On Providence, Fear, and the Third Flight: A Dream of Certain Annihilation

Hey everyone—I'm so excited to be sharing this with you. Honestly, it feels a little surreal to finally be posting my first story here on Vocal. I’ve been reading so many incredible pieces on this platform for a while now, and putting my own work out there is equal parts thrilling and nerve-wracking!

This story is something really personal to me, and I really hope it connects with some of you. If it does—or even if it doesn’t—I’d absolutely love to hear what you think. Comments, feedback, your own experiences… all of it is welcome.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read. It truly means a lot.

You were incredibly lucky you missed that flight. You were initially so frustrated because that happened—the ticket was expensive. But the reception of the dire tidings—terrible accident, no survivors—forced you to look upon the incident from a new scope. You’d never missed a flight in your entire life. And now, the first time you missed one, it was destined to crash?

That’s weird… There surely must have been some kind of providence that intervened for your sake. And could it now be the same providence that, manifesting itself through your intuition, urges you to turn back, as you are on your way to catch the next flight?

“This cannot be,” you are trying to reassure yourself, bringing forth every sort of argument that the faculty of yours you are accustomed to calling reason can come up with…

Providence…? There is no such thing. There is no way anyone or anything can know of a plane crash prior to it happening. And even in case something knew, there is no way it could have intervened to save you—you have a free will, after all. And let’s suppose that it did know and could help you—why you?

No. All this was but a strange coincidence and nothing more. You are not superstitious. How can you even think in such a way? You must let go of your angst right away…

Anyway, there is nothing you can do anymore. You are already seated on the plane and the doors are shut.

It took off. You are noting the distance between the fuselage and the runway increasing, in agony, moment to moment to longer moment… And then you cannot believe that the ground is getting closer again at a crazy speed. It’s gonna crash!

You have to act fast. Impelled by overwhelming instinct, you rush for survival. Without something like time having elapsed, you’ve flown over the aisle, you’ve opened the door, and you’ve jumped out… It was quite a miracle you made it unscratched.

Now you are totally justified for being engulfed in dreadful paranoia, as you are on your way to catch the third flight. It hasn’t been a good sign seeing both of your previous flights crashing. You are now sure this has happened because of you. It must be your fate to die in a plane crash. You know that this third flight is also going to crash, with deep intuitional certainty. But you cannot turn back. You must fly.

With a slight relief, but still suspiciously, you watch out of the window as the aircraft steadily gains height. The ground is left way down. And the plane is effortlessly and noiselessly slipping through the night sky. Everything seems normal, after all. Could it all have been just a mocking coincidence?

But alas! No! Your life’s prolongation is far from secured yet. The dark figure of a high mountain ridge suddenly appears ahead, in slight contrast to the dark firmament. The plane is still gaining height, fighting its way against gravity. But whether it makes it over the ridge or crashes straight onto it… it is a marginal matter.

In benumbing agony, your gaze fixed out of the window, you are waiting for the outcome, striving mentally to sustain hope, until every last bit of it is washed away by the torrent of desperation. There is no doubt. The plane together with you on it is soon going to be reduced to debris scattered about the cold rock.

There is only one thing you can feel now: fear. It’s not just any fear. It’s a profound fear; the most profound fear; the absolute fear; the progenitor of every other kind of fear; the only real fear: the fear of death.

And it’s not that vague kind of fear one experiences when mulling over the fact that one’s going to die at some indefinite point in time or knowing that there is a possibility to die at some other definite point. It is the unmitigated-by-hope kind of fear following the unequivocal certainty that your existence is going to cease shortly; before you even have time to meditate on why you even desire to be existing… The countdown is on.

In such a condition of pure fear, there is no room to feel any other emotion. Since there is no hope, there is no agony either. You are not panicked. You cannot scream or cry. Those parts of your brain responsible for feeling are paralyzed. There is only one thing you are capable of doing: wait. You wish that it all ends quickly but it takes tormentingly long. You get up and start walking back and forth the aisle, hoping that this will make time run faster… But it doesn’t.

You feel an irresistible longing to speak to somebody. You cannot think of something specific you have to say. But you understand that now is your last chance to say something. It’s only then you take notice of the other passengers.

They are also walking back and forth. It is obvious that they are all aware of their imminent calamitous fate. There is no hysteria going on, however. You know they know because of that ghastly look on their faces. You can discern on them the same kind of fear that you feel.

They look like zombies, and the suspicion that you look the same way further terrifies you. You wonder whether you’re already dead. But you rule this thought out quickly because wondering isn’t something a dead man would do. But still, no one, including yourself, doesn’t seem alive in the full sense. You desperately try to speak to everyone you cross paths with. But they all ignore you as if you don’t exist.

The end is nigh. There isn’t time left to speak. The desire to pay attention to anything other than the approximating dark figure of the mountain has faded away, and your perspective has changed to seeing just that.