Curse of the Killer Instinct

The entire time the woman with shiny red hair is telling me about her plans to save the world, I am plotting her death and let me tell you, it will be a painful one. It’s hard to reconcile this optimistic and seemingly capable woman with the gruesome death I can’t help but imagine for her. We’re sitting near each other in the airport, having what I’m sure this perfectly nice woman named Courtney thinks is a normal conversation while she tells me about her humanitarian journey to Yemen. It would be an otherwise pleasant conversation if the darkness didn’t follow me everywhere.

I will be on a different flight, my job as a pharmaceutical sales representative taking me to London. Last week, it was Pheonix, two weeks from now, Philadelphia. I am rarely in one place for very long, and that’s how I like it.

And in the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that I wasn’t plotting Courtney’s death—I was merely imagining it.

The truth is, I have this, let’s call it a habit, of picturing in vivid detail, a person’s last moments on earth. This practice of mine isn’t based on anything I know about the person’s health status or life situation. I am certainly not obsessed with death, nor have I even had anyone close to me die. Which is why this predilection I have is so strange and increasingly disturbing.

In the beginning, it only happened with people I knew. I would be going along, having a relatively healthy relationship, when I would suddenly see, in living color, the way that poor sucker was going to die. It’s like a slow-motion movie that gradually comes into focus, speeding up as my unintentional victim careens toward their death. The details are graphic and distressing, but I have forced myself to live with them so I can still function like a mostly normal person. I know, far from normal, but it’s my normal.

This has been my reality for as long as I can remember, and I somehow knew to keep these imaginings to myself. I convinced myself that everyone had similar dark thoughts but didn’t reveal them for fear of making them come true. I would have kept this secret forever except for the fact I started having panic attacks, leaving me frozen and shaken up for days on end. I hid them from my parents, mostly because I didn’t have the heart to tell them about the horrible deaths I had conjured for them.

I eventually learned that other people don’t actually have thoughts like mine. When I tried to make a joke to my best friend about my death visions, she gave me a look and said, “Okay, freak!” Not the most sensitive of friends, but she made her point.

This confirmed my fear that my situation was not natural. I started letting fewer people get close to me, hoping this would stop the death spirals from invading my thoughts. This made for a lonely life.

I’m a practical person; I knew I had to find a way to put an end to my bizarre thoughts. I did some online research and learned that I might have a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is also linked to anxiety. It was hard to believe the OCD part, as I am the most disorganized person I know; perhaps my mind needs a different kind of structure.

I finally started seeing a therapist who helped me do a validity test of my thoughts. Up to that point, no one had died in any of the ways that I had imagined they would, which meant that there wasn’t any true confirmation for my fears. However, I saw a big flaw in this logic: everyone’s death I had imagined was still alive. Which of course is a good thing, but it was impossible to tell if these were just paranoid ruminations or if they represented actual prescience of doom. I decided that certain truths needed to remain unknowable, so I pushed these thoughts aside and tried to focus on the realities of life.

***

For a long time, my life was manageable. I got promoted at work and was sent to exciting places, extolling the virtues of whichever wonder drug I was selling. I was never bored, which meant my intruding thoughts nearly disappeared.

And then, my world shifted on its axis. Slowly at first, but the change became profound. I noticed my death predicting starting to happen with complete strangers. I’d meet them briefly at a conference, or on the subway, and out of nowhere, their deathscape would show itself to me. I could usually brush it aside and continue the conversation, using techniques my therapist had taught me. He allowed me to appreciate my wildly active imagination that would sometimes try to convince me of things that weren’t true: don’t believe everything your mind tells you.

But these new visions started happening almost every day, causing me to lie awake each night wrestling with these horrible predictions, trying to guilt me into some kind of action. What was I meant to do with this information?

The problem got worse when I started seeing the deaths of famous people. These weren’t celebrities I had met; the thoughts would come up just from seeing their image on TV or in an online story. I’d see their faces and then came the torment of virtually experiencing their death, hitting me like a gut punch.

When something caused their premature death, the media would report it. And that sealed the deal: I now had proof that my death visions were real when more than a few died the way I had imagined.

Sure, some of the deaths were predictable: the overdose of a musician, suicide of a tortured child star with a history of depression. But I was coming up with random things like dying from a rare cancer or being shot in a country that person would have no reason to visit. The creepiest part was that they would die within the year that I had first had my premonition. Or whatever it was.

My therapist suggested I keep a journal of my death predictions to try to find a pattern. I don’t think he believed there was any truth to my prophecies, as he had officially diagnosed me with OCD and had gently used the word “paranoia” on more than one occasion. At a loss for any better ideas, I played along and kept the journal.

I felt better when the data showed my foretelling seemed to come true about 60% of the time. I was no statistician, but I figured there were only so many ways a person could die, so my predictions could be attributed to chance. Or reading too many crime novels or obituaries.

Several years went by, and my longitudinal data crept up to closer to 80% accuracy in my predictions. I was seeing people’s deaths but had no idea when they were going to die, just how they were going to die. I would replay their deaths in my head, interrupting any hope of normal, everyday thoughts. I wondered if there was anything I could do to warn the doomed, to make a difference, especially if their death was years away. Or was the death I was seeing predestined, already slated in their life story?

