This work written by Zach Claywell. Reproduction requests or general questions should be directed to Zach Claywell care of Zach Claywell at yahoo dot com.

A Pilot by Zach Claywell

“A pilot! A fucking pilot!” he screamed above the neatly lined blue seats. “Can any of you fly a fucking plane?!”

No one could fly a fucking plane, as was evident by the icy silence that engulfed the cabin of the airliner. I felt a sadness fill my lungs as the pure oxygen inched me toward sleep. I plotted my own last words. I really should have put more thought into it beforehand, I thought. I kicked myself for not having something worked out in advance. All the good last words had to be penned in advance. But that elegance in the face of danger was what made them memorable. No one would care about Marie’s call for cake eating if they thought she had stayed up by candlelight painstakingly editing her epithet. You can eat cake. No no, that’s all wrong. It is permissible to consume baked goods!! No, too wordy. Despite this I still ached for something memorable. As I finally passed out from the G-Forces I settled on, “Good luck with the clouds.” By then even the yelling man had settled down into a mumbling rant to himself. Praying to whatever god he believed in, undoubtedly trying to settle on his last words as well.

I was going nowhere. Literally. I was not even working, to be honest. No amount of passive entertainment could stave off the painful boredom of the humid summer days. I spent my time sitting. Staring at a computer. I would tap away at my keyboard, talking in anguished boredom the way a homeless man rambles to passersby who make the mistake of eye contact. I spoke to her everyday. Spoke being a 21^st century euphemism, of course. No one “speaks” anymore. We tap. Tap tap tap we click and clatter away. I clicked and clattered to her daily. For hours at a time, I’d tap and rap pleasantries. She was my girlfriend. Before summer started I’d heard her voice, felt her close to me and even kissed her. But I had no choice now, no way to feel her close to me, no way to even kiss her. We lived on an anxious mix of typing and vivid memories. I felt the urgency everyday, knowing if I lost even a tiny bit of the potency of my memories of her, we’d be something different entirely. Something solely based on the clicking sounds I made in my empty, lonely room. I refreshed my memories as best I could, daily.

She was a nice girl. I’d venture to call her beautiful with a radiant face that would change noticeably based on what she was talking about. Her eyes were gorgeous and always left me awestruck, even when she’d pretend to be sad. She liked animals, but not in a way that was particularly annoying, like some animal lovers can be. She lived in our college town, and fell in like. We didn’t always say “love”. Love was something intense, we shared I like you’s – mainly in response to I-was-going-to-say-that-too moments. It was nice. She was nice. I missed her often, in waves of intensity and release. I would suddenly be overwhelmed with the memory of holding her close to me, only to fade to something more immediate.

I was head-over-heels in like with this girl.

I left for the airport at six am. Dad was worried about my trip to Las Vegas. I was going to a conference. He told me to stay out of trouble. I told him I would. I tapped a message to her from the airport. She was awake, and we exchanged clattertype messages. She told me to be safe. She phrased it “promise not to die.” I laughed. It was funny. I promised I wouldn’t die. I told my dad I’d be safe.

Sitting on the plane before takeoff, my CD player broke. I tapped her my terrible news and she responded, “Awww, Well, good luck with the clouds.” She had a way with words, an odd diction that made me smile when I read it.

“Good luck with the clouds,” I said quietly to myself beneath the din of the jet engines as they started their slow crescendo.

He was a successful businessman. He was going to Las Vegas for a meeting and was staying a few extra days to see the sights. He was tan, with a goatee and short black hair. He wore an expensive brown suit. He was young, in his late twenties and his trendy white ear bud headphones sunk away into his trendy pants as he tapped and clattered on his trendy handheld computer type object. Trendy coffee burnt his lips as he hustled to make the gate on time. He sat down in a huff, just in time. The mechanics were working on an electrical wire near the cockpit, giving him just enough time to board. He felt lucky. A man beside him spoke. He was old, white haired and jovial.

“Going to Las Vegas?” asked the jovial man.

“Yes.”

“Ah, stressed out, huh? I know how you feel.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite. You’re hustling to get to the important meeting, then the important meeting after that. Drinking coffee, living in airports. Oh, I know it well, son.”

“ Do you mind? I’m trying to do some work here,” he said, growing more and more agitated. The old man just smiled knowingly.

“Ah, to be young again,” he said out loud to himself. “What’s your name, son?”

