Nine Eleven (#Wattys2015)

Chapter I

Die Decimus

A map of the airport, a blueprint of a 747 commercial airplane, the flight schedule for Flight 11 to New York, the cockpit, the controls, the seats, and map of the World Trade Center. He stares down at the papers. Omari.

The room is filled with smoke. A hotel. By the dilapidated marks on the walls and furniture, it obviously didn't cost much. The airport wasn't far away.

Once in a while the five men in the room would be silenced by the violent roar of an airplane taking flight.

Five men. Omari stares down at his hands. The brown skin. The white underbelly of his hands, the roughness. And the papers he held. They were old for him.

Smoke cascaded through the room like poetry. It blurred Omari's vision. He couldn't see Waleed, Satam, Al-Sheri, or Mohammed. But he could hear their voices. He could see the muggy silhouette of each member of the group. Two twin beds in the room. Five men. Two men sit on each bed as Mohammed stands in front of them all.

Omari stares into the conversation with a mask of passivity. Under his skin he holds the soul of a pall reality. In truth he was afraid, afraid of doing wrong. His mind should be a "tabula rasa" for all Al-Qaeda maxims; marching on, gun firing, and burying with even praxis. But it wasn't. He couldn't let his mind slip into the darkness. Questionless. Voluntary. He never had. Not through all the training; not through flight school; not through the blood he saw spilt aimlessly into a turbid dust-and not through the holy book he so much adored.

His heart and his mind were divided. Even there in the room with his brothers. Even on the eve of his glory. Even at the thick lip of shifting history. He wasn't sold.

I his heart knew this was of God. His heart saw thunder-claps of bullets sent like bolts justice to pierce the wicked hearts of unbelievers because of their lack homage, because of their rebellion, because of their immorality. All of which set them at enmity with God. His bullets where made of the silver stuff his ancestors pulled from heathen blood. His heart was the prophet's sword which switched back and forth in the light of an imperfect day. The blade would sink to the heart of a country he believed whole-heartedly hated his God. His ardor for God couldn't allow such blasphemy. It never would.

But Omari's mind was like a clock that was stuck at the midnight of a most inopportune time. Stuck. Locked. Against him.

Was he afraid? Maybe "cold feet." It was the thorn in his side that he couldn't remove. It pricked a his soul and the assembly of his better senses.

Omari flips through the pages in hand as Khalid spoke in his harsh voice. Rumination. The last page was the blueprint of twin towers.

The rough sound of the paper brushing coarsely under his hands reminded him of his past. He thought to himself:

"Omari!"barked Satam sitting directly in front of him on the other twin sized bed. One of the five.

"Yes?"Omari replied.

"Are you going to daydream all night? If the switches on the plane are any different will you still be able to reroute it?"

"Yes," he replies.

"How do you know?"everybody waits for his reassuring response.

"I told you. I've done this before. If any of the gauges or switches are different from the ones I've used before then I'll go over the manual they have inside."

"Alright."

"What do we do about the stewardesses,"interjected Waleed after a long and laborious drag of his half smoked cigarette? He was the biggest of the group. He blew violently in the open air, away from conversation.