Quote: "MACHINES OF THE OCCULTUS" from novel The Graft of Shadows (A. Glass 2019)

Shannah fancied this ex-Captain of the airline she once worked for, knowing that he was married at the time, with liaisons between airline staff prohibited. It would have been Shannah, if she was found out, who would have had the short shrift, rather than an airline Captain. And now it appears he has a child. She hasn't seen anyone else from the airline since she was retrenched and the carrier went into receivership, pilots and support crews lost contact with each other as they tried to attain new jobs throughout the country. “...Anyway, congratulations on the baby, I saw you with the stroller just before.” 

He doesn't answer the question directly, instead his expression is blank and detached. He just nods in a delayed way, whilst maintaining eye contact with Shannah. 

“My wife...” He says, as Shannah curiously looks at the man. “...And I...” She maintains her perplexity at his obscure responses, as Shannah looks in the direction of the path she had just ran down from, to which, it appears, he had doubled back to reach her. Shannah wonders, in her enticing assumption, if he had desperately dropped off the stroller to his wife somewhere within the park, fueled by a lust filled urgency to meet up with her. 

“Is your wife close by?” Shannah asks, curious if her old work colleague, a pilot of a now defunct airline carrier, is mentally coherent or just been evasive in hope of a tryst. 

“Yes...my wife is just over there...” He points in the direction in which Shannah was running towards - the lake parts of Central Park West. Yet, she is aware that he was running in the opposite direction. He then smiles at Shannah as though a moment of clarity has, in its instant, relieved his own vagueness. “...We live on the West Side.” 

Shannah reciprocates with a smile, dismissing any abnormalities as she is thrilled to have a man she had desired, whilst working as an air hostess, standing in front of her. With a possible anticipation of intimacy, exasperated by the many times she has fantasized about fucking him.

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The Graft of Shadows (A.Glass 2019)