“Troy,” Troy said as he tapped and clattered loudly and angrily on his handheld computer type object.

“Troy is it? Good strong name. You’ll go far in the business world with a name like that!”

Troy was now openly ignoring the old man, feigning absorbed focus in his clattering.

The old man smiled.

I had the window seat, which was my favorite. No matter how many countless times I’d been on a plane, I always stopped and focused on the portholes to see the earth get smaller as we powered through gravity. It was always a nice feeling. I watched until the cloud cover got too dense and went to reading. I had coerced the CD player to work again. The music washed through me, soothing me from ear to toe and then back. It felt like how a cup must feel when it becomes filled with ice water. I paused my reading to consider the earth below as the music dripped in my ears.

“I’m all alone so far up here

and my oxygen’s all gone,”

sang At the Drive-In. I let my mind wander. The context was so strong. I wondered what it would feel like to be this high without the metal tube, without the pressurized cabin, without the dismal in-flight movie. I imagined it how cartoon characters floated just before they looked down. Only colder.

Down below we had just hit a farming state. The land was parceled and a deep, luscious green. Between the clouds I could see only perfect, green tiles of land. It felt nice. I went back to reading.

She was working at a daycare at the time. She measured her day in terms of bleeders and criers. Four bleeders yesterday, but only three criers. A good day. Her days were quantitative in some way. My days were measured only in how much time I wasted waiting for the world to get off work. I contributed nothing to society, but that was okay. It’s common knowledge that society is the single leading problem in this country. Take that, society.

Troy was trying his damnedest to be a contributing member of society. Well, I mean, he was trying to become rich. Very rich. His executive job was just good enough to brag at parties, but not good enough to own more than one luxury item. His was his car. He used it to pick up chicks. His latest girlfriend was a power-skirt type, making deals and etc etc. they were perfect for each other. He was too busy to devote much time to her, and she was too busy too. But they both felt better having each other – at least in theory. They were each other’s stock in the market of “social life”. Nothing more than another cocktail party topic of conversation. And they were fine with it. It worked. Troy didn’t think much about it. He requested the aisle seat because he was afraid of flying. Closer still, he was afraid of thinking to himself in quiet. There’s no telling what the mind can do if you don’t control it.

I gazed out the window from time to time. We were hitting a more desert-like place now. And I was taken aback. The canyons formed green veins that snaked their various capillaries throughout the otherwise dull brown landscape. After a few minutes of watching, the trees started sprinkling the scenery more and more. Like those pointillist paintings people like so much. They sloped with the hills and climbed the mountains. Then I saw it. A mountain jutting straight from the ground – a scarily sudden elevation change covered in a lush blanket of tree-dots. It reminded me of something tucked into bed. It appeared that the soft, rolling hills were merely wrinkles in a beautiful green bedspread – the silhouette of a foot (maybe?) pointing through the otherwise gentle slopes of the covers. The faraway mountain ridges side by side completed the vision. It was clear that these were two bodies lying beneath the covers. I thought of her. I thought of waking up next to her, seeing her sleepy eyes and kissing her sleepy lips. I thought of the feeling when I awoke before her – allowing me to enjoy her peaceful breathing, her lungs filling and releasing as we clung onto each other tightly in the new sun.

I unsheathed my cell phone to take a picture of this marvel - a violation of FAA rules. As I clicked and clattered on my phone, I felt it. The small, but unmistakable jolt of turbulence. I looked out, and the sky was just as cloudless as it had been since we entered the desert.

The turbulence shook through Troy, jolting his nerves and causing him to sweat through his designer shirt. He looked around and noticed the non-chalance with which the other passengers took the shake, and failed to comprehend their apathy. His mind raced.

“The plane must be going down,” he thought. “Why can none of these idiots see that the plane is going down?”

He took a pen from his carry on bag and scribbled on the closest paper he could find, which happened to be the back of an airsickness bag.

The Last Will and Testament of Troy Millford Littleton.

It was bizarre that my cell phone was out seconds before the turbulence occurred. I peeked my head up the aisle to see if the captain or flight attendants were ducking for cover. I saw nothing but a dangling wire, swaying in the pseudo-breeze of the collective ceiling nozzles. That dangling wire, sitting there, waiting like Chekhov’s gun.

“Thank the Lord,” said the old man.

“What?” asked Troy.

“I thanked the Lord that we’re okay.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I’m thankful,” he smiled.

“Thankful for what?”

