"Handle With Care" by Eleanor Luke

A man squeezes into the middle seat beside me.

‘Could they make these seats any smaller?’ he puffs.

I don’t answer, pressing my face against the window as drizzle weeps onto the tarmac. 

‘I wasn’t always this big,’ he says. ‘It’s the meds.’

I sneak a glance. He’s stretching the seat belt over his stomach, sweat beading on his brow. On the seat next to him, there’s a black instrument case, buckled up and ready to go. From its shape, it has to be a banjo. I shudder and want to ask him why the hell he didn’t put the thing in the hold. But I don’t want to strike up a conversation with him in case he thinks I’m being friendly.

I close my eyes and hope for sleep. 

Two hours into the flight, I’m woken by turbulence making the plane pitch and keel through an ocean of air. 

‘I’m terrified of flying,’ my neighbour says.

I want to tell him not to worry because plane crashes are more efficient than car crashes. No chance he’ll wake up from a coma to discover he’s the sole survivor.

But instead I tell him I’m scared of banjos. An encounter with a banjo-playing nun when I was a little girl. 

He laughs. ‘So we’re both making progress.’

‘Are we?’

‘Yes. I’m taking my first flight in decades and you’re within reaching distance of a banjo.’

The plane lurches and my stomach with it. ‘What are you doing here if you’re so scared of flying?’ 

My bluntness stuns him momentarily. ‘I’m going to see my son. I’m bequeathing him this fella.’ He strokes the neck of the case. 

‘Bequeathing….’ I echo.

‘Yes.’

We go back to silence. But it’s different now. Conspiratorial.

After we land, I stretch on my tiptoes to reach the bag containing the ashes of my husband and daughter from the overhead compartment. 

‘Allow me,’ he says. 

‘Thanks.’

He hands me the bag. ‘That’s heavier than it looks!’ 

I want to say it’s not heavy enough. That two lives should weigh more than this. But then I’d have to tell him everything. So I just nod and smile.

I see him one last time in the arrivals hall, banjo slung over his shoulder. He’s waiting for someone. His son, I guess. I give a half-wave. He waves back. Then I walk towards the sliding doors.

Eleanor Luke lives in Spain with her husband, one teenager, another tweenager, and a small menagerie. Her stories have appeared in The Birdseed, FreeFlashFiction, FlashFlood, Retreat West. Longlist Reflex flash fiction. Top ten Oxford Flash Fiction Prize 2022, shortlist Welkin Mini 2024. When not writing, Eleanor can be found eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.