Tabula Rasa

I relaxed. There were just four other people on the flight, dotted variously amongst the rows - in fact, the staff outnumbered us almost 2 to 1. I stared out the window. What should have been a sea of lights was just blackness. They cut the power after 8pm these days. No, wait. A flash of light in the distance. A car turning the corner perhaps, headlights briefly pointing towards the plane. The hostess murmured and offered me peanuts, I accepted and looked back out the window. The light was still there, but it seemed closer now. I watched it curiously. It was definitely getting brighter. The plane exploded and I realised what I had seen. No, that can’t be it. There must be another one. The plane began to taxi down the runway, and lifted in a jolting fashion. The harsh wind off the desert meant that the pilot was struggling to keep it flying level. The plane was packed and you could hear the uneasy murmur of people trying act nonchalantly to turbulence. Children whined. An air hostess explained there was a nut allergy on board and offered me pretzels instead. I was wedged in between two other men, and struggled to open the packet with my arms all but pinned to my sides. I finally got it open and a missile hit the fuselage killing me instantly. Nope. There are no planes, all planes are cancelled until further notice. Government troops round us up at the airport and take us to a detention centre. Most of us perish after the government collapses. Fuck. The plane took off without a hitch, but an engine suddenly loses power. We swerved sickeningly down and to the left, exploding into a fireball just 600 metres from the runway. I can’t believe it. I am a man who can literally see into the future and even I can’t see a way to get out of this city alive. I pack everything useful I can find into a rucksack. This doesn’t amount to much, so I pack some useless stuff as well. I sit on my bed in my tiny hotel room with my rucksack on my back figuring out what to do. I had seen that I couldn’t stay here, in a few hours government troops with storm the lobby and round up any foreigners, but I had no idea what to do next. The chaos of war always made seeing the future more difficult. The best future I had seen so far was sneaking out the back of the hotel and bribing a taxi driver to take me outside the city. I couldn’t see past then, but I was out of options. I step outside my hotel room and bump into a woman, slightly startling her. We sit in field of lavender in the Côtes de Provence, sipping wine from a plastic cup. The sun warms our face and honey bees drone lazily between the flowers.