“That the Lord didn’t take us yet.”

“Listen, when it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go. I just accept it as the way of the world.”

“Listen yourself,” said the old man through a broad smile, “If it’s the pilot’s time to go, what’s it matter if it’s ours?”

With that Troy’s eyes widened and he faced the front – his lips down turned ever slightly and the sound of an involuntary swallowing of spit sloshing down his throat.

Bump. Silence. A drop, like when an elevator goes too fast when you’re not expecting it. A shaking. Shaking. Trembling. A ding. Fasten Seat Belts sign. The dangling wire sparks. The lights flash on and off. It’s now dark. Another drop. It’s around now that everyone realizes what is happening and screams.

Troy unhooked his seatbelt and jolted to the front of the plane.

“A pilot! A fucking pilot!” he screamed above the neatly lined blue seats. “Can any of you fly a fucking plane?!”

No one was listening to him. They scattered and scurried around the aisles with no thought to where they were going. The old man smiled a muted smile and calmly put on his oxygen mask. Troy collapsed to the floor by the cockpit. He felt the air rush through the cracks in the fuselage. Troy passed out with his hand extended toward his last will and testament, an airsickness bag scrawled in blue cursive.

I woke up in a desert. Everything around me was orange. My eyes scanned my body to make sure I was intact. I was intact, but surprisingly immobile. I was laying on my side, my brain slowly and hazily piecing together where I was. A burning plane on the horizon spewing giant plumes of black smoke reminded me sufficiently. I used to be on that – in the air, up there (my eyes titled to the blinding sun), in the high hot heat of this desert. But I was now on the ground, as evidenced by the sand burning my eyes as the hot wind of the orange landscape blew in them. I closed my eyes to protect them, but woke up asleep again some hours later.

Troy was hot. His suit was not helping, but it was mainly the burning fuselage that caused his discomfort. He opened his eyes – awaking to the grisly silhouettes of burned passengers, still posed in fear. He scrambled up to his hands and knees and crawled toward the daylight of the hole in the side of the plane. He flopped into the hot sand below, and didn’t stop crawling until his adrenaline ran out, leaving his body lifeless on the desert floor.

It was nighttime when I woke up again. This time I could move, which put me in infinitely better spirits. I sat up to observe the wreckage, still smoldering in the night and casting a flickering orange glow on the specks of debris surrounding the crash site. It was oddly beautiful- like a romantic fire in the cool of the desert evening. The smell of roasting food wafted through the air. My mouth watered and my stomach awakened. I smiled. I hadn’t eaten all day, and the aroma was mana from heaven. It was then I realized whose flesh was burning, whose smell was wafting through the air, whose roasting made my mouth water. I vomited. And even as I had emptied the contents of my stomach it contracted my abdomen and throat until I was shaking on the ground. I heard a groaning in the distance and tried to call to them. My meager yelp was unheard, but pointless anyway – seeing as how my vomiting was what had awoken the figure in the first place.

Troy awoke later that night to the coarse sounds of a young man vomiting. He could tell it was a young man by the involuntary yelps his voicebox made between sessions. Troy spit and tried to stand to walk. He wobbled and fell the first time, but regained balance and hobbled toward the sound on his second attempt.

“Hey! Kid!” he yelled.

The dark and distant heap responded with a groan.

“Are you alright?” Troy said, more to fill the awkward silence than anything. Of course he wasn’t alright.

“Of course I’m not,” the kid grumbled.

By this time Troy had reached the kid and had sat down next to him. Troy ignored the comment and calmly looked up at the stars.

“Why hasn’t anyone come yet, do you think?” asked Troy.

“I’m not sure,” said the kid, speaking clearer. The kid raised from his stomach to his hands and knees, eventually rolling over to sit Indian-style next to his unexpected ally.

“You’d think there’d be firetrucks everywhere or something by now,” Troy observed.

“Yeah. But I’m not too worried. How can this many people go missing and no one notice?”

“Yeah. You’re right,” said Troy. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen. You?”

“Twenty-nine,” said Troy. A pause. “Why the hell were you going to Vegas?”

“Conference.”

“Oh.”

“What about you, Troy?” asked the kid. Troy’s eyes widened.

“How do you know my name?” he asked in bewilderment.

The kid simply pointed to Troy’s fist unintentionally clenched around a white airsickness bag.

“Uhm, a meeting,” Troy said after the shock wore off.

“Oh.”

