~1987~
“
Come on” The man rushes the little girl to follow him. “
We have to change you”
The little blonde girl comes running after him.
“
There ya go Marie.”
Hearing his sister and their father a three year old boy with round cheeks runs and hides behind a white panelled door. The boy has thick dirty blonde hair. The door is closed inwards. He tries not to look out.
His dad thought that he was outside playing. They didn’t know that Vincent had come back inside.
He tries not to stir lest he be caught. The adult was his father. He stood at five foot ten with blue jeans, a black Ozzy tee shirt and a jean jacket. Following shortly behind the adult is a little girl, two years old, Marie. She has blonde hair and blue eyes.
Vincent tries to stare at the door. He can hear Marie crying. Something is wrong. The cry itself is different. There is something off about the crying. Only some can hear it. But, there is no such thing as one form of crying.
People cry differently depending on the situation. There is the cry of physical pain. There is the cry when the child is hungry. There is the emotional cry when the adult raises their voice at the child. This cry from Marie was not those. It was something else. Suddenly the crying stops.
Vincent tries to look around the door. His father moves from the bed and heads towards his direction. Vincent ducks behind the door again. He breathes a sigh of relief as his father walks past him.
Marie stops and walks around and behind the door. She stares at Vincent and he stares back at her. They both know. The little boy lowers his head as Marie walks away.
A couple hours later,
The boy and the girl sit across from each other at the Queen Anne dinner table. The chairs have a rounded back of wood with the seats with a cushion seat. Adjacent to the table is china hutch. The adult man sits at the head of the table. A woman with dark hair sits on the other end of the table.
Marie looks at the woman. Marie’s face turns to an almost snarl. The woman snickers at the snarling two year old sitting in the Graco seat. The boy does not even bother to look at the woman.
The woman stares at the man. She looks at the two children. She focuses on the little girl. She looks back at the man. Her eyes widen.
Looking back at the woman the man slightly lifts his head up in between eating. His shoulders lift up along with his head. She glares at the man. The little girl’s face looks void. He can tell the change.
Just a few short hours ago she was so cheerful. Those blue eyes danced. Now they were motionless. There was something altered in her.
Vincent looks away. His eyes water up. Finishing her food Marie looks at her father. He nods.
Marie gets up and walks away from the table. Vincent watches her go into the other room. It wasn’t just the eyes. Even her walk was different. Something had happened.
Not even asking Vincent gets up from the table and goes to her. The adults talk in the dining room. He pays them no mind as he sits on the floor in the living room.
She is holding her baby doll. It was a cabbage patch doll with blonde hair and a blue dress and white shoes. The way that she looked at it, though. It was not with love. No, she looked upon it now with envy.
Tears fall down Vincent’s face. Marie walks over to Vincent and sits down next to him. She looks up at his face. Taking her small hand she wipes the tear from his eye.
She looks back into the dining room before looking back at him. She takes his hand in hers. Vincent pulls her to him. The two embrace in each other’s arms. For a moment the world stops and there is nothing but each other.
A red plain of dirt as far as the eye can see. A little girl comes running in a torn white dress. Her bare feet are scarred and covered in dirt. The ground cracks just past her and fires rise from underneath her. The fire begins to crawl over her body. Tears roll down her cheeks.
‘
AHHHHHHHHHHH’
Her scream breaks through the air. The tears are consumed by the fire. Her skin peels off her body until only ash and charred bone remain. What appears to be birds fly overhead.
As they fly closer to the little girl the large claws rip the Earth beneath them. Their heads swoon from the wind. Not a single feather is upon their head all the way down to the breast. The head and neck are a reddish flesh color. Above the birds only a mixture of darkness and reddish brown can be seen.
Something large breaks through the darkness. Seeing the movement the ‘birds’ scatter and fly in the opposite direction. A massive sound, like thunder, breaks through the air. A creature flies just overhead. Its wingspan is fifty yards. The head of the creature can barely be seen.
