The Anti-Garrison: He's Like the Antichrist, But For Me, Garrison

 

Every bully and abuser I've ever had is a brainwashed cult member. The Anti-Garrison is their god.

Angel's Share

The rift between Alex Macintosh and her so-called “lord and savior” grew with every bigoted slur that came out of a preacher’s mouth. It was already a yawning chasm from an early age. Now it was a dark black hole that sucked all of the life out of her. Going to church wasn’t as fun as she remembered it being. The fairytales weren’t as fascinating. The loving spirit wasn’t as warm. Everything in this mega church full of enthusiastic worshippers revolved around money these days.

How much money could Pastor Shawn Hawkins swindle out of his followers? How much of it would actually go to the poor? How much of it would fund his vacation in Neo Hawaii? The deeper Alex dug into his bank account, the more obvious the answers became. There she was in a shadowy corner of the church tapping away on her smart phone and thumb drive. Her dark trench coat and equally dark scarf around her face made hiding in the shadows that much easier. It also helped matters that the thousands of people packing the arena were too busy praying for things they’d never get on their own.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” shouted a young man into the microphone. His voice temporarily jarred Alex out of her hack job, but ultimately she thought nothing of it and went back to work. “Put your hands together for the messenger of God himself! The angel from the heavens above! The warrior of worship! The preacher of perfection! Here he is: Pastor Shawn Hawkins!”

The raucous clapping and lurching from the congregation once again snapped Alex out of her work. They were so obnoxious with their zeal that she failed to concentrate on what was most important: getting Pastor Hawkins’s ill-gotten fortunes back into the hands of those who needed it. Just a few more bars of code…just a few more clicks…”Damn it!” she whispered to herself. She quickly covered her mouth considering where she was saying it, but still nobody paid attention to her.

As the audience clapped and some of them did back flips and cartwheels in the audience, Pastor Shawn Hawkins descended from the ceiling dressed in flowing red robes. He really was an angel from heaven with his feathery wings gently flapping and lowering him to the stage. “I’ve seen better wings on a plate of KFC,” murmured Alex as she struggled to focus on her hack job.

The raven-haired, thick-bearded Pastor yanked the microphone out of his hype man’s hand and motioned for his congregation to sit down and shut up, which they gladly did. Alex couldn’t believe the smiles on their faces, the tears in their eyes…and the dollar bills folded up in their hands. “Here we go…” she muttered.

Taking a karate stance in the center of the stage, Pastor Hawkins belted his sermon into the microphone like a heavy metal singer moonlighting as a fat-shaming fitness guru. “Sinners! All of them! Each and every damned soul outside of this church today will have no such access to the pearly gates! They choose not to come here and choose not to give their welfare money to the heavens above! They are vile! They are rotten! For every penny they pinch, they are keeping the Christian revolution from taking place! That will not happen on my watch! Can I get an amen?!”

“Amen!” said everybody not named Alex Macintosh, who still thumbed away on her smart phone, still chipping away at Shawn’s bank account.

Pointing his hairy finger out into the crowd, he shouted, “You see that?! The sinners and nonbelievers call that fanaticism, but I call it reality! God is your reality! This world we’ve created for ourselves inside this church is the only thing that’s real to us now! Forget the vegetable-munching hippies! Forget the rock and roll niggers! Forget the transgender fags! They hold no power of us!”

That last slur had Alex’s eyes watering with rage as she looked up from her screen to unleash a hellish look upon her tormentor. He couldn’t see her even as he flapped his wings and floated around the church, but she saw him with tunnel vision, so much so that she forgot to keep cracking the code. She wanted so much to rip his tongue out, but also knew that Shawn Hawkins was a martial arts expert and often used his trade to intimidate “sinners” into giving him money.

“I fly around this room today and I see heavenly beauty!” As if right on cue, congregation members grinned up at him and held out their wads of cash. “You’re not just giving me your hard-earned money. You’re buying something with your dollars. You’re buying a revolution! You’re buying paradise! You’re buying a weapon against the darkness of hell!”