We stared in awkward silence at the smoldering tube in the distance. Speechless we forwent speech and just stared; letting the gentle wind blow the warmth of the flames across the desert to our faces. It felt nice to be here on this cold night – not dead, breathing in air and thinking about exactly what I’d do if I weren’t here. I instinctively reached in my pocket for my phone, longing to tap a message to anyone and everyone. Especially her. I unsheathed it from my pocket and tried to turn it on. Nothing. But I tapped and clattered my message to her despite the hopeless black void of the screen.

I miss you. Plane landed…not dead. How’s your day?

I found myself not only missing the people I tapped to, but the act of tapping itself. I clattered everything I would say to her – that I’m alright, not dead, and lonely. I fell asleep with the phone in my hand, curled up in fetal position. There wasn’t anything else I could do.

The desert days were brutal. The sun sweltered so strongly that it drew the moisture from Troy’s skin before he could sweat. His lips chapped and hurt. It was the feeling of being in an oven that Troy found maddening. The heat made the air swirl in dancing waves on the horizon. Through the melted glass of the heat waves he saw nothing. The air around him was melting, and so was he. He hobbled to the wreckage to try and salvage some supplies.

I saw Troy walking toward the plane and called for him. It was our second day in the desert and I could already feel both our thirsts as we limped toward what we considered salvation.

“Hey! Wait up” I called. He turned his head and wordlessly ceased walking. I caught up with him and we walked toward what remained of the fuselage.

“Do you think anything is even there?” I asked.

“There’s got to be something.”

“But…”

“What?”

“The bodies.” I said. We both stopped in our tracks and pondered for a moment. Troy shook the thoughts from his head. His sweat flew through the air, evaporating before the drops could cool me. He continued walking. I was soon behind.

Troy walked with the kid a half step behind. When he reached the hole in the fuselage he kicked away a few vultures that were so bloated they couldn’t fly – choosing to waddle out of the way unsuccessfully. It was the din of flies that shocked Troy, even before the smell. The kid behind him let out a gasp upon entering, but steeled himself quickly – trying to act calmer than he was. They took off their shirts and put them to their faces as masks and searched the wreckage for any signs of water. They split up, Troy heading toward the back and the kid going to the front. The beverage cart should at least have pretzels and a bottle of water, Troy thought. He was right. He decided he might as well take the whole beverage cart with him, seeing as how it wasn’t in use anymore. He signaled to the kid, whose arms were full of tiny bags of pretzels.

I told Troy we should make shelters. He agreed and we grabbed seat cushions and various debris. We took blankets and pillows from the overheads. We went back to our respective spots and fashioned tents far away from each other. I felt the need to mull things over quietly and he must have as well.

I had eaten my third bag of pretzels before I lost interest in them. The most unexpected part of being in this desert was the boredom. I’d already gone over the wreck a million times in my head, and now even the brutal memories I had were like images of things I’d seen on TV. It wasn’t real to me. [[Or was it hyper-real?]] Was it a memory of something that never happened? Had I dreamed a plane crash so vividly that I thought I had survived? Was I simply imagining the desert sand beneath my feet? Was I in a psyche ward somewhere giving odd meaning to the sights around me? How could I prove I was here – or anywhere? Now or ever? These things cross your mind when you sit in the same spot staring at the same horizon for hours at a time.

I reached for my dead phone, gazing at the slick black screen. I felt its loss was a loss of part of myself. I felt trapped, claustrophobic though I lay in an orange expanse so vast a wrecked plane could go unnoticed. It was the desire to feel the vibration of the messages, the clatterclick of the sending, the warmth of mind at the sound of its buzzing. The physical representation of the abstract. Her messages of love communicated so often in it that love became the object itself. And now it was dead in my hands.

The sun was setting.

Troy thought of his significant other more often than he ever had. She had once been a status symbol, but now he yearned for their meaningless conversations as they dressed for work in the morning. He was near tears at every insignificant memory of every nonevent they shared. He felt something. Something so deep and so trembling he couldn’t explain it. But the more he thought, the less he could recall actually happening. What did they do? What did he do with his life ‘til now? He had nothing and lost nothing, but mourned it ruefully and bitterly. Did he miss her or the idea of her? Did he miss his friends or the idea of friends? Did he miss work or did he miss having something to keep his mind off of what his life meant?

He held back tears until the sun had set enough to hide his face.

