Paragon (182 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by calbearspolo (View user info) at 2006-10-10 11:49:36 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
The drone of the engines was sleep-inducing. Normally. It was the constant rhythm, the low-pitch hum shielded only slightly by the thin fuselage, that drowned out almost all other sounds. But at 23,000 feet, knifing through the inky blackness of a lonely Wednesday night, Greg Watts was never further from sleep than this moment.
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Caliadne Kolonis was shockingly gorgeous. Her unusually blue eyes were startling and bright, always framed by her cropped hair and impish nose. Her slender neck scooped into her athletic body, toned and thin. Her clothes always seemed to fit in all the right places. Better than being just good looking, everyone loved her.
"Callie," as her American mother called her since birth, was the daughter of a Greek military pilot. He was one of the leading aeronautic theorists when it came to aerial combat tactics with fighter jets, and thus moved the family almost once a year for various military requirements and training ops. It forced Callie to acquire a quick wit and outgoing personality as a kid, something that complimented her dazzling white smile and olive skin, to make quick friends.
It was during college in London that she truly blossomed, excelling at both the 100 and 200 breaststroke for the swim team and standout student within the communications and advertising school. She had all the promise one could hope for.
Greg met Callie on spring break in Spain. He was cruising the narrow allies of Barcelona, trying to find the town's cheapest pint with dinner. Tall, athletic, and charming for an American abroad, he had come with two of his best-friend on a shoe-string budget and a penchant for pretty girls. Greg had seen her from across the bar and when he approached her he was confident and grinning. She was interested in the bold Yank with the tussled brown hair, and after a half-hour conversation, they were in love.
Friends who knew Greg would have said it was out of character to be so brash, but he took a job in the London office of his investment Bank just so he could be close to her and move there only 3 months after that first night. On her graduation day from college, he proposed with the ring his grandfather had given his grandmother, and had in turn been passed down to him.
The date they would be forever tied together was to be one year from that graduation afternoon.
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362 days later, Greg was on Paragon Flight 6360 from La Guardia to Athens. Greg liked the idea, the perfect embodiment of his affections for Callie being delivered by an airline with the exact moniker. Serendipity perhaps. It had been almost three weeks since he had last seen her, finishing up details for the wedding with his own family before flying out to hers to have them all joined together.
It happened 274 minutes into the flight. A small capacitor, electrically connected to the landing gear, shorted and discharged involuntarily. It was enough to melt a small perforation in a fuel line and ignite. In turn, the heat from the fire combusted it's way through the wing's structure and quickly destroyed the foil up to the safety cock above the second engine.
Greg was in row 27 and saw the whole event unfold through the window.
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When Callie got the phone call Wednesday night, she was pleasantly surprised. Greg sounded far away and muffled by static, like a kid talking through a tin can connected by string. There was quite a bit of commotion in the background, but Greg brushed it off as the in-flight movie. He calmly explained how overwhelmed he was that they were getting married in 3 days, how his life had become infinitely better since he met Callie. He poured his heart into recounting memories of them together and how much he wanted there to be so many more. He wanted kids, lots of them, and they would all grow up and make the two of them proud. He wanted to shake Callie's father's hand when he would tearfully give her away. He wanted to be holding her, right that very minute.
Greg explained that he had to go, but signed off with his traditional "raspberry kiss" sound and a chuckle.
He didn't tell her. He didn't tell her that his flight, crippled and spinning towards the ocean would never make it home. He didn't tell her that they would never get to do any of those things together they had just talked about. He couldn't bring himself to do it.
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Callie eased the phone back into its cradle and smiled. She had been feeling slightly ill all week, and had just chalked it up to nerves, but sure enough when she stopped by the doctors office that morning she found out the truth. It had been morning sickness. She didn't tell him because she wanted to see his face. She didn't tell him because he would be there in just a few hours. She didn't tell him either; everything was just too perfect.
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Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2007-06-07 03:30:10 EDT (#)
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Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-06-05 12:29:07 EDT (#)
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