Alex shook her head and got right back to work cracking the code. Pastor Hawkins’s words began to blend together in a cacophony of screaming and prejudice, so much so that Alex didn’t even notice him flapping directly above her until she saw his reflection in her screen. “Come on, damn it!” she whispered as she grew closer to cracking his password.

“Who said that?! Who in God’s good name said that in my church?!” roared Shawn. Alex dropped her phone in panic and almost shattered the screen. She crab-walked against the wall in an attempt to hide from her accuser. She even held her knees to her chest to make herself small. But there he was descending upon her, the flaps of his wings creating deafening whooshes, the anger on his reddening face palpable and tense.

“Come to me, harlot,” said Shawn as he held out his hand. Alex couldn’t. She was frozen in fear. “I said come to me, you devil’s whore!” He stomped over to her and her phone crunched beneath his army boots. The congregation stared at her with wide-eyed shock while Shawn picked up the remains of the phone and instantly deciphered what Alex was trying to do.

“It appears we have a thief in our midst, my children. Stealing is a sin! Stealing from the lord is a MORTAL SIN!” Shawn stared hellfire into Alex’s soul and she could do nothing but cower in the corner and shiver. He ripped off her scarf and revealed another “sin” to the congregation. The blond hair extensions, the white makeup, the poorly smudged blue lipstick, they all led him to one conclusion. “Transgender whore!”

Alex could feel the boos and “Whore!” chants radiating off the congregation and piercing her skin like daggers. She tried to stand up, but her legs were too wobbly and her head was swimming laps around this church. She eventually found her equilibrium by holding onto a stair railing. “Please!” she begged in a low, trembling voice. “Just let me go…I’ll never bother you again…it’s just that I…”

“Silence!” barked Shawn as he punched a hole in the wall next to her head, causing her to trip over her own quaking fear. She couldn’t even crawl down the stairs without Shawn placing his boot across her ankle. The harder he pressed, the louder she screamed. “You dare steal from a house of worship?! You dare steal from the lord almighty?! That is inexcusable! I shall send you to hell myself, you filthy whore!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please, just take my flash drive and take your foot off of me!” She blindly chucked the flash drive at him hoping he would catch it. However, her heart and brain pumped her with so many chemicals that she miscalculated how hard she threw it. It bounced off of one of his feathers and exposed wiring underneath. The hacking properties of the device caused even more sparks to shoot out of what was now revealed as his mechanism. The congregation gasped in shock while Shawn’s hardened facial expression grew soft with worry. He even took his foot off of Alex’s leg.

Trying to regain her breath, Alex pointed at the fake mechanical wings and said, “You see that, everyone? He’s not even a real angel. His money isn’t being used for a Christian revolution! He fooled you all! Thou shalt not bear false witness, anyone? He tricked you all into becoming bigots! He tricked you all into giving away your money to what will eventually be his expensive vacation! If you don’t believe me, look on that flash drive! Look on whatever’s left of my phone! The more you hate people like me and the other so-called ‘fags’, the richer he becomes and the poorer you all become!”

Shawn kneeled down beside his victim and smiled at her. “Don’t you get it by now? These people don’t care about any of that. They don’t care about you. Did they care when our president said he would grab a certain part of the female anatomy? No. Did they care when a certain Supreme Court justice was accused of doing much worse to said anatomy? No. These people know who the real enemy is and who their friends really are. They want entry into heaven. They know they’re not going to get it by listening to a transgender thief whore like you!”

“Is…is this true, everyone?” asked Alex. Her answer came in the form of angry stares from the congregation, not at the one swindling them, but at the one they were told to hate. Their hatred hurt her badly. She could feel her heart racing and her mind numbing to the violence that would become of her very shortly.

Shawn slowly stalked Alex as she crawled down the staircase. As soon as she moved too fast for everyone’s comfort, the congregation and their Pastor charged after her in a screaming rage. She almost tripped over her fear again when she tried to get up, but this time she bolted out of the emergency exit and set off a blaring fire alarm. Fire sprinkles set off even more sparks on Shawn’s mechanical wings and his congregation crawled on top of him to put out the electrical storm. Alex used this distraction to dash down the street, her legs trembling and aching the whole way.