The next day, bored again. It wasn’t actually all that different from what I had left. I was still sitting, primarily, though it was much hotter here. Society had lost nothing in this transaction except a jet-liner. It didn’t matter if I were sitting quietly here or at home. In fact, since I was not using electricity or gasoline while I was here, I was actually improving the world. That was a striking thought. It wasn’t like It’s A Wonderful Life, where angels tripped over themselves to assure me I was a decent and important part of the world. Here the faint buzz of flies in the distance did nothing to quell my existential yearnings.

I thought of her, but my memories were faded. I couldn’t tell which of the cloudy images had occurred and which I had imagined. Had she worn that skirt the last time I saw her? Or had we said those words? I could imagine her kissing me and saying, “good luck with the clouds” but I don’t think that really happened. Were any of these memories of her, or was I just imagining a copypasta TV montage?

I needed human interaction before I went fully insane.

The kid walked up to Troy’s spot in the desert. Troy put his hand to his brow as a form of makeshift sunglasses and smiled despite himself.

“Hey kid!” Troy yelled.

“Hey!” the kid responded. The kid kept walking, eventually plopping down next to Troy in the bivouac.

“What have you been up to?” Troy asked.

“Thinking.”

“Yeah.” A pause, “me too.”

“What have you been thinking?” the kid said, “If I may be so bold.”

“You may,” Troy said with a smile in his voice but absent from his face. “I’ve been thinking about my life.”

“Same. What about it?”

“What’s it mean? What did anything matter? And I miss it, I miss everything – but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is I even miss.”

“Your family?”

“Nah, I haven’t seen them in years.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking that. But we weren’t anything special. We were both just along for the ride, you know? I wasn’t going to marry the girl or anything, we were just having fun. Fucking, going to dinner. I don’t know, she’s nothing special but she’s all I have to miss.”

A break in the conversation let the winds and the flies fade back in, slowly.

“I miss my girlfriend too,” said the kid.

“Yeah? What about her?”

“I miss the way I’d wake up next to her and kiss her cheeks until she was awake.”

“That is a very specific answer.”

“I’ve had time to craft it.”

“I guess.”

“I miss texting her in public – hiding the phone so no one could see me. We were like kids in the best way possible.”

“That’s nice, kid,” Troy offered.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be…”

Silence.

“When do you think they’re going to realize these couple hundred people are missing?” Troy asked abruptly.

“I don’t know, man.”

“I hope they figure out soon. No offense, but I can hardly stand this place another minute.”

“None taken,” the kid said through a soft laugh, “I wouldn’t mind being rid of this place myself.”

They sat in silence for the next few hours. Locked in their own thoughts, but happy just to be near someone again.

I walked back to my little tent. It was good enough for now. It lacked the beverage cart that held up Troy’s blanket fort, but it was home for now. I could feel myself scooting toward madness. No clattering or typing; nothing for the fingers to do but swat at the flies that swung in clouds around me. I missed the soft resistance, the soothing ticking of the keyboard as my fingers kissed each letter with a passion I could never feel otherwise. Tapping was a drug and I was without it.

In all my days in the melted air of the desert it was typing I missed. Surrounded by death, lips burnt onto faces, the smell of one thousand rotten compost heaps being burned – all I thought about was the satisfying tick my fingertips were without.

It was only at this realization did I wonder about her.

More importantly I started to wonder about myself.

Troy was wondering of rescue. He couldn’t help thinking about his significant other. Had she even noticed he was gone? He thought of her intensely – making her perfect in a way only a starved mind could. Her words were eloquent, her accomplishments divine, her beauty unrivaled. Troy was lonely enough to fall in love with this perfect image he had created – but not enough to believe she loved him back.

Troy didn’t miss anything he had lost. The handheld computer type device had long since been decimated. Troy missed people, family, loved ones – people he hadn’t cared or thought about in years. Suddenly Troy saw life in a new way.

Suddenly everything had changed.

I was so fucking sick of pretzels. Pretzels in the morning, pretzels at noon, pretzels at night.

My skin felt too tight. The sun was shrinking it, like a child sucking on a juicebox. My skin cracked like paint on an old barn. [[My noun was like a simile.]]

Troy was attempting in vein to clean his hands. That is what bothered him the most at any given moment. The sand packed under his fingernails. He picked at it until his fingertips bled and resumed when the bleeding stopped.

