The flight was late out of Kastrup. The week had caught up with air traffic and at the end of the day, some Friday evening flights were not going to be on time, on any week in the year weeks, especially when Heathrow was at the other end.

Across the lounge, planes of varied colors and nationalities were taking off down the southwesterly runway up and over Køge Bay towards a setting sun. Off to all points of the globe. But my tracker app told me that my tardy flight was still only just landing – let alone departing – in the next few minutes as was expected.

She grasped my attention as I tried to make the best of the complimentary but lukewarm chili – with rice – and a glass of supposedly good quality South African Merlot.

Doing nothing else at all, she was staring hard at the planes easing back from their stands and following each one with her eyes and then body as they took off, as if she were willing them forward, her chin lifting at the moment the front wheels left the runway. As if she needed one to carry her away, as, of course, one shortly would. Every single plane moved her the same way, such that I was quite mesmerized and in my absence of focus, dropped some of my rather unappetizing dinner off my fork.

I had no idea of her destination, of course, but what really stuck with me was the still sadness in those dark eyes beneath the shock of red hair that fell from her blue knitted bonnet, incongruous in the heat of the humid summer’s day outside. When I looked up from tidying the spillage down my fortunately red check shirt, she was gone. Not just moving out of the room filled with the blazing orange of the late sun, but actually not there anymore, such that I wondered for a moment whether my long and hectic day had played tricks on my eyes and I’d dreamed the vision of her entirely.

The screens told me that my plane now had a gate, and it seemed they must have hurried up with disembarking the inbound and cleaned up quickly, for the flashing ‘Boarding’ word caused me to hurry off, but not before I looked at where she had been sitting in case there was any evidence of her there. But there was nothing.

I was late to the gate after the wait – not the first time, of course – for my life often had that edginess of a creative risk-taker, which was useful to me in my line of business, so I walked straight through and onto the plane. As I took my place in Club, she was there in the aisle seat and stepped out to let me through to my preferred window position, with a spare seat between us to define our status.

As we touched with the sterile proximity of fellow travelers, she was polite, and in the intimacy of our exchange, I noticed she smelled wonderful with a heavy perfume I did not recognize, though that was not surprising, being a man with little knowledge of such things.

We take off quickly and make a gentle turn over the sea and the ranks of wind turbines just off the coast. Into a setting sun that flashes orange across the ceiling of the cabin as we make for our flight path.

The crew do their niceties, and we settle for a while with our meal and drinks, and as we get to the halfway stage and beyond in the flight, she leans over to me a little and begins her story.

“May I speak with you?’

She asks and without waiting for more than the merest of acknowledgments on my part, continues.

“I don’t dream about him anymore. Not at all. I did at one time. Well, all the time, of course. The bloodshot eyes. The smell of beer and sweat. The way his sticky hair flopped down on his face as he grunted and pressed down hard on me to that familiar rhythm.

“Doesn’t happen nowadays.

“It had to stop.

“If not for me, it had to come to an end the little ones. I couldn’t let it go on for longer. Not for them. Well, actually not for me either for that matter.

“It was a conscious decision on my part, of course.

“I stole it from the diner during my shift. I don’t know why I took it that day, of all of them. But the sleek curve of the handle caused me to double-take that heavy, thick afternoon.

“Customers arriving in their storm gear; windows all steamed up as they did on days like that. Wet and damp. Perhaps that was what made me do it. The oppressiveness. Or maybe it was merely the style of the knife that caught my eye and tempted me that day.

“I don’t know.”

She took a long draft of water from a large bottle, carefully and slowly opening and closing the top before she continued.

“I saw it on the preparation table out back, and it was still there the next time I came in with an order. Cheeseburger Max with double Fries and Diet Coke. An oxymoronic order that made me laugh and in a moment, I picked it up and slipped it down the hem of my skirt, cold on my back, handle stopping it from slipping down any further.

“That night he came for me, to the room I shared with Maja, or so I thought. But for some reason, he picked her instead, for the first time. And the last, as I told myself right there and then.

“Quietly of course.

“I saw him come into the room. I never slept that early those days anyways. And in the shadows cast from the moonlight through the window, the storm cleared away, I did it. Maja never woke. And he didn’t again. I left him on the floor by her bed for a while to make sure he was gone, red pooling across the fluffy white, rubber-backed rug by her bed.

“The next morning I carried Maja out of the room early before she woke and made sure she didn’t see anything. I didn’t want her dreaming my nightmares.

“Not then. Not ever.”

She looked over to me, two seats across to see my reaction. I was almost open-mouthed by this point, and her eyes laughed a little at me, though she remained tight-lipped. She knew I must be puzzled and intrigued – if not appalled – at this stage.

She took another sip and continued.

“After I got rid of him, they came for us all. I was old enough to make my own way, but they were gentle with Maja and Frederik, making it safe for them with distant family. The scars of him were still there, but hidden and, in time, they would need to come out. But they weren’t as bad as they might have been.

“I never dreamt of him after that. I dream of red, of course. Deep, deep crimson clotted on the white tendrils of the thick rug. I remember it now all dried and prickly and recall, even now, before I fall asleep and every morning just after I wake, the faint metallic smell of his blood.

“And after breakfast, wherever I am in the world, I smile – just the once, usually when I’m looking in the mirror – and make my way through the day.

“I heave myself through the shreds of my life that remain.”

We are getting lower and lower over scorched and harvested fields. Despite the late Friday arrival, we don’t have a circuit or two of hold to take an extra fifteen minutes or so, and we buckle our seatbelts for landing. I feel like mine has become a metaphor for the story I’ve experienced in that last hour.

But I still don’t know what to say. I’m a naturally empathic person, but this slow and calculated outburst has taken me by surprise, and I cannot say anything at all for a moment. But, before I gather myself to make some – any – comment, she continues with a final outburst.

“I have never told anyone about this before.”

She looks at me in earnest, but without expectation.

“You are the first.

“And you will be the last. For my life is about to change.”

I fumble in my case as she utters these last words and find what I’m looking for. I pull out my business card and pass it to her.

“In case you need someone to talk to about this.”

I don’t really expect her to take it, but she does. At first, a tiny smile crosses her face.

“A shrink. Ha!” She laughs out loud.“I’ll need more than a clinical psychologist to get me out of this.”

It is as close to real emotion I’ve seen in her the whole flight, she then fumbles around in her little bag, and I hear a zip pulled, first one way and then back as she places the card carefully in her safe place.

The plane speeds along the taxiway and seeks a stand. Like it’s been a long week for it too, and all it seeks now is the weekend and rest. A barbecue and a beer or two before starting all over again next week.

I peer out of my window as we turn and just for a moment I notice some unusual activity on the ground as the jet manoeuvres itself for precise position for its air bridge. As quickly as I noticed something, it’s gone.

Through the scramble that ensues at the end of a flight, we push and nudge to all get our things, and we begin to disembark. The red-haired young woman I have got to know so intimately – yet so distantly – is three ahead of me. Apart from a small personal bag, she has no carry-on and as I get up. As we turn left to leave the plane, past the obsequious smiles of the attendants and the obligatory pilot, I see two dark-suited men approach her and escort her away down the stairs that lead off the air bridge that attaches to the plane doorway.

I have to peer through a grimy window as I pass in the flow of exiting passengers to see them all get into a sleek black BMW that hurries away, lights flashing and she’s gone.

I’ll never know the outcome. I’ll never know her whole story. But the flight I took home from Denmark and that dark and hidden place she took me to that summer evening two years ago, will stay with me, forever.

Topic: Forbidden Places| Word Count: 1800| Genre: Thriller