Poop Shute

I love a picnic. The cheesey checkered blanket. Potato salad. Even the ants. What more do you need besides a frizbee and sunshine...? A beautiful woman, I suppose. I was covered on all counts. A good day was predestined.

I was struck by the sunlight through her hair. She looked at me with that look that tells me I am the only man on earth. I leaned in for a kiss and got shoved onto my back for my trouble. Playfully shoved, but shoved still, and unkissed no less. As quickly as I went down, she was on me, giving me the lips I sought with the added bonus of a strawberry. Mmmm. Strawberry kisses. Giggling and tickling would shortly follow.

I lounged for a moment and looked out over the overgrown grass, glowing green in the sun and swaying gently in the breeze. All around us was nothing but peace and light. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning there was a flash on the horizon that caught my eye. For a second I felt the sharp tingle of panic. The hair on my neck stood straight on end.

"Look! What is that flash?" I jumped to my feet as I asked, knowing for certain that it must be a nuclear blast, and we only had mere seconds before we would be swept up in it.

"That's the shuttle blasting off, you weirdo. That's why we're here." She said with a tone that said I must be crazy for thinking otherwise. I glanced in her direction incredulously, and back to the flash... and it was changed.

Now I could see that she is right. There is a space shuttle launch, and what I saw was, in fact, the rocket igniting. I could swear that only a flash had been there before, but there stood a NASA shuttle, slowly jostling it's way skyward. A glance around me also showed that where I just saw naked grass in the breeze there sat hundreds of other watchers, captivated by the launch. I too was overcome with the awe-inspiring scale of it. To think that this hulking beast of human engineering was actually about to pass clean through the pale blue dome that hangs over all out heads, just as likely as a camel could pass through the eye of a needle. I remember thinking that this is something I ccould cross off my List. The List of Things To Do Before You Die that we all have. This one could get a check mark.

Then I thought to myself that we are awfully close to the launch site. What if something went wrong? If it did, we could be killed.

Right then, I heard a lone woman scream, and as though it had heard my thoughts, the engine on the right side exploded in a terrifying and beautiful display of light and smoke, throwing the fuselage into a horrible spin. It's trajectory no longer vertical, the machine whirled around us, making a pattern of perfect concentric circles with the horizon, thousands of feet over our heads... no, not circles. Worse, a lightning quick spiral, slowly closing in over our field full of watchers, slowly dropping in altitude. Then the screaming really picked up and people began running in all directions. I sat dumbstruck, unable to move. If I had been in my right mind I would've have realized that the danger was constantly moving around us, and running in any direction was really a waste of energy, and no safer than staying put. My course was the wiser, but I wouldn't have known the difference. I had all the forethought of the deer in the headlights.

Faster and faster it whirled about, pieces beginning to break free here and there and soaring out of site. Closer and closer it fell towards us all. Still I didn't move, in spite of myself...