By Kenneth Harper Finton ©2015

An imaginary trip into the mind of Andreas Lubitz

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.