This was in 1977 when I was in nursing school, eighteen years old. The whole class was outside sitting in the colored leaves under a deep blue sky. The teacher was lecturing about oxygen. I wasn’t writing anything down. I first followed the path of a shiny jet above. Then, I secretly watched Sandy Devon. She wore a plaid skirt, and her legs were short but nice. Before this class we had smoked a joint, and my eyes felt red and bulgy like they might pop from my head. Good thing she didn’t see me. She was taking notes. She was one of the smart ones. I never took notes, because I pretty much remembered everything I read. 

But the jet was getting lower, diving in fact, making a crying sound. We all looked up, making little gasping sounds. The teacher exclaimed, “Oh no!” It disappeared and shortly there was an explosion. The ground beneath us actually shook. Being high did not help this. I had an anxiety attack, my heart pounding in my throat. Sandy sat with me, and we tried to calm each other down. It didn’t seem right that the sky stayed so blue and innocent. The ground still shook, and it occurred to me it was from the whole class trembling. 

What could we do? Foolishly, we thought we could help. After all, we were in nursing. The rest of the day was called off. Sandy drove my Ford Maverick because my arms were jerking uncontrollably. We sped into the woods, but the trees were torn and on fire. There were twisted pieces of metal. We turned around, not wanting to see body parts. We were not brave at all. Fire engines screamed towards us, arms waving us away. We were fools. Tears ran down our faces and we could feel the heat from behind on our necks, like we were getting sunburned. I was paranoid. The trucks were coming for me, the asshole. 

We drove back to the school and found the school doctor, Schwartz. His hair pointed straight up as he penned valium prescriptions for half the class. Then we drove to the Rite-Aid. Shit! Stan the pharmacist! He was our pharmacology teacher. He filled our orders, handed out the tiny envelopes, just three pills. His eyes narrowed. He had not heard the crash. “This is because of that,” I said, and his blue eyes grew. He was young and had well managed hair and trimmed beard. The girls mooned over him. Sandy had invited him to her party tonight. He would be watching us. No drinking on the valium. Well, there was always the weed.

I didn’t want to be alone so Sandy went home with me. I knew she had a boyfriend in Massachusetts but we held hands. My father had the news on. Helicopters were filming the wide swath of destruction on the mountain. Flight 93 bound for Boston, 255 souls disintegrated. Smoke curled up like a question mark,

Why?

My mother called from her hospital bed, “If just one of them. I could give my life to one!”

My father yelled, “Just stop that! You’re going to live!”

She lit a cigarette. We didn’t stop her. She coughed and retched. Her body looked smaller by the day and soon she would be just a wisp of smoke, too. 

I heated up some soup from a can and Sandy and I sipped it for comfort. My father flicked off the TV and smacked his hands together as if to say, “Well, that’s the end of the world.”

We drove back to the school to her car. We hugged. “Come at eight,” she said, kissing my reddened cheek. 

Driving home was when I first saw the Asian woman. She was standing next to the road, naked except for a piece of ragged blouse over her shoulders. Her body looked burnt. I stopped the car and she got in. She smelled like smoke. 

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t remember.”

“Were you on the plane?”

“Going to see my kids, I think.” She rubbed her arms, which were red and raw. It seemed like the skin had peeled off. “Dear God, is there a place to get blind drunk?” She had the strangest, loveliest green eyes, like marbles. 

“I know a place.”

I pulled into the GET INN. Why not? She’d had a bad day. Was she dead? I didn’t know, but it became clear when I went in that no one else saw her. Or if they did they didn’t bat an eye. We sat at the bar and ordered gin and tonics. 

“My kids go to school there,” she said, and then, speaking no more, she downed three straight drinks, almost without pausing. Then, drunk, she clung to me. I was at first repulsed by her peeling skin, and then felt sorry for her. Her long black hair was stringy, singed, and held bits of something. Seat cushion stuffing, perhaps. I wondered if the weed I’d smoked had some hallucinogenic properties. Or the pills? She slumped on the stool, and I had to carry her to the car. She had weight, so how couldn’t she be real? Then, before I could get her in, she bolted, a wavering line into the woods. I started after her, but then a terror seized me. I couldn’t breathe. I fell to my knees. I stayed that way until darkness crept in, bringing the scent of death to me. Then, I drove home to get ready for the party.

I took a bath, kneeling in the tub to wash my hair. I knew it was weird, but then I was a weird guy. I looked at my dick hanging there. It too was weird. Curved. I thought it was ugly. It had never seen the inside of a female. Poor guy. Maybe tonight. But no, she was a friend. Little Sandy, with whom I’d seen the blue sky collapse, a shared nightmare. I blew my hair dry, the rush of heat like fire through a cabin of breathing souls. I dressed in my best, feeling guilty for having intact skin. At one point, in the mirror, I thought I saw a flash of the woman’s black hair. She was consumed by a blue flame, and again the fear clutched my throat.

My mother was smoking in her bed again. For a second I saw her hair in flames, smoke curling around her like fingers of death.

“Stop it!” I said. “Put it out!”

“Did you see any bodies?”

“No! Just…drop it!”

I slammed the front door as I left. My father yelled at me from the porch. “Some respect!”

I peeled out of the driveway.

All the way to Sandy’s I kept waiting for the woman to appear. I pictured her on the forest floor, dead drunk, or just dead, waiting for her children to claim her husk, to finish burning her. I took another little pill.

