I broke down and signed up for the free in-flight wifi. They must have given me back my phone because they knew I was ready to break. It’ll cost me an undisclosed amount of time but I really don’t care anymore. I’ve been on this plane, with these people, non-stop for what has felt like months. I don’t know if we’ve landed once. Maybe we have and I’ve just been lost in drex when the doors have opened. I’ve lost track of time. It’s just so difficult to tell. I think that’s one of the purposes of this fucking place. To drive you mad until you step off. The guide never gives a clear answer when I ask her. She says I can get off whenever I want but if it’s not my stop then I’m stuck. When you ask what happens if it’s not your stop, she just says that she’d hate to ruin the surprise. That fucking bitch.
If this plane is a living hell and she’s warning me against getting off, then what’s waiting for me outside here. How are you supposed to know when it’s your stop? When I ask that, she always says the same thing. “Everyone will know when it’s their stop and everyone knows when their stop is coming.” That’s it. I can’t deal with her half answers or riddles for answers any fucking more. I can barely think straight anymore. I just wanted a cheap flight. I’m writing this now to stay sane between the moments where the drex pulls me away. I need to remember. I can’t forget and this will be a log for that purpose. Hopefully it reaches someone.
The best place to start would probably be to explain the reason I’m on this plane in the first place. The week before I boarded this plane, my best and childhood friend died. Tina Hatfield. She was an amazing person. When she found out about some of my troubles she offered me a room in her home, rent free. I didn’t want to put her within an arm’s length of my bullshit so I declined. She told me the invitation was always open and she’d love to have me as a roommate. She really was a saint with a kind heart. I remember this one time when we were kids, she invited one of our classmates to stay with her. The other girl’s dog had died and Tina’s parents just bought her a puppy. She thought it would cheer the girl up. She ended up giving the girl her puppy. Her parents were helpless to stop her from doing so. That was Tina, always giving herself to others. I think that’s what led her to becoming a social worker.
I work out on a farm in the country. I shovel pig shit for a living. $5.25 an hour because “small businesses’’ can get away with paying below the minimum wage. Capitalist hill fucks. 10-12 hour shifts a day for 5 days a week. A bit over $630 dollars before taxes. When I told all that to Tina the last time we spoke, I joked that she still shovels more shit than I do in a week, and only makes two dollars more. We’d both laugh. She said some people have to shovel the worlds shit and she couldn’t think of two better people to do it. God, I miss here. She was the best and I needed to be there to say goodbye, to see her go.
Her brother Ryan was the one that called me. Someone had broken into her apartment. The cops first suspected the intruder was there for something specific because they tore the place up and they didn’t notice anything large missing. When Ryan ID’d her in the morgue he noticed her pendent missing. She never took it off. When he told the cops they concluded it must have been someone that knew her well enough. They could have just robbed her but decided to kill her too. She must have seen their face. The funeral would be in two weeks.
I’d love to have a better job but this is a place of very few opportunities. Because of that it seems anyone from “out of town” is used for the betterment of the town. I’m talking about a cartel manipulating which individuals get what jobs. If you’re a random guy, well, for these folks, you shovel shit. On top of that I live in some grandmother’s basement. Did I mention the cartel also determines who lives where? Yea, lucky me. When her kids come over she refers to me as, “The lazy broke fuck,” and says she can’t wait for me to miss a payment so they, her sons, can throw me out on my ass. She charges $500 a month… Did I mention I sell plasma for money too. I’ve also got some gambling debts that are tied to some unsavory things I won’t talk about. Let’s just say that those two things have caused me to seek seclusion.
So where should a man go to get away? The middle of fucking nowhere. Some ranch town in the mountains that nobody ever drives by. There’s a lot of those around the country. A place for the good ol’ boys. I imagine they’re a lot like this one. Oh yea, last thing, I only have a bike. My car was impounded when I arrived and the judge backed It up. I was lucky enough that this town just happens to have a bike shop. They let me take out a loan on a bicycle. It’s an electric one. It was the only way I made it around town. I’d later come to find out it was owned by the judge’s son. Anyway I hope you understand the severity of my situation when I say the word broke.
Broke enough not to have the ability to miss work, or have the wheels to make it to an airport. Better yet, I cant even buy a fucking ticket. I remember sitting down the night I found out. I was in the beginning stages of mourning what felt like a sister. I wouldn’t miss this. I would say my goodbye in person, even if it’s too late to be heard. So I did what any broke person with a phone would. I scoured the internet for deals, packages, offerings, any type of transportation option that would be dirt cheap. There’s a lot of strange shit out there that you can do for a ride. How far back in Google have you gone? I was on page 99. I didn’t think that was even possible anymore. I turned to the 100th page of Google and hit the jackpot. The link read “Travel Anywhere, No Money Needed”.
I stared at that for a long time. It has to be the scam I thought. I read the little blurb after the headline. “Travel anywhere, anytime, for no monetary cost. We at the Drex would love to have you as a guest. All transportation covered. We will cover your lost wages while you are gone.” Those fuckers knew exactly what they were doing. I clicked on the link and did some navigating around their website. The company’s logo was an ugly shade of metallic silver. But the rest of the website was an odd shade of black. It almost looked like it had faint purple in it. It didn’t look bad or cheap, just not a design choice that a big ass company would make. It was too deliberate.
