It was Christmas Eve. Fog stuck to the tarmac at Lindbergh Field. Tomorrow was Christmas, yet Morgan was stuck with the night shift at the security line, again. Every year her coworkers found a way to convince her to take the shift.
Her mind was elsewhere when she asked the frantic passengers where they were going and why. It was ridiculous that her boss required her to be happy to greet these average, boring, unremarkable passengers. Each traveler had the same story. Everyone wanted to get home to see their families; Morgan would smile and wish them luck, secretly hoping their Christmas would be ruined, just like her own.
It wasn't like she had anyone to see tonight, anyone to come home to. If she wasn't in this horrible place, she would be at her tiny apartment on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise, eating microwave popcorn. Some part of her deep, deep down, is proud of herself for letting her coworkers spend time with their families, but on the surface, she hates every single one of them and the mundane life they share.
All of the stories she heard were the same, until a man Boston bound came through her line. Mark Potterson had dark brown hair, so brown it was almost black. It was the exact opposite of Morgan’s light blonde hair. His grey eyes had a strange emotion in them. It wasn't frantic desperation, like the other passengers. It was a lighter emotion, like a playful golden Labrador. He was unlike any person she had ever met. His apparent innocence is rare in this day and age.
He was headed for Boston, on an American Airlines flight that was only half filled. From the instant Morgan saw him, she knew he was what she was waiting for. Someone in her life that brought her joy; someone who would help her escape her boring life. But he was walking away, about to hop on a plane that would fly thousands of miles away from her.
Morgan couldn't let him get away; she couldn't go on living like she did now. She asked Henry, her overly peppy and extremely irritating partner, to cover for her while she went to the bathroom, but the bathroom wasn't her destination. She sprinted to the ticket counter to purchase a ticket for flight 3463 to Boston. The flight boarded in 3 minutes, so she ran to the gate, and her future. As Morgan was boarding the plane, she caught a glimpse of Mark’s rich brown hair, which fueled her desperation further. She couldn't let him get away. The doors closed, and somehow Morgan found herself in a seat next to Mark. During the first hour she would peek over at him every other minute, but finally she gathered enough courage to do what she wanted to do since she saw him waiting in line. She smiled like she never had before, and squeaked out, “Hi, I'm Morgan”.
Reflection: "The Plot Sickens" by Fanny Howe is a short essay about the flaws of young writers. She talks about random violence and unsolved stories. My free write deviates from Howe’s claim about young writer’s violent stories. My story has a hero, which Howe said was rare to find among this generation of authors. Although my short story never reveals that Mark actually saves Morgan, he inspires her to save herself. “Clearly these young writers can’t figure out how the solve the problem they have invented in the first few pages”. This statement was not true for my story, as Morgan finds a better life in Boston. I was able to solve the problem I created within a few hundred words, exposes Howe’s article to not be completely true. Howe says, “For me it was not the violence per se; it is the fact that violence enters the story without benefit of the plot, as if by metaphysical caprice”. There was no violence in my story, so that disproves Howe’s theory about senseless and random violence in my case. I do believe her claim is true for a lot of students however, because I have found that my classmates did add senseless violence to their stories. Her article does have some truth, as I have found myself adding random violence into my other stories and pieces, just not this particular one. I do believe that most of Howe’s claims are true about young writer’s flaws, however it is clear that they are not applicable to all writers, all of the time.
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