Unchecked Baggage

2/17/2023

***Disclaimer: This story was inspired by a prompt provided by Reedsy.com. Prompt is provided below. Visit their site https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/ to learn more.*** 

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Prompt: Emotional baggage must now be checked in at the airport

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“Babe come quick!” 

Laura called to her boyfriend as she scrolled through the airline’s site on her laptop, stumbling upon an offer they couldn’t pass up. She found a round trip flight for two to Miami, Florida for a steal. The deal was only good for the weekend. It was exactly what she and Brad needed to break up the monotony of bills and demanding jobs with endless work emails. They desperately needed a weekend getaway to relax and unplug.  

“What’s up?” Brad asked as he walked up behind Laura’s chair at the kitchen table, placing a hand on her shoulder. 

“Look at this killer deal!” Laura gushed excitedly, talking a mile a minute as she showed Brad the details. “We’ve been talking about going on a small vacation for forever, and we’ve got some PTO to burn. This deal just popped up, so I figured why not! It’s just what we need. So what do you think?” Laura turned to look up at Brad, excitement in her eyes. “We could be on a beautiful beach this time tomorrow, basking in the sunshine and drinking bottomless piña coladas.” Laura paused, eagerly awaiting her boyfriend’s response.  

“Well,” Brad said thoughtfully, hand on his chin as he looked up at the ceiling. “I suppose that work can wait.” A big smile spread across his face as he looked down at her. Laura squealed with delight, jumping up from her chair to wrap her arms around Brad’s neck, giving him a loving peck on the cheek.

“Great!” Laura exclaimed, beaming up at him. “I’ll book the flight and we can start packing! Our plane leaves at 8:45 tomorrow morning.”

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The eager couple packed light for their weekend getaway. Neither of them saw much sense in having to pay for checked bags for such a short trip. They got to the airport early, excited to get to their destination. Laura couldn’t help but notice it was awfully busy that morning, and the line for the security checkpoint was very long.  

Laura and Brad jumped in line and chattered excitedly about what they were going to do in Miami. 

“So I did some looking around and I found some awesome places we can go!” Laura said to Brad. “We can hit up South Beach and drink and bake in the sun to our heart’s content, then we can go jet skiing, and I heard the nightlife scene is pretty sweet there, too.”

“That sounds awesome,” Brad replied, smiling as Laura rambled on, clearly already having a set itinerary in mind. “But we can’t forget to relax and have fun too,” he winked at her as they moved up in the line. 

“I know, I know,” Laura said, a slight tone of annoyance in her voice like a child who just got scolded for being too energetic. “I’m just so excited to get away and do something fun for a change. I’ll try not to plan every moment that we’re there. Sorry, it’s a force of habit. Gotta turn the work brain off.” Laura grinned up at Brad, who nodded at her with an encouraging smile.  

After a lifetime of waiting in line, it was finally their turn. Brad went first, and everything seemed normal at first glance. But as Laura watched him go through the metal detector and put his duffel bag on the conveyor belt, something peculiar happened. He was asked to step to the side by a woman with a clipboard, into a little curtained-off pop up room with two chairs and a small table. With one last glance behind him, eyebrows furrowed as he met his girlfriend’s gaze, he stepped into the room and pulled the curtain closed behind him.  

Laura noticed that Brad didn’t emerge right away, and she couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in there. Lost in her thoughts, Laura didn’t hear the security guard telling her to step forward.

“Come on through, miss,” the man said, making a herding gesture with his outstretched arm as he attempted to corral her through the metal detector to keep the flow of traffic moving. 

Snapping out of her daze, Laura walked through the metal detectors and put her backpack on the conveyor belt. At that moment she glanced up as Brad emerged from the curtained room, and their eyes met. Laura raised a quizzical eyebrow in his direction, and Brad answered with a dubious look and an exaggerated shrug. He picked up his backpack and gestured to Laura that he would find a seat nearby and wait for her. She nodded after him and watched him go.

Suddenly Laura was ushered into the same little room. She was greeted by the woman with the clipboard.

“Hello there,” the mystery woman greeted Laura, her smile formal but polite.

“Um, hi?” Laura said uneasily as she settled into the seat across from the woman.

“Let’s get right to it then, shall we? We don’t want you to miss your flight,” the woman said cheerfully as she sat down across from Laura and placed her clipboard on her lap.

“I’m sorry, but what is this about? Was there something wrong with my bag?” Laura asked the woman, feeling a slight wave of worry wash over her.

