My grin was genuine, warm and engaging; like my grandmother’s home baked apple pie. When my mate saw it, he instantly grabbed me in an affectionate bear hug; a gesture that could only be shared between two best friends who had struggled over mountains together.

“You did it man!” Grinned my best friend, “You did it!”

I can still remember his voice in my ear as we gripped each other tightly. After years of planning and putting our small fledgling business together it had finally come together. We had the loan.

“We did it.” Was all I could reply.

*

I was a young boy then. I wanted to touch the sky and feel the warm glow of satisfaction and success drown me; to fill me with the electric energy that would draw me to greater heights. I was the greyhound racing for the finishing line, the eagle soaring higher. Every moment, every step, every ascent brought me closer and closer to my goals.

And now here I am; silent with my head down against my lap in an awkward, almost painful, position. The hero inside me, the hero that had died long ago, had been well and truly subdued. It felt shameful that I no longer had that urge to fight back. It felt sad.

Ten minutes ago, with my smart plush suit (Armani mind you) showing off wealth and power, I had been sitting in the plane reading the paper: swank and glamorous. Now I was feeling sweaty, frightened and breathing heavily as the man roared out orders, walking up and down the plane’s aisle: the hijacker.

I’d even seen him just a few seats down, perhaps not exactly at ease and relaxed to the trained eye, but that was something I didn’t possess. I was not a detective, I was certainly no spy, and the FBI had never been a past profession of mine. I was a business man: I sold, I bought, and I gave orders. Perhaps years ago I might have read the uneasy body language, my mind finely tuned to see the nerves and sweaty palms that spelt a bargain, but not now. Now my business life was almost over as my world crashed down around me along with my years of work.

I took a glance out of the corner of my eye and could see the madman storming up and down, up and down. What he screamed was probably blasphemy and foulness; pointing his chunky gun at random terrified rabbits that dared to look up into the head lights. It was Arabic or something, I was never good with languages, but it sounded like Satan’s own, a tongue forged in fumes and flame. Red rage coursed through that man’s veins and everyone knew to remain silent.

In a world such as ours, equality doesn’t come easy. Age, sex, religion, and race: any difference divides us yet our diversity brings us together when we fight as one. But we don’t. Scared of what we don’t understand, to learn about these distinctions is not in our nature; instead of becoming whole we are segregated. My generation was born to make us complete. Or so I had thought. I understand that there are different parts to religion: Catholics, Mahayana, Sunni; but now, hearing words of Arabic origin swearing our damnation, every racist image of discriminating hatred merged into one. It was wrong but I couldn’t help it, a weakness of humanity.

He was calming now and his movements were more careful: deliberate. Maybe his initial rant was to have us paralyzed with fear; if that was the case then it had worked. Taking a quick glance I observed him in more detail. He was young, dark haired and definitely from the middle-east. His clothes were ordinary, smart trousers and a casual shirt. No-one would have suspected him of being any different to the average passenger but for the black revolver held closely to his side. How the hell had he got it on to business class? With his back to me, I could make out the passengers, bent double in their seats, hands folded behind their heads. The rows of seats, classy and relaxing, made me think of the pews in that church I went to as a kid.

The sharp turn in his stride caught me by surprise and my head snapped back, like a mouse darting for its burrow. Had he seen me? All the instructions, the threats, the warnings; they flooded into my mind, “Head on knees! Hands on head! Or I shoot!” It had been stumbled English in his foreign accent, but it was all too clear now, ringing out in my mind. I closed my eyes. Now I could hear his footsteps, like the beat of a drum, thumping inside to match the pounding of my heart. The whimpers of parents and the crying of children had subsided; all my brain was focused on was the thump, thump, thump. I pictured him, eyes fixed on my head: staring, boring in through my skull. He was near, passing the seat by the red skirted lady, whose attractive legs had caught my eye; past the smart suited youngster; and then he was there. His breathing hovered above me, the stench filling my nostrils. My eyes closed tighter. Hands shaking, forehead sweating, I willed him to go away. Time ticked away: seconds, minutes, hours. I finally had the courage, courage to open my eyes slowly, slightly, just to see if I was looking up at a cold hard barrel of the gun.

Relief filled me. No muzzle. No weapon. No hijacker. I slumped, my muscles suddenly tired from the tense moment in the company of the reaper that had drained the energy out of me. I was born again.

“What do you want?”

Loud and clear, the voice had come from my left and it had to be that foolhardy thirty something sitting next to me. Dazzling smile and creased eyes he was handsome, probably arrogant, and had consumed more than one drink from the aeroplane’s bar. And now he had decided he was the voice of the plane.

The drum beat was back but this time it was the executioner’s march, the terrorist screaming profanities as he roared down the aisle. I ducked further, the sudden pump of adrenalin blown back into my system, making my head dizzy and my stomach feel sick. This was it: this was the day I would die.

“Sit! Sit!”

Stunted by the accent, barked out, the order was obviously directed at the man next to me. I could see he had stood, the creases in his trousers dropping out as his knees straightened; the light above glimmering off the highly polished designer shoes. Knots twisted inside me. Why was he doing this?

“Sit! Sit!”

