A Hero’s Diary - Excerpt

A cold night, and soon I will act. Soon I will jump from this cold perch over top of the streets and fall through this cold May night. But just before I do that, I take another puff of the weed to calm my nerves. It’s hard to get the hang of tense moments, got death on ya back, and the constant refusal to believe. I won’t slip and fall victim to a murderer who would prey upon the helpless.


I lost a close friend, shot dead from a stray bullet when I was ten. It changed my life forever. My mom, Bertha, and my father, Walter, tried to comfort me in my time of pain, but I wanted more. At a young age I started to feel, a want to act in my neighborhood. So I became block captain. See, I always wanted to do good in some way, whether it be beatin’ up a bully for some ninth grader once I made it to high school or creating programs for the younger students in college. I always wanted to be someone my generation could look up to in a good way and still do just as much dirt as the next man if I wanted. I think graduation top of my class from elementary on up would make anyone feel cocky in someway.

I left Philadelphia at fifteen and began my own quest for knowledge. I used schools as my cover, and many other places of learning, but I never stayed long. When I was twenty I told myself I would try and work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (you know they got some hood in the F.B.I) for a change and not it cuffs. So I started F.B.I. training and stayed with it for a few years. I learned a lot about obeying regulations, analyzing statistics and how none of that stuff had mattered to me. The experience only opened up the way I had felt coming up about the law, that I couldn’t operate within the law system. Where I’m from, people out in the street don’t care about the law or any type of system someone tries to create. So I left and went back home to Philly.

Once back, I saw how much things had changed. The news one night had said Philadelphia averaged two-point-something homicides a day and forty-something homicides in two weeks. I had only been home for a moment and it felt like I was here for years. For a while I collected grants that schools had given me and used them to travel around the world. I started to feel a need to act and become a positive force in my neighborhood. But to do this I needed the skills and knowledge. I had to be cunning. I used most of my grant money in order to fly to the last place I felt I would find all of those, Korea.

It was different and the natives didn’t take well to some black man wondering around in their country, but I didn’t care. I knew that if I just kept along the way I would be ok. Boy was I wrong. In my travels a local clan found me asleep in a ditch just under their temple and took me as an American spy of some kind. They were about to kill my ass just before their Master saw otherwise and took me in as one of his students for whatever reason. I was glad that he did. His name was Master Kenshi, leader of the Clan of Hope. I stayed with him along with his other followers for many years. They first year he made me wash the dishes for everyone and clean behind them. Year two I was the cook and for the next two years I did whatever cleanin’ for them the Master had told me to do. And I had to. They were going to kill me for one and I wanted the instructions and training this man was teaching.

Finally just before I started to give up I was given the instructions I had been hoping for. The Master was hard on me during my training. His method is extraordinary and I started to look up to this man of great intelligence. After a while I would have run-ins with other students there because of my race probably, but it didn’t matter. I was makin’ progress faster than most there and they knew what I was hittin’ for. But just then I was smacked with some news that came right outta left field. He had spoken light before this day but I knew something was up they way he sounded. “I cannot teach you anymore, forget now all I have taught you,” he said.

At first I thought it was another test of some kind, or just a trick to see how I would react, but this was serious. He told me I was nearly perfect, that I had become his best student. My reflexes and vision along with my strength was ten times what it was when he found me. It scared him that what had taken him much of his life to reach had taken me a matter of years. I didn’t understand, but he was right. The pain from losin’ my friend and the violence that I loved as a kid had marred me and that was what made it easy for me to pick up the techniques I was being taught. HE also added that the rage and pain in my heart would someday destroy me. He told me that if I wanted to overcome such a cancer I would have to find myself. I knew just then it was time to go back home to Philly.

My last night there I thought hard about my next move and what I was going to do once back in Philly. That morning I left what little things I had along with a mentor that helped me in more ways than I can explain. On the flight back home I started to think of ways to become more cunning and the use of deception. Back home I took a job in the letter room at the Inquirer just downtown in City Hall. I was happy to be back in my hometown with my family. I never told them about what happened in Korea. I’d told them just before I left for Korea I was going to see a friend from college or some type of move for a job opening to keep them from asking questions. Then one day my father sat down and talked for hours about everything that was on our minds. The one thing that stood out was something my dad said, “Will is nothing if you don’t have the power to act along with it.” What was that, A riddle of some kind? Something about it brought slow meaning to m life.

I always knew what I wanted to do, protect my neighborhood. But protect it with what? And how? No franchise backing’ me to start anything. What my dad said had made me more confused about what I could do in the hood. Then I turned to my comic collection, just to step outta the real world and become a kid again. The one I picked up about crime fighting had me deep into it. One of the things the hero said about criminals was crazy, “People who usually turn to a life of crime are cowardly and fear what they don’t know.” At that point I knew what I had to do. I had known for a few years what I wanted to be and what I had become. I remember the night like I had sex with a special girl that night, it was the first time in a while I felt good and sure of my next move. It was like I hit the lottery. Something in me that I never knew had come over me, some type of hero or avenger was starting to form. One that’s grimy and relentless but still had some kind of compassion.

Gathering my black army pants and black vest to protect me from gunshots I knew I had to do a lot more than this. More than human, more than the cops to those who dream on wrecking havoc on others and the helpless. They have to fear something and most of all they have to fear me, before they even see or hear me. That’s what I’m going for. So I used a Halloween mask to cover my face. Next I needed a name and then it came to me. I’ll let the fear of not knowing what’s coming after you at night seep into the evil hearts of men. My weed is just about out and it’s time. Relax. Take a puff and breathe deep, filling my lungs with the smoke my eyes turn as red as that stop sign on the corner. I take a peek behind me, step off the edge of the perch and into a new life for myself.

From Broad Street down to 29th is my neighborhood. I stalk alleys and prowl the rooftops of the streets. A knight in the war to stop violence in the neighborhood and the force of good I always wanted to be. But will this change anything?