I never want to go to Thailand

The minivan pulled up to a roundabout outside the resort and my family piled out - there were 10 of us, a rag tag assortment of cousins and aunts and uncles, plus me and my sister.  My parents were already here somewhere, having taken a flight to Pukhet earlier in the week.

A team of bellboys stood in a line.  As each one was introduced, he would run to the back of the van and add a suitcase to the growing collection on the baggage cart. I wondered if we were supposed to tip them, and how much.  I wasn't prepared, having failed to exchange currency at the airport, and it stressed me out to be waited on, by an army no less.

I glanced over at my sister, Alison, lounging at the back of the group, in a plaid red minidress, sandals, hair long and sleek down her back.  She'd been to Thailand half a dozen times, as well as numerous places in Mexico, South America, eastern Europe, western Europe, Australia, Japan.  At this point I believed the only continents she'd failed to at least set foot on were Africa and Greenland.

Ali tended to travel by learning the language and arriving with only a loose itinerary.  I imagined her moving through a country like a ninja, engaging on the fly in complex negotiations for out of the way accomodations.

The rest of the family swirled around me, in tourist shorts and walking shoes, looking rumpled and sweaty and definitely not capable of conversing in the local language.

We were instructed to board a small electric shuttle which took us literally half a block, then we were herded onto a smooth wooden platform, that began whisking us down a canyon.  It began like a mobile sidewalk at the airport but as we picked up speed the surface came apart in discrete squares.  My sister and I were at the front of the group so we ended up alone on the first section, with just the baggage cart, separated from the rest of the family.

It all happened so fast that I barely had time to register that there were no safety rails and no discernible steering or brakes.  The canyon got deeper, the drop off the side more formidable. 

We slid smoothly to a stop and waited, suspended over train tracks.  About a hundred yards to the left, children splashed in a giant rock water pool, their squeals echoing faintly off the canyon walls.  Another hundred yards ahead the canyon dead-ended and the tracks led to the wide loading dock of an immense complex.

My sister was at the very front edge of the platform, when it suddenly lurched forward.  She stumbled and I had only enough time to begin the "what if, oh shit" thought before she was off the side, the platform sliding past her body, hundreds of feet below, lying unnaturally arranged and still.  The red dress framed her like a mannequin.

I screamed, "stop," but the platform sped ahead to the loading dock without unloading, then continued briskly through gleaming white corridors, like a gurney ride, and I was crying now, hyperventilating, would have been screaming but couldn't catch enough air, huge hysterical sobs, in that cartoonish way all movie moms receive the news of their son's death at war, and I felt simultaneously like my chest had been crushed, and I was drowning and it hurt so much, just kept getting worse, my mind racing through flashes of the stumbling, her body on the ground, did I try to reach out as she fell, what if I just reached out now, could I still save her

I woke, heart hammering, breathing hard, the light on,  I am in bed.  I'm in bed.  It's 4am.  It was a dream.  Take a breath.  Just a dream.

Political scandal

The familiar chime of the eleven o clock news.  "Good evening."  Like the half dozen solo drinkers, I looked up to see the the vaguely familiar face of a woman with shoulder length brown hair fill the flat screen hanging over the bartender station.  "Grace Hailey, of CBN, filling in for Tom Donovan."  It was a slow night at Joe's Tavern.  Light conversation continued around us, from those lucky enough to have drinking companions.

"Tonight, a disturbing turn in a story we've been following since early this morning.  The two ice chests abandoned at around 6AM on the baggage claim at O'Hare airport, originally believed to contain explosives thanks to an anonymous phone call made to Chicago police, have now been confirmed to contain the remains of a woman."

Almost everyone was looking up now; conversation died.  I took a long pull of my beer.  "Authorities claim they have been able to identify the body, using genetic testing and dental records, but will not release her name until her next of kin have been notified." 

The head shot of a high-cheekboned blonde with icy blue eyes slid across the screen.  "This news comes only two days after the highly publicized disappearance of former Miss American contestant Claire Porter, a long-time resident of Chicago's upper west side and half-sister to the President, and follows on allegations last week that the two were romantically involved while the President was still married to his first wife Marie.  The White House had no comment and police refused to say if the two cases were linked."

Hover cars and Faberge eggs

Last night I did something radical - I slept without my phone.  It may be causal or merely coincidental but my dreams were exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to fill a void left by an iPhone.

Early in the night I drove a hover vehicle.  I'm inclined to call it a hover car but for full disclosure must mention that it lacked almost every single distinguishing feature of a car - there was no combustion engine, steering wheel, gears, brakes; in fact there were no discernible moving parts unless you count the big black stick in the front that ostensibly acted like a rudder.  To be honest it most resembled a plywood box, something barely upscale from Calvin and Hobbes.

I rode it proudly, dipping and swerving over the urban landscape as if it was entirely normal to move about the country in a box operated only by a stick and the power of my mind.  I maneuvered through a giant outdoor market, a place I knew well, stopping to talk to friends, acquaintances and even attempted - unsuccessfully but without drama - to pick up a cute new girl on my way.

I also tried to take the hover car (because I refuse to call it a hover box and vehicle is too pompous) to the beach but kept running into residential neighbourhoods and powerlines which is entirely too much of a recently-returned-from-Hawaiian-vacation metaphor to be quite comfortable.

Next up!  I was a 20-something ne'er-do-well, engaged to a wealthy debutante, at an extrememly uncomfortable dinner where I was being introduced to as well as subtly and thoroughly despised by her parents.

Briefly we had a Freaky Friday / Sixth Sense gender moment, and I was walking across the dining room in a ridiculous gown covered with bristly fake lilies, enduring the cold entitled stares of the snooty family who clearly thought I shouldn't have come to the wake for their son.

A moment later I resumed my initial gender and socioeconomic status and my place among the living so that I could Tango with my bride-to-be at our engagement party.

As had been our plan all along, we officially broke off our engagement mid-song, which also happened to be halfway up the staircase, next to the extensive collection of Faberge eggs, much to the relief and delight of her family. 

However the dance was so moving that some of her relatives relented in their distaste and sat around me at my Consolement party later that day to listen to my thoroughly insincere tearful explanation of our parting.

The reason for the staged engagement and breakup was never revealed and my pretend-fiance and I remained good friends.