The Strange Odyssey of Mx. Smith

by Jon Clendaniel

Your name is Smith.

You’re in a terminal at LAX, preparing to board a cross-country flight to Boston. You have some business there to conclude with an associate, a significant deal that has been gestating for some time. You need to get to Boston by tomorrow for the big meeting. Thus, you were forced to book a nonstop flight.

While walking through the terminal, you feel a creeping disquiet overtake you. A heightened awareness descends upon you, assaulting you. With this awareness comes a feeling of great import, a certainty that something momentous is about to happen, though you can’t put your finger on what it is. This disturbs you.

You board the plane and walk down the aisle. The carpet’s dull pattern—navy blue with specks of yellow—nearly lulls you to sleep. You find your seat: Row 18, Seat D. An aisle seat. Great. You settle into the worn leather, noting that the two seats to your right are unoccupied.  

You start making sidelong glances around the cabin, observing your fellow passengers. There’s a little girl across the aisle in the row in front of yours. She’s holding a doll with jet black hair and a polka-dot dress. The doll talks—it spouts some inane catchphrase every time the girl presses its chest. You hope the kid will get tired of it soon. Otherwise, this will be a long flight.

In the row behind you is an older man wearing a pair of round spectacles. His nose is buried in a book. The seat in front of yours contains an unlucky person whose head is half-covered in bandages. You steal only a few quick looks at the person, so as not to be rude. 

More people file into the plane and find their seats. A middle-aged man and his young son squeeze past you to sit in the seats beside yours. The boy sets his tiny backpack on the floor and takes out an iPad.

A slender young woman sits down in the seat directly across the aisle from you. She looks stunning in a tight-fitting black dress. Your eyes meet for a moment and she offers a quick smile before busying herself with her purse. With her clear skin and perfectly styled blonde hair, you think she looks almost too immaculate, too put-together—like a department store mannequin come to life.

You take a break from people-watching and take out your phone, browsing news websites and scrolling through photos of yourself with friends and business associates. You hardly notice the flight attendants’ safety spiel and the whirring of the plane’s engines starting.

As the plane takes off, the little girl crushes her doll in a tight hug, causing the doll to repeat its catchphrase over and over.

Yes, this is going to be a long flight indeed. 

Shortly after takeoff, you ask the flight attendant for a glass of water. You’ve found it calms your nerves during a lengthy flight. She returns with a small plastic cup. You take a sip, relishing the sensation of the cool liquid sliding down your throat.

Closing your eyes, you focus on the hum of the plane’s engines and the murmur of scattered conversations.

Your mind wanders to tomorrow and the pending business deal with your associate. You hope it will conclude satisfactorily for you. You think about the hard work you’ve put in, the sacrifices you’ve made to advance this far in your career. Get through tomorrow, you assure yourself, and it will all have been worth it.

You start to relax, allowing the soft ambience of the plane to usher you into sleep. 

You’re jolted awake by a rocking sensation. Your instincts scream “earthquake” at first, then you remember you’re at 35,000 feet.

We’re just experiencing some mild turbulence, the captain says over the intercom. Nothing to worry about. 

The plane continues to shake. You glance over at the boy and his father to try to distract yourself. The boy is watching a movie on his iPad, something with dinosaurs in it. The father appears to be asleep.

You now realize you need to go to the bathroom. That glass of water must have shot straight through you.

The fasten seat belt sign is on, but you don’t care. You stumble down the aisle toward the lavatory. You feel a sudden sense of foreboding, an uncanny dread, as though you’re being pulled toward the lavatory by forces beyond your control.

Stop worrying, you chide yourself. You just have to take a damn piss.

You squeeze into the lavatory, locking the door behind you, and relieve yourself. As you’re washing your hands, the plane hits another pocket of turbulence, much more severe than before. You’re jolted off your feet. You stumble, bracing yourself against the wall to avoid falling into the toilet. The lights flicker and go out, leaving you in darkness for a few seconds. Your heart pounds.

The lights flick back on. You haul yourself upright. Still disoriented, you don’t even bother checking your appearance in the mirror before opening the bathroom door.   

You walk back to your seat. There’s a strange feeling in the air that you can’t quite place—a thickness, like the subtle charge in the air after a thunderstorm.

The first difference you notice after taking your seat is in the carpet. You’re glancing around absently when it hits you—the carpet’s dull gray fibers, interspersed with specks of red.

Wasn’t it blue and yellow before?

No. You just weren’t paying attention.

Then you look to your right, and the boy in your row is still watching a movie on his tablet. But now, instead of dinosaurs fighting in the jungle, alien spaceships descend from the sky, piloted by giant humanoid beings with bulbous heads. 

