Rag Doll Man - Medium Length Version

Rag Doll Man

A Novelette

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 13,500


Did you know that in the sixties, the men of X were Malcolm’s, trying to improve the world for Black America? And the X-Men from Marvel Comics, about which you’ve probably heard, are “white” derivative life forms. These comic book characters have been quite popular for the past several decades, and nowadays “hit” movies are being made about them. In the comic books, they claim to be genetic “mutants” who are persecuted by normal people.

What do the X-Men signify? Some think such a derivative evolution is simply a Darwinian “sport,” which can go off in any direction it pleases, finding new natural zones in which to perform its adaptations. And some other beings say that man always has an eternal soul, meant to go new places and become new people. Lastly, some people say that if you are alone, heroic and isolated, you are Satanic - and simply meant to die.

In a time of missed opportunities without happiness or splendor, there were once the ongoing murders of one charming young man’s family and friends by hideously evil people, the authorities, multiple petty acts of greed, outright poverty of both the pocket and the soul, and unknown hideous political affiliations. This erudite man was an overburdened and handsome tall, charming and sophisticated black dude with a modest good sense of timing and a wicked but underplayed sense of humor, who had originally wanted to become a defense lawyer. He was only trying to halt the violent spread of social injustice, which was one long attempt to kill him, one which finally succeeded in February of 1965. He was only 39 when he died, the same age as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at his death, but his memory lives on - much like Dr. King’s has, and for similar reasons.

His way was filled with important political questions that were never truly answered. Due to many frustrating circumstances such as these, that young man was stabbed four times in the chest, touching his heart deeply before he finally could go home. However, his home at the time was a nice, normal house not far from the black section of Harlem in New York City. That area is poverty stricken to this day, mostly populated by black people, but areas within it are now dedicated to this man, as he worked hard to save it. He ended up dying there, blown away by his fellow militants at a public theater for having tried to turn in their leader to the authorities.

On the day that awful event happened, he looked in a full length mirror lining the wall of his small bedroom, and he saw a tall, well built, handsome but thick cheated elegant black bull - who for some reason looked exactly like Satan. He was forced to reflect upon this. In Islam, his religion both of choice and circumstances beyond his control, Satan was a character killed off in their holy book, the Koran. This was so he could go to eternal Hell with the Jews, the pagans and other such “unbelievers.” Of course, true Moslems don’t go there, but it’s debatable as to what is a “true believer.”

In order to look more Islamic, he had grown a small goatee, and this small beard combined with his dark skin made him look like a smart brother, but somewhat Satanic. This seemed eerily appropriate to him, as he had turned in some other black people to the authorities, men he had considered to be his brothers and leaders, and now he had to pay the ultimate price for these actions. He felt he had done the right thing, but was worried. Now he had to go speak in public, and in all probability, die in front of a crowd.

This largely involved “suicide” by firing squad, as he had to give a speech while knowing he was going to be assassinated. He had for many long years not wanted to be killed, as so many people had been gunning for him. To be murdered meant diabolical implications, not only for him but his own new family, including his wife and small children. They would be there at the theater with him. He was now stuck laying their lives as well as his on the line, which he’d known about for several months. It made him feel slightly guilt-ridden, but he knew he had done the best he could, given the circumstances. There had been attempts to blow up and burn down their home and gun them down earlier, anyway.

Those events or similar ones actually happened, but this story is about what could have happened if a different chain of events altogether took place, one which would involve Malcolm X actually being an “X-Man” - like the ones in the famous comic books. What would that have been like, in other words, if Malcolm X had to face his death like a true X-Man? His life, harsh as it was, was as fraught with danger as any comic book hero’s was, and in the case of his public assassination, was given much media play. That’s why I’m afraid the X-Men are nothing but a rip off from him, like the Marvel Comics “Avengers” were a rip off of the TV show of that name.

So this story is an attempt to “avenge” that, although it’s rather tongue in cheek. I’m leaning on the grand old “colored people” traditional literature of the French’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “The Three Musketeers” - and the Spanish’s “Don Quixote” - in this somewhat lampooner, ribald tale. I don’t mean disrespect, but the X-Men are teenage children’s comic book characters, all white (albeit they are also “mutants”), and they have their own particular style of witty panache. So this story has to reflect that - while it “updates” Malcolm X - in true inimitable Hollywood fashion.

In this fanfiction story, to keep away from outright libel, I am going to refer to the title character as “Mur” or “Murdock” – another popular Scottish name of its time – and not Mal or Malcolm. The latter was merely a “slave name” from white people, anyway. It even means "a white dove," and it was quite popular among Scottish nobility, but I think Malcolm kept it because it was the name given to him by his mother, Louise Little. I also attempted to alter as many names of people and places that I could, given the complex circumstances of trying to tell a straightforward fan fiction story.

Malcolm loved his mom, who was put away into a mental institution for over twenty-five years simply for trying to defend their family against the Ku Klux Klan. As a small boy, he dove for a shotgun a moment after his mother got to it, and apparently she was caught pointing it at the white men who were attacking the Little’s family house. This memory has stuck around for so long, there is a black boy icon at Yahoo! Mail that clearly is based on the young Malcolm X. I’m not sure if it’s derogatory, laudatory, or explanatory. At any rate, this story was not inspired by that icon. I’ve been meaning to write it for years, after I found out about the X-Men and their connection with the life of the real Malcolm Little Shabazz X.


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“I’m black finally,” the dapper, but bleeding, young dude thought to himself, “and they still don’t love me. Gee, why is that?” Mur decided he was only having a hangover for half a split second. “I have spent year after unadulterated year trying to become black for them, after moving around enough to have run away from nearly everyone. I am the utmost coward that I have ever met, and I only want to kill people now. I don’t even know who you are as yet, strangely enough. It is because we are forever at war with each other. I am standing here with four gaping open wounds slowly closing and unclosing, and I have no desire left to go hit up a hospital anymore. Why bother? I have pulled stickups, heists and burglaries, and waved around a sawed-off shotgun, but I’ve never killed anyone - yet.

“What gives with that, Mur? What happened to you? Ah s--t, all my old family is dead, every last relative, and I am the man in the middle. I now have a family through Bette and the kids, and they’re waiting for me to give the last speech. I have to go mount that podium, don’t I? And I’m unlikely to make it there before I fall down dead.”

He knew Bette cared about him, as she loved him deeply. Sometimes he wondered why she loved him. She had only had children with him, but he also had a feeling she was always afraid for them. She didn’t look around at other guys, and she seemed to be very proud of him. But he wondered what she really thought.

He felt like such a miserable failure at being a husband sometimes. Who was going to provide for his family? And what if the people who killed him killed them as well? It wasn’t that unlikely. There had been so many attempts on their lives, the kids were used to it. And so far as he knew, Bette was pregnant again, due to give birth in a few months. He’d surely be dead by the time that happened.

He watched himself redly ooze, sighing while shooting his natty cuffs. Long ago, he’d been called by the nickname “Red” due to his ruddy hair color, which he hated - as it showed he was part white. Now his clothes were growing redder by the minute. Assuredly, he thought it would be best to change, but considering the lack of anyone caring about him, he decided, it would be better to mount that podium as his own red self.

“I’m red, red, naught but red. I would say a green light would be a better chance for me, the devil in the mirror,” he sighed. And altogether, I am a Moslem no longer after tonight, unless Heaven does go ahead and receive me. What determines whether I’m a Moslem; my own feelings, whether I’m anti-Semitic, which I’m not, or my supposed treachery?”

