Skyward - Chapter One by B. L. Hobson

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PART ONE - THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

PILOT

I didn't bother cross-checking. I just lifted the plane and off we flew. No way was I going to crash. That never happened. Wings, flaps, whatever. Round and round we go.

The people on this plane are in need of this. They are broken people. They are beyond repair.

A friend once tried to explain to me why I did this job. Why I was chosen and why I should continue with it. Were I given the choice, that is.

He said that I helped. He said that I was necessary.

Being dead, I can't remember as well as I used to. I can't remember much at all really, unless I make the effort. So what I'm remembering now may or may not be me. It may or may not be true. I can't remember. Anyway, nobody cares.

As a young man I had been invited to celebrate my friend's tenth birthday. We had gathered around a wonderful chocolate cake his Mum had prepared. We danced about eagerly, me and six others. We couldn't wait to bite into that chocolate and feel it on our tongues all moist and exquisite.

We were each served a slice. My friend's Mum had been beaming as we took our plates, I remember. She watched us warmly as we shoveled it in, hands in, not using the fork. When your ten years old, manners are optional.

I would have done well to wait just a while.

As I bit in I realized something was amiss. This wasn't chocolate. This was something else, something vile. Something unexpected. I slowly took the cake away from my face, dreading what I would see and knowing anyway. Horror.

It was a fruit cake.

Fruit cake disguised with chocolate icing. We'd been had. My friend's Mum had double crossed us and she had been beaming, the trickster. I remember staring at my friends, all of them with the same expression, the same expression I wore. One of horror and torment. One of shock.

I stared at that cake and I couldn't comprehend the evil. An adult had willfully tricked us. My mother before had tried the same thing, pushing cauliflower besides mashed potato, trying to blend it in. Trying to trick me into eating that vile and mushy thing. Trying to make it look like mashed potato. It never worked, but that was different. That was an innocent lie, replacing one vegetable with another. My friend's Mum, she was a work of art. Pure evil. She beamed all the while and I remember that smile. I think.

None of us finished our cake. Like I said though, this may be somebody else's story. Maybe this never happened to me. I've told it that many times that it can be hard to tell.

Being dead, it doesn't matter. I'm lucky I remembered at all.

The same friend, the one who had tried to explain to me why I did what I did, he said that we were helping. He said that we were necessary. That we were disposing of the disguised cakes. The lying cakes. We were doing the world a great service and I had to agree. I felt like I was ten again and I was staring at that cake, lying, it's belly exposed.

I felt like I was sick but that couldn't be.

We were in the air now and I was on steady. My co-pilot, whose name I didn't know, stared straight ahead.