By Kenneth Harper Finton ©2015
An imaginary trip into the mind of Andreas Lubitz
A French helicopter departs for the site where Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed. CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY MUSTAFA YALCIN/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY
Tired of living, spurned in loving, deficit in compassion,
Andreas Lubitz and his crippled amygdala
Donned his smart uniform and climbed aboard the plane.
A pretty stewardess smiled at him,
Bid him a good morning as he passed.
She smelled of a musky perfume
That reminded him of the sex he often craved with her.
He found sex to be an animalistic and ludicrous practice.
Love had always been a dream that faded away to sorrow.
He returned to her a faceless smile without meaning.
He took his place in the cockpit beside Patrick, his pilot.
It was less that two hours to Dusseldorf from Barcelona.
Patrick was loquacious, almost collegiate in manner.
As they bantered back and forth, Patrick’s banal conversation
Bored Andreas to death. He could only fake a smile for reply.
Andreas thought about how he hated God for giving him life.
An aching desire for release from the prison of time
Had overcome him. A dull ache of depression swept over him
As he remembered all the hideous assaults he had endured.
It was as though he wore glasses that saw only
The evil of time and hid away the pleasant moments.
When Patrick left the cabin, Andreas pushed the button
To lock the door so that he would not have to bear him any longer.
Alone in the cabin, with only the sky in his eyes and the engine noise
In his ears, Andreas was at last alone with himself.
He hated his aloneness. “Everyone is suffering in their meaningless
Lives just like I am,” he thought. The future brings nothing
But more disappointment, times filled with melancholy,
Nights filled with helpless thoughts, days filled with foolish actions
That try to mitigate the absurdity of living a desperately miserable existence.
Dog eats dog, life eats life, panicked schools of fish swirling
In circles as the sharks attack the outer layers of their being.
The images consumed him. The irrelevance of his very being
And all those around him felt like the beating drum of a hated heartbeat.
Mushroom clouds raining death, pits with decapitated bodies killed
By fools who thought themselves righteous appeared in the gray sky
When he adjusted the course of the plane to fly at one hundred feet.
“It will soon be over,” he thought to himself. “I am finally on control.”
He heard a frantic knocking on the door as Patrick tried to gain the cabin
His gut tensed, his breath came hard and fast. He could hear
The hysterical screams of the passengers behind him.
No sympathy for their plight crossed Andreas mind.
“They are all going to die anyway,” he thought.
“Today is as good a day to die as any other. Today is better.
It will save them from through suffering their ignorant lives.”
Adrenaline rushed through Andreas veins as the mountain
Loomed before him. He felt like a soldier entering battle.
“It is a good day to die,” the voices around him exclaimed.
He remembered the stewardess with the sexy perfume
Who greeted him when he stepped onto the plane.
Her voice was among those screaming behind him.
“I will not fuck her,” he told himself. “She will not tempt
Anyone to fuck her now. I can make sure of that.”
There was power in the thought; power had always escaped him.
The remembered scent of her perfume hung in his nostrils.
His own breath came hard and deep as he thought about
Having sex with her. Death, he thought, would be like conception,
One timeless contracting orgasm would begin the journey
To another useless, meaningless and painful life.
Another contraction would snap the miserable body away from experience
And into the vast nothingness of the universe.
He could picture himself letting go after the shock of impact.
It would be his final orgasm, his final statement, his final action.