“Oh heavens no! So sorry to give you that impression. Everything is fine.” The woman smiled before adding, “We’ve established a new policy here at airport security and I’m just supposed to ask you a few questions before you board your flight.” The woman smiled reassuringly, making Laura relax a little. The last thing she wanted was to be embarrassed at airport security and miss her flight. 

“Okaaaay,” Laura said slowly, still not completely sure about the situation. “I guess I’m ready.” 

“Perfect!” the woman exclaimed, too enthusiastic for Laura’s liking. “Let’s start with your name.”

Easy enough, Laura thought to herself. “Laura Michaels.”

“Date of birth?”

“May 20, 1997,” Laura replied. 

This continued as the woman gathered all the basic information that a general practitioner might ask a patient. Then the questions suddenly got oddly…personal.

“Married or single?”

“Um, in a relationship currently?”

“Are you close with your parents? Are they married or divorced? Would you say that good examples of family and relationships have been set by the people in your life?”

Laura sat there, dumbfounded for a moment before she said, “I’m sorry, what on Earth does this have to do with my luggage? Look, I’m just trying to get to Miami and enjoy a nice weekend getaway with my boyfriend,” Laura said defensively, shocked by the gall of this woman that she didn’t even know asking her such specific and personal questions. 

“Please,” the over-friendly stranger reassured her. “I promise you this will all make sense afterwards.” The woman continued to smile, but Laura was not so sure about her intentions and what Laura’s personal life had to do with anything. 

With a hesitant shrug Laura replied, “Okay,” as she took a deep breath and answered the woman’s previous inquiries the best she could. 

“Um…well my mom and dad divorced when I was nine. Not really the picture perfect nuclear family situation. But we got by. I still maintain a pretty stable relationship with the two of them. It hasn’t really affected my other relationships in my life. Well I guess there were a few past relationships that had their ups and downs, but I mean what normal couple doesn’t have issues?” 

Laura realized she had rambled on for quite some time, and realized that she probably said too much. What did this woman stand to gain from learning every detail of her past? The whole time Laura rambled on, she noticed that the woman listened intently the entire time, taking detailed notes as Laura talked, unusually invested in everything that Laura was saying. 

“Okay, great start. This is really good,” the woman replied, punctuating the end of Laura’s unexpected monologue about her childhood and past relationships with a single nod. Laura didn’t realize that she was harboring old feelings about her past and her failed relationships until this stranger started pulling them out of her. 

“Let’s continue,” the woman said gently, trying to nudge Laura along. The rest of the session was a blur of questions that made Laura’s head spin. 

“Do you harbor any guilt from past relationships?”

“No. I mean I don’t think so…” Laura trailed off. 

“Do you have any regrets?”

“I, uh, well, doesn’t everybody…?” Laura searched for words as the woman continued. 

“Do you have any fears?”

“Like spiders, or…?” Laura didn’t have time to think deeper about this question before the next one, a stuttering mess as she tried to keep up with the woman’s rapid-fire interrogation. 

“Do you often self-criticize?”

“I mean, I guess I am hard on myself sometimes…” Laura’s brow furrowed, hoping she answered correctly as the woman jumped to her next question. 

“Do you consider yourself codependent on others?”

“No, I don’t think so. I mean I haven’t spent much time single between all my past relationships…” Laura was starting to feel like these questions were getting more personal, and the words were starting to echo in her brain as she tried to get a grip on her sporadic emotions. 

“Do you feel you exercise controlling behaviors over others due to any past insecurities?”

“What? No I don’t tell my boyfriend what to do if that’s what you mean…I mean…I don’t mean to…” Laura could feel the tears welling up in her eyes as she simultaneously recalled everything and everyone she had ever done wrong in her life.  

“Do you feel your emotions are often mixed and inconsistent?”

“Well right now I definitely do…” Laura felt the first tear escape her eye and trickle down her cheek as she tried to control the dam of emotions that was threatening to break. It was too much. Becoming overwhelmed, she started to cry.   

Just like that, Laura was blubbering like an idiot in front of this person she had never met who had an odd and very keen interest in her personal life, especially all the emotional baggage stowed away in her subconscious. What on Earth was this woman doing this to her for? Was she this thorough with everyone else? Laura was angry that she allowed this stranger to pry so much into her personal thoughts and feelings. There were things she held sacred, things she kept guarded in her mind, that she hadn’t even told her boyfriend about yet. Who did this woman think she was?  

By the end of the extremely intimate questionnaire, Laura was a wreck. She still didn’t understand the meaning of this twisted survey and how this woman seemed to magically pull all this information out of her with mere questions and a clipboard.  

