SHIRLEY KNOTT

by Abby Goldsmith / AbbyBabble

"Please step aside, ma'am." The airport security guard didn't even bother to look at her. Hardly anyone deigned to give her more than two seconds of their precious time anymore. The older she was, the more insignificant she became.

"I do have my boarding pass." Shirley Knott clawed through her purse. "I know it's in here somewhere."

"Ma'am." The security guard sounded bored. "Other people want to catch their flights. You need to step aside while you search for it."

"I have it somewhere." She couldn't miss this flight. Otherwise her ex-husband would be buried alone, lowered into the ground without a single mourner. No one deserved to vanish like that.

The security guard touched her thin shoulder. "Ma'am, I don't want to keep asking you to step aside."

A family of six waited behind her. They all glared at Shirley, except for the screaming baby. Everyone wanted her to go away; to disappear.

Just like her ex-husband.

Shirley grabbed her valise and dragged it past the security stand. Maybe she was invisible enough to get through, even without a boarding pass?

The security guard seized her.

Shirley shoved him, and her elbow hit the luggage scanner counter. Something on the conveyor belt fell over. She hardly realized what it was until a cold stinging sensation traveled up her arm and spread into the rest of her body.

A purple liquid soaked her arm, leaking from a container marked with a biohazard symbol.

The liquid sizzled on whatever it touched. Shirley lifted her arm and stared at the soaked area in dread.

"You all right, ma'am?" One of the other security guards sounded sympathetic.

Shirley's limbs tingled. She was too elderly, and too alone, for anyone to pity. She knew it. Everyone here would probably point and laugh as she collapsed, just as they had done in grammar school so many decades ago.

The guard who had seized her reeled as if someone had punched him in the stomach. He retched. Shirley and other travelers backed away, noticing how the guard's muscles slid beneath his skin. He howled.

Suddenly his torso elongated, like stretched rubber. His head drooped on his lengthening neck. Clothing and skin ruptured, revealing muscles glistening with bloody slime.

The line of travelers shoved each other to escape. They tried to run through the body scanner, and guards on the far side began shouting for order.

Shirley didn't bother to run. That mysterious biohazard liquid had spilled on her, also. She was probably doomed. But so what? A weirdly gruesome transformation was better than dying alone and unmourned, like the alcoholic ex-husband whose funeral she wanted to attend.

The security guard had turned into a pulsating red monstrosity. But somehow, it wasn't over.

He grew a shiny metallic shell.

His legs fused into one unit. His arms spread outward in a flattening cross. His face grew pinched and featureless, and his screams ended as his mouth vanished into a metallic protrusion.

The thing that ended up in the security aisle was a man-sized airplane. It lacked windows or doors. Shirley wondered what was inside.

An excited pre-teen ran around with his phone, snapping photos.

Shirley didn't understand what had happened, but she felt fine. So far, at least.

And she knew an opportunity when she saw one.

She snatched her valise and squeezed past the body scanner machine, unnoticed amidst the pandemonium.

#

"Pardon me, sir." Shirley stepped in front of an aging man with a beard and a cowboy hat. "Do you know which gate leaves for Dallas?"

The man blew through his mustache in irritation. "Flight monitors are right over there," he said in a Texan accent, pointing. "Just look up your flight."

The text on those screens was too small and blurry for Shirley's poor vision. She began to explain that she needed help, but the cowboy seemed to be having a sudden seizure.

His whole body rippled in an obscene way, straining seams and popping buttons off.

He grew squat, losing height. Bones cracked, loud enough for Shirley to hear despite the babble from a growing crowd. Even his clothes changed, fusing into what looked like cheap plastic. Everything about him was becoming squat, square, and gray. He went silent as his mouth fused shut.

The last human part of him were his eyes. They dulled, losing all signs of life, flattening and vanishing.

The cowboy had mutated into a television monitor. Departure times glowed across the screen.

All across the concourse, people stood agape. Someone collapsed in a dead faint. A little boy wept into his shocked mother's dress. A man cursed softly and continuously.

Shirley had no way to know if the flight information on the man-monitor was accurate, but at least the text was easy to read. She saw a departure for Dallas listed as Gate 32A.

#

As Shirley dragged her rolling valise through the airport, ignoring intercom alarms, she was actually relieved to be so forgettably insignificant. No one connected her with the declared state of emergency. People sheltered in bathrooms or huddled in corners. Those who saw Shirley striding past them probably assumed she was just hard of hearing.

No one would dare ignore her, if they knew that she had a new power of some sort.

Power.

She clenched her vein-knotted hands. Power was all but unobtainable for a friendless old lady like her. Perhaps that biohazard liquid had granted her some sort of superhuman power, like in movies?

"Miss?" Shirley called to a flustered airline stewardess.

The stewardess wore too much makeup. She glanced at Shirley, then blatantly dismissed her, hurrying onward.

"Miss stewardess!" Shirley yelled. "Can you tell me where I might buy a box of chocolates?"

"Ma'am," the stewardess said in an irritated tone. "You need to shelter in place. Get to a—"

She stopped in mid-sentence, face contorted as if she was about to sneeze.

A sweet chocolate fragrance filled the air.

The stewardess's braids began to drip chocolate. She began to scream, her body puffing out, clothes crinkling into a gigantic foil wrapper.

Shirley Knott was tempted to sample the chocolate. But prudence won out over her curious taste buds, and she hurried towards Gate32A. She really didn't want to miss her flight.

#

Only a handful of people waited for the flight to Dallas, thanks to the blared warnings over the intercom system. A man dozed with his backpack next to him. There were two young men with tattoos, and an overweight couple. An elderly lady wore a neon emergency vest over her blouse, and she hobbled towards Shirley, holding out a tin cup.

"I'm a charity worker," the little old lady explained. "I know you're worried about your flight. But you look like somebody who understands the degradations that many older Americans suffer. Would you please consider donating a little money to the Palliative Care Fund?"

Shirley protected her purse.

"One dollar can make a life-or-death difference for the most overlooked people in society," the charity worker said.

Shirley struggled to think of a way to cause the charity collector to lose interest. "I'm not made of money," she explained.

Her skin prickled, as if reacting to some strange chemistry.

In that instant, Shirley understood that the power had never belonged to her. It had splashed onto her by accident. She'd been wearing it like perfume, but she was just as susceptible to its effect as anyone.

Millions of cuts stung her skin. She was falling apart, becoming a heap of cloth-like paper. Money.

She had refused to respect a fellow human being, just as the stewardess and the cowboy and the security guard had done to her.

"I ... will ... respect ... you." Shirley Knott struggled to speak through her papery lips with a tongue made of paper.

As she spoke, her face and skin firmed back to normal.

"We're both too used to being ignored," Shirley admitted. "The only reason I wanted to fly today was to visit another overlooked person, my ex. He was going to vanish without anyone noticing. No one will attend his funeral. I guess I'll be the only one."

The charity worker had overcome her shocked fear at Shirley's near-transformation. She nodded with empathy.

"I'm not going to get a chance to pay my respects to Sawyer. Not until after he's buried." Shirley looked out at the tarmac. No airplane, and since the intercom was citing a possible terrorist attack, she doubted any plane would accept passengers. "So." She dug into her purse and pulled out all of her precious traveling cash.

"That's way too much!" The charity worker went bug-eyed.

Shirley Knott pressed the hundreds into the tin cup.

"For Sawyer," she said. "In his memory. And for me, too."

<<< END >>>