Took the death plane from Heathrow, a numbing multi-stop ride, first Schipol then Sofia, which only a few of us survived, before we arrived, 2 o’clock in the morning. On each land the empty seats flopped forward, their backs pointing to the ceiling, crash position. Was that the best position to make it through?
Alone again, and I had all the time to look at the room. It was unseasonably hot and I switched the fan to circulate the heat from the walls. It started slowly, each blade cutting the air in steady breaths until it spun into a whorl that swept the hair away from my face. The light was off and from the window, dusk shifted a red and orange hue across the walls. I looked out and beyond the river. The silhouettes of corn terraces scanned the valley, black mountainside beneath red shimmered light, a dying sun that left colours in the water like blood on oil.
