6/28/17, Harm County, United States of Dismay

As I emerged into the half-lit street, between the side of the shopping center and the darkened church grounds, two heroically repasting Dindus were exiting their car to access the Nepali Pizzeria, where thugs hang out in crowds regularly.

I am so wary of this location that I get into battle mode as soon as I cross the back lot, knowing that I am usually being considered for a different kind of meal—Caucasian street pizza. At least a dozen times in the past two months young thugs have looked at me, conversed with each other, and then decided not to “do me.”

My war face is always on at this portion of my walk and last night was more intense than usual, as I was seething over the nightmares I had had while trying to sleep, nightmares about being abducted, tortured and killed by BPD cops, because of what I said about them in my recent interview with Kevin Michael Grace. Also, although it was not going to rain, I did not have my cane. Having come directly into town from Harford County, to which I had not brought my cane out of pride, not wanting my grandson to see me like that, I was carrying the heavy umbrella I bent stabbing that pit bull two weeks ago.

So, to my right, 75 yards across a deserted lot, as I angled across the street to a deserted church ground [where I was ironically beaten as a small boy], the two thirsty, hungry negroes spied Whitey. These two were in their mid 20s, one tall and thin the other a large heavyweight. The heavyweight pointed at me and said something to the tall thin guy, who nodded affirmatively, looked at me, put on a hard face and began walking a line out into the lot to intercept me, swaggering, shoulders back, elbows rubbing his sides, his wide grin flashing like white Chicklet teeth in a chocolate jack-o-lantern.

He would intercept me in the middle of the side street at this rate and angle of convergence.

I had gotten up on the wrong side of bed for this shit.

I stopped in the middle of the street as he made the halfway mark and thought to myself, I’m going to bayonet this Dindu like he was the last Zulu over the wall at Rourke’s Drift.

As I took my place in the imaginary battle line of my mind’s eye, brought the butt of the umbrella behind my hip and presented the point with my hand well forward, my left elbow braced against my other hip, flexing my knees to charge when he got within three paces, he stopped, the wide grin imploding into a dark O of dismay, as the big man behind him bellowed, “My bad , Yo! Wrong white man!”

On his return, the lackey groused, “Muvafuca, dat shit ain’t funny!”

My night now in complete ruins, I angrily snatched my umbrella with the left and took up a stalking cadence as I snarled at the cool breeze, wishing for once that I could wake up in Baltimore with a torch in one hand and a sword in the other as God pissed gasoline on every hoodrat hovel and liberal lair in my path.

Why couldn’t I have had that dream?

Why did it have to be a dream about cops putting a hair curler up my ass while they electrocuted my balls?

Because, I suppose, that is how white devils dream.

An hour later, I was feeling better about things as the new magic negro in my life, Hotep Jackson, the bus driver, dropped me off at the deserted transfer point where two thugs tried to mug me two weeks ago, waiting there, looking all around for trouble, idling the bus as if he were Big-Headed Yakub his genius self, hovering the Mother Ship over the pyramids he designed, making sure his favorite white devil [1] escaped the launch zone before the Sudanese hordes came rolling up out of the Nightlands…

Big-Headed Yakub was the black scientist of ancient Egypt who crossbred Neanderthals and Chinese on the Isle of Patmos 5,700 years ago, in an effort to breed the perfect laboring beast, but ended up with my evil ass instead.

Skulker Jones is the sequel to A Hoodrat Halloween and an urban horror tale of a failed man looking for a final saving grace.