Wrath White - Yaccub's Curse

“Everybody down! Get down!” I yelled, pulling my Beretta out of the holster in the back of my pants and Huey’s Sig Sauer from my jacket pocket.

They all looked at me as if I had gone mad until Huey whipped Tank’s old AK 47 out from under his trench coat and it began belching death in a stuttering staccato. He was running towards the oncoming cars in a full gallop. I saw my mother’s mortified expression as she dropped to her knees and rage blinded me. I chased after Huey firing both pistols into the advancing vehicles.

“Duck!” I heard Huey yell as return fire came from the three cars, ripping up the sod at our feet. I jumped behind a tombstone, narrowly avoiding being cut in half by nine millimeter slugs.

We crouched behind the tombstones and trees as the hail storm of bullets shredded the manicured lawns and sent chunks of sod and chips of gravestone flying. We returned fire with our own torrent of flaming alloy. Bullets rained through the air like we were in the middle of a war. The sounds of gunfire continued without a break for almost a full minute then it just stopped. Scratch’s cars continued up the road while Drew, and Fat Greg chased after it popping off a few desperate rounds. None of our guys had been hit and despite several hundred rounds sent into the three vehicles, it didn’t appear that any of their guys had been hit either. I popped the clips out of the two pistols and reloaded them.

“Come on, Huey. Let’s finish this shit right now.”

We jumped into the Monte Carlo and sped off after Scratch, leaving my family behind, rising from the grass terrified and confused.

“They’re splitting up.”

The cars reached the exit to the cemetery and took off in different directions.

“Scratch is in the Lexus. There it is up ahead.”

The gold Lexus cleared the cemetery gates and kept going straight toward West Oak Lane. The Range Rover and the Tahoe both turned right and headed towards Cheltenham. It was midday and the streets were too crowded for a high-speed chase, still we were doing more than seventy miles per hour in pursuit of the Lexus, stopping for most of the red lights, but blowing through stop signs. Scratch was driving conservatively as if he were unaware that he was being chased or else he wanted us to catch him.

We knew he had to get rid of the Lexus. No way they would drive their own vehicles to a hit and driving stolen vehicles filled with guns around in the middle of the day was too dangerous. As soon as the cops arrived at the cemetery and questioned my family, every squad car in the vicinity would be looking for that Lexus. Sure enough the Lexus stopped in a parking lot behind the First Black Pentecostal Church of Christ where a black Mercedes covered in more gold than the BMW had ever had, sat idling. The license plate said, “Scratch”. The man was definitely in love with himself.

We pulled up next to the Lexus and Huey unloaded an entire fifty round clip into it, killing the three soldiers inside beyond any hope of resuscitation. I took out the driver of the Mercedes with six shots from the Sig. Scratch broke out into a loping run and I leapt out of the car and took off after him. He headed away from the Mercedes in the direction of a small fence that surrounded a yard adjoining the church parking lot. He tried to hurtle the fence in a single leap like he was Carl Lewis or something, caught his pants leg on the top and flipped over, landing on his back in the yard. He jumped right back up and started running again using his good arm to balance himself as he vaulted over the next fence and into the neighboring yard. I followed him, hopping fence after fence until we wound up in an empty lot.

Suddenly Scratch turned and fired a single shot, catching me right in the chest and throwing me backwards onto the ground in a cloud of dust. I stared up at the sky breathing laboriously with a sucking chest wound pulling air into my thoracic cavity and slowly collapsing my lung. Scratch’s grinning face abruptly blotted out the sky. I stuck my finger into the bullet hole to stop my lungs from sucking anymore air into my chest. Now I was able to breathe a little. The Beretta lay by my side and Scratch kicked it away. The Sig was still in my pocket though, with my finger on the trigger.

“Thought you was so slick didn’t you, nigger? Thought you was the baddest muthafucker on the planet— Bad-ass Snap! Well, you’s a dead mutherfucker now.” He pointed the big Colt automatic down at my head and then bent down to place the barrel right between my eyes. “Tell me where the kid is and I’ll do this shit nice and quick.”

“Fuck you! You fucking devil!” I spit in his face and his grin widened even more.

“Devil? You startin’ to buy all that Black Muslim shit about all white people bein’ devils? You done let Huey get into your head? Well, that shit ain’t true. All white people ain’t devils. Naw, little nigger, not all White people.” His smile widened further still until it looked like his jaw would unhinge again like it had down in the basement of that crackhouse. His eyes flashed a fiery red as if someone had lit a fire in his retinas, “Just me. Let me tell you a little story about me. Just so you know what all this has been about. Why your people ain’t never goin’ to rise no higher than they are.

“In the year 8400 BC, twenty miles from Mecca, an albino child was born named Yaccub. He was ostracized by his people for the color of his skin and he grew up hating those bastards that had rejected him. But Yaccub was also a fuckin’ genius. A genius like the world had never seen, you know I’m sayin’. He knew things about genetic engineering that scientists today still haven’t figured tha fuck out. Frankenstien ain’t have shit on him. He’d broken the DNA code thousands of years before the rest of the world knew what tha fuck DNA was. But his people didn’t trust him, they saw his experiments as witchcraft and so they banished him into exile on a tiny island in the Aegean sea.”

I shook my head and laughed, spraying blood from my lips into Scratch’s face.

“They banished that twisted freak because he was using his own damn people as Guinea pigs for his fucked up experiments!”

Scratch scowled and his face shifted again as if it was getting harder and harder to retain the façade of humanity he wore.

“You must have read those lies in Elijah Mohammed’s book. That’s all bullshit. They banished him because they were afraid of his genius and envious of his white skin. That’s why they sent him to the island of Paean. So they wouldn’t have to look at him anymore. But Yaccub’s followers came with him and they helped him launch his greatest revenge against the African people. He created a man from genetic material he’d harvested from his disciples. Only Yaccub used magic to alter the genetic structure of the DNA he used. He changed the pigment of the skin, the color of the eyes, the texture of the hair, and even the mind and soul of his creation. He used a combination of science and magic to create a new man that would forever live as a torment to the Tribes of Shabass who had banished him. But he didn’t create an entire race like they say in those Muslim books. There were already Caucasians living in caves all over Europe. Dr. Yaccub only created one White man because he knew enough about human prejudice and stupidity to know that he’d only need one. He knew that the entire White race would be blamed for the actions of this one evil man and the two races would forever be at war. He also knew that other White men would follow this devil and his actions would become the norm for all Caucasians. So he created one malevolent Caucasian man to live forever as the adversary of the African people, stirring up shit between the two races. He created me.

“I’ve lived for thousands of years, starting wars, initiating the slave trade, the KKK, Apartheid in South Africa, Jim Crow laws, the urban drug trade, and the war on drugs. Shit, nigga, I even invented gangsta rap. I’ve been here forever, wearing different faces in different lands, but always there, whispering in the White man’s ear and shouting in the Black man’s ugly fuckin’face. Making sure you ignorant monkeys never got a moment’s peace.”