Through the melted pane of horizon, Troy’s eye was drawn to a glint. He could see tiny specks of light. Rescue? He rubbed his eyes with his sandy hands for minutes. He pretended it was the sand in his eyes that caused him to cry so gnashingly.

I heard the sirens sometime in the afternoon. I rushed to meet them even though they were obviously miles away. The baking sun made them look so much closer, and the lack of any vegetation or even what one could call atmosphere made visibility almost infinite. I fell to my knees in front of a paramedic scurrying out of his ambulance.

“Are you alright?!” he screamed above the din of sirens.

“No,” I said. Why does everyone keep asking me that?

When rescue finally came, Troy sauntered up to them as though they were guests late to a dinner party. His saunter was actually more of a hobble, as his body had been drained of all its energy.

“You’re late” he said with all the pith he could muster. The fireman gave him a look and handed him water.

I woke up in Las Vegas. From my hospital bed I could see a tiny tv playing the news. There was a shot of me, my eyes glazed, my skin burnt and my walk crutched in hobbled sway. I didn’t remember there being cameras there. The doctors told me I was severely dehydrated and I could have died. I guess I was supposed to act surprised, or feel lucky. The nurse said my dad was coming in a few days. I asked for a cell phone charger.

Troy felt better. Other than the needle in his arm he was in much better condition than he could ever remember. He felt envigorated – emotionally and spiritually. He decided then and there he was in love. He called his girlfriend.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Sweetie! It’s me! Troy!”

“Oh,” she sounded worried but not surprised, “how are you doing?!”

“Better,” he said, noticing the smile in his own voice that he’d never heard before.

“I’ve been worried sick about you! Have you seen the news? It’s everywhere!”

“I haven’t yet, Hey!” he said, interrupting himself, “ I’ve been thinking a lot recently.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah”

“What about, Troy?”

“About you. About us!”

“That’s wonderful Troy,” she said with the faintest disinterest.

“I feel like I realized what really matters and…”

A pause.

“Will you marry me?”

A pause.

“I know it’s not the best way to propose, but I…”

“Troy….”

“Yes?”

“I don’t…”

“What?”

“I don’t think it’s going to work out between us.”

Troy felt the bottom fly from his hospital bed. Troy remembered the lack of gravity, the free fall, the clouds as they ascended ferociously.

Troy remembered the sinking feeling of seeing the ground rush upward.

I was released the next day. I immediately bought a phone charger. I picked my nails impatiently waiting for the bars to rise. 47 unread messages. And for the first time since the fasten seatbelt sign, I felt good. I felt free from the itchy confines of my prison. I clicked and clattered, and felt the smooth release of the smooshy springs ticking below my eager fingertips. It was the sound of rain drops pattering beautifully and fresh against my dry desert mind. I read the messages in order: starting at the simple greetings and ending at the painfully worried collage of letters.

As I limped slowly down the blinking corridors of Las Vegas, I felt my mind become truly at ease. It was a blue, clear sunny day in Las Vegas. The sky blank, empty and dead set against any wispy disturbance.

I read her message. “Good luck with the clouds.”

I looked up and realized there was nothing left.

Troy saw the kid later on the streets of Vegas, his nose buried in his cell phone.

“Hey!” Troy yelled.

The kid seemed confused and looked all around his side of the street for the voice. Realizing where and who the voice was coming from, he smiled and waved.

“How are you doing, man?” Troy said as he leapt through the maze of afternoon traffic.

“I’m okay. How about you?”

“It’s been a rough day,” said Troy, “But I’m glad to see you!”

“Why’s that?”

“Well…” Troy felt an odd shyness, “You’re the only person I know in Vegas, so…”

A pause.

“I heard there’s an aquarium in one of the casinos down that way,” he kid said with a smile.

“I don’t know about you, but I’d kill to see that much water!”

They shared the kind of laugh people share when ice is breaking.

“But I don’t have any money,” the kid said.

“I can spot you!” Troy rustled through his pocket to prove this. An air sickness bag, folded in tiny pieces fluttered to the ground.

They both watched in heavy silence as The Last Will and Testament of Troy Millford Littleton slowly crashed to the ground.

They stared at the paper lying dead on the sidewalk.

Their smiles shifted to pained grimaces. The warmth of their faces froze in the desert heat.

“Troy Millford Littleton is dead.” Troy declared, “He died in a plane crash and was born in the desert.”

Troy’s last words lay dead on the hot desert asphalt as he walked away.

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