It moves like a jet after the birds. As the creature flies after the birds a small gathering of bipeds begin walking out from underneath the dirt. They look as if they could be human. But, there are noticeable differences.
The skin is warped over on many of them. All of the eyes are an incredibly bright shade of blue. The skin color itself is grotesquely pale. One of them points towards the large creature. The others acknowledge this. The group suddenly starts running.
They do not run towards the giant creature or in the opposite direction. Rather the herd heads north. Beyond a hill is a large body of what appears to be water. It is murky in some areas but clear in others. The creatures wave at each other and point at the water.
Suddenly the group grabs one of the others and tosses him into the water. A large massive creature with teeth that are several stories long bursts forth from the water and swallows the man. As the creature goes back into the depths of the water other creatures begin to emerge around the more shallow parts of the water. The herd begins grabbing rocks and wading into the water.
Another group emerges from beyond the hill. This group is also bipeds. But, they look very different from the other. The nails are sharp, the hairs are long as are the teeth. The shoulders are wider and the muscles are clearly defined.
The second group wears very little. They have ripped cloth over their lower bodies and what looks to be some kind of aluminum that they made into rough sleeveless shirts. They descend quickly upon the first group. A couple of the first group screams and runs.
By the running and the scream it is apparent they are female. The second group descends upon them. Swarming the females they drag them off. A few of the second group remain behind. The first group gather in a circle. The two groups stare at each other momentarily.
With great speed the remaining members of the second group descend upon the first one. Quickly they take two away. One of the first group cries tears as watching one of them go. He reaches out but the group holds him back from chasing after.
Grabbing one of the rocks he bashes his head in before the group can stop him. The second group stops and watches this unfold before continuing to drag the two away. Getting past the hill they crack the two males with a rock. The largest one comes back with what looks to be hair. A piece of wood sits on the ground. He places the hair on top of the wood. Taking two rocks the man begins to rub them against each other near the hair. Within a couple minutes the hair lights a fire.
Slowly the wood begins to catch the fire from the hair. One of the other men takes and begins ripping apart the dead men with his hands….
~2020~
Fathi sits up in his bed. Sweat runs down his forehead. He looks around the room. He sits up in the bed a moment and looks around.
“
Ah” He sighs
To the right of Fathi is a black marble nightstand. Sitting on top of the night stand is a pack of Carnival red short cigarettes. Slightly next to it is a bottle of Zoloft fifty milligrams, next to it is a bottle of Doxepin ten milligrams, next to that is a box of Benadryl pills, and next to it is a bottle of Spring Valley Valerian Root five hundred milligram each. Fathi reaches over and grabs the pack of cigarettes.
Pulling the pack of cigarettes to him, Fathi pulls one of the cigarettes out before reaching to the floor and grabbing the black bic and lighting the cigarette. Turning on his phone he opens YouTube and puts on an interview on Vladtv with Immortal Technique as he drags on the cigarette. Watching the interview his mind wanders a bit as he drags on the cigarette. Knocking off the ash into a cheap plastic ashtray he sees the image of the dark skin two year old walking over to the side of the bed with a bowl of spaghetti.
‘
Eat daddy’ the mental apparition says
Fathi puts the cigarette in the ashtray, lays down and pulls the blanket up over him. Bring on the monsters, cannibals and rapists nightmares. What could his dreams do to him that life wasn’t already? People like Denise D’evil think they know darkness. People like Jennifer Enigma think they know what hell is.
People like that toy with ‘magic’ and where black clothes. But, they never really understand hell. They don’t know what continual suffering is. No one really can until they experience it. They say that experience is the mother of all knowledge.
If that were true then it is easy to say that there are times that Fathi wishes that bitch would die. There are things that he would happily live without. Sometimes ignorance can be bliss. Other times it can shape your life even if you are not able to remember it in your conscious mind.