She ran until she couldn’t do so anymore. Her lungs burned, her heart exploded, and her eyes dripped with wetness as she hunched over on the street corner. “How could they not care?!” she mumbled unintelligibly. “How could they not fucking care!” She stomped her high heeled boot on the ground and broke said heel in the process. “Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“Excuse me, Miss!” said a homeless man with sunglasses. “Can you spare me some change?”

How about that? He actually said the right gender prefix. But such a small victory was nothing to celebrate as Alex wiped away burning tears from her reddened face. “I don’t have a dime,” she confessed. After a silence hung between them, she pointed at the mega church and said, “But they do. Why don’t you go ask them yourself?” Alex walked away hoping at least one person got the message she was trying to send.

The Golden Angel

The Golden Angel sat hunched over on a tree stump with a fiery look in his wild eyes. His bright yellow spandex, his dazzling angel wings, his flowing blond locks, they were part of an image that was all for nothing. He kicked a stone across the dirt into a nearby lake as he thought about what Pastor Jane had said over those airwaves. All of those homophobic slurs, every suggestion of violence, every invocation of hellfire and brimstone for the LGBT community, they caused his blood to boil like a witch’s cauldron. He kicked even more stones into the lake, every shot more aggressive than the last. Goldie even pounded the side of the stump with his fist and sat there in his grumpy state.

Normally the sounds of a woman screaming for help would send Goldie into an adrenaline fueled frenzy in an attempt to be the daring superhero he once was. With super strength and the power of flight, he could have won those fights in record time. But all he did was place a fist under his chin and stew angrily. The woman’s screams were more ear-piercing by the second and Goldie’s indifference turned to irritation. “What the hell’s going on around here?” he asked rhetorically.

Sure enough, a woman in gray sweatpants and a cyan hooded sweatshirt came screaming like hell as she leapt into the Golden Angel’s hulking arms. “Help me!” she cried. “He’s after me! The Dark Paladin is after me! He wants to give me his demon baby! Dear God, help me!”

Behind the drenched tears and bubbling snot of sorrow, Goldie recognized that face as clear as day: Mia Jane, the pastor’s twenty-something daughter. Same long black hair, same dimpled face, same gray eyes, and the same silver crucifix around her neck. Goldie glared at her before dumping her on the ground and causing her to crab walk backwards into another stump. “You’ve got some serious balls asking for my help, Miss Jane. Oh wait a minute, I forgot, women can’t have balls because that’s just an excuse to shower with little girls in the locker room. That is what your father said on the radio the other day, right?”

“Listen, Goldie, I’m begging you, please!” said Mia on her knees with her hands together prayer-style. “I’m sorry for everything my dad said about you and your…people. But you have to help me!”

“My people? What do I look like to you, a fucking alien?!” snapped Goldie as he shot up to his feet. “You think gay people like me are invaders from another planet? Oh wait a minute, they’re just Satan’s creations, which is something else your genius dad said.” He approached her with more muscle in his step. “You know what else he said? He was the one who outed me on national television! He’s the reason I’m hiding out here! What good is being a superhero if I can’t live in the fucking city where all the nasty shit is going on?! In fact, how do I even know The Dark Paladin is out here?! I didn’t hear him at all!”

“He’s here, Goldie. I saw him chase me. You have to believe me!” said Mia through a stream of tears not unlike the one rolling through the forest. “I was out here on my morning run and he flew right in front of me. He said he wanted to…” Her sentence was interrupted by an even bigger storm of tears.

Goldie’s furrowed eyebrows straightened when he knelt beside Mia and placed his pink gloved hand on her shoulder. “I desperately want to be a superhero again. But as long as your dad is spreading his ignorant bullshit around, nobody will let me in. The gay bar has been burned to the ground, transgender folks are being lynched, and I’m just another piece of this puzzle. If I wasn’t for my powers, I’d be a dead motherfucker by now. Just another footnote in Paulson City history. Just another body freezing at the morgue.”

“You’re more than that,” sobbed Mia. “You were an inspiration to us all. And now you’re just going to throw it all away because your feelings got hurt?”

