'Trixie' Lands a Boeing

            I guess it was bad, yeah.

            Yeah, it was definitely bad.  I mean, three men had just been killed, right?

I know, it’s weird, I’m talking about it so… casually, so nonchalantly.

Well, let me tell you: it was not casual.  It was far from casual.  When three men get killed, nothing is casual.  I mean, the killing itself was not.

Obviously, the killing was not a casual affair.

Listen.  I know that there is a time, and a place, and people with whom to be.  I know that, and so do you and every damned media reporter and snazzy-a*s cool cat who thinks they share my story.  Some people, though, are killed before that time�"like a premature birth, only they are thumbed out of this world instead of gloriously welcomed into it.  All three of those men?  Premature.  Premature.  Before their time.  And now, who knows when their time was going to be?

The killing was atrocious, the killing was unfair, the killing was intentional, bold, pleasurable.  Pleasurable?  I don’t think I said that because the killers enjoyed killing.  I don’t think that anyone, even someone who truly despises something that someone else stands for or someone who has killed prior really can enjoy doing it.  It’s like, here is a life, and now it is over.  Because of your action, which you carried out deviously and maybe with the forethought of pleasure, this life is over.  Gone.  Through: it literally has no way of ever becoming human ever again, and how can that be pleasurable?

No, I think I said ‘pleasurable’ because I had the killer who killed the killers in mind.  Whoa, yeah, okay, I mean, I’ve rehearsed this like a thousand times but that sentence still seems to only make sense to me.  Haha.  Pathetic, isn’t it?  Roughly a thousand times, only makes sense to me.

I’ll probably repeat it a thousand more times between now and, oh, y’know… next week.

Me.  I’m the hero.  Some people came on board my flight, and they… they killed… they removed the lives of three men from this world.  Removed, I’m being serious, removed�"but what were they thinking?  They wanted to survive, didn’t they?  Well, they did.  Sort of.

I know: I didn’t say anything about the killing�"yeah, I talked about the killing, but I mean the killing.  Well, lucky for me!  I can’t!  No memories!  Yes, that’s right.  Stab, stab, stab, says the reporters.  Sounds good to me.  All I know is all I need to know: I completed that task, check, done, off the list, let’s move on to writing an anti-White House virus, and next we’ll skydive off Everest and maybe have tea with Mussolini.

Me: The cheeky flight attendant who was called ‘Trixie’ like some demonic attempt at making the hourlong flight from Manchester to Philidelphia more pleasurable.  PLEASURABLE.  Yeah, right.  I’ll bet when half those passengers hear ‘Trixie,’ they snort with unnecessarily�"unnecessarily to them�"concealed laughter.  Half of them probably don’t even hear when he calls our names.  Half probably want to get off the plane and out of the 1950s and back to solid ground and legitimate sandwiches and tightly-packed families, with one boy and one girl and one dog and one wife that obeys and a husband that smokes a pipe while reading the newspaper so that he can boast to his business colleagues that he has some sort of completely mind-blowing opinion on the most recent headlines that will make him famous even though he read it in an Op-Ed, even though that scene is straight from the 1950s and even though there isn’t all that much pleasure in newspapers or boasting or white picket fences.

You see how much ‘Trixie’ ruins a flight?

A thousand times I’ve told it.  That’s how it feels, anyways.  I guess that it’s good ‘cuz now I can tell this story and look all heroic like they want me to be, and smile and wave and write an autobiography.

You still don’t get it?  I don’t blame you�"I didn’t explain.  I mean, when I said that weird think early about killing killers kill kill killed, I meant something about that man who sent those men to kill.  Some guy decided that he would just send men to kill MY CAPTAIN.  My captain.  My captain who offered me a job because of my cleavage and let me stay because of my disarming charm.  My captain who bought me the best food and told me to look sharp and never asked for perverted favours like some would.  My captain who named me.  And now look where he is�"killed.

Just… did it, one day.  That man just decided one day that he was going to kill.  One day was one more checked box for me, and one day was my hiring all those years ago�"yeah, two years.  Seems liked the passed about as slowly as the landing did, with a control tower scrambling to send me the right instructions so that I could save a bunch of people, even though it didn’t matter because three had already died.  No�"dying has a time.

Killing is determined.  By a man… and I meant to say that that man found pleasure, sick and blind, in sending and killing.  I meant to say that that man killed all that he could of the hearts of the killers on the plane.  The killer of the killers, who killed MY CAPTAIN.

When was my Captain’s time?  When was he supposed to shed vital functions in favor of eye rolls and cracked nails?  Supposed to?  Well, I can tell you one thing for certain, yessir: only that preposterous man thought that the three men on my aircraft were supposed to die.

And I had to land a Boeing 747.  I was a stewardess.  I saved every life on that plane but my own.  Oh, look at me now!  Look at that hero!  See her flash a winning grin and raise her hand to the balustrade and try to wink even though she hasn’t been able to since she was six years old, a time when she wouldn’t have minded being called ‘Trixie’ because it was magical and new and young and she didn’t have cleavage and it was practically the 1950s and the only killers were knights on horseback who rescued princesses and they were only killers because they had to slay a dragon, they had to, because if they didn’t then the dragon would kill them and the princesses and wouldn’t that be much worse?  Wouldn’t that be terrible?

I don’t even know who sent those men, but someone did.  Killers.  Why would they even consider killing the only people who could come even remotely close to freakin’ landing a Boeing 747, on a flight with, hell, hundreds for all I care, given the families and communities, people on board?  You know, I don’t even have theories.  You can go to the papers, if you want.  You probably already have.

Yeah, you probably already have.

Were they scared?  Did they forget the plan?  Maybe they realized afterwards that dying wasn’t an ultra-effective way of spreading a damned message.  Maybe… did they regret it?  Did they realize the err of their ways, and did the best they could?  Hell, maybe it was all part of the plan�"y’know, to have a busty stewardess land a Boeing 747 after killing my three ‘up fronts’�"and they were all keen on confusin’ the media and makin’ the airline industry look bad, makin’ America look bad, makin’ themselves look pleasurably good-natured.  You think those passengers are having pleasure right now?  Huh??  What about them??  Maybe they’re giving their kids some worldly advice about never being too sure about those damned airplanes way high up in the sky with big wings and not-at-all-casual jet engines that can suck a man through to no identification.

‘Trixie’ landed that plane, because a jet engine is too kind.  It can kill one person.  But only a killer can kill three.  

Author's Note

Written the week of 17 June through 24 June