Skin clung like Saran Wrap to her palsied hands, blue veins raised like rivers on a topographical map. I stood while attendants assisted her to the window seat, wishing now that I'd sprung for first-class.

"Excuse me, young man," she said, as the plane reached twenty-seven thousand feet, mints not quite masking the stink of age. "Are you getting off the plane in Chicago?"

"Yes," I said, not daring to look up from my book.

"My great-grandson lives in Chicago. I'm visiting him and his family for Easter. I've never been on a plane before. Have you ever been on a plane, young man?"

"Hmm-hm."

"I swore long ago that I'd never get on one. If God had meant his children to fly, we would've been born with feathers, I always say. But I wanted to see my great-great-grandchildren, you see . . . while I was yet able. There's no chance of Hank coming to Florida to see me, of course." She sniffled. "So I say to myself, 'Mabel, if you want to see those little ones, get off your ass and touch the sun.' Chicago's nice I hear . . . ."

She rambled on for another twenty minutes, and I did my best to ignore her drone.

"You're a quiet one, aren't ya?" she asked. "Isn't it difficult to read with those sunglasses on?"

Despite what I might confront, I removed my shades and risked a peek at this lady with so much life in her bony frame. "I'm sorry," I said, before turning to her. "My name is Michael D -"

You'd think a person who's seen death as many times as I, in all its myriad forms, would grow callous; you'd think a person could eventually adapt, learn to shrug off death's face as one learns to tune out noisy children, or a nagging wife. You'd be so wrong.

Death isn't easily ignored. Death is a sonofabitch. Death gets in your face and laughs because he knows no one would believe otherwise. I've learned to live shit, get by is closer to the truth with my curse; adapt, cope, not by a long shot.

"Deese," I finished.

Mabel was grotesquely old, a skull with thin lips and a bad wig, poorly applied black mascara served as eyebrows. They twitched and wavered, motion not unlike that of caterpillars.

On the middle of her face as obvious as an elephant on Fifth Avenue, but only to me, a 0. Mabel had zero days of life left. Death was coming today.

I smiled and put my shades back on, grabbed a pillow from the overhead compartment as she twittered on about her family. Would she even live long enough to see them? I hoped she would. But death is sardonic as well.

I pretended to sleep, until finally, I did.

At seventeen I died of a massive brain seizure. Nearly a hundred feet of variously-sized hose running from a multitude of pumps kept my basic body functions going but clinically I was dead; my brain activity, unmeasurable. "Living Wills" became a topic of much discussion during those last two weeks of my coma, I'm told.

The doctors never found a reasonable explanation for my seizure, but they suspected drugs, and told my parents as much. Not that they had the balls to write their allegations in my official records, which state "cause unknown" to this day. Yet the damage was done. My parents had already suspected I was a "druggie." My shoulder-length hair apparently held more weight than my straight-A report cards. My father who rarely needed even circumstantial evidence to stubbornly hold on to his convictions was especially condescending afterwards. I bring this up only because of the impact the doctors' words had on our already strained family bonds.

The rub is, I rarely suffered even an aspirin.

When I awoke in the middle of the night after four weeks of death, startling a young nurse who seemed slightly embarrassed for being caught bedside the doctors, they didn't have an explanation for that either. I was, as one perceptive young intern put it, "a fluke."

Nor could the doctors sufficiently explain why I saw numbers on all their faces. Considering my brain had shut down for four weeks, they said I should feel extremely lucky to walk away from the hospital with only sensory "residue" on my brain. In time, they would simply fade away.

The numbers not only remained, but in fact changed each day by a count of one.

Seven weeks after I left the hospital, on my eighteenth birthday, my father's number was down to 44. And forty-four days later my suspicions were confirmed when an accidental spill of molten steel at the mill melted him and two others to nothing.

The empty coffins enabled the families to believe there was actually something left to bury. But I never understood what the cosmetologist bill was for. As I stood with my mother and little sister beside dad's coffin, receiving well-wishers and even a few honest grievers, I read their faces while I shook their hands.

Aunt Tina, my father's sister, 7792.

Cousin Rose, 11431.

George Hunders, mill worker, 5723.

Father Delaney, our pastor, 310.

The death line toiled on. I was staggered to learn that Father had so many friends. I watched their faces until I couldn't stand to see the walking corpses any longer. Then I bolted through the funeral home doors, unintentionally knocking an old man to the sidewalk, a 5 boldly displayed on his reddening face. I wanted to help him up but couldn't find the courage to touch the dead, so I ran. And ran and ran. At some point I found myself back home, in my bedroom. My eyes hurt from crying. When Mother walked in I quickly put on a pair of Ray-Bans to hide my shame. I was so relieved to find that the sunglasses somehow hid her death count that I cried again.

She held me, and we wept together for the longest time. But only one of us mourned the loss of dad.

"Sir, would you prefer a breast of chicken or a slice of ham?"

"What?" I mumbled, not sure at all that I was awake.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," the attendant said, "but we're serving dinner now. Would you prefer a chicken breast or a ham slice?"

She was an attractive woman, early to mid-twenties, breasts tightly cramped into her stewardess outfit.

"Are you awake?"

"Yes, honey, he's just quiet," Mabel interceded on my behalf.

For the first time in my life I believed that I could fall in love. I removed my glasses so I might see the color of her eyes.

"Chicken or ham, sir?"

Her eyes were the same color as the sky through which we flew. Her cheekbones were prominently raised on both sides of a petite nose; her lips full and invitingly kissable. But overshadowing all these features was a blazing 0.

"Sir?" the goddess said.

"I'm not hungry."

"How about something to drink then?"

"No, thanks."

She pushed the cart forward, banging into a man's ankle which was extended into the aisle. He turned to complain, lost his words on her beauty, and smiled instead. A large, fat 0 covered the jowls of his fat face.

Nearing panic I said "Excuse me," to the man in the seat across the aisle from me.

He turned and his 0 struck like a baseball bat.

I quickly turned in my seat and rose to my knees, looked at the faces behind me shoveling food and drink into their mouths. Each wore a 0 like a freakish burial cowl.

The airplane suddenly lurched and oxygen masks dropped. Plates of chicken and ham hung suspended in mid-air, before slamming into the ceiling. Amidst all the screams I could make out Mabel's voice: "Oh my, is this normal?" she repeated.

I rocketed head-first into the luggage compartment, nearly passing out, and was thrown harshly back into my seat. I somehow found the strength to latch my lap belt, as if it would make a fucking difference.

The world bled.

My last thought: dad's death couldn't have been much different.

From a live news feed from station WKWK in Glasgow, Kentucky:

"There are rumors that a survivor was miraculously found in the twisted wreckage of Flight 931, which crashed just a few hours ago into the tobacco fields of north Barren County. Until now, it was believed that all 237 passengers and crew had perished. Emergency rescue crews refuse to confirm or deny the rumors, and have asked the press not to send any false hopes to families."