“Mayday! Mayday!” She called over the coms but was only met with the unsettling hiss of static. Slamming it down on the dash it made a distinct cracking noise, broken and useless. She turns and eyes her co-pilot who’s slumped in his chair either unconscious or dead, he was equally as useless. So she tries one last desperate attempt at grabbing the yoke and pulling, forcing the airboat’s engines to groan and shudder unwilling to give her anything more. Calculations of survival were less than 10 percent and rapidly declining every second she sat here. Her mind races with every possible scenario and finally settling on the absolute last resort. She needed to abandon her beloved ship.

Her palm beats against a spherical digital reader at the center of her chest. It only takes a second before her buckles came undone with a click. She notes minor electrical systems were still working. Chances of survival had increased to 15 percent. Three minutes till impact. She hears over the airboats intercom system, she needs to work quickly. She unravels herself, ignoring the red alarm on the digital reader as it flickered in and out telling her to remain buckled. Good thing the scanners maintained the captains override, even in free fall.

Smoke starts to fill the cabin and she tries to grab the ventilation switch but as the airboat reaches terminal velocity the whole plane shakes violently throwing her against the chair of her copilot. She scrambles over him, reaching for his neck and checks for a pulse. Her fingers sliding against a thick sticky substance at the base of his neck, blood. She doesn’t feel a pulse but she does feel the hot metal shrapnel imbedded in his neck. It must have happened when the Fright attacked. She smears the blood on her fingers back across his jacket. She doesn’t have time to focus on the dead.

She opened the doors to the main channel of hall ways and was met by a thick wall of smoke. She covers her mouth coughing and grabbed the emergency preparedness bag by the exit. She twists and turns through the labyrinth of narrow hallways avoiding loose live wires spitting sparks at her. As she moves the faint sound of screams are heard over the roar of wind and churning metal. Adrenaline courses through her veins but the panic that accompanies it isn’t there. She can feel the want rise, but with every precise movement the sharpness of her reflexes intensifies. Her human reactions dulled by years of training, there is no error in her movements, only perfection.

One minute and thirty seconds till impact. The airboats intercom system reminded her, but she didn’t need to be reminded. She finds the door to the muster room. She attempts to open it but it doesn’t budge. She places her hand over the scanner and an error code reads. She wasn’t expecting this. Percentages have dwindled down into single digits. The sweat on her brow drips along the edge of her dark features. She wipes it away with the back of her sleeve and lumbers the unsteady floor to a few doors down. A large sign with bright red and yellow warnings read “CAUTION: HIGH VOLTAGE” There’s only one other door that leads into the electrical wing, and that’s inside the muster room, it’s her only chance of survival now, the others will either be gone, or in there waiting. The only place safe enough to make an emergency exit off the airboat is through that room.

She types in her captain’s code once again and places her hand over the glass, again it gives her an error code but she hears the door click from the inside. Ignoring the warning that was alarming in her head as the intercom system reminded her there was less than 60 seconds left till impact; the door swung violently open slamming into her with brutal force. Her body is flung backwards smacking the wall opposite and slumping over.

She gasped for air but choked down smoke. An electrical torrent rained down upon her from the open door, her amber eyes watching in horrific fixation unable to do anything. Calculations of survival were zero percent, death was imminent. Fear, she thinks, this is what fear must feel like. The reflection of the warning sign mirroring in her fear struck eyes.

***

Darkness, there is nothing but darkness before birth. No matter how hard someone might try to remember a before time, there is nothing but darkness. But it wasn’t really darkness, was it? It was the absence of memory, of light, of anything. Dying felt much the same. There was nothing. There was no before, middle, or after there was only the absence of anything. In this state of nothing there is no thought, no feeling, and no emotions.

So, if there was none of those things, why did she hurt so bad?

She blinked. A soft white light blurred her vision. She blinked again and again. And slowly the world around her came into focus. It should have been the smell of the fresh air hinted by potent horse manure, entangled with food that drifted from the houses of the town’s folk, and smoke that flowed from the bar that alarmed her. But it was none of those things. Not even the fact that she was laying in the middle of a cobblestone road when she was used to dusty trails. She stares up at the gas lantern that was above her lighting the street from the darkness that shrouded around it. Haloed by its light was a figure whose face was shadowed and staring down at hers.

She sucked in her breath, “Friend or Fright?”

Volta

that one little moment set this whole thing in motion