Goldie’s hand slowly traveled up the back of her neck before he grabbed a handful of hair and snapped, “This is more than just emotions! People are dying! People are being beaten! They’re being tortured because of your father’s work! You’re damn right my feelings are hurt! But I bet you’ll be the quintessential tough bitch when it’s a member of your family that has to suffer through the torture!”

Trying to steady her chattering teeth from both the cold morning air and her sorrow, Mia said, “People are dying anyways because you’re out here doing nothing! You’re too good for them! Not everyone in the city is like my father!”

“But you are, Mia. I know you are,” whispered Goldie angrily. “You hang on his every word. You claim to be about love and honor while casting aside those who dare to be different, those who dare to be themselves. I’ve seen a million of your kind come and go, but I’d never thought you’d give up on your city’s only superhero just because you don’t like the fact that I fuck men!”

Mia’s brow furrowed as she smacked away Goldie’s clutch on her hair. “Who’s giving up on who?”

The two of them shared a moment of intense glares when the Golden Angel was blasted off his feet and into the creek, suffering a burn mark on his chest. Mia Jane screamed in horror once again and kept Goldie conscious long enough for him to pull his face out of the water to take in the view of The Dark Paladin. There he was with bulging red muscles, black metal armor, devilish horns, and yellow fangs dripping with the blood and flesh of a forest critter, potentially a squirrel.

“Miss Jane, I personally want to thank you for leading me to the Golden Angel. This couldn’t have been more perfect!” chuckled the Dark Paladin in a throaty voice.

Goldie glared evilly at Mia and whispered, “You bitch! This better not be true!”

“It’s not true! I would never do that! He’s lying!” yelled Mia. “I didn’t even know you were out here!”

“Bullshit!” roared Goldie as he leapt to his feet and took to the skies with his flapping angel wings. Every time Dark Paladin’s eyes radiated with red energy and he shot another scorching beam, Goldie would punch and kick them away like they were dodge balls. Having had enough of the demon’s laughter, the angel zoomed down upon him and threw heavy fists against his already contorted face.

Not one punch cracked bones or loosened teeth. “Is that the best you can do?” Darkie taunted. “Why don’t you try slapping me on the ass instead, lover boy?!” After throwing a mock kiss Goldie’s way, the superhero kneed Darkie in the balls and doubled him over, but only got another throaty laugh for his efforts. “Shouldn’t you take me out to dinner first?”

Dark Paladin attempted an ear clap, but Goldie ducted down and threw rapid fire punches against his stomach, each of them more powerful than the last, some of them cracking the metal armor, but not ribs like he intended. Goldie military pressed the Dark Paladin in the air and slammed him down against a gigantic stone, crumbling it into powder. The demon refused to sell his pain and instead gave a wicked grin.

“I’d say you fight like a sissy, but that’d be a little redundant, don’t you think?” said Darkie with a wink before throwing a knee against Goldie’s ribs and sending him rolling into the creek once more.

Mia Jane shouted, “No!” and ran by her would-be hero’s side. “Are you okay? Please be okay! I never wanted this to happen!”

“Get off of me!” shouted Goldie as he stood back up and attempted to dive bomb Darkie again with flying fists and feet. Instead all he got was a head butt to the skull upon landing. Dark Paladin grabbed the Golden Angel by his shin and twirled him so around so powerfully that the resulting whirlwind took Mia off her feet. Darkie slammed his nemesis against multiple trees and shattered them into beauty bark before tossing Goldie’s limp body on the ground, bloody and bruised.

Mia crab walked backwards in a shaky attempt to get away from the stalking Dark Paladin, who grunted at her, “Time to get my jollies, little lady! You’re giving birth to my child whether you want to or not! Don’t even bother going to one of those special clinics afterwards. Daddy dearest wouldn’t approve!” The last sentence was accentuated with a wink before the Dark Paladin dropped his metal pants and revealed not only his worm-infested meat, but also a familiar crucifix tattoo on his shin.

“D…Dad? Is that you? No…no, it can’t be! That’s impossible! You can’t be the Dark Paladin!” cried Mia while pounding the leaves on the ground with her fists.