The order came again, this time with more fury, and I saw the gun’s barrel swing upwards. He was going to fire! His finger would be on the trigger, pressure lightly on the metal ridge, waiting for the moment to send a small projectile into the skull of the defiant and blow out the pressure of the plane. We would all die.

“What gives you…”

My head vibrated. It filled me ears, my brain, my body. All I could feel was the thunderous pain of the explosion that had just taken over my world. Something had spattered me, over my arm, and my mind danced. I surreally looked around in a slow, dazed motion, my hand lifting to wipe red liquid from my sleeve.

And then the sudden jerk, tearing me out of my seat. It left me scrabbling to keep my footing, trying to stop myself from tripping as I was dragged out of my seat. I looked back to see the hero’s body slumped forward, nothing much left of a shattered skull, like a vase that had been hit with a baseball bat. The brain, the blood: I vomited, spewing up the vile pulp that had filled my gut and then I was pulled to my feet as the hijacker gripped me tightly.

For some reason my position didn’t come to the fore of my mind. Maybe it was shock, maybe some defensive mechanism of my brain, maybe it was to hide from reality, but all I could think of was the hole where the bullet had perforated the plane; a small dot of light that gave a glimmer of the word outside. And we should be depressurised, surely? Wasn’t the air supposed to be sucked out? Weren’t we supposed to be flung around like in the films?

A jerk at my collar snapped me back to reality and I found myself being the exhibit of the terrorist’s speech. As I pleaded for help, they all huddled: shaking and afraid. They were almost as terrified by the cold, harsh kill as I was, but not quite. Me? I wanted to cling on to that disbelief and pretend it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t, it couldn’t be.

“You sit or I kill!”

The gun was raised to my head and I felt the barrel press against it. I tried to control myself, to stay calm or hide away but I couldn’t. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and rock back and fourth mimicking the cradle I had peacefully slept in as a baby.

Tossed around to be displayed to all, I finally caught a glimpse of the fanatic’s face. He had dark skin and it was greasy, sweaty. His brow of ink black hair swept down across his forehead but it stuck to the skin, drenched in his body fluids. Yellowed teeth showed saliva sticking to them and forming threads like a spider’s line as he yelled and bellowed.

Then I was thrown forward, sprawling on and sliding onto my chin with a crack that dazed me. Stars danced in front of me and automatically I felt my hands reach out, grabbing for some passenger’s leg that was just in front of me but it darted aside. Vision spinning and mind full of confusion I scrambled down the aisle. No shout from behind, at least none thrown in my direction, so my body kept moving, crawling along the plush red carpet that only made me think of the fluid that was smeared over my finger tips. I was pulling myself along a stream of blood.

“Stop!”

The screaming yell could only mean one thing but the door, the safety of the cockpit’s door, was just in front and I reached up to bang furiously on the entrance. It wouldn’t open.

“Stop! Stop!”

Thump, thump, thump a running pace that made me grimace and my fist struck all the faster, even as the hopelessness of the situation hit me. Panic filled my body, a new found terror that turned my thoughts in to a blur. In a last ditch effort, I turned to beg for my life, but instead I was met with the flush of the gun being pointed straight at me.

Pain. Once again the deafening explosion that tore at my ear drum, rocking me from within. But that was nothing, nothing, compared to the torturous fire that erupted through my body from my gut. My hands clutched at the pain, trying to tear it away, but instead they were coated in my blood. I didn’t care. I was being burned from within and I could feel the blaze burn out my insides. I barely noticed the hijacker’s spittle as it flew from his mouth onto my face; barely noticed him turning, to leave me writhing and screaming in agony.

And then it began to disperse; like a painkiller had been injected into me. A sudden silence descended, and the fire became a dull burning sensation in the background. I waited for the end, for the hijacker to turn back and put a bullet through me and stop my nightmare. I couldn’t think of anything else, I wanted to die.

Nothing but a descent of peace and my fingers reached down to my stomach that still throbbed with pain. Sluggish, mind blurring, my hand felt towards the wound in my abdomen but instinctively drew back as new found pain bit into me. I could feel the blood that flowed down the sides of my body, pooling on the floor. For a second, I jolted as flashes of lightning flew through me, but then my senses dulled once more and I slumped back against the cockpit’s door.

Was this what humanity was about? I thought of the man who stood against his killer and the corpse with its head broken like an egg shell. And then the passengers; huddled, crying, with no one standing to help the hero’s attempt to fight back. No-one had even tried.

Life flowed from me. I felt dizzy, woozy. Thoughts of my life, my ambitions rolled through my mind; building my business, watching it slump, and this horrifying journey. I had been taking this flight to clinch a deal that would save it all. I snorted to myself, that wouldn’t happen now. My eyelids were dropping, head swimming with a thick fog that weighed down my limbs. I tried to lift my arms and felt the slightest of movements but gravity seemed to be pulling them downwards. I knew I would become another lifeless piece of scenery in this play where no-one knew the ending.

We preach equal opportunity and fairness but can humanity ever reach this level of awareness? I doubt it. When we cannot find the strength to stand up to the demon’s that stalk the world, how are we supposed to find the strength to fight the demon of inequality?

For my other stories/parts go to:

http://www.xomba.com/short_story_list_metrius_and_others