I did some more reading into the company on the site. Essentially, as I understood it at the time, they were a fairly niche non-profit that was funded by some billionaire families foundation. Red flag number one, I know, but let me repeat, broke. Their mission was to allow the less fortunate to travel, anywhere, as long as they fit the criteria. As a non-profit, I guess they’re allowed to be selective with their clientele. You have to fill out some forms and they’ll see if they can accept you or not. I thought, “well shit, that’s gotta be me.” I don’t remember what glass of whisky I was on at the point, it had been a lot.
Even still, I did a quick check around the web for them and they seemed legit. There was this one video though. I swear it looked weird, like AI weird but thought, “Hey, maybe they’re just trying to be cheap too.” So I went to their website and booked a ticket. Another red flag was the questions they asked. Height, Weight, blood type, age, ancestry, pay, living relatives… Did I mention, broke. I filled them out and kept it moving. It wasn’t a second later after hitting submit that I received a text saying the words, “Mr.Reklaw, you’ve been approved.” I clicked into the text. “Congratulations, we welcome you as a guest. Your driver will arrive the night of Nov 8th. Please be ready. They will get you to your flight on time. Your flight will leave at 10:00 PM and arrive on time. We look forward to spending time with you.” Do I really need to explain my reasoning again?
A week later I was waiting at my door for them to arrive. It was freezing that night. I waited inside because it was so cold. It was 9:59 pm and they said 10, so they’d be pulling up shortly. I didn’t see any lights come down the street. It kinda just rolled up. It wasn’t going fast and it wasn’t going slow. The wheels were spinning but it almost looked like it was sliding down the road. I walked out the door and towards the car. It was an old school Crown Vic, all black with the windows tinted. I swear there was a faint purple glow almost radiating from the car. Like a fuzzy glow that you get when you try to close your eyes as much as you can without actually closing them. It glided up to me and stopped when the trunk was slightly to the right of me. I looked down at my phone. It was right on time.
The trunk popped open. I waited there for someone to get out of the car and take my bags . Nobody came. I didn’t expect someone but it just kind of felt like that would happen. I tossed my bags in and shut the trunk. I looked over to the house, sighed, walked around and opened up the door. It had an all black interior with a black plexi-glass divider that you’d find in a limoscene. I bent down to look further into the car. The window must have been tinted the same type of black on the inside. You couldn’t see in or out. The lights were a faint purple instead and offered dim glow.. It looked like when you shut your eyes really quick and see the afterimage against your eyelids. I picked my head up and breathed a good fuck. I looked back at the house for a moment. Tina, I thought, then got into the car and shut the door.
Pitch black. It looked less like I was riding on the inside of a car and more like I had entered into nothingness. It felt that I could walk one way, forever. There was no depth, just black space. The car began to move and the door locked. The voice of a woman came from the speakers, “Please buckle your seatbelt.”
It reminded me of one of the overly nice tones someone puts on when they think they’re better than you. It has a hint of condescension, like you’re a child. Like they know better than you. I decided to oblige and buckled up. I tried to look out the window and was reminded for the first time that it doesn’t exist in the blackness. It was just me in this box on wheels that could be going anywhere. “Welcome Mr.Reklaw,” the woman’s voice chimed again. My brow furrowed, did they make a recording? “I’m your very own travel attendant, Mr.Reklaw,” it was as if she was reading my mind, “I won’t physically be with you in the vehicle or plane as you take your journey but I will accompany you in spirit.”
“So you’ll be on the phone the whole time?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied with a snide under bite in her tone, “Something like that, Mr.Reklaw.”
“So what’s your name?” A few seconds passed with no response. “Hello?”.
“I am always here, Mr.Reklaw,” she replied promptly. “You can refer to me as your guide, I’m here to answer your questions as you take this journey. Please just let me know how I can be of assistance.”
“So you’re like Siri or Alexis, huh?”, I joked. No response. She must have not liked that one.”I’m only joking.”
“You will be arriving at the airport in three hours, Mr.Reklaw. Please let me know if you need anything.”
“Guide, please just call me Otis.”
“I’m sorry Mr.Reklaw, this is company policy. We must keep a formal canter with our guests.” I sighed and looked down towards where I believed my feet were. I stared into the emptiness. I swear the more you looked into that black, the more that hint of purple appeared. It reminded me of one of the unsavory things I was talking about earlier. It took me back to that day. It’s taken me back to a lot of days, this darkness has since I’ve been on this plane.
A notification just popped up on the phone saying my time on the wifi is about done. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone for this time. Hopefully my phone is still here when I come out of it. The light it’s given has helped make this darkness less, isolating. That’s the trade for the wifi. The undisclosed amount of time I mentioned at the beginning is how long the drex takes you for. See, the drex is always going to take you under regardless. That’s it’s nature, I’ve come to learn. So might as well get a little hope out of it. I’m going to post this now. I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m going to make it to Tina. I just need to wait for my stop.