The Final Flight

“Champagne or wine?” he asks, that malicious grin playing on his lips.

A similar grin quirks at the corners of my mouth, realizing quickly where I am. I look around the plane, taking in my lavish surroundings. What makes the growing grin fade as quickly as it came on is the sight of three haggardly girls in the back of the plane, staring blankly at the floor as a hostess brings them juice and water. I look back to his expectant expression. He looks older than in the documentary I watched about him just a few minutes ago. His wrinkles cut deep into his tan and uneven skin, and his hair was even whiter than that salt-and-pepper color that women loved.

“I can’t drink yet,” I reply with a shrug, leaning my cheek against my fist, my knuckles blotched yellow with how tight my grip is. “Apologies.”

He chuckles, a low and rumbling chuckle that sat deep in his chest. It made the corners of my mouth deepen even more. “Ah,” he says simply, waving over a hostess and whispering something in her ear. His eyes graze her ass before he turns his gaze back to me. “You see, that isn’t a problem here,” he says, pushing forward a napkin onto the tray attached to the arm of my seat. The hostess comes by a few seconds later, two flutes of champagne in hand, setting them down on the trays. He thanks her and takes a sip, his eyes never leaving mine, even as he tips his head back to drink the sweet alcohol.

“Do you see the police around?” he asks and gives me a nauseating once-over. “I thought you looked young.”

I bite the inside of my cheek to prevent myself from saying anything brash that might cause him to ground the plane and prolong what was waiting for him on that godforsaken island.

“Hm,” I reply, pressing my lips into a thin line. My gaze falls to the flute with the bubbling liquid inside. Has he drugged it? I look at the clock on the wall. There is only an hour until the plane lands. Plenty of time for him to do something. But as I look back up at him, his welcoming expression sours as I take longer and longer to decide. The last thing I want him to be is suspicious. I take the flute into my hand, spinning it around before taking a sip. It tastes normal enough for alcohol. There was nothing especially sweet or bitter about it that would denote a drug, so I take another tentative sip. I place the flute back down, and his expression visibly brightens.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” he asks, his eyes fluttering closed as he took another sip. “Moet & Chandon Imperial Brut. Fruity with a smoky aftertaste.”

I nod along with everything he’s saying, but I’m far away from listening. I’m thinking of things to pick his brain about, and my eyes fall on the girls in the back again. I point to them, causing his eyes to widen slightly. “Who are they?” I ask, and his Adam’s apple bobs. Is he...nervous? Have I made the great Jeffrey Epstein nervous?

“They’re...family friends,” he replies after a moment, and I can see the gears turning in his head.

“Wow, you must be a great friend to be flying them out to your private island,” I reply nonchalantly, looking at my nails. He shifts in his seat, the armrest groaning as he grips it tightly.

“Yes,” he says, his ‘s’ hyper-sibilant, coming out almost like a hiss. “Aren’t you here for the same reason, my dear? To...have fun on the island?”

I only then remembered: I am a girl. Of age, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Epstein since I still look young. As long as I don’t tell him I’m eighteen, maybe this could go smoothly. I bite my lip and take a look at the other people on the plane. It seems to be just people working for him and hostesses, all of whom were looking away at their electronics or at nothing. It seems as if staring into thin air was better than looking Jeffrey Epstein in the eye.

“You’re right,” I say hesitantly, bile rising in my throat. “I was just confirming who they were, Mr. Epstein.”

He seems to accept that response, leaning back into his chair comfortably, polishing off his champagne.

“But, I do wonder what makes you like underage girls,” I say outright, and he nearly chokes as he swallows the alcohol. I look at the time: forty-five minutes until landing. I needed to bide my time better. But I need to pick his brain. I need to know why. I stare at him, but he isn’t able to do the same, his eyes anywhere except on me. “Were you molested? Do you want to do onto others what happened to you?”

He calls the hostess over and gives her the flute, shaking his head emphatically. “W-who are you to ask these questions? Are you a reporter?”

