Page 1 of Christmas With the Jerk

ONE

Woodley

Oh, the weather outside is frightful / But the fire is so delightful / And since we've no place to go / Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport

1001 Airport Rd, Chattanooga, TN

11:42 AM

Isn’t that nice?

They’re playing “Tis The Season” before take-off. I might appreciate this any other Christmas season. I’m sure most of these people, besides Thorne and me, are flying to some magical place to celebrate holidays with their loved ones.

Not us. Not me! Our flight it purely work related. Only the most important meeting of my life is coming right up, just days before Christmas. There is no time for nostalgia and cozy thoughts.

I hope they don’t do Christmas music the whole flight. I can’t get into the festive spirit until this is behind me. The infusion of the Santa hats into the flight attendants’ uniforms and the carols ringing through the plane only further remind me of how shitty this is.

I’m glued to the glowing screen of my laptop, racing to perfect the last details of the presentation before the flight attendants force us to shut everything down for takeoff. It’s the hundredth time I’ve tweaked this deck, but working with a trust fund loser like Thorne Chilton, I have to basically do it all if I want it to be done properly.

It means I can’t rely on him to get it right. I’ve got to do all the heavy lifting. At least we aren’t sitting anywhere near each other on this plane.

I’m not sure what it is, but there's a sense that something is missing. This holiday season has been so blah… Looking out the window, I notice gray clouds hanging low over the tarmac, winter casting a dullness in the sky. I sigh, settling back into my seat. We’ll be taking off soon.

Just a few more hours and I’ll be in Boston, settled into my hotel room.

Then, out of nowhere—BOOM!

The entire plane shudders beneath me. The sound is so sudden, so loud, that it rips through me like a shockwave. My fingers freeze over the keyboard, my heart hammering away in my chest as I try to understand what is happening.

My breath catches. What the hell was that?

It’s the type of sound that puts my Spidey-Sense on full alert.

There’s a beat of silence like the entire world is holding its breath, waiting for something else to happen, something worse. I look around, trying to gauge what everyone else is thinking, trying to determine where the loud noise came from.

A chill crawls up my spine. Something’s terribly wrong.

The murmurs start low at first, whispers of confusion. But they grow quickly into panicked cries and questions, passengers twisting in their seats, looking out windows, trying to figure out what's happening. The plane tilts slightly, the vibration of the engine humming beneath us. We haven’t even taxied yet, but I can feel it in my bones that something is off.

I unbuckle my seatbelt, leaning toward the window. My hands are shaking, the nerves creeping in before I even know what I’m looking for. That’s when I see it.

Smoke. Thick, black plumes rising in the distance, curling up from one of the wings of the terminal, not far from where we sit on the runway. Fortunately, the boom does not seem to be related to the plane we are on. Thank the heavens.

“Oh my God…” I whisper—The words barely make it past my lips.

There’s not just smoke. There’s fire. Bright, searing orange and yellow flames are now angrily emerging. They lick menacingly at the side of the building.

Panic erupts all at once, it seems, inside of me and all around me on the plane.

People are shouting, passengers turning to each other, voices loud and terrified. Babies and adults alike are crying. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so frightened and trapped in my entire life.

“What’s happening? What the hell is going on?” someone yells from the back. The flight attendants look as stunned at the rest of us. Time has stopped momentarily and they are frozen in place. As if they all got the memo, they start moving, pressing buttons on their radios, eyes wide with alarm.

“Everyone, remain seated, please remain seated—” one attendant says, her voice shaky but rising over the chaotic noise of the plane. It’s no use, no one’s listening.

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