“That’s right, honey! The Golden Angel ain’t going to help you this time! Not that he ever would, the little coward! Open wide, sweetheart!”

The Golden Angel’s vision was stained with blood and pieces of dirt, but he was conscious long enough to hear the entire conversation. It all made perfect sense to him now why Mia’s demonic father wanted to get rid of him. All the propaganda. All the lies. All the hate. Every one of the newly minted Dark Paladin’s dangerous words haunted Goldie’s mind like schizophrenic voices. Every time he said faggot, queer, or hell in the same sentence lit a hellish flame inside Goldie’s belly, a flame that burned brighter than the bloody pain he was feeling.

He watched Mia Jane crouch on the ground and close her legs as tightly as possible. He watched Dark Paladin’s rotten meat get harder and larger with every close step he took. The more Goldie watched, the more his heart was ready to explode in a volcanic burst. His eyes welled up with hot tears, his blood burned like acid, and his head pounded with a sledgehammer’s fury. He saw red for more reasons than Dark Paladin’s skin and the blood in his eyes.

In one swift motion ignorant of pain, Goldie flapped his wings and buzzed over to the Dark Paladin with a sharp stone in his hand. Before the demon knew what hit him, Goldie smashed the flat stone against Darkie’s groin and sliced off his monstrous genitals. Screaming agony and bloody fountains aside, no genitals meant no demonic birth, and no demonic birth meant the Dark Paladin’s plans for world conquest were ruined.

“You haven’t won shit, Golden Angel! I’ll see you in hell yet!” snarled the Dark Paladin before elbowing Goldie in the chest and sending him rolling backwards. With blood pumping out of the demon at a rapid rate, Darkie held his wound and flew away, dropping pus, maggots, and redness onto the ground below him. Mia Jane had been saved…for now.

The grateful preacher’s daughter, still bubbling with tears and snot, crawled quickly towards the downed Golden Angel and hugged him tightly, unintentionally aggravating his bloody wounds. “Thank you, Goldie! Thank you so much! I’m so sorry everything happened the way it did!”

Groaning painfully, Goldie wiped the blood off of his mouth and said, “Don’t be sorry, Mia. This isn’t over by a long shot. He’ll come back stronger than ever and we have to be ready.”

Mia gently stroked Goldie’s battered chest and said, “I’ll tell everyone the truth. The whole city will know who my father really is. I promise I will undo the damage he has done! This is not the loving priest I know! This is a monster!”

“You? You’re going to bring the people of Paulson City together? You’re going to end the hatred?!” scoffed Goldie. The two of them shared an intense stare together before the superhero said, “You’d better do it, Mia. You’re going to use your loudest voice possible. All that hellfire and brimstone crap? You’re going to use it to end this senselessness. You’re going to be the voice for positive change. You’re going to be the voice of the voiceless. Are you ready for that shit?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be, Goldie. Ready as I’ll ever be!” said Mia as she wiped the tears and snot from her face with her sweater sleeve.

I Am Death

Kobra and Lux embraced each other lovingly as they watched the scene unfold from their abandoned building hideout. Black protesters, with rage on their faces and profanity on their cardboard signs, surrounded the courthouse waiting for the perfect moment to unleash their fury. White hooded Klansmen stood on the opposite side with nooses and effigies to show their disgust. In between the two extreme parties were police in riot gear, armed with batons, tear gas grenades, and facial expression fiercer than an entire hunting party of starving wolves.

Lux, dressed beautifully in a fairy-like white dress, black knee high boots, and a glittery mask over her stunning blue eyes, gazed into her lover with and said with the softest voice, “What will happen if this plan doesn’t work?”

Kobra, with a snake’s mask covering his face and black robes with skeletal armor covering his toned body, stroked his girlfriend’s long black hair with soothing comfort and said, “Let me put it this way, my love: we don’t have a choice. Any minute now, the verdict for Keith Turner will be revealed. No matter what it may be, this city will descend into chaos in a heartbeat. I never really did like politics, but I hate senseless violence even more.” He touched a gentle finger underneath Lux’s chin and said, “Everything will be alright. The devices are rigged, everything is in place, and we’ve rehearsed this act until the end of time. They’d be foolish not to be frightened by Death himself.”