“Okay, you’ve grilled me enough. You’ve gotten all your information,” Laura said sternly, completely out of patience. “The least you can do is tell me what in the world this is about.” She straightened up in her chair, averting her gaze as she sniffled and hastily swiped a tear from her face, aware of the woman’s eyes on her. “And would it kill you to offer me a tissue or something?!” Laura demanded, rubbing her eyes with her hands, unable to look at the woman. 

The woman pulled a handful of tissues out of the box next to her and held them out to Laura without a word. 

“Thank you,” Laura said, slightly annoyed as she snatched the tissues out of the woman’s outstretched hand.    

“Of course,” the woman replied in a soothing tone, seemingly unfazed by Laura’s sudden outburst of tears and demands. “First off, I’d like to say that you did an amazing job. I know that this is strange and highly personal. I appreciate your patience and understanding as we implement this new procedure.” The woman paused, folding her hands and placing them on top of her clipboard, smiling at Laura as she said, “Now that I have a much better understanding of the amount of emotional baggage you have, we can talk about your bill –”

“I’m sorry, my what?” Laura cut the woman off mid-sentence, eyes wide as she wondered if she just heard her correctly. 

“Oh, um, yes your bill,” the woman shifted uncomfortably in her seat, visibly more tense as she attempted to hold her plastered on smile. It was clear that she was having a hard time getting her point across, and most likely not for the first time that day, seeing as she was talking complete and utter nonsense and Laura couldn’t possibly be the first person to think so. 

“See, we’ve launched a new program that we will implement moving forward for all future flights. It’s called an “Emotions Assessment.” The way it works is we will begin checking emotional baggage, much like you would check any piece of luggage. We will evaluate our fliers by assessing the amount, or rather the weight, of their emotional baggage, rating it all on a 1-10 scale and totaling up the amount the customer will pay to check their emotional baggage before boarding their flight. So you see, it’s just part of the new policy we’re rolling out. And you can rest assured that we weigh and price your emotional baggage with the utmost care while ensuring you make it to your destination with all baggage - physical and emotional - intact and accounted for.” 

The woman was as cheery as ever, seemingly recovered from her previous uneasiness at Laura’s initial reaction. It was as if the words she just said made complete sense. She seemed confident that her explanation would answer any lingering questions Laura might have. 

In a daze of disbelief, Laura mumbled to no one in particular, “I can’t believe this,” as she tried to comprehend what she was hearing. “Did you ask everybody else all these really personal questions, too?”

“Of course. We ask everyone the same set of questions and evaluate them all equally and fairly based on the quantity of baggage a person has. It’s efficiently standardized to suit all fliers.” The woman gave a definitive nod and a confident smile. 

Laura was sure that the woman had asked Brad about things he had never even told her yet. They had only been going out for six months, after all. Usually people give it some time before they reveal their past emotional trauma, or at least ease them into it gently so they don’t run for the hills. This made Laura feel even more violated. Now all she could think about was what he said to the woman while he was in here, unable to shake the feeling that after only about ten minutes this woman might know her boyfriend better than she did.  

“Um, okay,” Laura said with an unfriendly edge to her tone, at her wits end. “This still doesn’t make much sense. And I assume there’s nothing else you could say that would make it any clearer. But I need to get out of here and find my boyfriend if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, we’re pretty much all finished here –” the woman was interrupted before she could finish her sentence. 

“Great,” Laura said dryly as she jumped up from her seat with exaggerated enthusiasm, dying to escape this nightmare she didn’t even realize she had. As she made her way to the closed curtain, she called over her shoulder, “I’d say this has been a real pleasure, but –”

“Oh!” the woman perked up, unclipping the pages she had been scribbling for her life on for the last ten minutes and handing the papers to Laura. “Don’t forget your evaluation results. The man at the register will ring you up. He’s at the end of the conveyor belt. You can’t miss him.”

Laura snatched the paper out of the woman’s hand, none too kindly. “Oh goodness me,” she said dramatically as she stormed out of the small room. “We can’t forget the evaluation results.” Laura paused at the curtain, eyeing the woman over her shoulder as she said, “Well it’s been real. Real weird. Thanks for this…unwanted and seriously freakish experience.” With a flourish, Laura walked out of the little room, pulling the curtain closed hastily behind her, with enough force to collapse the entire pop up room. Luckily that didn’t happen, but Laura couldn’t help but think that would have been a pretty perfect exit. 

Safely on the other side of the curtain, Laura took a deep breath and shook her head. Trying her best to shake it off, she wandered absentmindedly towards the checkout counter and was greeted by the cashier. 

