As Monica stood in the airport concourse, staring up at the departures screen wondering where she should go that might not entirely bankrupt her new life, she heard four taps on glass coming from behind her. Spinning around, she beheld the form of the old homeless guy from outside the Albany supermarket grinning toothily at her, somehow back in human form with easily several hundred busy people walking past behind him.
The hairs on the back of Monica's neck raised as the creepy...thing waved at her slowly. Monica looked back at the flight board for just an instant, seeking out the nearest flight gate with the fastest departure time. Just as her eyes flicked to "Rome, Gate A3, departure time 12:45 P.M." she again felt talons encircle her wrist, though this time the creature used both hands, one on either side of her. In a deep raspy voice that smelled disturbingly of funeral homes, the creature said in her ear. "Hello Child! You look especially tasty." He let out a groan of what might have been anticipatory pleasure. Monica struggled mightily in his grip as she desperately looked around the station. People were walking through doors to either side of them, but were roughly seventy-five feet away at closest. What was most alarming was that nobody seemed to notice what was happening aside from Monica herself.
She attempted to scream at the top of her lungs, but the demon clamped a hand over her mouth. "Now now girlie, none of that. Why don't you and I take a wal....AGGGGH!" It screamed as Monica bit the hand in her mouth, repulsed by the leathery texture that tasted like burnt peas. Without looking back, she sprinted for gate A3. Monica was not the religious type, but whatever the hell this thing was, she prayed to whoever would listen that she could outrun it and that it couldn't fly, even as the memory of it leaping off the top of the storefront to tackle, and tear apart, that security guard made her weak in the knees.
She was stopped by the line of blue-shirted TSA officers doing security checks. She wedged herself into the line, cutting in front of an elderly woman at the exact back of the line who was so deaf and out of it that she didn't even object. Monica folded her arms, nails digging into the fabric of her overcoat, and tapped her foot relentlessly as she glanced back where she had come, up, down, and in every direction. Her head on a swivel, she also belatedly realized that whatever that thing was had torn her overcoat. White hot anger pulsed through her, joining the rampant fear. That coat had been the last thing her mother had ever bought for her.
Five minutes later, with a conspicuous lack of demonic creepy old men coming for her, she made it through the metal detector normally enough, although a brisk TSA woman pulled her aside for a patdown that left no cavity unsearched. At least it was just through clothes. The thought of being caught nude in front of that...not human thing was terrifying.
She briskly walked until she was out of the TSA station's site before sprinting pell-mell through the airport for gate A3. She didn't have to sprint long, finding it near instantaneously as the security checkpoint had been at gate A-5.
Whipping out her money from her purse, she slowed her pace and approached the counter where two wary-eyed clerks were eyeing her distrustfully. She asked, "How much for a flight to Rome?" smiling as charmingly as possible. One of the attendants was a pretty African-American woman who twirled her silky black hair with a finger before answering, "Five hundred and seventy-two dollars, but we're two minutes from final boarding." She flipped her long, single braid from one shoulder to another in a gesture that struck Monica as oddly uncharacteristic. "Why? Do you want on?" she asked, but she wasn't even looking at Monica but the tall, rather strapping, male attendant next to her. The hair twirling continued and Monica had to pointedly clear her throat to get either one's attention as they had both begun to make moon eyes at each other. "Here's the money," Monica said, looking anxiously over her shoulder but trying to keep her tone as calm as possible. She placed the cash on the table just as an automated voice came over the speakers, "Final boarding for Flight AA-123 direct from New York to Rome, final boarding for Flight AA-123 direct from New York to Rome!" Monica walked backwards down the gangway to see if anyone boarded after her, then turned around when she felt the tube begin to turn.
Hoping the vampire or demon whatever it was didn't have invisibility powers, she half-jogged down the rest of the long jetway tube, but right before she turned a corner that would have led to the plane itself, she tripped and skinned her knee through her jeans on the rough vinyl flooring. "Oww," she hissed, but was then surprised once she got up and began walking again that the pain seemed to go away quicker than it ought to considering she had just taken a full-on spill.
As she rounded the final corner, smoothing her hair down with a small cracked brush that had been in her back pocket, she put the brush away and inspected her thumb as she handed her ticket to the blonde female flight attendant. Interestingly, the skin on the pad of her thumb from where she had cut it hours earlier had completely healed over. As odd as it was, that didn't stop Monica Dansbury from quickly boarding the plane and finding her middle seat in coach without incident. She sat down and began to wait, wondering how the hell she was going to learn Italian in her new life...but not caring.
A dreadful thought struck her as she sat there, watching a man in the window seat to her right snore soundly. The two attendants who had been staring at each other hadn't asked Monica for her passport. Nobody had. Come to think of it, Monica didn't even have a passport on her, but here she was on a plane to Rome. How the hell had nobody bloody thought to ask that? Monica sighed, absently tracing patterns on the empty seat to her left and wincing as a baby fussed across the aisle from her. She supposed that the oversight was welcome for now as it hopefully got her away from whatever that thing was. The memory of it jumping down off the top of the store and ripping at that poor security guard with just its teeth occupied the whole of her thoughts, making her shiver.
Banned