Most of the class was there. Stan the pharmacist met me at the door. He looked good in his sweater. He had a beautiful girlfriend hooked to his arm, and the girls in the class pouted. “You can have a little wine only,” he told me in a low voice. He winked. I had a steady A in his class without studying a word. Maybe I had a brain tumor, because some pale, pale faces were looking in the window. I went outside and found a group with torn and burnt clothing. They left the windows and wandered aimlessly around the lawn. They said they needed help finding their way through the airport. They had loved ones to meet. They had been looking for what had seemed like eternity, and I knew it would be eternity. I smoked a joint and they trickled into the woods, calling names in broken voices. Shaking, I went back inside. Sandy thought I was cold and wrapped her arms around me, her sweater softer than anything I’d ever known. I had some vague memory of my mother and a blanket, showing me off, the blanket smelling of her smoke. Now, I pictured her enveloped in that eternal blanket of death, carried to the next world. Would I see her then, too, wandering through my reality, or lack of?

In the living room Sandy sat on my lap, sipping white wine. I could feel warmth like a liquid passing down my limbs. Stan watched, gauging everyone’s level of functioning, taking little sips from a joint. He was cool, he was. The man with knowledge of all drugs. I sank, the soft chair enveloping me in its forgiving belly. Sandy kicked her feet, and I rolled gently as I had in my mother’s womb.I was falling, falling back, my brain dizzy, blue as that sky beneath my lids, the glint of the jet out of the perfect blue. And my heart dipped with it, slowed, held a beat like a long low note waiting for resolution. The end was the start of our new life, sadder, wiser. My heart thumped Sandy’s ribs, sent her a message. The bong came around and we started to laugh on this day we weren’t allowed to. The dead Asian woman peered in the window, looking for a good time. I giggled and waved her in, but she stared sadly with her pale lips on the glass like a lonely fish in a tank with its time ticking away. 

Around two a.m. people started leaving. Stan monitored for any inebriation, but it was minimal. We were back to being somber after the day’s events. Home to dream that the world still turned.

But Sandy led me to her room. We took off each other’s clothes (she wore coveralls) ever so slowly, as if revealing bodies for the first time. This is male. This is female. Girl meets boy. Our fingertips felt around like tickling spiders. Hairs stood erect. Juices flowed. Our bodies pressed together, still emanating the heat absorbed by our proximity to the crash. It might never go away, locked in a secret room in our brains. We kissed gently, probing, our eyes closed, plummeting from the deep blue sky. When we landed, the moisture in our mouths exploded, our dry tongues fusing. We were joined, crawling under the chilled sheets. We set them on fire. Dickeybird got on his raincoat. I was happy and he was happy. He found his way into the dark cave. Candles in the room flickered our working shadows. I murmured into her shellike ear: “Your boyfriend?” 

“Shhh…”

Well, how stupid could I be? 

I came too quickly (asshole), so I had to finish her with my inexperienced hand. She crash landed, the whole thump of the bed startling me, the drugs wearing off. Throughout the early morning hours the bed traveled a foot as I got better each time. At some point the Asian woman slid between us, so cold. Her skin was like leather now. I curled her in and rubbed her warm. Sandy was asleep. At daybreak I found a robe and wrapped the poor woman up. I watched her walk off into the sun. I sat on the porch as the leaves blew around. I smoked a cigarette. Then, I went in and cooked eggs, toast, and coffee. My hands shook again. They wouldn’t be right for a long time, that I knew. I delivered breakfast in bed, but Sandy looked troubled, guilty. I knew it. Was I an asshole during sex? Did I cry? She was cold now. “How can I be happy?” she said. “How could I enjoy myself when all those people died? How dare I?” Jesus, if she knew what I was seeing. We ate in a funk. Outside the rain poured down, blurring our sadness. Part of me loved her. Part of me loved the woman. Part of me was sane, and part crazy. All of me was confused. 

Back at school, looking out the long windows, I could see them straggling out of the woods, steam sizzling off their bodies. The two hundred and something. I knew they were looking for me. But why me? Because they were in my head? Because I had caused it? I was looking at the deep blue, concentrating on the plane, wondering what if. Would it be my fault, for thinking about it? They came into the building, adventuring through doors—men, women and children. “Follow me,” I said, leading them back through the rain. The Asian woman was last to go. She didn’t want to let go of me. I was her link to life. 

The school nurse found me. My father had called. I was to go home right away. It was raining so hard I had to stop. The earth in its cruelty was being cleansed, perhaps, washing away yesterday, soothing the terror of a final minute. On the way the minutes became hours, time stretched like a band. On my radio the static turned into their voices calling me, the people from the woods, begging me for help. At home I found that my mother had died while looking out the window, her last words being, “Let them in. They want to come in.” I knew who she meant. They were her escorts, her guides to the other side. She smelled like smoke, like the dust she would become. The wind rattled the window, the rain lashed out its displeasure with me. 

I thought then of the future when I would have  an apartment and they would cluster in the hall. What did they expect from me? I had said I was sorry. I would have aged terribly by then, but they, of course, would remain the same. But sometimes they smiled, smiled. How could they? Something about me amused them. Would they know that I was lonely? That I kept one bullet in a gun in my drawer? 

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Gary Moshimer has stories in Frigg, Eclectica, Wigleaf, Smokelong Quarterly, and many other places.