no doubt, as if to say ‘I dare you to so much as touch me’.
         “Everything will be fine,” he continued. “There has been an accident and—“
         That was approximately when all hell broke loose. A black mass, a wave of molasses goo, exploded out of the carry-on compartment. Someone’s socks and undergarments shot out like confetti. The black mass flew over US Marshall Chaplin’s upper torso and tore it from his waist as easily as ripping a piece of paper apart. The sounds of blood spattering and terror were all around Joe. Overhead compartments started to burst open like a jack-in-the-box from hell, emptying tentacle-like sludges of black slick over passenger after passenger. The once white walls of the plane were painted with a crimson spray as people were devoured by the strange thing.
         Watching people being torn apart by something that looked like black jello wasn’t Joe’s cup of tea. He could see the pieces of human flesh slowly move through that black jello as if they were being… digested.
         Something in Joe’s mind gave loose. He backed away from the herd of people and sat down in his seat. He buckled his seatbelt and put the oxygen mask that was hanging in front of him on his face. He leaned back and looked out the little window. The plane was beginning to list dramatically to the right.
         Putting his head between his legs, like the stewardess had suggested in case of a plane crash, he kissed his ass goodbye.