As he gazed upon himself in the mirror, he gasped. He pulled his rag doll self deep inside to him, for he really had to “be a man” now. He had to still be his old, familiar self to his own eyes - but everyone he met had seemed to see a good man in Satan. He was the biggest, tallest, most strapping Lucifer that he had ever seen, as a yellow man. He didn’t feel half as unique as he looked, being surrounded often by other black men. Scots, he dreamed, must lead the most arrogant existence as white Mures that the world had usually told of. Old Nordic civilizations ruled his universe, but he liked the Islamic ones.

He drew himself up in full pose, reflecting upon how much a mirror can bleed. The pain that tore through his right chest enormously suited this new perspective. He smoothed back his simple haircut, a fifties crew that felt easier to take care of - but pathetic.

“At last, at last. Well, I’ve told Bette off for the final time. Bad kitty cat.” He smoothed down the walls of his contained within a roughly six foot four body thick chest. It throbbed. It was interesting to feel such a noise coming from deep within him. “Help me, Allyah. No, don’t. Actually,” he chuckled, “As you must kill me at the theatre, I suppose you would not like to be me any further, would you? I think I should make a cutting fellow for a few bullet wounds that could insist on. Dad, would you mind if I f----d up your speech? You were great, and I’ll never be great like you.”

No, the chap in the mirror reflected as he frowned in supple manners. Black people, we don’t seem to go away, even when we’re ninety percent white. It is the heat of an African sun that lends us any such thing as mere physical superiority. His dad had been laid in front of a slow moving street car with a bashed in head, and he should never have woken up. How could he? If the streetcar had jarred a man as it cut into him, over time. This was done to him because he’d been a Garveyite, and Mur’s speech tonight was going to be about Marcus Garvey’s movement.

Murdoch was tired and getting rather dried out now. His Dad should’ve had his human rights. I should also be a Scot, as named “Sir Murdoch,” he slyly whispered, smoothing down his bleeding white lapels. He thought they would wince as inwardly as he did, chuckling with a dry sob. It felt eerily good to be dying - oh so slowly - but finally; it felt especially good to so spite his idiotic and overly determined to kill him - enemies.

Still, he could keep them waiting at the theatre for his choice appearance. He raised his hand up to his mouth, lightly licking blood off his steak like fingers. They tasted strangely good. He drew his long tongue over each one in turn, relishing the bitter, iron like taste of his own flowing blood.

Huh, he thought. I shall never impress my lady, but at least I already have her set up. It shall not be more than a pain than (wince) to die slowly on stage, but my heart is stabbed through.

Just then, the wound in his heart tore apart, and it opened. Murdoch knew momentarily that he must die right now. The pain was telling him so, although the aches of a black and lonely selfless but fatherly soul began to override it. It pulled through him as it ripped wider within. Needing to be saved from himself, he grabbed downward at his dresser drawer, resting his now heavy trunk upon it, staring above it at the vanity’s surface, which was slick and nut brown like him. Leaning over both his straightened arms, he gazed upwards at his turned up eyes, which made him look serious.

In the mirror of his awful but handsome features lurked a witless presence, peering through centuries of time and insane persecution. Wander down to that Catholic Church on the street corner, and see what you saw before in the sidewalk, written in the anti-Semitic letters of sand. Yourself, super stud, wanting to save the whole entire world through Satan. Do you think being a p--p, a gay male escort, and a John really helped the Cause?

That is not the way, the truth or the guiding light. Who is an individual must reap the benefits of all human misery, and as a Black Scot, don’t you think? Would you rather be torn apart with knives - or with more bullets? What is the best performance? I’m going to the Apollo tonight to give a speech, and it’s going to be my last one.

And Bette and the kids will be there, forced to watch me die, which is not a pretty picture, blue and black exploding manhood flowers aside. I painted a picture of my chest exploding, as I’m stuck dwelling on that now.

My sweet Lord, God, Allyah, Jesus, Peter Paul and Mary, Hare Krishna, Buddha, clear skinned beacons everywhere, Jews yet, the Ivory Coast, whatever; they could all get shot, too. Why doesn’t anything stop that from happening? Where are these supposed African American friends when I need them? Nobody’s doing anything real about this. My original family is almost entirely dead; now my new one is in deep, dark jeopardy.
My family is at least prepared for the very worst…like, being all killed. Their staying out in the open is the best we could come up with. You’d think all those black admirers of mine could try something to stop this.

Probably it’s because I’ve been expurgated from the Nation of Chocolate Milk there, which I used to run singlehanded, by some old dude named Muhammad, who thinks he used to run it singlehanded. He named me “X” to replace my slave name. Hell, what kind of name is just an “X”? I hate the b-----d, because he sleeps around with even more women than I do, so I probably am going to go to Hell tonight, unless the Sunnies save me.

Rain, rain, rain on a Sunnie day. S--t, if it comes to that, I’d rather be lost and in Scotland, with a kilt up my a--. Yes, what is the best performance at the theater tonight, given that? I wish we could all flee to Scotland…

“Myself,” he croaked casually in the mirror, his ruddy lips curling into a complex, fair, but highly disdainful snarl. He didn’t feel afraid to die. He felt afraid of being too white, which has to happen when all the blood runs out of your body. “Yeah, mighty night finally, ya red headed fool. I’m too much to take into infinity; and yet I have seen you before, whoever you are, and here I am as you. I am not your white, am I? Am I secretly Jewish?”

He began to notice the tempo of his voice rising to a whine as thin blood spurted in small amounts from his chest. I’d best calm down, he thought.

“I have never been allowed to be “white” under this life, which I think now I freely chose, somehow, at one point or another. Nah, I never chose nothin’. Or at least I chose to turn in the brothers of Allyah. Whether or not it was the right decision, I shall have to leave to Allyah, although living people will decide my fate. People. What kinds of people kill people? All of them I guess. Now I’m glad I only wanted to kill people. Chuckle.”

Sighing over his fortunes of not being able to harm a fly in his life, let alone kill people, in spite of getting in some knife fights back there somewhere, he decided he’d better set to straightening out his clothes. They were wet, but he needed to apply some good looking shoe wax.

So he laid out a pair of shoes on his bed and began to shine them. He’d worked as a “shoe shine boy” in the past, when he was lost in the white man’s world, and he did a pretty professional job. As he worked, which took all of five minutes, he thought about the audacity of black men shining shoes for white men. But having children in poverty had meant to better their circumstances. And he seemed to have a reflective crowd of - following him - black statues who cut a fine spooky figure - for cowards. He felt ashamed of himself for only giving speeches to serve them. Yet so many of them had died bravely in battle, one way or another.

They tended to stalk around wearing dark glasses, which he secretly loathed, and act tough. He felt like more people ought to appreciate real eyeglasses. But maybe they make me look like a dink, he thought; is that why they want me dead? I’ve run into nothing but weirdoes in my life but Bette, the kids and the people I met on that pilgrimage, seems like sometimes. Why don’t they care? Why don’t they do something?
Do you suppose they’ve all decided I’m gay? Mur smoothed down his bleeding chest some more. They sure seemed rapt on putting holes into me when this happened. Could be all they remember is when I was gay, and they forgot I was only an invert for paid political reasons. Sheesh!