Could be a really wacky movie. Yeah, that must be it.  

You glance around the cabin some more, trying to put yourself at ease.

The little girl is still clutching her doll, which still utters the same stupid catchphrase. But wait. The doll’s hair is red … wasn’t it black before? And wasn’t its dress polka-dotted? The girl pushes a button on the doll’s back and its plastic eyelids wink at you, as if confirming your suspicions.

The bookworm behind you is still totally engrossed in his reading material. Didn’t he have glasses before, though? Perhaps he misplaced them, you tell yourself.

In your survey of the cabin, your mind picks out other changes. Wasn’t that fellow bald before? Didn’t that woman have a mole on her cheek?

Are they all in on it?

You lean forward, trying to glimpse the half-bandaged person in the seat in front of you. Peering around the headrest, you can make out a mass of white bandages on the right side of their face.

You sigh in relief.

Although, come to think of it, you could swear it was the left side that was bandaged before.

You turn your gaze to the left, toward the blonde across the aisle. Before glimpsing her, you shut your eyes. You decide that she will be your anchor, the stone that keeps you tethered to this reality. She will be unchanged. She has to be. She is a shining beacon in this suddenly strange world.

You open your eyes to behold her.

She’s still radiant, with her shimmering hair falling around her shoulders. Her skin is as fair and unblemished as before.

But her dress is now red.

She notices you staring at her and locks eyes with you. She has the same smile as before, but now there’s an extra glint in her eyes, like she knows a secret, something that’s on the tip of your tongue but you can’t place.

She seems to sense your bewilderment. Her smile grows wider.

You tear your eyes away from her, fixating on the back of the seat in front of you. Relax, you tell yourself. You’re just a little freaked out right now, is all. It’s your nerves, that’s it. You’re nervous about the big meeting tomorrow. Maybe get another glass of water to settle yourself down.

You take several deep, measured breaths, and run your hand through your hair.

Then, you freeze. 

Your hair should definitely not be this short.

You pat your scalp in a few places, confirming that you’re not imagining things. Your hair is now cut short across your entire head.

For the first time since your visit to the lavatory, you feel your face. Your skin has a coarse, pockmarked texture to it. It feels foreign to you.

This is not your skin.

Still rubbing your face with your hands, you stand up. You feel like you’re in a trance, like only part of you is there in the flesh. The other part is gone, floating away somewhere outside the cabin amid the clouds and the ether.

You walk back down the aisle toward the bathroom. Each step you take seems to reverberate, a series of impact tremors rattling in your brain.

You enter the bathroom, draw a deep breath, and look into the mirror. 

A different face stares back at you. It’s older, more worn. It has been places you haven’t been, seen things you could not have seen in your relatively short existence. Your hair, cut much shorter than you ever would have before, has bits of gray creeping in. Your facial structure—cheeks, nose, jawline—are all unrecognizable. Even your eyes have a new look—more world-weary, more knowledgeable.

You take a moment to wrestle with the notion that you have no idea who you are.

You step out of the bathroom in a trance-like state, not really seeing or hearing anything around you. Then, a voice on the intercom cuts through the fog.

“Attention, passengers, we are beginning our approach to LaGuardia. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. It’s been a pleasure flying with you, and welcome to the Big Apple.”

The plane starts to descend. The tinny voice of Sinatra blares from the intercom. Your mind grapples for some sense of purchase. Amid the wreckage of the beliefs you once held and the things you once accepted as fact, you can now discern only two incontrovertible truths: Your name isn’t Smith, and you’re not going to Boston.

The remainder of the flight passes like a dream. You go back to your seat, strap in, and join your fellow passengers in tolerating the rough descent into Queens.

You gather your carry-on luggage (strangely, it still looks the same as before), and depart the plane. As you step onto the boarding ramp, you feel a curious sense of calm wash over you.

Mx. Smith is gone. They are obsolete. You are someone new, free to start fresh, free to wander where you please.         

You walk out of the terminal. You stand on the sidewalk, gazing out into the cool, dark night. Waiting taxis and Ubers line the curb. You scan them, trying to decide which one to take. Trying to decide how to begin your new life.

You see the blonde in the red dress walk toward a taxi. Intrigued, you follow. She opens the door and climbs in the back seat, leaving the door open.

You look into the back seat. The woman wears the same sly smile as she did on the plane. She beckons to you with a wiry finger.

“Room for one more, honey,” she croons.

You shrug your new shoulders, returning her smile as you climb into the cab.