Hopefully this marks the end of my very specific writer’s block around Flash Fiction. Feedback, as ever, is welcomed. Enjoy:

Descent
By Neil Beynon

I keep having a reoccurring dream:

I am standing on grass, a short distance from an airport. It’s not a real airport and I only recognise it because on some level I know I’m dreaming. That I’ve stood here before.

I look up at the sky and planes drop from the blue like oversized snowflakes, rising on the occasional gust but ultimately crunching into the ground. There is nothing cold about the landing, the flames giving way to rolling mountains of thick black smoke that chokes.

There is no sound. That’s how I know I’m dreaming.

I have dreamt this for the last eighteen months on and off. Sometimes Mary is there, sometimes she isn’t. I’m not sure what it means. I’m dreaming it now as my body hurtles along at 500mph, strapped to a metal tube that is all that keeps me from falling.

The sound of a glass being set down on my seat tray shatters my dream, leaving me clambering through the shards for the memory of where I am. It doesn’t take me long to find it.

Mary is next to me. She is fidgeting with her hair, eyes fixed on the window, mind lost on the clouds. I never figured her for a nervous flyer, that’s more me. Still it only takes one bad thought. Or dream.

I take a pull from the scotch in front of me, its amber fire scores my throat on the way down. I’m really awake now.

“You OK?” I ask her.

She nods.

She shakes her head.

“I’m leaving you,” she says.

And just like that I’m falling.

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