Completing the act of fixing his nice personal appearance, he combed his ruddy, scrubby hair as his newly dying body throbbed. “How long I have is beyond me. Falling down on the way to the theater suits, but I must walk there now without panting. Hold on, bud, I really have to do this. It’s the last mile. I have murdered so many people through proxy, I must be akin to Hitler - and surest will meet him where we all must go. I suppose I shall end up shining his shoes by making him eat them. I hate anti-Semites, and don’t want to ever be one again. I’ve been anti-Semitic enough in this life, and I still haven’t really met any such Semites. Well, let’s be off.”

As his bloody hand pulled at the doorknob of his small bedroom, he looked back through time at the wall. He remembered when a chunk of it had flown over to him and landed at his feet, which were clad in bedroom slippers at the time. The noise of guns had been deafening, and he had reached for his, but once more, it had been spectacularly missing. Never a rifle around when you need one, he reflected.
“A cracker, a cracker, a kingdom for such sustenance from you, shadow weirdoes. I know I am hallucinating all this. Still, Bette’s safe, and so are the kids, so far. I shall buy off their souls tonight from the slavery of death as my personal future. It’s best that way.” Maybe I’m my own cracker, thought Mur, licking briefly at his fingers again but tiring of the taste.

“Cracker” - by way of explanation here - was once an alliterative slur (with crap) about white people in America. It has to do with them being tiny little squares who were shot full of weird little holes. However, such a being is improper sustenance for a dying man, especially only one such toy.

Smiling, Mur thought to himself, I’d go to Hell for just one chance at one of those buck white Southerners. On the other hand, I am one. Well, what’s a body to do but be half and half? Lots of people are, and I’m nobody special, I just made thousands of people pledge to kill thousands of other people, and seldom do so. At that rate, I should be a born suicide. So it goes. If I go give this speech, it’s suicide by proxy; I don’t get to murder that way, so I guess I’ll just have to bow out of the picture. Bow out; ha ha.

He thought about putting on his bow tie, but decided it wouldn’t look good as a torn apart rag, so why bother? “I’m going to be a rag doll tonight,” he sighed. “Rag doll, rag doll, ya ya,” he sang to himself oh so softly. He sauntered out the door, down the steps, and was hitting the streets of a city just outside of Harlem. He had quite a little ways to walk. Victims of gun violence were common in these environs, but why worry now?

Meanwhile, as he was dying, Mur began to wonder about the audacity of guns that were always placed conveniently out of his angry reach. He also thought Allyah must be kind, as all his life he had never really wanted to shoot anyone. Too many people had been shooting at him personally for him to really want to do the same thing. On the other hand, he would have deeply relished the chance to slaughter them. He’d just rather kill them with his bare hands wrapped around their white and hairy “cracker” throats.

Just then, a white man passing by him said, “You’re a mess, boy.” Mur gave him the finger, but the guy didn’t see him, walking away coughing to himself. It’s cold season, Mur thought. Death is one way to avoid that.

“Hey, dumb a--, I won’t get your colds ever again in this frozen waste of a country, you excuse for a…redneck.” Mur had been warned by some journalist not to use the term “cracker” on white people. It wasn’t popular. Why, he didn’t know. The guy was already out of hearing range anyway as Mur winced in sudden agony. He put a hand to his chest, and yes, it came back quite soggy.

“A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse, or a Kingdom Cab. A Kingdom Come Cab, thy will be done.” Giving up on the walk, he tried to flag one down, and got nowhere. “Can’t even get one near Harlem. It figures. Nobody loves me, I wonder why. Aren’t I good looking, aren’t I a stud, aren’t I married, aren’t I a womanizer…well, sometimes.” Frowning, he thought about the sex he’d had with other men. Was that what paying this penalty was secretly all about? If so, so what? Well, it might mean his wife and family. “Curse every white dick in the vicinity. I wish I had a giant club and could beat a white man to death for every time I had to fart.”

What were those giant clubs they had in Scotland called, he wondered. Shillelaghs, I guess. They used spears in Africa, and stakes, but I wish I had this mother f-----g giant club - I‘d lay right into someone with it. Damn, I have violence tendencies. Chuckle; maybe that’s why I’m being killed. Well, they killed the Kennebunks, and they say they’re going to kill Dr. Queen, so I guess I’m just a side trip that’s par for the course. Four men; one Scottish golf foursome of dead guys who couldn’t get along with each other.

It figures. I liked Dr. Queen, but we couldn’t stand those New British. Blacks versus whites, Scots versus the British. Someday, I’ve got to tell Allyah off about that. What do brown people do, stand around a lot? Mostly, make war on each other in the Arab world against Jews, I guess. If I had to go to Hell, I guess it would be there. Isn’t war the worst of all hells?

As a shadow slipped over the horizon, Murdoch peered around the open streets of daylight laden Harlem. Others waved at him, then flinched slowly as they moved away. Oh, I smell of iron, thought Mur to himself. Red blood is so full of lovely dark protein. Sustenance I suppose, but as the evening shades enveloped the wan smells of stores and people milling throughout the grey streets, he casually strolled towards his reckoning premise. He crossed the vaguely demarcated line into Harlem. The area he was in was somewhat pretty, but strewn with garbage and littered with odd relics. There were shops and stores with bars on the windows, and graffiti everywhere on the filthy sides of buildings with peeling paint.

Why did I ever love this place? I loved the black people in it, he sighed. A few people who were coming to see him at the Apollo, he figured, were still his good friends; yet no one was planning on stopping the attack.

On the way, he passed the filthy doors of that same Catholic Church, the one for blacks that had inhabited Harlem since some time immemorial. It was never the same regal church twice, being frequently updated by its invisible black hierarchy. He turned right to brutally sigh, letting all the air out his huge chest, as the four wounds gainfully poured forth their fullest measure. How touching. It promised peace in heaven for the spiritual, such as his wife and children. They somehow seemed whiter than white to him, although he was nauseated at the comparison. He’d rather think of them as blacker than black, in spite of the “evil sinner people” referencing.

“Well, this is as good a time for it as any, I would guess?” he stated aloud, meaning, why not drop him down to his knees right in front of it. The church door taunted him with its message of green paint peeling back the layers of the necessity of the thing called Death, which had been chasing him all of his short life. The sound of multiple guns firing had come right through the door - on many occasions. This had over time put his mind into a useful state of grace, which he used to get around in traffic. He had terrific schizophrenia potential, but wasn’t too worried about mental illness. They’d stuck his mother in a home after his father’s death. Lousy place to be; but death couldn’t be any better. I’ll see them again someday.

If I could quite recollect, I need to go down Cherry, take a right on oh here we go there’s the stoplight. Right, stay right there. Oh heart that is not made out of candy - be good. It is good. Yes, there’s the light. Murdoch the Red walked against the light and then saw the theater and realized it was not where it ought to be. It had definitely been located between Alder and Bourbon with a little white people flower shop situated across from it. I believe that if I ever sliced into those white people I would see red blood, but I have never seen them at all in that form. My mother was whiter than I, and she ended up in many mental asylums over my dad. Meanwhile, I have never really killed anyone, he supposed. Doesn’t that make me “white?”

Is that the reason no one respects me enough to save my life? Not even Bette? Is she seeing someone else? For one moment, he clutched at his failing heart, feeling it thud only once. Maybe it was drained dry, and he was a walking dead Haitian voodoo zombie - who didn’t know it yet.

