"I'm going to die."

The words keep running through my head—over and over. The oxygen mask falls from the ceiling, and I rush to put it on. When I'd watched the flight attendants going through the motions before takeoff, I never in my wildest nightmares thought I might need to know any of their spiel.

But now the plane is in a nosedive and shuddering wickedly. Alarms are pinging all around. I'm sitting in the midsection, and when I look forward, I'm also looking down.

We're all going to die. Among strangers, yet alone. I don't know one face among the crowd.

I gasp out loud, then hold my breath, trying to stay as motionless as possible. As if any movements I make could worsen the situation. There is no worse. And we're all powerless to do anything about our fate. This is the end of the line. Our time is up.

People are screaming. Others praying and signing the cross. Others chanting. Making promises and vows. "If I make it out of this alive..."

Somewhere behind me a baby cries, and the mother reassures her child that everything will be okay.

Warm tears trickle down my cheeks. A lie, but how I would love to believe her.

The pinging of the alarms is drilling my skull. Like a woodpecker's beak rapping incessantly. But I've never liked the sound of them, even in smooth flying. Whenever someone flicked on the light to summon an attendant, I'd hold my breath until I realized what the noise was for.

I hate flying. I never should have gotten on this plane. I should have stayed home. After all, I had this feeling... This knot in my chest. I knead it now, but the pilot is calling out over the speaker system. It's hard to make out his voice above the din. But everyone starts leaning forward. I follow their lead and glance across the aisle to this mysterious man.

He first got my attention at the airport. He's wealthy. The rings on his fingers, the cut of his suit, but there's something else about him—an enigma. He's traveling with three men. One sits beside him, and the other two are in the seats in front and behind him. I get the feeling they are his bodyguards. So who is he? Just someone rich and powerful with enemies to match? The leader of a crime syndicate?

But he is calm as he sits there, as if he's prepared for the day of his death and is ready to face it head-on. He holds a small book open in his lap, one hand splayed over the right page, his eyes following the text on the left. His lips move behind his mask as he reads in an undertone. A chant? Scripture? A prayer? All this is hard to reconcile with my fabricated image of a leader of organized crime. His companions don't appear to be equally at peace. Rather their faces are masks of fear.

The plane swerves side to side, careening like an out-of-control car skidding on ice, and the nose plunges farther downward.

The baby screams louder. No assurances come from the mother this time. I hear her sobs. Despite the racket and cacophony of noises, there's an underlying stillness, quietness—a sense of serenity in our final minutes—and all my senses are highly attuned.

"We're all going to die," the woman beside me cries.

As if voicing the inevitable makes it more manageable, bearable. Though it doesn't change the fact there is some sort of finality hurtling toward us. But is it an ending or a beginning? We'll soon find out but have no one to tell.

I grip my armrest so tightly my fingers go numb.

The confident man continues to read. Unfazed. On another plane of existence.

The aircraft takes on a violent spin, like a shooting bullet whizzing through the sky on a downward trajectory.

This is it! I yell in my head.

The woman next to me takes my hand and squeezes. A person I have never met, but with whom I'll be eternally linked. I look down at her hand in mine. Hers so fragile and brittle to the touch, riddled with age spots against my milky flesh and bright-orange nails. I allow my mind to drift away, to try and find some comfort in these final moments. My heart slows. My last inhale becomes caged within my chest forever as we thunder into the ground.

I had expected some pain before oblivion, but instead I find myself floating over the crash site. Below me, the plane is in pieces and debris is spread out for miles over a country field. Fireballs shoot from the wreckage and catch the wheat on fire. But there's something unsettling about the flames being licked by the wind... They perform a beautiful dance, but it's one that marks utter devastation and tragedy.