Milkshake Read Free Page A

drowsy, he closed his eyes.
His hearing became more acute, more attuned to sounds other than
the incessant low whistle of the engines. He thought he could hear
another noise hidden within the engine sounds, a metallic banging
as if someone was deep inside the fuselage hitting pipework with a
hammer. Each time he opened his eyes, the distinctive sound melted
away as he looked for any sign that other people could hear it too.
When he closed his eyes again, the sound returned.
    Beneath shoeless feet, under the carpeted floor, below three
metres of airframe, there was nothing - an empty expanse of
screaming icy air. David resigned himself to being disturbed by his
latent fear and morbid imagination for the duration of the
flight.
    He yelped as a loud bang woke him with a start, the pain deep
in his neck thrusting down his left arm as he straightened in his
seat. There had been no loud bang and the subdued scene around him
was as he had left it before drifting off to sleep. A screen
attached to the bulkhead displayed a map of the world indicating
that a small yellow aircraft, trailing a thin line of the same
colour, was now more than half way to Singapore.
    It was reassuring the map showed no other planes in the
vicinity. In fact, according to the screen, no other planes were
currently in the air anywhere else in the world. He would be able
to anticipate the approach into Singapore by watching the numbers
on the altimeter decrease.
    As the cabin crew processed along the aisle checking seatbelts
and clipping trays back into place, he turned to Katherine who had
been asleep for much of the flight. “I think we’ll be landing
soon.”
    She nodded sleepily and he realised they had probably not
spoken more than a dozen words to each other since take–off. They
never usually spoke between eleven-thirty at night and seven-thirty
in the morning. The previous few hours of silence was no more than
habit.
    The captain appeared to have browsed through the manual of
alternative landing techniques during the long flight. Whoever was
at the controls now decided to begin the descent in the manner of a
small child going down stairs on their backside.
    Every few minutes the plane would suddenly descend as if from
one step to the next. This was not going to be a landing, it was
controlled dropping. The plane rolled alarmingly to the left, David
looked towards the window, two seats away, and saw sea, palm trees
and small boats just above the wing tip. The plane continued in a
sweeping arc before levelling off as sharply as it had
turned.
    Through the window he could make out the unfamiliar skyline of
Singapore. It sped past at a crazy angle as if gravity itself had
suddenly been switched off and everything on the face of the earth
not firmly rooted to it was now rapidly sliding away. David
imagined every human, every building, sliding off as the oceans
poured themselves around the curvature of the earth before forming
a giant tear and dropping off at the South Pole.
    There was a final plummet and the wheels banged hard onto the
runway, the combination of fierce braking and reverse thrust making
the cabin bulkheads shake violently from side to side.
    As they stepped from the plane, it was as if they had flown in
a huge circle. The walkway to the terminal seemed identical to the
one in London, the baggage trolleys looked familiar and the
brightly–lit posters were advertising the same cameras, phone
companies and credit cards as the ones they had seen at
Heathrow.
    It was not long before some of the essence of the true culture
beyond the airport began to infuse the surroundings. It began
simply - exotic foliage in locally decorated pots lined their path
and signs were bi–lingual, with English as the second language. As
they moved closer to Immigration, the hum of humanity grew louder.
So many different cultures and creeds were being drawn towards this
point.
    Insomnia–induced meanderings abruptly halted as his mind
returned him back to London.