Fear of Flying ✓

Fear of Flying

You really only get one shot at this whole Death thing, and to be perfectly honest I had rather wanted mine to have counted for a little more. I'm not sure what I had expected – maybe dying a martyr or a revolutionary perhaps? Or maybe even just a parent? I would have settled for that. Most anything really. But to be honest my death was, if anything, anticlimactic.

It started, so to speak, by complete and utter chance on a business flight to Oslo. I, with my mild fear of flying, chose to opt away from the window seat, where instead sat a gaunt-looking businessman playing Tetris idly on a Smartphone. I had to admit, he was making me a little anxious, constantly checking his wristwatch every few seconds.

"We're taking off," he informed me, tucking his phone into his pocket as the plane chugged giddily into the atmosphere.

I just nodded and looked away from the window. I didn't want to think about the vast nothingness separating me from safe land.

"Fear of flying?" he asked, and I nodded. He gave a small hum. "You would have been better off on the 2:30 flight to Stockholm. I was supposed to be on that godforsaken plane you know," he said with an irritated little groan, checking outside the window. "Boarded the wrong one."

"What do you mean better off?" I asked.

I looked at him, trying to avoid concentrating on the clouds gliding by the window behind him like smug, delusive safety nets for the imaginary plummet.

"Literally," the man elaborated, "godforsaken. There was a terrorist on board." He pulled open a pack of peanuts and began popping them into his mouth.

My brow creased into a deep frown. "How could you possibly know that?"

He shrugged. "I boarded the wrong plane. The terrorist was off to Stockholm. 2:30." He heaved an angry sigh. "The boss is going to murder me."

"Boss?" I couldn't even imagine what line of work this man could possibly be in.

"Hades," he muttered. "Can't blame him; trouble at home you know? His wife left him. Again."

I couldn't help but feel a tad curious. "Hades as in the god of the underworld?"

"God?" the man chuckled. "This is the twenty-first century. We say CEO now." He checked to bottom of his nearly-empty packet of peanuts, and shook the remnants into his mouth.

I took a moment to digest what he had told me, honestly too stressed about the flight to really question the logic behind it all. "So if your boss is Hades, what does that make you?" I asked, with a mixture of sarcasm and inquisitiveness.

"Death," he replied cheerfully, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a business card. Where his profession should have been stated, the card read 'Destroyer of Worlds'.

Nodding slowly, I pocketed the card.

Extracting a 'Licensed to Kill' flask, the man began to pour himself some hot, black coffee. The stale stench hit me instantly over the stifling aeroplane odour, and I couldn't help but gag a little. At least, I thought, it was distracting me from the flight.

"Any last regrets?" he asked offhandedly, blowing onto the surface of his hot drink.

I frowned, a little alarmed by this sharp digression.

"You know," he elaborated, "before you die?"

"Die?" I repeated. "What do you mean die? You said the terrorist was on the other plane?"

The man shrugged, jolting his cup so a little coffee spilled from the side. "By getting on this flight I screwed up Fate," he said with little remorse. "You see, what happens in times like this is Fate has to work through her lunch shift trying to fix things so the terrorist gets caught."