Part One: Murkhan Pricks

The trajectory of our yet to be hero is charted from his pariah place among the vapid shades of a less than womanly agoge.

Names of the guiltless victims of Time’s pitiless course have been omitted or changed. However, active agents of Destiny, are recalled according to the names assigned by the world they have been liberated from to serve a higher cause.

-JL

…

The echoing cafeteria was his refuge in the morning after walking to school. No way would he rock along in that yellow bus with those inane, meticulously polished turds of humanity, looking at the poor, brain-dead “Greatest Generation” zombie bus driver, wondering if that might be what Witch World had in store for him.

Last table on the left, back corner, furthest from the window, near where the nice bun-haired lunch lady, the only human being it seemed in this shit crystal palace of indoctrination who had a genuine smile, would bring out the bullshit welfare breakfasts for the spawn of the losers. She had long ago learned that he did not take charity, and gave the best gift she had, an honest smile. She was returned the only smile Scott over permitted to mar his perpetual frown.

He wondered, ‘Lady, I can only imagine what horrible shit has happened to you, for you to be still real in this phony, mind-bending world.’

He, perhaps subconsciously, had maintained eye contact, and she seemed to understand his empathy for whatever bad deal this Witch World had cut her. Her smile slowly cooled and her eyes warmed, like she wanted to give him a grandma hug. She kept going to the loser spawn, her good duty in service to Great Evil.

He was shaken, ‘Oh, shit, did she hear that! Is she telepathic? Bro, if she heard that thought, then she has definitely heard you fantasizing about Miss Engle, who you want to ride like the bitch train to Nirvana.’

‘No, there is no such thing as telepathy.’

So comforted, Scott continue to sketch his alter ego, him, if he could ever get off this rock with a CSA saber, a six gun and a panzerfaust!

Yes, Miss Engle, the smoking hot school shrink, was sashaying in, going to the various losers and sympathy head cases. His thirst for her, especially in that green dress, made him want to throw her on that empty table—but no! This is Planet Guilt Trip, for limp dicks only!

With a frustrated growl he returned to the sketch almost breaking the pen. He liked working with shitty pens—there was no turning back once a stroke had been made. His art SUCKED, but it had conviction. It helped, a bit.

‘In what kind of fag world is a kid in the corner drawing feared by the jocks? In this Witch World.’

He improved the sight on the Panzerfaust, made it a bit more like a U.S. dragon, even as he committed to making the knuckle bow of the saber a CSA letter stamp… on into his drawing he went, strident about never setting the sketch of his alter ego aside until the home room bell rang, and to always be the last person in class, knowing that those ass kissers would leave him the last seat on the far left, by the window.

“Nat Star!”

‘What?’ Scott looked up at some nerd he had never seen, a super nerd, like rocking the white collar shirt and black rimmed glasses and dweeb hair—everything but the tie, so he knew this was not a hallucination.

The nerd sat down across from him, pulled out a wallet, like a biker wallet with a chain, set it on the table and grinned like he had just met Sean Connery or Clint Eastwood.

“Nat, mother-fucking Star!”

“Dipshit! I’m Scott—fuck off!”

The kid grinned, as if Scott had complimented him, “True to life—just like they said, badass.”

“They? Who the fuck is they—and what the fuck are you, you fucking stooge!”

The kid smiled open-hearted, “The Baltimore County Junior Debate Team. They told me all about you. I’ve just been transferred, last week of the year, from Parkville—Dad’s on a bender, Mom is shacked up over here with some dooche bag biker. Here, I took the asshole’s wallet while he was banging Mom. It’s a shame you get good grades despite not trying. If you could only flunk we could be a great team next year, educate some of these idiot teachers.”

‘What the fuck?’ thought Scott as he looked on in horror at, the nerd who seemed to be captain of his fan club, which had to be a terrible gaggle of awkward geese.

“I’m Edward Munson. I’m going to do my PHD thesis before I’m 26 and it’s going to be on the Origins of the Great War.”

“Scott,” he grumbled as he extended his right hand for a shake even as he noticed this shit stain was a lefty, and he kept running his mouth, “Scott Grumman. They say your grand father disowned you because you kept hanging up pictures of your Confederate and German ancestors, in uniform. Looks like you are compositing them in that sketch—love the USG Dragon sight, an implication that the Capitalist scum stole Third Reich technology—you know, like getting to the moon! I gave a speech to the Fourth Reich Arуan resistance gang, down in Arbutis last week. Wish you could have been there.”

“Dude, Ed, who ever the hell you are—are you even real?”

The persistent nerd grinned, “Edward, please. Could I see the Stars and Bars tattoo you did in Home Economics? It’s legendary.”

Scott rolled up his hoody sleeve and exposed what was probably the shittiest tattoo on earth, a stars and bars flag, with a white fist and middle finger for a flag pool.

“Badass. With an icing nozzle, really?”

“All I had,” grinned Scott, warming up to this rampant nerd.

“I like how you did it on your wrist instead of the forearm like the Kung Fu brand. Is it true about—”

Scott rolled up his left hoody sleeve to expose the Swastika lawn mower tattoo he had rendered behind the supermarket with shoe polish and a finishing nail.

“Badass,” crowed Edward, reducing his voice to a hiss, “The Mexican and African heads sticking up out of the ground, eyes bugged out in horror and the bleeding heart liberal woman looking out the window in terror—BAD ASS.”

Edward had a definitive way of speaking that did not rely on exclamatory tones, and, well, Scott could see him, in hos own fevered mind’s eye, with the right kind of mustache and a trench coat in a beer garden…

Scott rolled back down his sleeves and Edward slunk forward, pushing the biker wallet to Scott, “I want you to have this. Also, you know about the military recruiters coming today, and the test?”

“What do you think this sketch is for. This is what I’m handing in,” as he wrote FUCK MURKHA—Baby Killer Empire! At the bottom of the page.

“Bad ass, as expected,” said Edward, with a sage like quality. “Do me a favor, take the test, ace it—they’re easy. I’m testing out as a senior this year and am headed to community college—no sense in hanging around without a fellow Nazi on deck. I’m interested in the contents of the test and the interview you will get if you score well. I’m not taking it. I’m going the cryptic academic angle and I’d like a contact inside the Capitalist Military.”

Scott looked at him, “You’re nuts.”

Edward winked as he pushed the thick wallet full of bills, dragging a chain, over to Scott, “Not saying you need to enlist or anything. I just want to debrief you. It would give me some idea of what kind of grunt mentality they are looking for and help me with recruitment after I get the PUSH going.”

“Push?”

Its an acronym, Punk Uber Slave Hegemony: us, rising up to take down The System.

“You’re fucking nuts,” Scott observed, of a sudden somewhat afraid of the blazing, nerdy fanatic brain across from him.

They looked at each other and Scott knew, Edward was for real, frightening, but REAL.

The bell rang, Scott took the hefty wallet, appreciating that his honor had been engaged, and said, “I’ll take the test and talk to the fuckers, but this is getting stapled to it.”

They shook hands hardily and Edward, despite his obviously expansive vocabulary could only grin and say, “BAD ASS.”