Fathi’s eyes begin to droop off.
A few hours later,
Opening his eyes Fathi looks around. He had slept long enough. Taking in a deep breath he threw his feet over the bed and headed into the bathroom. Splashing his face with water he made wudu before going ahead and going into the living room to make the morning prayer.
Having made the morning prayer Fathi went to his closet and pulled out his blue jeans and grabbed a white tee shirt. Getting dressed he went back into the bedroom and sat down at his computer desk. Opening his Lenovo laptop he pulled up the NCW website. There it was plain as day.
"The Demon Witch Queen" Jennifer Enigma vs. "The Rabid Cur" Fathi vs. "The Deathbringer" Denise De'Vil
It wasn’t a surprise. Everyone already knew who was going to be in the finals. It was a bit of a wake-up to see it in black and white, all official. This was it.
He was finally going to get his shot to prove who he was. The fact that he had not accomplished that much yet and his size would make him greatly underrated. Jennifer and Denise De’vil would likely overlook him to one degree or another. It would be curious to see what they had to say.
Taking one last look Fathi glanced to see where the match would take place. Oakland? Again? NCW roster had very little room for variety apparently. It didn’t matter.
Fathi had known this was coming. He had been preparing. Walking from the computer Fathi stopped at an upright mirror in the hallway. He lifted up his shirt admiring the six pack he had been building up since Genocide. Grabbing a backpack near the door Fathi headed out.
Making sure to lock the door behind him he headed to the black Ford Crown Victoria. Getting into the car closing the door, and driving off he pulled out his headphones which were attached to his phone. He pushes a button on the phone. Someone on the other end answers.
“
Yeah I am heading that way now.”
After a brief drive of fifteen minutes Fathi arrives at the local YMCA. This was where he had gotten the kids to come with him to the last Assault. The local YMCA had a program to help low income teens. Fathi thought it would be a good chance to show people what exactly he was envisioning for the Thug Revolution.
Parking the car, he grabbed his backpack and headed inside. A white bald guy in a polo shirt and khakis waved at him.
“
Hey Vincent”
Looking up Fathi scowled. He had thought about changing his name, legally to Fathi. But, there was really a lot that went into that. Rather than respond with some cold and callous remark Fathi simply nodded and walked past the man.
Taking a left he headed towards the men’s locker room. Turning right he went to the lockers. He never bothered with buying a lock. If someone was so desperate that they wanted to steal his blue jeans they could have them.
Fathi quickly slipped out of the jeans and shirt and into his swim trunks. Shoving the backpack into the locker he closed the locker and headed out to the pool area.
A large man in red trunks was waiting for him. The guy looked like he had been an extra on Baywatch before they decided he was better suited for 90210.
His name was Ryan Knoll. Ryan was the kind of white boy that made others want to throw up. His face had that hard rectangular shape with a clearly defined chin. Not a single hair can be seen on him other than the ridiculous faux high top fade.
As intolerable as he may look he was a pretty decent trainer. Over the course of the past month he had been training with Ryan. He had done the medicine ball, the dumbbell clean and press transitioning to clap push ups and burpees. Now they were moving to the pool for endurance.
“
Okay, I hope you are ready. This week we start the pool exercises.”
Fathi nods
“
Okay so what am I doing?”
Ryan grin
“
This is going to be the hardest and yet simplest workout you have done. We are going to go one day on, one day off until the day before the match.”
He nods.
“
You are going to swim two hundred yeards to begin with. Later you are going to be holding pool buoy’s out in front of you while kicking. Then after you have done two hundred yards with that you are going to switch up and hold the buoy with your legs and use only your arms. That will be the warm-up.”
Ryan pauses to see if he can measure Fathi’s face.
“
You pay me and I do my job but I got to ask if you don’t mind.”
“
Shoot”
“
What are you doing this for? I mean is this your job and you want to prove your the best or what?”
A grin goes across the face of Fathi.