I could feel the toll this was taking on my sanity. My therapist was now prescribing me one of the meds I peddled for my job. This made me feel like a fraud at work since the medication was doing nothing to stop the visions.

***

So here I am today, talking to Courtney as she waits for her flight to Yemen. I like her the more I talk to her, feeling drawn to her selfless passion. She was channeling her energy to make a true difference in the world. I longed for the ability to use my brutal talent for seeing death for something good, to make a positive impact on someone’s life. I couldn’t figure out a way to do this without bringing fear and dread into an otherwise happy life, so I did nothing but fester in my dark imaginings.

The longer I talked to Courtney, the more I noticed a disturbing tingling moving through my body. Every instinct was telling me that I was meant to meet Courtney today, that I could be a talisman to alter the course of her life. This could finally be my chance to make a difference before it was too late.

The problem was that my vision of her death was hazy, much less detailed than other imaginings I had before. I could see her slowly moving toward something, as if floating. She looked peaceful, and there were people surrounding her. Suddenly, the tableau changed, her serenity turning into misery. Her face appeared contorted in silent agony, but I couldn’t tell why. I had no idea how old she was in this vision, whether her death was imminent or years away. My familiar feeling of helplessness was threatening to turn into a full-blown panic attack.

I knew in my gut that it was time to share my death vision with the actual person involved. But I wasn’t ready! And I didn’t know how.

I decided I would invent an excuse to get Courtney’s contact information, allowing me to contact her later, once I figured out the best way to reveal her fate. I needed to use my power to give her even the slightest chance to change the course of her life. This could be my chance for redemption, to make up for having done nothing to save anyone all these years!

Still, I needed a minute. I tried to control my breathing as I excused myself, telling Courtney that I needed a preflight drink to calm my nerves. She smiled kindly, calling after me, “Have one for me!"

I made my exit and practically ran to the bathroom. My palms were sweaty and the tunnel vision had already started. I found a stall near the back and sequestered myself until my heartrate steadied. I rested for about fifteen minutes until I could feel myself return to my body. My feelings of doom had lifted, leaving me feeling foolish about my earlier drama. I needed to do something normal, so true to my word to Courtney, I headed toward the bar for that preflight drink.

I sat at one of the last barstools, wedging my carryon next to me. I sipped my chardonnay slowly, enjoying being a voyeur to the conversations around me. I raised my glass to the man sitting next to me after I overheard him on his phone, beaming with pride about his daughter’s college graduation. Miraculously, there was no death movie playing above his head. I looked at the other bar patrons, who also spared me from predictions of their fates.

I allowed myself to relax, dismissing my earlier anxiety as misplaced preflight nerves. I sat back and felt a surge of relief that I hadn’t ruined Courtney’s important mission. It would have been almost cruel to introduce my own neuroses onto such a fearless woman.

I got an alert on my phone that my plane had an electrical issue, meaning a delay of at least an hour. Resigned to waiting, I ordered another chardonnay, feeling the relaxation settle in.

I passed time reviewing a white paper on the latest clinical trials of Prostetha, the drug I was now responsible for convincing physicians was the next Lexapro. I immersed myself in the panacea that would rid the world of anxiety—if only.

***

It was finally time to board, and I made my way to the gate. I passed the seats where Courtney and I had been chatting, now empty. I had missed my chance to get her contact info and took that as a sign that it wasn’t meant to be.

I boarded the plane and was comfortably in my business class seat, 30,000 feet in the air, when a thunderbolt hit me. My death vision of Courtney came flooding back, nearly returning me to my earlier panic. I could clearly see the terrified look on her face as she swam away from a giant object that was descending toward the vast ocean floor. I could almost feel the freezing water as she struggled to surface. She was swimming in circles, trying to get her bearings. The giant object continued to tilt back and forth as it sank, its massive wing slowing its descent.

Something wasn’t right about what I was seeing. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t reconcile the woman I was seeing with Courtney, who I had been so sure was the subject of my vision. My heart sank as the realization set in. The woman drowning in front of me wasn’t Courtney. It was me.

Was this my ultimate punishment for not sharing my visions?

Would I have gotten on this plane if I had known it was me?

Should I warn one of the flight attendants?

But I was nobody, no proven ability to predict the future. My track record was far from perfect, and that vision could have meant anything…Right? This was my decisive moment, and I was overcome with indecision.

Exhausted, I allowed my indecision to be the decision. The two glasses of chardonnay were catching up with me and I could feel my eyes getting heavy. My mind finally stopped spinning and I was fading into sleep. It was time to leave fate to the universe.

***

It’s been six months, and I haven’t had a single deathscape vision. Maybe surviving the London flight released a deep-seated, unknown fear that was holding me back. The one thing I’ve learned is that it’s impossible to know what’s in front of us, which of our decisions might alter the course of our lives. Or someone else's. Is it one decision, or is it a thousand tiny decisions that lead us to our true fate? Is there even such a thing as destiny?

I have no idea, but the second night I was in London, I met Michael. Even if he’s not my destiny, he showed up at the perfect time. And I haven't imagined his death, even once.