He briefly harrumphed, pulling at his collar, which was quite wet with perspiration. As the finality of the thing called Death began to travel through his entire body, he jerked himself awake. He had a fantasy about when he thought he may have killed a hooker - and also one about being a gay escort who p--ped. He was looking out a door, at the outside. Across the street, in his real life, was a local popular coffee shop.

It promised him a summer sun, deep in the heart of equatorial Africa. He loved that strange continent, which was a giant world in his mind. But it was full of communist countries. Mecce had been fun to contemplate, as long as he didn’t really want to go to heaven. As he frowned, he realized he was being told that a total fix of heroin like before was on the horizon, and all he had to do was not walk into the theater. If he simply went over to the Busted Denizens coffee shop across the street, he could avoid falling down, and get the finest cut of heroin for free from the owner, who liked him. Yes, Mr. Drayfuss did like Murdock. He’d given him free coffee, back in the old days when Mur was getting lots of media attention promoting the Nation of Chocolate Milk, trying to get people to “kill whitie.”

It was a sweet little coffee shop, one where he’d almost had a good time. It beckoned to him like a way out of dying now.

The voice in his head said if he called it off, life would be normal again. He had been busted so many times, it was a wonder his military crew cut was yet in place. To be busted means to be under arrest for impersonating a large, scary animal, he reflected. He coughed into his reddened hand, gazing upon it with undying affection for himself. He was martial and military without feeling it. Having a tiny military of his own was entirely out of the question now, and he had to keep aware that many people didn’t like him or his new family anymore. These people would be gunning for them in mysterious ways, all of which promoted supernatural feelings. He wanted to kill the supernatural - and stop thinking so much.

Spooks on the street aren’t going to kill me or us. Hired guns are. But how do you kill supernatural Catholic lying b---s--- stuff that curses you out? It and even our religion is all, you go to Hell for this, and you go to Hell for that. A voice in his head, not unlike his own, told him it is easy to kill it. All you need to do is face it down fearlessly, and then you can tell it what to do. You can even use it to kill people, if you so desire. But if you do that, you will have to suffer the immediate consequences of your dire and violent actions. You might even have to suffer if you don’t kill anyone.

Mur looked away from the coffee shop and over at the theater door. There was the usual bright red neon glowing sign, reading Apollo Theater. It winked on and off up high in the air, floating above the stacks of the chimney factory area down the block away from the street. Murdoch sighed. This was going to be tricky, because he suddenly felt like his wife and children were not there in a theatre he was about to enter. As pain wrenched his body, he mumbled, “Enough. I am a radio program but not a television one. I don’t carry this forward anymore.”

The theater had been the one thing he could count on to be normal. It was not. As he searched out the front of it, he knew it was not at all the same theater he knew. It looked too different to be the same one. But it reeked of being from the same economic conditions: terrible ones.

As the undying pains of possibilities racked that young amateur lawyer who had determined that merely attempting to save his people was enough for his soul, he pulled himself into place. His whole body coldly told him to fall down and die. As his knees buckled, he pulled a buck and wing and stood sharply erect into place. It had been a good idea, to wage war with the United States, and then die fighting. It had been appropriate.

There. That was enough. Feeling cold all through him, he realized the wounds had quit oozing momentarily, perhaps for the next twenty-five seconds or so. Ah yeah, I can reach for that door - push - and there we go, now it’s time to enter the theater and meet Death or not. Say, the thought occurs that I am already Death myself. It is like being made half of hot summer air, like usual. Right now though, I wish I could rend another wound most deeply into my lonely immortal soul. My last female cousin whom I can remember fell to a house burglary recently. There is something wrong with leaving my entire older dead family completely behind. Yet I have now to save a father headed family of mine.

At least I got…me…a brother still alive; I think he’s in trouble somewhere. He always was in trouble, but at least he helped out with the Nation and was alive. I’m street educated, but that cat could out read, out write and out wit me anytime. Hmmm. Nothing looks the same…in the neighborhood, here. Do you suppose this is another dimension? Have I entered the Eventide Zone? Maybe I should look around for Rod Sterling or something.

I read somewhere…that I am only two percent solid matter, and the rest must be winging its way around in there like crazy. If I push through this door, what could happen? Bette and the kids and the rest of those a--holes might be waiting for me, but come to think of it, I’m going to have to follow my…usual elaborate plans. I have a speech prepared, but I have no idea when the bullets are going to begin to fly. And my wife and the girls are right there. “Whoops, there goes my heart again,” he told himself, nearly falling down on his knees. He finally tried, and got back up again. “If this…is another world…maybe they’re not there. Maybe Allyah answered my prayers. On the other hand, where…are they?”

As he went through the open door and gently let it slide shut behind him, he walked down the steps. Each concrete bar shot through him, but he was trying to guide it back behind him. Ouch, he thought, now I have to do something other than stepping forward, I think. So he bounded down the last five steps and landed, going: now I do feel I’m a nightmare marine. Odds bodkins, I’m definitely service personnel here, aren’t I? I’m going to have to lure them away from Bette and her kids. I wonder how. They are not out to kill only me - so far as I am aware, although I have done my best to attract them like a dust magnet. If I am truly Satan here, the racially mixed Jewish black man, they should be out to kill only me, under Islamic rules. However, they view Bette and the kids as pagans and are equally out to kill them. If they want to get at me. Satan should be enough to get their attention, but is it? Am I real enough a performer to pull this off?

Roger. I’m a big strapping Black American. So patriotic. If I needed to be patriotic to get out of this one, that ended a long time ago. I can’t stand the attitudes of this country which I was born into, as it is full of s--t. Still, I am good at blaming our and their womankind for my problems. Yeah, blame mom, which will get me out of this one. She’s long gone in my mind, he thought smiling to himself - as he approached the stage door back. She’s safe, in Heaven at least. I tell you, I’m going to see her again, someday.

He peered silently around, whipping off his narrow black glasses to quickly wipe and put them back on. They were now obscure, relatively difficult to see through. Shrug. I’ve handled that before, he thought. But no, there was something wrong this time. Still, I have about five minutes to get on stage. Umm, no, these go off. So Mur took off the glasses, carefully placing them in a side pocket. Then he shook with laughter at himself. Why keep the glasses, when he was not going to go on living?

He took his prescription frames, which he had worn since a boy, back out of the pocket, saying, “L’chaim.” Now I’m summarily Jewish, he smiled to himself, crushing them under his left shoe succinctly. This will make a stronger Satan for them, but I do not like this. I fear much for my true family. Stomping them once, they were a clear mess in the shadows under the floor, seeming to disappear as they so blended in.

At least it will be a life without glasses for five minutes, he wheezed, patting his chest down again. Those things require so much care and attention.

Something was strange, for the ground seemed to be rising and falling in an unusual rhythm. Well, he figured, this is not it. The floor is weird and flesh colored. I had a deep cut on my hand after a knife fight that I let to go, and it healed all right. These cuts can never heal again under any circumstances, and I would relish their claiming me.

Why, this is not it, again. Walk through door. There they are. Walk forward, stand in front of - no - behind podium. There is the white podium, off in the near distance. It is a few meager steps away to my simple death. The lighting is great tonight here at the Apollo. I see a huge crowd of the subhuman vultures, gathering to feed on the upper sky lighting. Not on me, I suppose, but on Negroes. None of them seem to know they are Negroes - and I believe they are now all demons. They seem to be gabbling merrily away at each other, in a hubbub. I wonder what a hubbub is going to turn out to be in the next realm. Surely, something pitiful as me, circling the skies over my head as I pitch it up. Nah, I’m walking toward this. There is the gravesite podium, two steps away.

