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.