“Stand up,” he told me, and I obeyed because apparently that’s what your body does when someone’s waving a gun at you. Someone who’s just shot another woman not ten feet away from where you are.
I stood up.
“Come here,” he told me.
So I did.
“What’s your name?”
It’s funny because as he was asking me all these questions, I could only think about one thing. Kennedy will be traumatized if she has to watch me die. Of course, any and every one of us on that flight were already traumatized. You don’t have to know a murder victim to feel terrified in a situation like this.
But my mind was on Kennedy. On how goodie-goodie she always was, and look where it got her. On a doomed flight, forced to watch while her blue-haired roommate got executed.
General was still talking to the video cameras. Going on and on about how none of this was his fault, how he didn’t want to hurt anybody but this was the only way he could get the people of Detroit to take him seriously.
And I think I prayed. I say I think I prayed because it wasn’t anything formal. It didn’t start with Dear Jesus and end with Amen. In fact, if I had to relive that moment in pristine detail, I’m pretty sure my prayer only consisted of one single word.
Please.
“You don’t want to die, do you?” General asked me. I assume I shook my head or gave him some sort of response because he frowned as if he actually felt sorry for me. He let out his breath. “I wish I didn’t have to kill you.” Somehow as I stared at the tip of his gun pointed straight at me, I had a hard time believing him.
“Your hair’s blue,” he told me, as if I might not have realized.
“I know.”
“You some kind of punk girl?” General asked.
“No.” And unless you’ve had a conversation with a terrorist holding a gun at you with dozens of cameras recording your upcoming execution, you have no right to tell me that hair color is a strange topic of conversation when you’re about to literally get blown to hell. To me, it felt just as natural as standing there waiting to die.
“You know those dyes have chemicals in them,” he told me.
“I only use all natural.” Looking back, I too can see the absurdity of the conversation, but when I mentioned all-natural, he locked eyes with me. And for a second, I saw a man and not my own executioner.
Then the moment passed.
“I’m sorry about what I have to do,” he said, except he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to the cameras. The cameras all pointed at me waiting to record my death.
I hoped my parents weren’t watching.
When I relive this event, why I try to get to that state where I can recreate the moment when General decided it was time to pull the trigger, I picture a lot of different plausible scenarios, all of which result in my survival.
Of course there’s Math Babe rushing up from behind, tackling my assailant, and saving the day. I’m a self-proclaimed pacifist, but more often than not, this scenario ends with Raul (aka Math Babe) shooting General square in the head. Often I stick around to watch an epilogue, and sometimes it involves a doctor jumping up and declaring Tracy the slain flight attendant was still alive, thank God, and sometimes it involves Raul and me walking hand in hand beneath a gorgeous Detroit sunset after a lovely evening of tapas.
One of my personal favorites is when I stretch out my hand, and with some super skilled ninja moves, I disarm my would-be assailant to the sound of thunderous applause from the rest of the cabin. I never actually kill General in this particular daydream of mine, but I like to remind him that I’d be well within my rights if I did.
We land in Detroit, and an army of hot twenty- and thirty-year-old SWAT men in super tight combat gear showing off each and every one of their well-defined muscles barges in, congratulates me on saving the flight, and holds a celebration on the ground that more often than not involves more tapas.
But it’s only in my daydreams where I’m saved by myself, a handsome math teacher whose name is possibly Raul, or a couple dozen SWAT men. The true story is that I was saved by a little old granny lady with a head of white hair and enough courage to put all the heroes of the Bible combined to shame.