So Brother Murdoch Shazam leapt up the final steps to the podium and grabbed it with one fine thin brown paw. He was standing on a wooden platform behind it, one of those short stepstool ones, and needed to get rid of it. So he jumped back, kicking it away to the right side with one foot. He had done this solely because it had seemed “right.”

But it seemed to leap away from his foot, like a mere feather in the wind. It had been a solid wooden piece of step, too. Wonder how I did that? The crashing noise had been deafening, but the audience paid it no real heed. He glanced out, but it was so dark, nobody could be made out.

Something again clicked in his head. As he did so, the upper lights all flew on. He was looking over the podium, the top of which hit about chest level under his stomach, and he felt a little too tall and moist for the podium. So he grabbed it bodily, shaking it back and forth as it swayed, letting it settle down, and began his final speech.

It had been supposed to be about the Marcus Garvey return to Africa movement, but in fact Murdoch had finally decided that movement was the one the white men had kidded his father into believing was possible. He and others had made some visits back there, and a few people had left to live there, but it was mostly a Communist continent, which made life there difficult. It was not the “dream world” he had hoped it would be.

It might be, he thought, in an actual world. This is…however…not the real world…so far as I can tell, he reasoned out, and I am…leaving it. So he had to begin his “speech” now, while unable to read off the paperwork. He heaved one last sigh, which felt like his final one, and began:

“Ladies…and most definitive germs, welcome. I am now…the Wizard of Oz. Oh, and…I have no such announcements…to make. As the Black Mafia and its sidekicks, the Black Moors, is now situated in the audience, can I see a show…of hands? He bent over as blood dripped in a growing trickle onto the podium, streaking down its sides. This will make a mess for the janitor in the…morning…

“What, no hands? Hey, looka here. Hi there, how ya doing? Wait a minute, this podium is getting a little juicier than me.” Mur tipped his head to one side, thinking this was surely the Jesus Christ moment of reckoning. It could slip away there, but as he had to protect Bette and only Bette surely, the best way to do it was to crash the podium. So he grabbed it and pulled it away to the right, where it neatly bounced off the side wall of the entry area he had come through, landing within a curtain and pulling if off stage to one side. It nestled there, after having made a loud noise, crashing resoundingly, making the night ring as though with the sound of laughter.

The distant echoes of this shut up the entire audience momentarily. As Mur grabbed the mike, he looked down and noticed the speech someone had prepared for him was held within his left hand. He frowned at it summarily, and ripped it into several bunches of white pieces of paper, the lofty ripping of which filled the entire anteroom. These then dribbled down, as he pitched forward a little.

Then the strangest feeling enveloped him. Bette and the kids were over on the right wing side of the auditorium, and she was giving his oldest girl a sandwich, but as usual she wasn’t looking at him. Checks, that’s Bette. She tries to remain calm in these typical situations, but tonight I have to show her something, he decided, involving what she should do to leave immediately. That’s it; get her and the kids to leave the theater. Is there any reason she should stick around, and be bored to death?

My wife, he brutally cries to himself inside, never spent one moment in her whole life noticing me, any of my accomplishments, any of the things I did except those which suited her fancy for the moment. Nah, that’s way too harsh. She complimented me several times. She worships and respects me. She isn’t selfish; she’s oppressed, and that is what I always wanted to believe, heaved Murdoch X Shazam into his sleeve cuffs.

But I have this all set up for her if I can ever survive this theater, which I cannot do. Her wealthy family out in the boonies will take good care of her and the kids. Meanwhile, I have to keep the audience as distracted as humanly possible. She has got to handle the kids in a few moments.

Frowning summarily, while clenching his teeth against the pain, he decided to make his final announcement anyway. He had been listened to before in the early days of his movement, but now he was apparently getting old and slow. “Okay, I always have been completely one with “Stan” - the Devil White Man. I sold my immortal soul to all of your white Christian enemies millennia ago. I am Satan, and it is time for my public execution, which should be in keeping within the heavy rules of Koran order. I hereby commit the unforgivable sin of evil pride and renounce all ties to Islam whatsoever. I am obviously supposed to go straight to Hell itself for you. Wonderful, because that’s exactly what I’m going to do here tonight for all of you wonderful…Godly folks.”

In the original version of this, the event was supposed to hit the newspapers and cause political changes to happen, several of which may or may not occur in anyone’s real lifetime. Some people think they may, and some people think it may never happen. But in this instance, something had to go in an entirely other direction.

“Unfortunately, the entire Jewish race is not dead in a major forest fire yet. That is what the Hell in the Koran is about, up in the frozen north. That’s what is in the book in the portion preceding my death. That is supposed to happen before the Devil here can hit such a town as Hell. I have an associate who has slipped me this impertinent information. Would one of you guys in the audience like to tell me who it is?” He crossed his mostly African feeling business suited arms across his massive chest, which was heaving inwardly with the sighs of a lost paradise that he’d never truly obtained. Everyone in the audience seemed to be having a lot of a good time at his expense - as true universal cold enveloped his entire body. It felt excruciatingly good. Still, as he looked the thing over, he could not see anything out there that looked ripe for a kill. He needed about ten men with guns, he figured, to show up. Ten, twenty, four, whatever was there.

“Hey, friends, where are you? Please show up, now. I’ve come to give you milk and honey and all the images and all that. You know, guys with the guns. You must have about ten of you ready now, like my Roman numeral X, c’mon, lemma see those major firearms. I’ve been waiting for rifles all of my life - and you’ve all been keeping them out of reach. Please, pretty please, I beg you on the mercy of being a nigger, come show me your guns so I can see how pretty they are. There you go!”

As the paced out group of men in the middle section pulled out their handguns one at a time, they pointed summarily at his closed off chest, telling him to open up so they could begin the firing squad action they were set to do. He had already turned himself in for the petty crimes he had committed, and now it was time to be blasted away. He had fought with something like meager thousands of these before, and had suffered through some skirmishes, but as the coalescing group began to murmur about how long it was taking, the solution materialized in his own mind like an Egyptian pyramid. Meanwhile, it looked like about three of them.

Maybe it’s time to unleash brute force upon you people, Mur reasoned, but you can’t dive into an audience like they’re a swimming pool. How do I keep these guys busy, when my family is not going to leave the theater without me? Bette is the least realistic person I have ever met in my life, though she guides me to paradise in her own lost fashion. Still, this must be done. Perhaps keeping these other black “children” of mine distracted enough to ascertain their own political purposes and not bring in the other beings with weapons would help. I can keep both Moorish groups, the one that kicked me out and the one I formed up, at bay until something right comes of this situation - or something wrong.

The one I formed up is REALLY going to be pissed off at this. “You know,” said Murdoch as he unbuttoned his shirt collar, “It is getting so bloody hot in here, muggier than the deep south, and oh pardon me is that your ugly Mommy in the audience? Say, I am going now to open up my chest and front and get some air. It’s stuffy here at this A--hole Theater. You know, how about if I rip myself wide open, to make it easier for you? Maybe I can show you the right methodology of, say, dying in public. We seem to be getting better and better at that, lately, don’cha think?”

