Come Back Margaret

“Sir, would you like a drink?” She spoke loudly both because the hum of the engines made it hard to be heard and because the man was elderly, bordering on ancient. He let in punctuated snorts of air and slowly sighed. She pushed the cart to the next aisle. A small child without her seat belt fastened greeted Margaret. She jumped up and down on the seat and screamed with excitement, her tongue and scattered teeth visible.

“Apple juice! Apple juice!” A polite smile was still apparent on Margaret’s face when the child’s mother pushed her down into her seat and scolded her with recently manicured nails.

“Will she be having apple juice this morning?” Margaret asked.

“Certainly not, she doesn’t need any more energy,” the mother scoffed. A drop of spit emerged from the enraged mother’s mouth and landed in her crying child’s hair.

 

Margaret struggled to keep a straight face through her thoughts of the selfishness of the mother and the disobedience of the child. She pushed her cart to the next row and the next. She was done. Reclining in an uncomfortable chair in the back of the plane, Margaret went through her thoughts. The one that kept coming to her was the hatred of people. It was true, she hated every person she had ever met. She opened her personal bag, pulling out a bottle of Zoloft. Margaret took the prescribed dose and then some. The plane was flying at 30,000 feet, and had been for hours. “When will it end?” Margaret accidentally said out loud.

 

A fellow flight attendant heard her and saw the stricken look in her eyes. “We’ll be down in another two hours,” she said in her hideously sweet high voice. Margaret pretended not to hear the girl. “When will It end?” she thought.

Just as Margaret had this thought rise into her consciousness, a man struggled on his way out of the restroom, making copious amounts of noise and bringing Margaret out of her head. A woman shuffled out of the same door a few seconds later. She obviously had not checked the mirror; her lips were smeared all around. Margaret sneered at the woman and man for their vile carnal act. Humans are monsters.

It was time to start handing out lunch, passing out various forms of cooked cardboard and wood pulp to cranky passengers. Margaret almost enjoyed this part of the job. She got to watch all of the disgusting people eat food appropriate for them.

She stood up and stumbled over to the freshly loaded lunch cart. She angled it through the back cabin and into the main aisle. “Chicken or pasta?” Margaret asked the woman who had recently emerged from the bathroom.

Before her lipstick-smeared mouth could open to speak, she felt a jump in her stomach. This jump was felt by the contents of the plane collectively. She screamed, which set off the child and several other passengers. The plane was going down.

Margaret was upright when the descent began. She clutched the cart in one hand and kept a death grip on the seat nearest her in the other. Her mind began a dance of rapid neurotransmissions. In a coherent and understandable format, they went something like this.
“Everyone in this world is evil. Is there any way to escape it but though death?”

With this, Margaret began to accept the transpiring event. With her death would come the end of her suffering. All the inanities of life, all of the stupid and rude and vulgar humans would simply disappear from her sight. Margaret rejoiced.

She turned to look out the window, to find out how much longer she had to endure this life. Instead she saw the scared face of the girl who formerly cried out for apple juice. She was wailing. Margaret saw a tipped over box of apple juice on the tray. The mother had let her have an apple juice after all, it appeared. They were hugging tightly despite their dispute earlier. Maybe the woman was not so selfish, after all.

Margaret’s grip on the cart was still tight but it was painful to hold on for so long. She noticed that the old man had woken up and had tears in his eyes. He had feelings, it would seem. His almost skeletal hands were gripping the armrests. Margaret was somewhat disappointed that she could never live to be his age. She liked the idea of being able to bicker at whoever for whatever reason with no repercussions.

Her grip on the cart was starting to loosen. Margaret questioned her reasoning for holding on to the cart in the first place. It was a burden of useless and rather flavorless weight. She wondered why she chose to grab it rather than another seat to help stabilize herself.

Looking down at the cart, Margaret noticed a shiny object. It was on the smeared lipstick woman’s left hand. There was another hand holding it. Their act was not one of lust, but one of love. Margaret almost smiled.

The loaded cart slipped out of her grasp, but she did nothing to stop its movement. Margaret realized that none of these people were bad or evil. They all had lives and families and feelings and love. How could she have ever wished any harm upon them or anyone in the world?

 

Margaret began to cry. The lives of all of the passengers would soon be lost, and she had only despised them in the short time she had known them. She wished she could save them all and give them another chance.

 

The feeling of free fall left the group. The plane was leveling out. The pilot had somehow managed to land the plane; It was a miracle!

 

The passengers ceased their sobbing and began to cheer. Margaret had saved their lives. A huge smile seeped up her face and she was consumed with joy. Margaret would get to experience real life, happily marrying and having a child and growing old. Hating all the people around her only hurt herself. As she reached the apex of her feelings of triumph and epiphany, the cart began to roll.

 

Margaret’s form was easily flattened by the lunch cart. A delightful crunch could be heard if one was listening closely.

 

The passengers flooded forward to the emergency exits, leaving her body to sit and wait.