“Checking out, miss?” the man at the register waved as Laura approached the counter. 

“Um, yeah…something like that,” Laura replied as she stared off into space. 

“Perfect,” the cashier replied enthusiastically as he took the paper from Laura’s hand and started typing in what seemed like a lot of numbers. After a long moment of clicking and strange whirs from the cash register, the cashier met her gaze, all service-with-a-smile. “Alright, miss. It looks like your total comes to…”

Laura’s ears began to ring as the cashier declared an ungodly sum. If this was a true evaluation of her emotional baggage, she needed some serious help. 

“Excuse me,” Laura half mumbled as she walked off in a daze, past the checkout counter, not heeding the cashier’s plea to pay before entering the airport. 

Laura rounded the corner and saw Brad waiting for her, reading a book without a care in the world. 

“Hey babe, I was starting to worry about you. That was weird, huh?” Brad said in a half-thoughtful, light-hearted tone like he hadn’t just gone through what she went through back there. 

“You okay?” He asked, hesitation in his voice as he studied the look on her pale face, realizing she wasn’t so chipper.

“Um, not really. Are you?” Laura demanded in exasperation, throwing up her hands. “You seem fine, how are you fine?? What the hell happened back there? What did she ask you?”

“I don’t know, I just answered honestly,” Brad said defensively. “She just asked me some questions about my past relationships and if I get along with my parents, stuff like that. Turns out I don’t really have a lot of past trauma to write home about I guess. I’m just a boring normal guy.” He smiled his winning smile, charming and carefree as ever. Normally Laura would be weak in the knees for that smile, but right now it was all she could do not to slap that winning smile off his pretty face.

“I can’t believe this,” Laura said to herself, raising both hands to her forehead, slicking her hair back in sheer exasperation.

“Laura, what’s wrong? You’re acting strange –”

“How much did your ‘emotional baggage’ cost, Mr. I’ve Had a Perfect Life and Don’t Carry Any Past Trauma with Me Anywhere?” Laura demanded, exaggerating her voice as she held up air quotes around the words “emotional baggage.” 

“Honestly, it wasn’t that much. I don’t see what the big deal is. Aren’t you glad that we at least don’t owe an ungodly sum of money on top of being guinea pigs in this really odd ‘Emotions Assessment?’” Brad held up air quotes, saying “Emotions Assessment” in a condescending tone, clearly making fun of the whole procedure. “Whatever happened in there, it’s behind us now,” Brad said in an attempt to soothe his unraveling girlfriend. “Now we can just forget about it and look forward to Miami.”

Laura stewed in her disbelief a little longer, contemplating if she should get into this here. She decided against it. 

“Well,” Laura said as she grabbed Brad’s hand and practically dragged him out of the airport, back through security from where they came. “I’m leaving with way more baggage than I came with, to put it mildly, so I guess I’m going to need therapy before I can fly again. I really don’t want to get into it right now, I just want to go home.” 

“Wow,” Brad managed to say after a long pause. “Ok. I mean are you sure? What about Miami? South Beach? Bottomless piña coladas?”

Without looking over her shoulder, she continued dragging Brad through the airport as she yelled in response, “Well apparently we’ll have to reschedule once I get my life together.”

Laura called for an Uber, swiping and clicking angrily on her phone as she did so. “I hope you’re okay with weekly couples counseling and relationship retreats for a while. I mean the beach isn’t going anywhere right?” She rambled on in her over-the-top, cynical flare as she threw her backpack into the backseat of the Uber and flounced into the backseat. 

“Uh, yeah, I mean…um…sure that seems reasonable,” Brad said hesitantly, wondering what in the world he was in for. This morning he thought he was on his way to a relaxing weekend at the beach. Now it looked like he was also leaving the airport with more baggage than he came with. 

“Oh relax,” Laura elbowed him a little too hard in the ribs, an unconvincing playful gesture, rambling dramatically as the Uber pulled out of the airport and onto the highway. “It’s just a lifetime of pent up emotional trauma that I have to unpack before we’re ever able to fly again. And besides, what are long road trips for, other than hashing out problems and making breakthroughs with your feelings and your flaws? We can still go to the beach once we have more PTO to spend on a week long drive to Miami. It’ll be fun. We’ll bring snacks, we’ll laugh, we’ll cry, we’ll learn so much about ourselves and each other. I mean what’s the worst that could happen?” 

Brad gulped, laughing nervously as he replied, “Um, hehe…yeah, what’s the worst that could happen?”

THE END