“I love you, Kobra.”

“I love you too, Lux.”

The two magicians shared a passionate tongue kiss only to be distracted by the noise going on outside. They peered out their window and saw Keith Turner and his lawyers dancing happily down the courthouse stairs. No shackles. No cuffs. Not a damn sign that he had been found guilty. The long brown-haired defendant even had a sadistic smile on his face. Kobra shuddered to think that was the look he gave the eight-year-old black girl before he murdered her in cold blood. And now the illusionist’s blood came a rolling boil now that this racist son of a bitch would walk free.

Just like Kobra predicted, the scene outside the courthouse descended into madness upon hearing the news that Keith Turner was free. Black protesters shouted and scrambled toward the heavily-guarded murderer while slinging their signs like steel chairs in a wrestling match. The KKK members swarmed the protesters and threw haymakers and shin kicks, not to mention a few choice N-words and other delightful racial slurs. The riot police struggled to maintain order and instead resorted to swinging their batons at anything that moved, be it protester or Klansman. Blood filled the streets of Paulson City and Mr. Turner watched from the stairs above without an ounce of warmth in his heart.

“It’s show time, Lux. Levitate me!” demanded Kobra. The magician had thin wires running through his robes that were undetectable by sunlight, yet powerful enough to hold his 180 lb. frame. Once Lux pounded a few buttons on a nearby control panel, those wires gave the illusion of floatation as Kobra “levitated” out of the window and high above the riot in progress.

Only a few rioters and police officers stopped to watch the floating death angel with wide-eyed awe and wonder. Kobra gained everyone’s full attention when he pulled a tab inside his robes and unleashed a pair of metallic angel wings. He winked at Lux inside the hideout and prompted her to activate the flamethrowers rigged on both sides of the street. This burning gesture was on cue with Kobra raising his arms in the air and extending his fingers like a sorcerer casting spells.

What once was a riot full of angry people and weary cops now turned into a theater with a dumbstruck audience. No more bloodshed, no more racism, just shaky bodies and faces of fear. Kobra loosened a few bladders and bowels once he swung his arms to the side and summoned a hurricane force wind around his body. He threw down his hand and tossed a rigged lightning bolt onto a gimmick fire hydrant, which exploded into a secondary Old Faithful.

One of the cops pulled out a shotgun and tried to squeeze off a few shells in Kobra’s direction. The combination of wind, lightning, and fire blew the ammunition every which way and almost blew out one of the covered-up flamethrowers. Instead of wiping off his sweaty brow in relief, Kobra went right into his distortion box-voiced tirade against the masses.

“Fools! Each and every one of you! You’re nothing but goddamn fools!” shouted the masked illusionist. “You’re gathered here today to spread mayhem and murder, the same mayhem and murder that the idiot in the gray suit was so happy to commit not too long ago!”

Even as Keith Turner stared daggers at him with a brown-toothed smile, Kobra wouldn’t shake and stutter so easily. The magician pointed an elongated, bony finger at the killer and shouted, “If you think you’re going to get away with your sins so easily, you’re sadly mistaken! I am Death himself! I am nightmare fuel! I speak the words of every victim you have claimed! That girl you killed had a name! That name is…”

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” Keith interrupted with a booming voice. “Does anybody else here think this Angel of Death garbage is a bunch of bullshit?! Am I the only one who sees this cocksucker for who he is?! You don’t scare me, snake boy! None of y’all niggers scare me either! White power!”

With Mr. Turner performing a Nazi salute, the KKK members did the same before clashing with black protesters and riot police once again. Their nationalist rage transformed back into pants-wetting, voice-stealing fear once Kobra shot a lightning bolt a jimmied mailbox and ignited the flamethrower underneath. “Silence, you fools!” shouted the Angel of Death.

