I arrive at the airport in a limousine covered in blood. I
get out, light a cigarette, take a draw then flick it into an open sewer. I had
been told I was covering the newest craze to hit social media: Bobo Homer.
Youths would wait at airports with signs showing random names before taking
unwitting tourists on wild joyrides before kicking them out of the car in some
random location. All the way through this experience they would blast quotes from
Homer Simpson at their victims head with a specially designed ‘speaker helmet’,
hence the name. As you could imagine, I was excited to uncover this strange new
fad that eroded societal norms quicker than a river of acid. Unfortunately, my
handlers had an eviller scheme in store for me.
I met my contact, Jeshua, who gave me a guided tour of the airport. She gave me a little known security hack – visit the public restrooms, use the toilet to boost you up into the ceiling space and crawl past security. All this was well and good, with my recording equipment scraping over the ceiling panels and dislodging them as we moved.
“I thought Bobo Homer was done outside the airport.”
“We’re going to follow a group of passengers about to disembark. You’ll see what happens.” Jeshua said behind me. We crawled towards a square of light and dropped down into the captain’s lounge. The air smelt of cocaine, between concrete and disinfectant.
“Do all of your guys like to party, or just the cool ones?” I said, drawing a finger across a glass table and holding up the white residue.
“Step through that door.” she said, signalling to one of those bullshit pine doors they have everywhere. I rest my hand on it, feeling the tree it had come from, grown in rows in silent forests. Evergreen plantations where no bird or animal could live, the floor deep in brown needles.
“I kinda hate this door right now.” I said, pushing it open.
I am immediately accosted by three security agents.
They wrestle with me, shooting pepper spray in my mouth, stabbing me with syringes filled with fentanyl.
“Did the IDF teach you that, dipshit?” I say, as three men all kneel on my neck at the same time and they use a device on my hands. When they finally get off, I see it and groan. A 7x9 rubix cube handcuff, tricky to solve even if I had the use of my hands. Instead they were encased in the two Kevlar spheres at either end of the puzzle configuration. Was I going to have to solve this with my mouth? Just as I lean forward, they strap a Hannibal Lecter mask they had got from the airports fancy dress shop, pull a sack over my legs and force me to hop down the corridor.
“Where are we going?” I say, immediately hit in the ear with a cattle prod. It feels as though my head explodes. When I come to again I am being carried.
“Where are-“ I’m cutoff. Cattle prod again, this time between
the eyebrows. In my daze I picture a venn diagram of electroshock treatment and
electrocution weapons, but unfortunately my dad doesn’t work at a newspaper that pays me £126,000 a year to come up with a punchline.
Soon enough I realise where we’re going. I’m outside. I’m on the tarmac. I’m being carried towards a plane. I begin to shout and wriggle, stretching my legs wide apart so that the sack begins to rip, smashing my handcuffs on the floor until the locking mechanism begins to crack. More guards have to come and grab me. Two more, three more, more and more arrive. They are six men deep and its still not enough. I have ripped myself from my shackles and fighting with them furiously.
“You’ll never win. Not if I’m alive.” I scream, throwing punches that break the sound barrier and make bodies tumble through the air like wet towels. I’m about to spin round and deliver a devastating elbow strike when I realise the opponent in front of me. The airport had hired children to work in security. There were three boys wearing high vis vests, blowing whistles at me.
“Stop right there!” one shouts.
“Look, whatever you think I did, I’m innocent.” I say, wiping the sweat from my head.
“You need to get on that plane right now.” says another. I look behind me and see a 747.
“Where’s it going?” I ask. The boys begin to laugh, but it doesn’t feel authentic. It is the performative laughter of children who think that something should be funny and so they should laugh at it, rather than the actual humour of a well-placed fart (for example).
They begin poking me with toy trudgens towards the boarding ramp. People are staring at me from the windows.
“I don’t have any luggage.” I say. One of the thugs hits me on my shin, another keeps shining a torch in my face. I board the plane sullenly, giving one last look behind me.
“So long England. The home of Queen Victoria, the capital of the UK, and the best nights out you’ve ever had.” I say, beginning to weep as the door closes. I make my way to my seat in first class, turning to the person across the aisle.
“Where’s this plane going bossman?” I say, searching my pockets for a cigarette and coming up empty.
“Oh gosh darned it, this flyin’ metal tube here is gonna go to America!”
“You mean, Brazil? Mexico? Guatemala? Bolivia? Maybe even Anguilla?” I ask, hopeful. The passenger just blinks beneath his cowboy hat, rubbing some ketchup from his lip.
“I ain’t never heard o’them, are they some kinda make of foreign automobile?” he says. The blood drains from my face as the plane begins to taxi backwards.
“No, you can’t take me back there. Anywhere but there, please. You have to let me off. Please, come on! I can’t go back!” I begin shouting. The cabin crew rush to me, strapping me down in the (actually quite comfortable) chair.
As we take off all the passengers begin to start clapping and whooping. One keeps parping an air horn. They all begin chanting.
“Am-eri-ca! Am-eri-ca! Am-eri-ca!”
I thrash around in my chair, crying, begging for help.
“Just open the door, I’ll jump out.” I say. The Stars and
Stripes unfurl from the ceiling, covering every empty space around us with
flags. The door to the flight deck opens up and the pilots toast their
cheeseburgers together, before turning to look at me and smiling with veneers
that glow in the dark. I begin to convulse.
It looks like I’m going back to the United States of
America. Stateside, across the pond. Land of the free refill. But something tells me, this trip is going to be a bit different from last time, comprendez?