“No, Mr. Epstein,” I reply calmly, trying to regulate the fear in my voice. He can just walk to the cockpit and tell the pilot to ground the plane at any time with the police waiting for him on the island. I lean forward and put my hand on his knee, quite nearly vomiting all over his lap, but it seemed to calm his nerves. “I work for you, sir. I want to get to know you, is all.”

He grunts a response, his knuckles as yellow as mine as he grips the armrest. “Well, I’m not going to answer that. Ask something else.”

I think for a moment. Now he has me nervous. After almost a minute of silence, with him sitting patiently and me tracing circles on the tray, I look up, prepared with a question. “Do you know that what you’re doing is wrong, or do you justify it in any way you can?” Before he can reply, and I can already see him getting defensive, his mouth open to argue, I clarify, “I have no judgment. After all, I’m here for you, sir.” I curl a lock of my hair around my finger and flutter my eyelashes, and he seems to relax slightly. It feels as if I’m trying to disarm a bomb but every few seconds, the bomb beeps loudly until I snip another cord.

He coughs into his hand, looking around the cabin. It seems as if there’s an invisible border between me and him and the rest of the cabin because nobody has looked once toward our way. Not once.

They’re used to it, I guess, I think. They’ve learned to stop paying attention to keep their consciences clear.

He looks back to me and raises his eyebrows. “No judgment, huh? Alright, then.” He drums his fingers on the leather armrest, his eyes keen on me. “Of course I know this is wrong. But what does wrong even mean? By society’s rules?” He scoffs. “Society is ruled by people like me, little miss. Or people involved with people like me. Society is hypocritical if they say what I do is wrong. They have no place to judge. Society has been like me and even worse since the beginning of time. One’s love for individuals younger than them was extremely prevalent in Ancient Greece, Rome, you name it. Hell, the age of consent in Italy is fourteen.” He points to one of the girls, a greasy brown-haired girl whose eye bags were the worst out of all of them. “She’s fifteen. So, by one country’s laws, I’m moral. But by California’s, I’m immoral. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

He shrugs, cleaning his glasses on his shirt. “You tell me what wrong is. What being immoral means. It seems as if more people are like me than aren’t. Yet we’re frowned upon?”

I can’t find the courage to come up with words to combat him. Maybe this is how he got so many girls to work for him and deal with him for so long. Maybe this is how he got so far in business. Maybe this is how he escaped the authorities for so long. Because I’m starting to believe him. I shake my head, both to shake those thoughts worming into my brain and to disagree with what he said.

“I-I...” But I can’t. I stutter out something unintelligible before I forfeit and stare down at my hands in my lap. I was about to say how it was wrong, but he just disproved what the definition of wrong really was. I gather my thoughts and look up at him, a pleased smile on his face. “You’re hurting people, Jeffrey.”

He seemed taken aback, either at what I said or that I used his first name. He ran a hand through his hair, bringing it down to stroke his chin. “I’m helping people,” he said after a pause. “I’m paying for their education. I’m giving them food. I’m giving them a place to live outside of their abusive households.”

“You are an abusive household, Jeffrey,” I interject before he can spew anymore garbage. “This is abuse.”

“They sit there happily, my dear,” he retorted just as quickly as I interrupted him. “It is simply an exchange for goods and services.”

I look at the clock. Twenty more minutes. I have to wait until one minute before landing, right when the island comes into view. I stand up, looking around the cabin. I can feel his eyes scorching me, my body. I am used to these glances, to these stares. Is that what Jeffrey means by saying that more people are like him than not? I have been getting stared at and cat-called since I was ten and still wearing Hello Kitty merchandise. I look down at him, and he is staring at me in confusion.

“Where are you going, my dear?” he asks, and I frown.

“Where is the bathroom?” I ask in return, and he stiffens. I jump to clarify, saying, “The champagne really got to me. It went right through me.”

