A Better Life: Chapter One

A Better Life: Chapter One

    “Good morning! Good morning! Are you ready to die?”

    Lorena shook and stretched her way out of bed, rubbing her eyes and looking at her wristwatch, the squeaky-voiced digital assistant beginning to repeat himself. “Good morning! Good morning! Are you ready to die?”

    “Yes, Clockwork, I’m awake,” Lorena replied with a loud yawn, stumbling out of bed and reaching for a glass of water on a wooden end table. “Not so certain about the other thing, though. Is today the day?”

    "Do you mean for your son's field trip to Ireland?" Clockwork asked. "I believe so. I hope the fear I have been detecting from you goes away. I am sure that everything will turn out wonderfully fine!"

    “I hope it does," Lorena said, taking several gulps of water, looking over to the clock hanging towards the top of the tan-painted wall. “Hmm, it’s only eight o’ clock…that gives me two hours to get ready. Maybe I can fit in a quick run to the gym.”

    “Mom! Mom!” A voice cried out from the hallway. “Lincoln stole my cell phone! Mom!”

    “Then again. Maybe not,” Lorena said, rolling her light blue eyes, dropping the glass back on the end table.

    The beige door pushed open, Lorena’s fifteen-year-old daughter Melanie storming inside the small bedroom, adoring a fluffy pink night robe, her thick, dirty blonde hair pulled up into a bun, a venomously exasperating look of sheer anger in her dark green eyes. “Make him give it back!” She screeched.

    Lorena’s short and pudgy thirteen-year-old son Lincoln ran in the room behind Melanie, adorning a set of Super Mario pajamas, his messy brown hair all over the place, a flabbergasted look in his big blue eyes. “No! I didn’t take it!” He cried in his usual high-pitched voice. “She’s a damn liar, Mom!”

    “Hey! What did I tell you about the language?” Lorena shouted. “Next thing you know, Clockwork is going to be cursing up a storm.”

    “What should we do to solve this dilemma?” Clockwork asked. “Where is the cell phone? Did you take it, Lincoln?”

    “I did not!” Lincoln exclaimed, crossing his arms.

    “Did so!” Melanie rebutted.

    “Oh, quit it, Melanie. Your brother is telling the truth,” Lorena said, shaking her head. “I’ve done over three-hundred job interviews for a tech company. I think I’d know a thing or two about telling when someone’s lying or not.”

    “I had a date with Randy Summers, the fifth hottest guy in school,” Melanie shouted, shoving her little brother, starting for the hallway again. “Now he’s going to think I’m completely ignoring him! Ugh. I hope the plane crashes or something on the way to Ireland and you never come home, Lincoln.”

    Lincoln pouted as Melanie slammed the door behind her, an exceedingly sorrowful look in his eyes. “I do not think she meant that,” Clockwork said.

    “Yeah, me neither,” Lorena agreed with a shrug. “Don’t take it too seriously, kid. Now, I’ve got to go get changed, so…”

***

    Lorena stepped into the hall and went into the bathroom, splashing cold water onto her fair-skinned face, her dark-brown hair a tangled, frizzled mess, a lost, fearful look in her auburn eyes. “Like I said this morning, I have been detecting on and off senses of fear from you,” Clockwork said. “What is the matter?”

    “Oh, what does a smartwatch know about emotions and feelings?” Lorena asked. “But yeah. Ever since my ex-husband got killed in that plane crash five years ago, it’s been pretty rough. Been on at least thirty plane rides since, but it still hasn’t gotten any easier. How did I get tied into chaperoning this trip to Ireland, anyway?”

    “Lincoln must be experiencing fear as well,” Clockwork pointed out. “According to my records, he was on that plane as well.”

    “Yeah. He was,” Lorena confirmed. “Broke his neck in five different places. Come to think of it, I guess that’s what he was upset about.”

    *Crack* *Pop* *Boom*

    Lorena hurried into the long-winded hallway, where Melanie and Lincoln stood near a small end table, a pile of shattered glass at the former’s feet.

    “Oh my God!” Lorena cried, clutching her temples in sheer, unadulterated, agonizingly gripping disbelief. “That was the glass sculpture your father gave me as a gift! Did you break it, Melanie?”

    “No! I didn’t!” Melanie cried, pointing towards Lincoln. “It was him! He attacked me!”

    “D-don’t blame her Mom,” Lincoln said. “I…I did it. Okay? I’m sorry.”

    Lorena clenched her fists and gritted her teeth and twirled her ears and wrinkled her nose, her arms trembling out at her side as she shook her head. “Lincoln, didn't we already go through this just now? I know you're lying. Tell Mommy the truth, please."

    Lincoln sighed, slowly shaking his head as Melanie’s face filled with overwhelming fear. “No. I didn’t break it,” he said. “She attacked me and broke it.”

    “You little liar!” Melanie screeched. “I didn’t break it! I swear, Mom! That little bastard is a total liar, I swear—”

    “Shut up, Melanie!” Lorena shouted. “What gives you the right to act like the pernicious, condescending, wretched little bitch that you are? Your little brother tried—no, he fought like hell just to be alive and you’re still going to treat him like this? You’re still going to treat your own mother like this? You know, you’re here in this world by accident! Did you know that? You know what happened fifteen years ago? Our father and I had sex while we were drunk and the damn condom didn't work! He wanted me to get an abortion, but I said no. So the only reason you eat my food, use my bed, live in my house and breathe my air is because I let you live! Next time you talk trash to your brother, me, or even Clockwork, you had better think about what the reason you exist is!”