“
I am doing this for several reasons.” he begins “Whether you look on television or in movies you see that poor white people are seldom, if ever, seen. That is what the elitists want…”
After saying ‘that is what the elitists want’ someone starts live streaming from their phone.
{On Camera}
“
...They want to continue to perpetuate this myth that only minorities are poor. They want to perpetuate this myth because if the elitists convinces everyone that only the minorities have generational poverty then they can continue to sell the American dream. Do you know what George Carlin said about the American Dream?”
Ryan looks like he is about to reply but he is cut off as Fathi responds
“
George Carlin said they call it the American Dream because you have to be sleeping to believe it.”
Ryan finally pipes in
“
What about all the people that have made it?”
“
Out of what percentage?” Fathi snaps back “
There are famous people from Russia too. Do we say oh Russia must be a really good country because so and so did this? No! We applaud those people for overcoming the system. Now wrestling is no different from any of these other media forms.”
A crowd is gathering around the pool side as Fathi continues.
“
Wrestling panders shamelessly to the middle and upper middle class. Meanwhile they do nothing to even make the working poor feel like they can relate to any of these people. By continuing to tell these people that if you work hard you can succeed you are inadvertently demeaning their life. You are telling all these people that are working forty plus hours that they must be doing something wrong. I am fighting to get to the top so that I can tell these people that yes I come from that background and yes I succeeded. But, I am not the rule. I am the exception. I am blessed. Not only will I use my platform to destroy this degrading bootstrap myth but I will use my platform and my eventual success to teach the truth to my sons.”
Ryan leans in
“
I don’t want my sons to admire me because I won this match or that match. I want them to admire me because I honed my skill and fighting abilities and then used them to help others. I want my children to smile as they realize that I busted open the myth and finally showed people that the racism in this country is generated by the elites to pit us against each other when they are the real enemies. I will win my match against Jennifer Enigma and Denise De’vil to show everyone that the working poor will make it regardless. We, the proles of this society, will rise up and the myth that true poor whites do not exist will be shattered to pieces thus exposing the pyramid scheme known as the American dream! WE SHALL OVERCOME!”
The crowd bursts into applause. Ryan smiles before shaking his head.
“
Okay folks the show is over.”
The person turns their phone off.
{Off Camera}
“
So, before you go becoming the next Muhammad Ali and motivating people around the world we got to finish building you up for this fight.”
“
Hey you asked”
Ryan laughs.
“
That I did”
Fathi laughs with him for a moment.
“
So what am I doing after the warm-ups?”
As the crowd walks away Ryan looks over at Fathi
“
After the warm-up you are going to do eight twenty five meter swim sprints”
Fathi’s face is motionless as Ryan continues
“
When you reach one end you are going to get out of the pool and do a plank for 30 seconds and then get back into the pool. After you get back to the other end you are going to do twenty push-ups. Got it?”
Fathi snickers before walking over and getting into the pool. Ryan pulls a whistle out and blows on it. Fathi starts swimming across the pool. As his arms are tearing through the water his mind drifts. He cannot help but to think of when he was first starting out.
Every other wrestler he ran into told him he needed to get his act together and what the hell was his problem? All of them talked down to him because he didn’t have some flashy gimmick. He couldn’t afford the costumes and bullshit. He tried to make work what he had.
Reaching the one side of the pool Fathi kicks off the concrete and heads back. His arms tearing through the chloroformed filled waters Fathi thinks of when he had lost the right to see his daughter because her mother didn’t like Muslims. People like Jennifer and Denise call him out for being quote unquote political but what was Ray Charles when he spoke out against segregation in Georgia? How about when Bono spoke out against the struggles in Africa? Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt became known as goodwill embassadors, Muhammad Ali used his station to speak against Civil Rights issues and the Vietnam war. Hell, Frank Sinatra was well known for being openly political. He had to beat Jennifer and Denise not just for himself but for the cause.
