Nine Eleven (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 14

Al-Shehri stands behind him with the razor that just slit his throat. The high-jacker stands like a dark tower over the dying white man. Two pilots squirm on the cockpit floor as blood jolts out their necks.

Al-Shehri looks down at his Islamic hands and sees long gloves of blood extending up his forearms. He can't see his hands. Just the blood. A candle of color in a lifeless room. Al-Shehri's red hands drip the wax of his expiation.

The cockpit of Flight 11 is quite. Al-Shehri stands motionless with the razor in his hand as the pilots spread their hot blood on the carpet ground.

The plane flies on. The hum of the steel engine is like a thin shroud that covers over the groans of the bloody two. The sound of the engine is as stable as Al-Shehri's conscience-a droll noise, not too loud, not too strange. The foreigner sets one knee down onto the floor and breaths out an ancient prayer. The plane still needs to be rerouted.

Clouds break quietly as they continuously pierce the sky.

"Al-Shehri!" the name breaks the unembittered silence. It's said from the entrance to cockpit. In a jerky twitch Al-Shehri turns to see who called him. Mohammed stands just under the steel door's arch. His dry hand holds onto the curve of the doorknob. His feet newly planted in the room, seemed like stubborn forms of twin foliage.

They have successfully hijacked the plane.

"Did you really have to make such a mess?" Mohammed said as he struts colossal across the hard carpet floor. A titan confident in his strangling power.

He walks towards one of the empty pilot seats to reroute the plane.

To crash a noble death.

To make a heated tomb.

To burn and bury the shrieks of American pride.

To crash the plane into Tower One of the World Trade Center.

A thousand souls sit in the palm of their discretion.

"Come here!"grunted Mohammed from the pilot seat. And Omari passes through the doorway. He walks into the room like the floating end of Mar's cape, trailing Mohammed the zealot. Omari looks undecided. The room is full of blood. The blood on the carpet beneath him moves with subsequent confusion. It makes Omari queazy. Sick. Omari walks to his seat as the blood moves like a Red Sea parted and split for his subsequent walk. He's afraid. The others don't pay attention to him as he joins Mohammed at the cockpit.

The three hijackers remain quiet.

He reaches the other pilot seat beside Mohammed who was switching gauges.

The gauges on the Boeing 767-223ER seem native to Omari. He sits and scrapes his craggy hands like a mobile cliff over the face of every button in front of him. He likes the feel of the buttons below his dark hands. He feels the handles, the switches, the silver, the black, and every form of his practice. He was trained to fly that plane. They both were.