He daydreamed about an earlier obscene group of white men, easier to keep track of, called the Klutz Klux Klan, which had faded away into obscurity and become several black groups, all of which wanted the honor of disposing of his body in improper fashion. The Klan had been big on killing blacks, and so were all his present groups of people. There had been a splinter group that had attacked his parents’ house twice before he hit four years old, and those weirdoes would stop at nothing. Yet ironically, they were not in the audience tonight, apparently. Or, were they?

Whatever. I’m doing this…Brother Murdoch then slowly pulled apart the sticky remains of his reddened shirt and undershirt, ripping it all open as he went, baring his black and hairy muscular chest ever so carefully until he pulled it all away as far as he could get it open. He exposed himself as much as possible to the wall of guns that were steadily pointed at around his chest walls and stomach, peeling himself like he was a kind of overripe tomato. As he peeled, a mysterious change started to overcome him. He had to pick off parts of his brown skin and white shirt, tearing a goodly shred of it over one of the stab wounds. Then he finally grabbed everything he could scratch at with large hands, and pulled it all away. Now he felt his reddened and raw chest expand appreciably. It felt so lousy to take in lots of stale cigarette smoke laden air, so he wrenched his dying chest outwards, inwardly cursing out loud. Heaving back a single sob, he thrust out what he could feel moving.

“Here am I, crowd of strange African wonders. I love you all with my entire being, with all of my heart and soul. Here - I am a strange voodoo object of merriment and good times remembered, in the last fifteen seconds anyway.” He bent his head back and said, “I wish you could all be here instead of me. It’s such an enjoyable experience.”

Wilting inwardly, he began to realize he could croak before any of his persecutors bothered to fire. He thought: I must tell them exactly where to end this altogether, for it looks like the weather outside could tend to rain shortly, and there are those on foot who must leave this our major theater and walk home in the pounding rain. Therefore, I am going to have to sacrifice my family and friends. There is no other way out of the theater and into this movie. I honestly don’t know who is making a major production number out of this, but it’s for the media so far as I can tell. Perhaps the Mafia is here also. The cameras are steadily rolling over there, and every flash bulb is ready to be popped.

“Hey Rubes, would you believe I have a speech all prepared in your shaggy heads? It’s about how you need to shoot me right here, and aim at it really well. See the chest? It’s deep brown - for no apparent reason. It doesn’t light up that well, I guess. Please, lighting, go ahead and train the spotlights on it. Whoomph! There, that’s good. Now you can all see exactly where to aim. Wouldn’t want anyone in the audience to get hurt.”

Heaving harder, Mur stuck his manly breast out much further. The lights at the Apollo seemed to flicker momentarily, as though they would go out as he pushed himself open. “I’m crowing, world, I’ve done this before - and it is finally the time. Hey guys, how come none of you are human beings yet? I woke up and didn’t become one either. Here’s the blood, the meat and the wine and all that, here’s this strapping black bull and all, here’s what you have been coming to this theater to collect on an artificial altar and pray over and feast upon for hours. Where are the billions of gunshots? I’ve been waiting for this moment all of my life. Shoot Bette! My family is here; you might as well kill them after you kill me. Shoot them all!”

He had said this last thing to indicate to her she had better get their act in gear - and leave. But he also truly meant it, down to the bottom of his black hearted soul. He shouted, “If you shoot my wife first, shoot me next!” If anyone was a mind reader, they would think Mur was insatiably evil – yes, even Satanic.

As the hubbub died down, one large portly lady in the audience said, “What, boy?” There was a loud crashing sound in the back of the auditorium. No one however was coming through the doors in back. It seemed to be a distraction of some kind. As Mur overlooked the crowd, he could finally see the faces of some of the unusual beings with the guns as they began looking over to their right at his wife, who seemed to be putting her hand over her face. No, this is not the right way to have done this. I should have simply read my prepared speech, been shot in the middle of it and my chest, and died. A distraction was a bad idea, but it’s too late. Now I’ve doomed them. Well, so what; I bet we all will meet again, somewhere. I’m hoping for Madagascar in the mountains…oh, shut up, Mur.

“No, actually,” he cried, “I didn’t mean that. Say, look over here, why don’t you? I am here already. I just wanted to let you know that Satan makes a great shoot. Look, I’m ready to take down and all, meat on the table for you and everything. The cameras are sitting all around this beautiful goddamn auditorium training on my gorgeous existence and you all are here for the ride. Look, suckers, calm down. I’m ready for Hell here.”

Every move a serious politico makes is always questioned in great detail by the authorities, the petty ones or otherwise. Would this one work better for the cameras? Every cut hurts, every trait any man has is magnified if one is a bull well boy or something like that, every drop of blood screams for high pressure, every taunt is a welt, and every time someone must come up with something new, the question occurs.

He raised one eyebrow as the men with guns pulled away their attention from Bette, slowly spreading the guns out in a wave at the entire audience, as though they would begin to fire if there was so much as even another mild crashing sound. Then there were several little streaks of light filtering in from outside, cluttering up the windows. Murdoch X knew there was an odd chance of other groups occurring on the premises, ones which also wanted to kill him. Still, it felt as though something was controlling the premises. Maybe the sixteen other groups with rifles, machine guns and bombs were busy.

Still, Murdoch reflected, the “people” in this audience don’t seem to be getting any of my outer space messages. That’s pretty normal for them. I’m the leader of “us all” and that must be an influence on life, I guess.

“So it would,” he roared at the top of his bull stomach, “be most kind of all you s---s in the audience,” he smoothly squelched through his dying outthrust lungs, “to continue to point all them guns in my general direction, no, put them together a bit more, there you go. Are you almost there?”

The fetching group of silver automatics, each with one or more potential rounds, waved like tentacles from the octopus like group of faces behind them. “Do you think you can tell us what to do, when you’ve condemned us?” said one of them, not materializing from the crowd at all. “We were hired to blast traitors who don’t believe in the Nation of Chocolate Milk - to death. Our leader Allyah Muhammad has nothing to do with this.” Mur was getting fairly certain he saw about two dozen guns pointing at him.

“Yes, he told them all about Black Worldist Supremacy, but the problem is that I am not now nor have I ever been a Black Worldist. So I decided to die at them, so sue me. No, don’t. Put the guns back in place and point them straight at me, here’s the target and everything, right here. I love you. I love you all. I am a huge undying wall of blue meat here, I am going to die incredibly slowly - and I am waiting to be slaughtered, fools! Seriously, fire right into these major holes, or I’ll kill you. I’m Satan, I’m burnt ready, and here I am. C’mon, what took you so long?” Murdoch looked down at the unmoving guns and flinched inwardly. Now was the time of reckoning. All of this could go any way, or another.

If they would shoot him, he would not be there to make sure his family got safe home. Meanwhile, the theater ushers were starting to open the back doors as if to give him some air. This alone caused a great unutterable disappointment to rack his very being. He had tried, he figured, and now that he was about to faint dead on the floor he…oh…pardon Satan…that’s it he decided - summarily pitched forward and pointed at the open doors.

“Those who stay in their seats get an expensive prize for inadequacy if they move at all. I have sixteen open guns trained on all of you behind the stage doors - on either side of this auditorium. If you so much as move, I will have them all fire at you. Say, you jungle bunnies with the guns, is you ready? I am determined to not be the only cuss to die in this theater tonight. When I give the signal, all those guns are going to open fire.”

