Oh, it's the safest form of transport they all said. More likely to get killed crossing the road, don't you know? Well fuck it; at least in a car it all happens in an instant. Just bang - and then you find out pretty quick if you've made it or not. No time for existential ponderings. No long seconds of watching the vast rippling silver sheet of the Atlantic Ocean gobble up more and more of the passenger side window.
"Brace for impact," the pilot called over the tannoy - in a remarkably calm South African accent – even though it felt like they'd been hunched over for hours already, faces mashed into the rubber life-vests looped around their necks. Emily couldn't even see the man who had been sat next to her for most of the flight; the thick wedge of her elbow as she cradled her arms over her head, had blotted out everything but sunshine yellow plastic. From his voice though, he'd already exhausted his list of prayers to Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and was now working his way down a seemingly endless line of saints.
All Emily could think about was that last picture she had sent to her family, of her pasty, sunburnt body on the white sands of Sal Island, two massive cocktails in hand and a smug tagline of 'bet you wish you were me,' that she'd added specifically to annoy her brother. He may be a sleep deprived father to her colicky nephew, but given the likelihood of her immediate future as a bloated, banana coloured corpse, his life choices weren't looking so bad retrospectively. Perhaps worst of all, those were her final words. Her painfully ironic epitaph. Not some profound musing on life. Not words of hope or encouragement, or even declarations of love to her family and friends.
Nope.
Bet you wish you were me…
Emily clamped down hard on the sick bubble of laughter trying to escape the iron fist gripping her insides. She didn't want to be the crazy one who goes down swivel-eyed and cackling. If nothing else, she'll die with a stoic, grim-faced dignity she never had in life. The guy beside her was only half-way down the G's on his canonical greatest hits list, when the plane gave a heaving lurch and a fizzle of static rushed over the sweat soaked skin along Emily's arms and neck. Everything went oddly weightless and silent. White noise thrummed, blotting out the world in a yawning scream.
Looking up, Emily watched with morbid detachment as the plane peeled apart in front of her, just before she stopped seeing anything at all.