    Lorena took a deep breath, looking at the shock and awe and fear in both of her children’s eyes, and starting down the hall. “Get your things ready Lincoln, so we can get down to the airport.”
***

    “Do you think I was too harsh on your sister?” Lorena asked, seated across from Lincoln at the airport McDonalds, sipping on an ice water, three hours removed from the sculpture-shattering incident. “It was just a glass sculpture, after all."

    “The glass sculpture that your husband made you during his trip to France? The one that was found in his luggage in the plane wreckage? Regardless, I do believe you were being too harsh,” Clockwork said.

    “Well, I wasn't asking you, Clockwork, but thank you for pointing out what we already know,” Lorena sniped, pressing her finger against the silent button on her wristwatch. “Still, Lincoln…don’t get why you tried to cover up for your sister. You know how good I am at catching lies.”

    Lincoln shook his head. “You’re not as good at catching lies as you think you are,” he said, far ready to relieve three hours worth of mounting guilt. “I broke the sculpture, not Melanie.”

    Lorena’s eyebrow twitched as she crinkled the paper cup in her hand, her lips trembling with a slight, twisted chuckle. “E-excuse me?” She muttered. “You broke the sculpture? Not Melanie?”

    “She kept calling me names and…she threatened to call this girl I like, okay? F-from school. She was going to tell her that I liked her...”

    “Agh, come on, kid,” Lorena lamented, clutching her temples in agony. “Now I’ve got to call Melanie and make it right, but I'd assume she's at school by now. I'd better get Clockwork to give me a reminder to call her later.”

    “Excuse me?”

    A balding middle-aged man with gray glasses and a thin beard walked up to the table, adorning a gray sweater and matching-colored denim jeans. “Lincoln and Lorena Marquart?”

    “Ah, Mr. Hyde,” Lorena greeted, pressing her finger on her watch button to un-silence Clockwork. “What is it?”

    “Thank you for un-silencing me. I heard Mr. Hyde has entered the room,” Clockwork said. “He is Lincoln’s social studies teacher.”

    “I know that too,” Lorena scoffed. “Remind me at nine o' clock tonight to apologize to Melanie, please.”

    “Noted,” Clockwork responded. “I will go ahead and adjust that to Greenwich Mean Time unless you say otherwise.”

    Mr. Hyde cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses over eyes. “Oh, well, just letting you and your talking wristwatch know that our class is gathering to depart over at the first terminal gate,” he sarcastically said. “We’d like you to meet us there.”

    "Yeah, sure,” Lorena said, motioning over to Lincoln, a burning sensation in her stomach getting worse and worse as the minutes ticked sooner to board the airplane. “Come on, kid. Can’t go your whole life without riding another plane again. It won’t be that bad.”

***

    Lincoln shook and shivered next to his Mom towards the front row on the plane, one hand nervously clutching her arm. “I-I’m scared, Mom,” he told her. “What if the plane crashes again? I don’t want to die…I haven’t even gotten my first kiss, yet...”

    “Come on, we're already half-way there by now," she reminded her timid son. "And you’ve had your first kiss. You kiss me on the cheek every night before you go to bed.”

    “That doesn’t count!” Lincoln exclaimed.

    “Certainly if it doesn’t, you can always kiss me,” Clockwork said. “I am not programmed to have any romantic feelings, however.”

    “That’s coming with your next software update,” Lorena joked.

    Lincoln and his mother laughed, and Clockwork soon joined in with the two of them. The jolliness and merriment of family bonding was ultimately brief, cut short by a turbulent rumbling sound as the plane started to shake back and forth among the large white clouds.

    It stopped as sudden as it started.

    “We are experiencing some minor turbulence,” a man said over the PA system. “Please stay seated and relaxed.”

    “Phew,” Lorena said, wiping a drop of sweat off her forehead, worried but still poised to stay strong for her teenage son. “You okay there, kid?”

    The plane started to rumble and grumble and vibrate and shake through the sky, as every passenger on the plane screamed in fear of their life. This was no minor turbulence.

    "M-mom! I think it's happening again!" Lincoln said, holding onto his mother with a sturdy grip. "I think the plane is going down!"

    "N-no, it can't!" Lorena cried, tightening her son's seat-belt as the plane shook and rumbled, clutching him close to her in a feeble attempt to keep him safe. "Everything is going to be fine...right, Clockwork? W-what was it you said this morning?"

    The plane rattled and rolled and shook and parried left and right and up and down.

    And down.

    And down the plane went at the speed of sound, the frightful noise of screaming, dying passengers flooding the aisles, the putrid mix of puke and smoke flooding Lorena’s nose. And as quickly as it started, it all ended with a deafening crash. And all she could think about as her consciousness came to an end was how the lives of her two children would be changed forever. How she never told Melanie how sorry she was.

    “Good morning! Good morning! Are you ready to die?” Clockwork said.