As the entire audience froze motionless, and the ushers alone rushed to shut the back doors, Murdoch sagged down. This was getting to be a dismal meeting for a night at the good old Apollo, one where he had summarily enjoyed nights out with friends on rare occasions. He’d even circulated a depraved underground flyer claiming he needed someone to kill someone else for him, for once, maybe a blond kid. Circumstances had forbid it ever being anyone but him. What was with Black America?

“Well, can you get back here with the guns? There you go.” Murdoch now had a clear field to see them get ready. He asked them inwardly if they were really subhuman enough to fire at nearly the one exact spot that was hurting the most. Then he asked them repeatedly if they were really subhuman. The guns bobbed up and down with a kind of silent laughter, then pointed steadily at various parts of his anatomy.

“That’s more like it, fools. Can you hear the sound of my voice? It’s in a mighty timorous majesty now, one which you’ve seldom encountered. I daresay tonight I can out shout Dr. Queen. Listen, you need to take aim right all over my body, or even my head. It’s there, just don’t be nervous. I see you’re not nervous. There you go. All over myself. You’re my children at last.” Murdoch waved over at Bette, trusting she was looking, and smiled. “Please plug this sucking crow right now, as soon as I give you the order to fire. We’re not going back to Africa except on vacation from now on and for the entire consecutive future…” He was motioning over to Bette, going to himself, I wonder how these folks will afford such vacations, he had to realize. We could, or at least her family can.

Murdoch heaved a sigh, knowing he was only himself and not Satan. He never had much thought as that stereotype, but it came together in a blinding flash that he would have to be one of the most Satanic caricatures for whites ever if he kept this up. He tightened himself, breathing slightly, and realized he was far, far away from his own dying process.

Coldly, he stood erect and eased back on the execution stage. He briefly recalled himself as a young man, but knew that everywhere he’d been, he had seen something unfamiliar at every turn. The supernatural could kick butt, he figured, but only if it was under my own particular command. I don’t want to do this, he suddenly decided.

He froze in a summary surprised gape. The guns were still trained on him, as though the beings behind him did not exist. And the beings in front of him began to pull him back to his human status. “I know I’ve been a bad daddy for all of you pukes who have been following me for so many years, for to have to live with this haunting imagery is the most pathetic attempt at a buck god of raw meat the world has usually seen. We have them on the run at last, I believe, those frozen white stones of the north. Do we not? And now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. There. All of your guns are now aimed right at the center of my immortal soul.” He appreciated the fact. Here we go.

Hath, they are indeed. The strangely marine-like head of Murdoch X had come up with one number as the digit signifying his death and the deaths of many others, the “X” that signified ten. He’d always thought he had about ten black men to every thousand white men, anyway.

He centered his head over his manly body in a nearly perfect diametrical line. He froze up, thrusting his meaty chest out, making sure to pull back the last of his shredded black clothes, which were oozing in porous layers every drop of life and banal bit of “soul” left in him.

He looked over the huge audience, thinking he would have liked it if any of them had ever chanced to be real or human in any form. In a way, they were almost like his Bette. In another way, they were all Grendal from Beowulf, hideous monsters in underground caves who tore people’s arms off to eat them. Well, he’d eaten something himself back there, somewhere.

They still weren’t doing anything in his direction. Not just yet. Then out of nowhere, somebody switched on the music from “Carmen” - and it began playing sweetly and softly in the background. “Oui j’taime, oui j’taime…OUI, J’TAIME…”

“Red is for blood, black is for death, white is for all right, and pure yellow is for me. Meanwhile, are you ready? I doubt it. But you must take aim and fire. Point the guns now. Straight at me in perfect little lines. There. You are now ready.” If these cusses were Army, they’d be peeling potatoes.

I mutter as I mumble, methinks himself ah yes I am surely this at last. I would rather go to the permanent hell as a boy than see Bette and my children ever get shot, leave their home again, or go anywhere else but the shopping mall and to all the wonderful places I have seen in a distant dream as we packed going from house to house to evade their awesomely boring enemy. They had come through the walls too many times. Yes, this is surely scientific reality, and I will not get my death - as I am an utmost raw fearless coward. I am made out of s--t, excrement and pee, and that is where I must go.

Looking at the stage lights in their myriad crystalline colors, he begged God to let Allyah there go to the best possible place where a girl could make up for a strange difficulty. To the pages of a book serene, or perhaps a small field and a polluted stream. He smiled, smirking to himself as one silver point crossed his mind. None of this was fun. It seemed like the setup for kids that his life had streaked through, in a marvelous way.

He looked, feeling weirdly like himself one last time over at Bette and his children. She seemed to be staring at him with something like hatred but akin to respect lighting her features, as if at long last. He swung his head back to the beings awaiting his purple command in the audience. They still awaited it. I am a good little tin soldier, I am, he thought with the greatest swell of black pride he had ever felt in his life. It filled his whole being, overflowing into his soul as it finally dawned on him what was doing. He had figured the enemy was somewhat right about something, and this must be what it was. They had been evolving the form of the thing that opposes the sun, and he was still its primary victim, merely a man.

His children were human, and now on the proper path. Or were they? He fretted for them momentarily. They looked a little whiter than him. Were they inferior, or superior, to him? They had grown up with the surname “X,” which had been odd for them at school. Some people even called them the “X Men,” which made Mur wonder why he’d ever taken that surname.

Then he gazed up at the lighting, which was not the same way it had been before. Oh, my oath for a better Apollo. Take me, do not take my wife and kids, do what you will with me, but make it a better theater. Come to think of it, hadn’t this theater been named something else, something completely different than the Apollo? Perhaps I’m imagining this whole shebang.

Stuff it up my rear later - soon as can be - for a better reality for all the below, he thought to himself. “Oh and you suckers in the crowd, now is the time. Here are the simple commands for you to never follow again, ever again, in the future.” You don’t know that I am genuinely thinking that for you, and you don’t even care. You don’t know how ready I was to flay my soul itself completely to Hell for you, to serve all mankind. For I am only a father now, Allyah and Mosses incarnate, and I am also the supper. I am the only level God incarnate in this entire room. It is all that I ever wanted out of life, save death, but you still know that I am only a bugger. That means I want to only bug you into shooting me as painfully as possible. Please take your time and fire each bullet slowly.”

“What?” smirked one of the white male denizens with the guns. Each of the ten or more guns was pointed straight to the center of his chest, which was throbbing with a kind of sexual ecstasy. He couldn’t get past an enormous feeling of infinite endless love for all human and otherwise mankind, and the mostly sexual part of it was dribbling away rapidly. As he spread his bleeding, growing and bursting arms wide, and as each brutal shot rang out summarily spaced apart by exactly one century or more of time, or as each shot spaced itself farther and farther out into space, the slowly dancing rag doll prayed the event would matter somehow - and also that the crowd would not descend and feed upon him later, or that they surely finally would.

I must now keep this up, he figured out, to the last “me.” He also prayed that Bette and all of his real children would shortly vacate the theater, as they were getting nervous. He heard the doors of Hell open and close, and knew his wife was perhaps locked in there with him, but waited. Suddenly, the voice said they left summarily and were gone home. He could stop worrying about his family - for the first time in many years.

Still, the rag doll witlessly danced on the stage, absorbing each bullet but pushing them all finally out of his bursting open back.

