Fel, a slender black cat with a tail so bristly it could be confused for a pipe cleaner, was my secret saviour. I don't try to wrestle with death, but the struggle is out of my control, and it often feels like I'm a magnet in a knife factory.
I've read a lot of books. I've seen a lot of movies. A common theme is that you can't run from your fate. You see it in the superhero flicks, the protagonist wants nothing to do with his powers, but something keeps forcing him to use them. Well, from my past experiences I've found that I can run from my fate, death. Fel has a habit of rearing his sleek head every time I find myself in a spot of bother, which brings me to my current predicament.
My seat rattled and thanks to the economy leg space my knees rocked in sync with the person in front. The stewardesses had taken a seat at the front and back of the plane. It was the first time I had seen them fasten a seatbelt outside of take-off and landing. The cabin was calm, having the rickety experience explained as turbulence made it "just another flight". What turned our bumpy country road into a highway to hell was the smell of smoke — an acidic vapour that clung to the back of each passengers throat.
I didn't panic. If this was a life-threatening situation, and this plane was about to plummet, then my little feline friend Fel would be here. With that thought, like I had birthed him out of my imagination, he appeared. But it wasn't my imagination because amongst the chaos a passenger in the seat next to mine screamed.
'Is that a cat!?'
Fel leapt onto my screaming neighbour and locked eyes with me. It cocked its head and purred. So I had two options. Die or follow my furry friend. That's not what I would call a crossroads, at least not one with equally sized paths. Take the beaten, bramble bush track or here follow this cat down a beautifully shaded path.
I unfastened my seatbelt, to the horror of the woman in the aisle seat, and climbed over her because she was not about to do the decent thing and let me out. Fel paced his way to the back of the plane without getting caught off-balance. I followed the tail, using it my reference point for what was "straight". Was he going to lead me to a parachute? Would I have to jump to survive?
I kept walking with the images of a fast approaching ground filling my mind. That was until I passed three seats. One was empty, one had a crying girl, and the last had a woman with a blood-splattered face. The woman slumped like a crash-test dummy and allowed the vibrating plane to have its way with her limp body.
The little girl, despite her puffy eyes and tear-laden face, stopped crying when Fel sauntered past. She swallowed, half choked and fought with her seatbelt. I'm not very good at guessing ages, but she looked about ten. The belt was too much for her jackhammer fingers, and she resorted to sliding out. She clambered into the aisle, right in front of me, and ignored me. Fel had her full attention, and she crawled after him.
We got to the back of the plane. Fel was rubbing himself against the closed door as if asking one of us to let him out. I looked at the girl, and without hesitating, she moved to the red handle that would depressurise the cabin and invite a vacuum that would suck us both into the ether.
'Can you save both of us?' I asked.
Fel looked between us, and a parachute appeared on the floor- popping into existence as he had. One parachute. That answered my question. Fel was here to save me, wasn't he? So it wouldn't work for the girl, would it?
Perhaps it was selfish of me to give the girl the parachute. On the one hand, I was saving her life (providing the parachute opened based on altitude). On the other hand, when she had the chute on, Fel seemed to focus on her as if I no longer existed. And it was in that instant that I realised he was a curse, not a saviour.
Where a disaster of life-threatening proportions appeared, so did Fel. And he needed a vessel — someone to be on the ground (so to speak) when shit went down. I had just given a little girl her very own shadow. A little black cat. Death himself.