The Monster

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THE MONSTER
by (AJ) Eric

Warning: This story scene is not violent or graphic in any way, but the person who tells it is a suicide bomber about to set off a weapon in a crowded hotel lobby. If that makes you want to skip this story, I certainly understand. If you’re willing to hear her out, read on.

Does the One True God delight in irony?

I’m finally dressed as I’ve always wanted to be. I walk from the entry path into the hotel lobby wearing a short-sleeved pale blue top with one scalloped reddish line across the front. The top ends about three inches above my navel. A low-cut pair of navy blue shorts cover less than half my upper legs. Ankle socks and white canvas shoes complete the ensemble. Hoop earrings, a heart necklace and bangle bracelets add to the effect. With raven hair in a high ponytail, smooth olive skin and the makeup I’m wearing, plus the small purse in my left hand, I don’t think anyone would doubt that I’m a Western girl from a Mediterranean country, about 16 or 17 years of age, probably looking for the rest of her family or meeting her boyfriend.

The problem is that to justify my looking like this, I have to die. My superior officers have sent me to this hotel with a bomb and a mission to take as many enemy civilians with me as I can when I explode it and lose my life.

It’s a holiday weekend here, and there are plenty of families around. Some are seated at tables, others on couches and chairs, and a few in the dining area eating snack food, since it’s too late for lunch and too early for supper. A few more are in line at the hotel counter, checking in. So there’ll be lots of people dying with me when I open the purse and flip the switch to set off the weapon.

None of this is unexpected. I volunteered for the suicide squad, asking only to choose my own disguise. They probably thought I was after the Martyr’s Reward in the afterlife.

Actually, I’m somewhat doubtful that if there’s an afterlife, our legends and lore, and perhaps even our scriptures, really know what it’s like. I’m a 24-year old university graduate in sociology, not a mystic or a zealot.

But what I did know was that I wasn’t going to live as a man any longer. Immediate death seems preferable to a full lifetime of that. I’d lost all my relatives, variously to accident, illness and civil war, so there is no one left here to be disappointed at my demise. I’ve never been in a relationship; if I looked fondly at Western women, it was to admire their appearance and clothing choices, not to imagine them in my arms, let alone my bed.

This mission does bother me. When I signed on, I expected to do my damage at a military base or checkpoint, or even an embassy — certainly not at a vacation hotel. But that isn’t my choice to make, and while there doesn’t seem to be anything they could do to me if I did it poorly — dead is dead — I still believe in our cause, and will do the best I can.

It’s time. It appears that I’ll be taking at least 20 people with me. Whether or not there’s an afterlife, I’ll certainly be remembered in this world: the enemy will call me a monster and my side will call me a martyr and an avenger. I’d call myself a woman. And I don’t think any of us will be wrong.

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Comments

Terrifying

joannebarbarella's picture

It could so easily be true...or nearly so.

Challenging but thought provoking

I suspect most of those who volunteer for this job are more zealots than our girl. Be that as it may, her reasoning driving her to this extreme action seems sound although I can in no way condone her actions.
Thanks for making it a short, short. I figured I could get through it. If you took the trouble to write it I could read it. Everyone has a voice to be heard.

>>> Kay

Giving voice to the unthinkable

laika's picture

A man in parts forgotten
With an outlook that is rotten
And an attitude to match it
Finds relief inside a hatchet
And he halves someone in Boulder
Justifiability is in the hands of the beholder
And you just don't know what people will do next
~Todd Rundgren

Whether it's a terrorist blowing up tourists for their God or a wacko with a chip on their shoulder wanting to "show them all" by shooting a theater full of moviegoers, attempts to imagine what a monster is thinking before they kill a bunch of innocents isn't the same as attempting to justify those thoughts (and by extension the killer's crimes). Although some people have a hard time telling the difference. To them even trying to imagine what a killer thinks is a criminal act- because all we need to know about evildoers is we hate them and they're so utterly alien we could never do anything like that (Until someone convinces us to. See: Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People by John Conroy...).

This is a disturbing story. I'd be worried about anyone who didn't find it disturbing. It's heartbreaking that the narrator sees doing this as the only way she can get to be the girl she knows she is, if only for a few hours before she dies at her own hand, taking 20 or so unsuspecting people with her. I wish she could see there are other ways, ways that hurt no one, and that what she's doing isn't glorifying God or anything else, but is just crazy and evil. And while I feel for her, every bit of my sympathy disappears the moment her finger presses the detonator.
~Good story if not a particularly feel-good story, Veronica
,

(I'd like to imagine the bomb fails to go off and---in some improbable rom-com continuation---she winds up meeting some guy or girl, falling in love and renouncing her fanatical cause as she finds herself living the life she'd always dreamed of; but I don't think that's the way this one plays out...)