The plane flies low as the pilot fights to keep it out of the water. I am not supposed to be on this plane, or any plane. I wasn’t even intentionally at the airport. But I know what will happen. At least I know what will happen to me. It has won again, but I can at least save the others on the plane— if I concede, It will leave them alone.

“All right!” I call, disturbing the terrified silence held by the other passengers. “If you can find a way to get me off the plane while it’s still in the air, you win this round!”

The other passengers look at me as though I’ve gone crazy. I can’t blame them; sometimes I think that none of this is real and I’m actually sitting somewhere in a room with white padded walls. I try to ignore those thoughts.

They don’t look for long, though. Almost before I’ve finished the last syllable, the emergency exit door that I am (of course) seated right next to flies open. I hear somebody scream as I grab a “personal flotation device” seat cushion and jump out.

The plane is quite low now. Somewhat to my surprise, I land in the water. For a moment, I panic. Is it tired of playing? Was I too easy a challenge? Then it runs in to me from behind: the raft. As I resignedly clamber aboard and the storm, after one last gust to disorient the pilot and remove the plane from the “board,” begins to abate, I start to analyze where I went wrong this time.

I know by now that how I get to land, or how quickly, does not matter— It will still find me. I must examine everything I did after I landed.

I was ashore for a while, this time… long enough to get a job, even to afford the small luxury of an Indian taxi cab… India is where I usually end up. Perhaps I should try something else? Wait— the taxi! I relaxed; I was enjoying myself. I let my guard down. And that was where the problems started. I’m not really sure how I ended up on the airplane, but it happened because I took the taxi and it went past the airport. I wouldn’t have been anywhere near the airport or the accident—

I still would have been fine if I hadn’t stopped to help with the accident!

It knows my weaknesses. Somehow, It had caused that accident to lure me to the airport. It had used the danger of others to finally win this game, too, with the plane. Almost every game, come to think of it. I concede to save the others in the plane, or the boat. I get in situations that lead me here because I try to help.

Already I have my plan to get to land. I know the string of islands from here to India well— which ones I can swim to, which ones to watch for natives on. But if I get back… The way to win is to ignore the pain of others.  And there would be a lot of it. It would cause pain to get me, to lure me back. So I must decide: Do I continue as I have been, escaping again and again, knowing the futility of my actions, but still helping people? Do I simply stay here and die, knowing that that, too, will protect people like the passengers of the plane? Or do I go through life ignoring the pain and need of others, back on land and away from this accursed raft?

I was certain I had won.

I went back. I went through the rest of my life seeing pain and ignoring it. My only good became freedom and my own ends, but I lived for a long time, and I never returned to the raft, save in the occasional nightmare. And finally, I died.

My spirit drifted, and eventually I found myself hovering over a familiar raft.

It turned, that which had haunted me for so long, a spirit, just as I. “I see one of you has at last come to relieve me.”

“Relieve you?”

“By choosing to ignore the plight of other people, you pledged to this service. Now it is you who must torture those whose fate it is to come here, and you cannot leave this post until one of them breaks and makes the same decision you did.

Deep within me I felt the tiny remnants of humanity I still possessed snap and begin to scream gibberish, but the rest of me was simply numb. “You mean…?”

“Yes.” The spirit grinned, baring sharp, wicked teeth. “I won.”