His stare stays stern, but he obliges, motioning to the back. I brush past him and the girls sipping idly at their drinks. I spare them a glance, but their stare stays put on the seats in front of them. I open the door to the bathroom and take out my phone. It doesn’t have reception, of course, but at least it still tells time. Ten more minutes. It still says August fourth, but the time is the same as in this world. I tuck it back in my pocket, pacing around the bathroom, trying to figure out what to do. What to ask. Eventually, after stalling for five minutes, I unlock the door and walk back to my seat, crossing my legs. Jeffrey was looking at his phone before he put it down to flicker his eyes up to meet mine.

“That took a while,” he remarks.

“I had trouble with the lock, and then I spoke for a while with the hostess,” I reply, thinking that was better than using shitting as an excuse. “I’m excited about the island, Mr. Epstein.”

“I am, too,” he replies, visibly giddier than before at the mention of his island.

“What will we do there?” I ask, feigning innocence. It is worthless at this point since we had already established that I am here as an escort.

He chuckles, as if he pities me. It seems as if he likes innocence. “Oh, massages, play golf, eat delicious food,” he replies, numbering the activities on his fingers. “Feel good.”

“For how long?” I ask, and he cocks his head in confusion.

“Did nobody brief you on this, my dear?” he asks in reply, and now I’m in hot water. What is my cover story? I should’ve thought about this in the bathroom. The pounding of my heart in my ears makes it hard to focus and come up with an excuse.

“Y-yes,” I stutter out. “I just forgot. It’s been an awfully long day.” I tuck a lock of my hair behind my ear, and he seems to buy my story. It must be common for girls to be a little loopy and not know information because he easily accepts that half-assed excuse. We fall into silence for a bit, and when I look at my phone, I see we only have five minutes before we land. My heart begins to beat harder and faster again, and my hands grow cold with both fear and anticipation.

“Are you afraid to die, Mr. Epstein?” I ask out of the blue, surprising both him and myself.

“Am I afraid to die?” he repeats, and I nod. He thinks for a moment, looking out the window to see the island approaching quickly underneath us. It truly is beautiful--too bad it is and will always be tainted by the ghosts of the girls ruined there. He turns back to me, his knee bobbing anxiously. “No. If I die, I die. Don’t I?”

“Are you happy with what you’ve done?” I follow up, tears suddenly appearing in my eyes. “Would you die happy?”

His eyes widen at the sight of my reddening eyes glistening with tears, but he says nothing of it. Instead, he replies simply, “Yes.”

The pilot announces over the intercom that we are landing, and I stand up abruptly, causing nearly everybody in the cabin to flinch. He looks up at me in bewilderment and stands up as well, crossing his arms.

“You’ve been way too suspicious this entire trip,” he says in a low tone, either to not have others hear it or to intimidate me. But the fear in my chest has been completely replaced with excitement and pure joy. “Who are you?”

I point outside the window, stumbling a bit as the plane shakes from decreasing its elevation rapidly. A devilish smile appears on my face as I walk to the door, pushing past the hostesses.

“I’m from August fourth, 2020. The police are waiting for you on that island, and you’re going to be arrested.” I walk up to him slowly, thoroughly enjoying watching pure fear replace the cockiness in his expression with each word that I spit out. “You’re going to be put in prison, and they’re going to say you committed suicide.” I lean into him, our noses mere inches apart. “But we know that’s not true. You were killed by who knows who, alone in your cell, cold and afraid. But you just said you weren’t afraid of dying, right?”

I pause, letting all of it sink in for him. “You will die. You will try to avoid this fate, but they won’t listen. They will get you eventually. Have fun, Jeffrey Epstein. It was nice chatting with you.”

I blink, and when I open my eyes, I’m back in my bedroom, the Jeffrey Epstein documentary logo staring back at me. I didn’t even get to see him get arrested. I didn’t get to see the panic and despair in his eyes as his hands were cuffed behind his back, never to touch another girl again. I didn’t get to laugh in his face and see the other girls be freed from his clutches. I sigh, close the laptop, and stand up on my shaky legs like a newborn deer.

It’s done. It’s over. He’s gone. But what he said sticks in my mind. It isn’t just him. Who will be next?