I hope it doesn’t need to be said, but it can’t hurt. I’m not defending the character that I sketched in “The Monster”.

I don’t personally believe in heavenly rewards and punishments, but if I did, in this case I’d have no problem at all consigning my bomber to the flames that her faith and a lot of others prescribe for the worst evildoers. I’m not trying to apologize for the bomber’s actions, even if I can understand the motives behind this fictional version of her. Even if the terrorist under discussion conceives of it as part of a war, IMO a suicide bomber who kills 24 random civilians who didn’t pose any threat at all doesn’t deserve a hero’s reward or anything positive.

I tried to keep the story as generic as I could, obscuring the part of the Middle East where it was taking place, the identity of the “One True God” she worshipped, the scripture and commentaries referenced and the heroic reward that was being offered. But the incident that inspired it was real, and something that sordid stays in memory for a long time (and on Wikipedia for even longer), so it’s very likely that many of you know literally where it came from.

The bomber in that incident, a man in his mid-to-late 20’s IIRC, did dress as a woman to enter the hotel. and I’m almost certain I saw one report, though I have no idea of its veracity, that said that he had dressed as a teenager in clothes similar to those I described here, with a bare midriff and most of the legs exposed — something that would have been very difficult for any of their observant co-religionists to get away with in public and especially in mixed company. I don’t know anything more about that individual, so I have no idea whether my take on their gender identity is accurate, or whether they actually entertained any of the doubts, such as they were, that I gave her.

Most of those here who know me as an author or editor will realize that this isn’t the kind of thing I normally write, not only because of its darkness but because I don’t do static character sketches; there’s usually something in my work that would pass as a plot.

I started a story on Sunday in a rare and unexpected fit of inspiration, a tale, working title “In Paradise”, not very different in tone from my lighter fare here on BC. (The Eric on FM is somebody else.)

I needed, about halfway through, to introduce a TG character who had qualified for a male hero’s reward but whose soul came over as a teen girl, in order to see what the virgin girls who had been selected as his “reward”, raised from babyhood in this isolated part of heaven for no other purpose, would do.

I’d had this particular terrorist in my head for some time — the bombing. after all, is a couple of decades old now — never really thinking that I’d find a place for her. So I wrote this up, still feeling inspired. I felt that I wrote it well — YMMV, of course — especially the payoff paragraph.

But it totally dried up my feel for the main story. I realized that if I included her I’d have to make my readers relate to her and root for her to some extent as she tried to navigate her new environment. That just wasn’t going to happen.

I continued writing "In Paradise", more slowly and laboriously, for a couple of days until I realized I was just spinning my wheels; the plot wasn’t moving forward and I was no longer sure how I’d resolve it.

So I’m going to replace her in my story with someone more compatible with it, and see if I can get back on track.

In the meantime, here’s “The Monster”. I can’t echo Rod Serling and say “presented for your approval”, but hopefully for your interest.

(AJ) Eric