Sky Pirate Of The Golden Age

by Eric Cline

About the Author: Eric Cline's stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Magazine. His science fiction stories have appeared in Analog, Galaxy's Edge, and other places.

Excerpt

Braniff flight 1225 from Kansas City, Missouri to Los Angeles was half-empty and half an hour late. I was excited and scared, because I was 10 years old and had never been on an airplane before.

My mother was not excited.

My grandmother had paid for two tickets for us to come out to visit her, minus her son-in-law. Mom was tensed up about seeing Grandma, but I didn’t care. I was 10! You don’t let an adult’s crabby mood get in your way at that age, especially if that adult is the most tiresome, embarrassing, and uncool person on Earth—your own mother.

The first thing I noticed as we boarded the plane was the smell. It reeked of tobacco. My lungs wanted to stop contracting. Every seat had a hinged ashtray. My parents didn’t smoke, so I always noticed when we went anywhere that smelled of smoke—which was almost everywhere.

Just as we sat down, some guy in a rumpled business suit, clutching a single valise, came on board huffing and puffing.

“Just found out they needed me in LA!” he said to a stewardess. “How much for a seat?” He plunked himself down a few aisles ahead of us. The miniskirt-wearing stewardess wrote out a ticket for him in pen, using a preprinted blank form. He paid with cash.

Oh, he wasn’t the hijacker, by the way.

Story Comments