The Revolutionary, a New Project

Just a bit of one of my new projects. More as it develops.

THE REVOLUTIONARY

By James Robert Smith

And if there's any hope for America, it lies in a revolution, and if there's any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara.

Phil Ochs

I look at the face in the dingy mirror. It’s a good face. Different from the others I wear, but a good one all the same.

Simon B. calls it the Hyde-Super-Jekyll Effect. Refers to me sometimes as "the good Mr. Hyde". But others don’t call me that. The folk call me The Revolutionary, or The Insurrectionist. As if I’m the only one.

And that’s okay. I suppose I’ve been called worse. And it’s not entirely accurate. I didn’t start out wanting any kind of revolution, or much in the way of social change of that sort. All I was after—and all that I’m still after when you get right down to it—is justice. If the result of my efforts is a mass revolution; well, they had it coming.

My Mr. Hyde face is gone. I stand before that grimy mirror in that filthy bathroom and gaze into the water-spotted, rust-pocked surface. If I ever showed this face, none would be likely to forget it. The dark hair, almost black, is not long: barely touches my ears and the back of my neck. The nose is strong and was formerly aquiline; but it’s obviously been broken a few times—three that I can recall. These lips are like thin, darker lines drawn across that square chin, below strong cheekbones that look born of some Navajo chieftain. And the eyes—piercing as any, black like polished jet.

A pity that no one ever sees that face—other than myself and Simon B. and a few who find themselves targeted by me. Everyone else—all everyone else sees is the mask. Not this flesh and blood mask, but the one that I wear made of synthetic cloth, shatterproof plastic, plexiglass lenses.

I’m a sight all dressed up in my outfit of black cloth.

The underground rags say I’m a superhero. The real deal. Fantasy come to life. Kids apparently adore me and draw pictures of me in notebooks. There would probably be posters of me for sale in comic book shops and toy stores if the authorities allowed those images to be marketed. But they don’t think

I’m a superhero--or any kind of hero.

The media, and their puppet-masters, call me a terrorist. They say I am, at best, a super-villain made flesh and blood. They say that I am a criminal and they scream for my head. They’re right, too. I want my enemies to think of me that way.

I want them to live in fear, to be terrorized. I want them all to piss their pants every time a board creaks in their Victorian mansions. I want them to shit their britches each time an unexpected movement enters their peripheral vision when they’re in their penthouses.

And then I want to kill them all.

I’m very good at that, as they have discovered, and as they are going to continue to learn.