Magic Carpet Ride

“What is it?” I said, already thinking I knew the answer.

“It's a carpet.”

“Hmm....”

“A magic carpet!”

“Bollocks!”

“It is... honestly... would I lie to y... well, it is a magic carpet. Not a word of a lie.”

“What, you mean flying... all that Arabian Nights stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Bollocks!”

“Come on, then?”

“What?”

“Outside....”

“I'm not going to fight you about it. If you want to think you've got a magic carpet... well, that's fine with me. I'll just be off.”

“No, not that. I'm going to show you....”

“Show me what?” I'd heard rumours.

“Come on,” he said. “I'll prove to you that it is a magic carpet.”

“I'll have to warn you...,” I said, laughing as I followed him out through the back of the shop out into the loading bay. “... I don't like heights.”

We sat down together on the carpet in the traditional manner. Him cross-legged at the front, me kneeling behind him, feeling like a tit, and giggling.

“You won't be laughing in a minute,” he said.

He was right.

A minute later I was puking over the edge of the carpet down onto the town far below us. “I told... I told you I don't like heights,” I managed to croak in-between the bouts of vomiting. It didn't help that there was a hole in the carpet I could look down at the town through, and that if I dared to look up I was immediately hit in the face by what seemed to be thousands of flying insects.

Not to mention the helicopter.

Not that I didn't try, but I'm sure he never heard it over the sound of the wind rushing past our faces, and having to fight off the swarms of insects.

Still we – sort of – managed to land with most of the carpet intact.

Although, I'm sure the flight engineers will no doubt have to ask the pilot why he has fragments of shredded carpet entangled in his rotors.

In the end I decided against buying the flying carpet after all, even when the price was reduced due to helicopter damage.

Like I said: I don't like heights.