“If you think those streets are bloody now, keep testing my patience!” bellowed Kobra. “I shall turn this city into hell itself! I shall turn this world into a necrocosm! I shall avenge every restless soul…”

“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! Yeah, we get it! Armageddon and shit!” yelled Keith with his arms folded and arrogant anger etched on his face. “Tell you what, shit head! Why don’t you float on down here and I’ll rearrange that pretty little snake face of yours! No more magic tricks and hocus pocus bullshit! Just you and me slugging it out, baby!”

Kobra sweated profusely inside his costume trying to think of ways to keep his bluff alive. He had an idea, but it was risky. But with no risks came no rewards. Either this would pay off or it would get him killed. “Tell you what, Mr. Turner,” said Kobra in his usual demonic aura. “Why don’t you come over here instead! You think this is a gimmick?! You think this is a fairytale?! I don’t deal in fairytales, you sodomite! I deal in death! Bring your bastard ass over here and prove to me you’re more than just a coward who targets children!”

Keith took off his suit jacket and angrily threw it to the floor before cracking his knuckles and putting his dukes up. He breathed heavily like a beast ready to jump on its prey. But then he chuckled egotistically and said, “Who am I kidding? I’m a free man. I’ve got nothing to prove to you. You’re the one breaking the law, not me. Hey, officers! Do your job and put this pinheaded asshole on trial! Maybe these jiggaboos out here can get a hashtag going on Twitter that says Snake Lives Matter or some shit.”

“Suck my dick!” shouted a random protester who threw a cardboard sign at Keith. With kicks, punches, elbows, and knees being thrown every which way, the rioting crowd and the armored police were back to square one with the bloody violence.

Kobra had one last trick up his sleeve and he had to make it count. He turned to his lovely partner Lux and gave her thumbs up before dragging that thumb across his throat. She smiled and nodded at him before pulling the biggest lever her control panel had. Slowly but surely, a parked police van on the sidewalk levitated off the ground with the same invisible wires to support it, though nobody could see them.

The fighting ceased once again despite Keith Turner’s constant bellowing that this was just another “hocus pocus stunt”. The higher in the air the van got, the more the crowd parted like the Red Sea. Protesters, cops, and Klansmen alike dispersed from the streets running like Olympic athletes. They left behind a battlefield of blood and bodies. There were even wounded bodies in the streets struggling and crawling to get away.

“This is horseshit! This is absolute horseshit!” Keith complained. He jumped into the nearly empty streets and started kicking the dead bodies of black protesters. “I’m so sick of this crap! Black lives don’t matter, motherfuckers! Your lives don’t mean shit to me! I’m sick of that stupid goddamn hashtag going around the fucking internet! You hear me?! I said do you hear me…”

The wires, being thin enough to evade detection, were bound to snap with that much weight underneath. Kobra knew this part of the illusion was a bad idea and covered his eyes, not wanting to watch his cinematic masterpiece crumble beneath him. But the sound of metal crunching on concrete deafened his ears, he opened his field of vision again to see that the only thing crumbling beneath him were Keith Turner’s bones. He was crushed underneath the wrecked vehicle with just his head poking out and his eyes bulging from his skull.

The poetic justice brought laughter to Kobra’s throat from the depths of his belly. It was an evil laugh that only a sick and sadistic demon could pull off. He even raised his hands to set off more flamethrowers and lightning bolts to keep his gimmick alive in the eyes of those still hanging around (which weren’t many). The howling laughter continued even as Kobra was slowly being pulled inside the hideout by Lux’s controls.

The illusionist stripped off his robes, skeletal suit, and angel wings to reveal a T-shirt and jeans underneath. “How did I do?” asked Kobra with a sexy smile on his face.

Lux wrapped her silky arms around her lover’s neck and said in a seductive voice, “I hope they give out Oscars for performances like that. You were wonderful, my dear. You even had me scared for a minute. Come here, sweetheart.” The magic-wielding couple pulled each other in for an emotional kiss. This illusion was a long shot in the making, but it paid off handsomely. Magic was real whether it was in the bloody streets of Paulson City or in the embrace of two passionate sorcerers.

“I love you, Kobra.”

“I love you too, Lux. Don’t ever forget that.”