Copyright (c) 1995 
 
                            RED-EYE 
                        by Michael Hahn 
 
     There weren't very many people on the last flight out that
night, and, as usual, I couldn't sleep. Travel is a large part of
my job, but I don't like it. Unlike my partner, I can't seem to
sleep on things that move. 
     Daphne and I were the team chosen to conduct the workshop for
the client in Los Angeles, and it was my first trip to L.A. The
four-hour flight from D.C. to L.A. was no picnic, but the flight
back home after five days of intensive work promised to be even
worse. 
     Document analysis workshops sound like innocuous exercises,
but for the facilitator/analyst team involved, it's a lot like
being on stage for eight or more hours a day. By the end of a
typical workshop, the client participants are tired; the
facilitator and analyst are exhausted. Despite the exhaustion, or
maybe because of it, we checked out of the hotel and raced to the
airport. 
     Daphne was in seat 12A, and I was in 12B. I wasn't there long,
though. Before the plane pulled away from the gate, she was asleep.
It's an odd sort of motion sickness, I suppose, but if it moves,
she sleeps on it. Lucky her. I looked around; there couldn't have
been more than twenty passengers on the plane, which is good news
for me. As soon as the seatbelt light went off, I grabbed my laptop
and moved back to the exit row over the wings. Exit rows are wider
than the others, and this one was empty to boot. I pulled out the
tray table, opened my laptop, and settled in to kill some serious
time. 
     It was 8:15 by the clock on my computer when the battery light
began to blink red. Two hours had passed, and my battery was about
out of juice. The drink cart had already made its rounds, and most
of the other folks had acquired pillows and fallen asleep. I
powered down my laptop, closed the cover, and yawned. Two hours of
flight time put us somewhere over the Midwest, just past the
continental divide. I looked out the starboard window and spotted
a thunderstorm, visible only by the intermittent flashes of
lightning. We seemed to be well away from it, though. 
     Maybe I was just too tired. There's no way for me to ever know
for sure, really. I stretched, looked around the cabin of the
aircraft. Two rows up, on the port side of the plane, the man in
the aisle seat was glowing. Glowing. He tightly clutched the
armrest of his seat, his fingers probably white from the strain. 
I say probably, because I couldn't be certain of any color other
than the bright, golden glow. The nimbus of golden light completely
surrounded him, extending for six or eight inches around his form. 
As I watched, the glow grew brighter and its hue became more
reddish. 
     The flashes outside the window to my right drew my attention
away from the glowing man, and I saw that the thunderstorm had
turned toward us, closing what I first saw as a safe distance. The
plane bucked once, then the captain announced that he was turning
on the seatbelt sign. The plane bounced again, harder this time,
and the captain was back on the intercom. We'd be landing in
Lincoln, Nebraska, he said, to avoid the severe storms moving all along the
Mississippi. He apologized for the inconvenience, and assured us
the airline would arrange connections to our final destination. 
     In the excitement and the unscheduled landing, I lost track
of the glowing man. He wasn't glowing when he disappeared into a
crowd at the airport, and I never saw him again. Something had
malfunctioned on the plane, we found out later, and we were treated
to a stay in the airport hotel before completing our journey back
to Washington the following morning. 
     I still wonder about the glowing man. Maybe I imagined it all.
Maybe he was the reason the storm didn't quite overtake us--or
maybe he was the reason the storm turned suddenly to the north,
toward us. 
     The evening news is reporting another plane crash, in a heavy
storm near Atlanta. I wonder about the glowing man. 
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