Ending on a high

She leant and held on, nervously chewing her lip. She knew herself that she was gullible, but in no way would she have ever seen herself being talked into doing this. Yet here she was. Strapped in.

She could imagine the comments from her colleagues before she finally agreed to do it. “Thin’n’Timid Molly’ll do it.” She imagined one saying. “She’ll be all of a quiver. We should go and watch.” Another one said, in her mind’s eye.

The thing is though, these comments from her colleagues’ imaginary voices were right. She was doing it. She was all of a quiver. And they were all there to watch.

Molly glared at the pointing and baying crowd she could just about see without her bottle-top glasses. She saw Battleaxe Brenda from reception grinning; Curly Charlie from recycling supporting himself on Ample Andrea from marketing, as both couldn’t begin to stifle their laughter; Big-nosed Alison from accounts, not smiling, as usual; Gorgeous Graeme from publicity posing with his zoom lens; Swotty Spotty Lottie from financial analysis pointing with one hand and hiding her mouth with another; Gay Glen from goods in staring open-mouthed; Nasty Nicola from the water cooler waiting with her video camera; and Stuart the Drip from maintenance waiting with his wrench protruding from his jeans pocket. Other – less memorable – colleagues were also in the crowd, waiting for her to fail.

Molly felt sick as the engines started. She felt her breath leave her body as the biplane shot forward on the runway. She screamed as the plane took off and she imagined her harness becoming loose. She felt herself go a paler shade of pale as the plane banked sharply. She shouted expletives she’d never even heard as the plane did its first loop-the-loop. She invented expletives during the second loop-the-loop. And she leant back and laughed during the third one… more out of nerves than anything else. She couldn’t care that the others were watching now. She’d done it, and was about to be back on the ground again.

She knew she’d need help getting out of the harness (which had been specially installed just above the cockpit on the top wing of the aircraft) when she landed, but she didn’t care about that.

She wasn’t bothered that she’d lost all of the remaining perm out of her hair during the flight, and looked as though she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards.

She’d done it. Thin’n’Timid Molly no more… she thought.

The biplane came to a halt, and, as she predicted, she needed help getting off. Looking like a screaming banshee, she was photographed. Not by Gorgeous Graeme… or Nasty Nicola for that matter (although everyone had gathered around her, and didn’t seem to be laughing as much now)… but by a newspaper photographer.

The aerodrome manager approached her, grabbed her, and made her pose for another photograph.

“Molly,” the manager announced loudly, “Congratulations! You’re our thousandth customer, and therefore the winner of this luxury two-week holiday to an exotic destination of your choice, plus twenty-thousand pounds spending money. I bet you’re glad that you did it now, aren’t you?”

Molly couldn’t speak. She could, however, laugh at the stony-faced expressions on all of the colleagues who’d put her up to the challenge. 

“Talk about ending on a high…” she thought. She was too timid to say anything aloud, unfortunately…