To Kill a Monster
Summery: I'm exploring Lisa's unusual self defense on the plane, and at the same time paying homage to director Wes Craven's sick little joke.
Disclaimer: Red Eye's ™ movie rights and characters belong to Wes Craven and Co.
Dr Phil ™ belongs to Peteski Productions.
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Across the walls, silver grey flickers of light were punctuated by the occasional high pitch of the violins.
'A stake through the heart kills the vampire….a silver bullet destroys the werewolf…' Lisa whispered into the insomniac night, eyes rivetted on the television screen.
What had put that thought in her head anyway?
The infamous Red Eye flight incident had spiraled Lisa Risert ( 27, graduate of Miami University) out of her complacent if slightly dull existence and straight into the unrelenting glare of the local Media ('Plucky Hotel Manager turns tables on Terrorist')
She drew the line with the Talk show offers even if it meant a regretful and somewhat ironic refusal to be interviewed on Doctor Phil's show. After all, she had already been through every level of questioning ranging from pertinent ones about upgrading hotel security in the future, down to the simply bizarre ones about the implied allegations of a bathroom tryst with Jackson Rippner aboard the plane.
Going through the same process again on live television would have been the last straw.
No one it seemed could get enough of her story with some journalists hailing her as 'National hero' while others took on a more sceptic outlook.
They certainly barraged her with enough questions about it.
But for some reason, Lisa kept returning again and again to the moment when she first grasped her potential weapon.
How did she ever make the connection between the pen weighing in her hand and the exposed neck of the killer hovering near her left shoulder?
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In her mind's eye, Lisa saw herself bending over in the classic position used during air plane emergencies.
The pen was in her line of sight just barely within her reach.
Jackson's impatient "What's wrong now?" pulled her to the present. She vaguely recalled the flimsy excuse about the pain he had caused when he repeatedly hit her during the nightmarish flight.
Throughout Jackson's smug speech about their "plans" once when they landed, a strange calm had befallen Lisa as she felt the nudge of the pen by her side.
Still, she had told herself, the idea was absurd at best. The desperate act of a desperate woman caught in the throes of a Catch-22 situation. The pessimistic part of her was unsure she could even pull it off.
After all, how did one kill a monster?
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Given the fairly traumatic state of affairs of that night, Lisa actually came across mental blanks in her memory of the flights events. Sleep was not easy to come by most nights, and for some reason she was drawn tonight to watch the Late, late horror show with its cheesy B-grade special effects and manufactured blood and gore.
Compared to the real thing called life, this was a comparative cake walk.
Lisa had been rendered helpless on that flight, numbed by the shock of terror and disbelief just like in the parking lot all those years ago.
Back then, all she could do was endure the humiliation of watching as the nameless man violated her while holding her life at the knife's edge.
Catch - 22 all over again.
Despite knowing what she had to do as they prepared to land, Lisa still had to fend off the ominous voices of doubt about the futility of her plan.
Monsters after all, she reasoned, were indestructible creatures - wrought and spun by imaginations fuelled on the purest forms of human terror. Monsters were not known for their acts of mercy. And defiance against them nearly always had fatal consequences.
Jackson Rippner may not have been a conventional Monster like the vampire from Bram stoker or if her charitable side allowed, the creature who took her against her will in the Parking Lot but like Him, Jackson only took and never gave back.
In her darker moments, Lisa use to wonder if it would have been better that she had died rather then live with the mental scarring of the rape all her life.
No!
It was a monstrous deed that he - that They had done to her. And monsters should be brought down…
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The bumps and thuds of the airplane skidding on the tarmac drowned against the roar of the rapid palpitations in her chest.
This had to be the best performance in Lisa's managerial skills, for she was dealing with a customer that would be handing the Ultimate promotion of Her lifetime.
She remembered forcing herself to give the shortened version of the rape to Jackson, being careful to keep the sentences short and staccato, correctly surmising that he would lower his guard on learning new information about his subject.
Lisa was put in the mind of a hunter waiting to see the whites of the prey's eyes before delivering the fatal blow. She told Jackson that ever since then she was trying to convince herself of one thing.
"That it was beyond your control?" he queried.
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It was at that moment when Lisa recalled the little figure on the pen.
It had been a glance, a brief glance back then but now she willed her memory to slow down as the camera of her mind zoomed in to recall the colour, the shape, the very Plastic tackiness of her unlikely talisman.
At last, a slow grin drew across her face as sleep finally claimed her for that night and many to come.
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"No", Lisa told him pointedly. "That it would never happen again."
And she bolted the Frankenstein pen straight through the Monster's neck.
Fin.