He spread his demonic white boned winged shoulders back as one plunging black crow, still in his shabby macho body that was opening up to the center of his virile but exploding chest. A deep blue and black fissure was swiftly forming, exploding ever outward into an enormous blossom, the only flower of “a true Scot’s” manhood. He’d painted a picture of this very event, where he’d finally become “blue black” and no longer part white, as he had pictured being torn apart by a shotgun blast.
How erotic, smiled the handsome black gentleman to himself. Good enough for a former gay male escort, p--p and John, I guess, which he recalled he’d had to do for a living - to get ready for his role in the Black Underworld. As white people wouldn’t let him work for a living, he’d fallen back on being a “trick;” now he was really torn wide open to death.

As he fell over backwards, on his knees at last, all the red sap of a true Harlem sucker was oozing out of his sunken chest - and it felt weirdly cool. A round of studied applause came cascading over the rafters. Murdoch, slightly offended, loudly booed back in his head; he figured he’d won.

“Could be the best draw for tickets the Apollo will ever have. And this one time, I got to tell off the crowd the right way, although I cannot do it ever again. On the other hand, I’m now outside - and on a green knobby hill.”

He got up off his knees, and as he looked down, he saw he was wearing something odd. “I can’t possibly be wearing a skirt - it’s a kilt - with a clan tartan.” He reached down, smoothing it over his bared thighs, and noticed he was holding a short broadsword, with a bow and arrows slung over his backside. And he wasn’t alone, as the place was crawling with men.

“Where am I? Oh, my Allyah; I think I’m in Scotland!”

As someone who’d always looked like a member of the United States Marines, due to his near perfect rectangular head shape, Murdoch knew he was probably stuck in Moslamic Hell as he cocked his entire body to one side. Or was this potentially Moslamic Heaven, after all? At least he wasn’t white, although most of the men around him seemed to be that way.

He was well…on his feet…and the surrounding countryside was almost grotesquely lovely in its verdant vermilion and emerald green landscape, beautiful and spreading widely out in all unlimited directions. Yes, it was somewhere near Killdare, in ancient Scotland. It was broad daylight, and he and a large group of other men, most of whom were also wearing kilts, were strewn all over, up down and sideways, a series of small rolling fragments of wild grass covered hills. They were running amuck, up and down the sliding slick green wet and muddy sides of the rising hillocks, screaming their lungs out as they did battle to the death. You never saw a muddier, louder or more raucous group of death dealing and dying men as they bashed each other’s heads in with what looked like giant clubs.

It was the year 1137, in the midst of a famous battle, one in which it had been later written for posterity and history’s sake, “We lost our dear leader, and sorely needed a new one.” Scotland wasn’t even officially Scotland yet, and was at war with the south and other parties. It was near the times of Braveheart, Robert the Bruce - and other such folklore legends. King Arthur had reigned in England but a mere century ago. And there were many smaller kings of kingdoms at war in Scotland, as unlike Brittany, those lands would not be tied together by a single king for centuries.

Sucking in his now unhurt - and somewhat fuller - bared hairy chest, Murdoch the Brave of Scotland sized up his situation, which seemed to have become exceedingly weird. Everything was wavy, nauseating, and incredibly painful. He was wearing only his clan tartan over a green kilt, leggings, and simple leather shoes, which were muddier than bricks. But then he remembered exactly where he was, and who’d he’d been.

He was truly Murdoch, a local king of the lands surrounding the Lochs of Killeen. His father had been King Malcolm the Wise, of the Culms of Killdeer. Their royal Moorish family had reigned in that general area for hundreds of years all told, and none had lost a major battle as yet, or ever. Murdoch held up his right hand, and in it was a short broadsword, encrusted with jewels, twin huge and bright rubies in its handle. One ruby represented Killeen, and the other stood for Killdeer.

It dawned on Murdoch that if he had ever lived in the future, yes, he was of Moorish descent. That was why he had been named Murdoch and kept that name in America, wherever that was. His sword gleamed in the sunlight. For one brief moment, Murdoch remembered and longed for a submachine gun, which would certainly handle this situation better. Then he crowed a loud and familiar battle cry, lifting his sword skyward, crying: “HA-HA!” - which was an ancient Roman battle cry, as he brought it down on an attacking white man enemy’s exposed neck. It neatly lopped his head off. It was a good sword, of Roman make, forged over two centuries ago.

He hefted it; it was pretty heavy for a short sword, but he’d wielded it well, and it was already well covered in the gore of others. In this case, ‘twas the thick and pungent blood of invaders from the Isle of Eire, who were associated with the Picts of England. These latter were blue blooded, white and pure looking, and they hated the Moorish descendants of Killeen and Killdeer. They would stop at nothing to win this battle.

Perhaps this wasn’t that likely of a prospect, as Murdoch the Brave had no peer whatsoever. But he and his father had always had to tell their men where to shoot at the enemy. They were all idiotic cowards, of two different clannish backgrounds, so slow and stupid. And instead of wielding guns, they were shooting arrows, which were equally deadly, though slower. They were much better at swinging clubs, although the shillelaghs were quite cumbersome - and slowed them down much. So Malcolm the Wise had introduced them to short swords recently. His father favored the flat Roman blades over the curved Moorish scimitars, simply in order to trade and consolidate relations with the powerful Roman Empire.

Both Kings - Malcolm and Murdoch - could wield either type of sword with ease, and Murdoch had become well known for his lopping off enemy’s heads, which he favored; he had a nickname of “the Kind King” for it. However, his men couldn’t see where to aim their broadswords as they slipped up and tumbled down the moistly grassy hills and dales. All of these clansmen would have to resort to a volley of arrows, aimed straight for their enemy’s bared chests, and they would have to aim at each other.

They were all not heavily mailed, and they did not wield any shields, as those things were far too heavy to bear on slippery slopes.

It was mid summer, and the battle raged especially hot. Most of these fighting Scotsmen were naked to the waist, and some were bare down below as well, wearing only loose leather belts and coverings bestrewn with feathers. Some also sported headbands, and a few wore Roman helmets. Many affected a clan’s dark-hued tartans, but they were not politically assembled well enough to have definitive clans. Their leaders were working hard on consolidating their many realms.

The young Scots king could barely tell the sides apart as they all raced past him. His side seemed to be browner than the other one. Murdoch the Brave of Scotland waved fiercely at the valiant but slow moving warriors, the ones which looked somewhat brown, to stand still and make ready.

He motioned them to line up on one side and fire their fletched brown arrows at the oncoming, ferociously charging white enemy. He was beginning to realize his men were not slow witted. The battle had been raging for a long time, all day in fact, and they had all grown weary.

Mur had figured out that he must do something, so he decided arrows should work. My kingdom for some guns; what are guns, he mused, as his formation lined up, ready to fire their brown fletched arrows at their enemy’s exposed and pale oncoming chests. At least it seemed the other side was tired too, as they were beginning to slow down, standing around as if waiting for Murdock’s side to attack.

Then they took aim, crouching down behind each other.

Out of nowhere, an impenetrable wall, dozens of death missiles, began cascading, arcing through the clear sky like thin birds. Mur could hear them whistling. They were tufted with the white dove’s feathers as they raced downwards. Mur’s men held no shields, and so began to die.

It had been a planned move. Malcolm is a Scottish name that means “white dove.” The enemy had marked white arrows specifically for his father, to make his family pay for previous casualties. His tired men fell down in droves with sickening thuds, as they’d not lined up behind each other.

His side would all die, if he didn’t move. Shocked - in the utmost living horror - he gave them his eternal orders:

“Ready…aim…fire!”