God Is a Blac Man

What am I? Man, God or Monster? Messiah, Impostor or Savior? Those are the questions I've been asking myself lately. I thought I knew who I was. Jacob LeJeune. Son of Samson and Evelyn LeJeune of Boston, Massachusetts. A Haitian-American student enrolled at Wilkinson College. A decent Volleyball player. A lover of Japanese comics, especially anime. That's me.

My life used to be pretty simple. In May of 2008, I graduated from Boston College High School. I got myself a student-athlete scholarship to Wilkinson College, a small private school located in Boston. I moved into the dormitories, just like any other freshman. My roommate is a red-haired guy named Jarvis Kendrick III who smokes dope and listens to Linkin Park all day long. I mean, I like Linkin Park too. I also like Green Day and a few other bands which produce existential music. However, I can't listen to the same stuff all day long. Jarvis doesn't have that problem. He can pretty much do whatever he wants because his father, Jarvis Kendrick Jr. is the Athletic Director. The school considers him a hero because of what he's done.

Athletic Director Jarvis Kendrick Jr. transformed Wilkinson College, a previously all-female institution, into one of the top schools in New England. He beefed up the fledgling athletic program by adding Men's baseball, basketball, cross country, soccer, volleyball, rugby, swimming, ice hockey, golf, track & field, football and wrestling along with Women's archery, softball, basketball, cross country, soccer, golf, tennis, swimming, rugby, field hockey, volleyball and wrestling. Wilkinson College now competes in the NCAA Division Two.

Life at Wilkinson College was okay for the most part. There are nine thousand students on campus. Three thousand five hundred and eighty six of us are of African-American or Hispanic descent. Even though Wilkinson considers itself a diverse institution, I still get funny looks from people simply because I'm a big and tall Black athlete moving about. I find that extremely tiresome. Especially the looks the wealthy white chicks and their steely-eyed boyfriends keep throwing my way. I would have gladly gone to a historically Black college or university but there aren't any four-year ones in the state of Massachusetts. And my parents discouraged me from going out of state for higher education. I try my best to focus on acing my classes, playing volleyball to the best of my ability and staying out of trouble. For the first half of the school year, things were peachy keen.

Then one day everything started getting more complicated. I discovered that I wasn't exactly like everybody else. And I'm not saying that because of race or anything like that. You'll soon find out what I'm talking about. This White chick named Mildred O'Connor came to the school with an automatic weapon. She shot nine people before turning the gun on herself. Six women and three men. Almost all of them faculty members. The only student she shot was me. I went down with a bullet in my chest. I was taken to the hospital, where I made the most miraculous discovery in recent history. I returned to my shocked but thrilled parents after I got discharged from Mass General.

A week later, I was approached by this strange man. His name was Leander Jackson. A six-foot-three, dark-skinned African-American man in his early forties. The latest addition to the Athletic Department's staff at Wilkinson College. Mr. Jackson claimed to be the Avatar of the Archangel Raphael. He told me some crazy stuff. According to him, there were Angels and Demons walking this Earth. They were in conflict with one another. And I was destined to enter this conflict. I told him he was crazy. Then I took off.

Later, things got really weird. I was approached by another strange person who practically cornered me in the student parking lot. A tall, blonde-haired and green-eyed White woman in her early thirties. Her driver's license indicated she was Rosalind Parker. An adjunct professor of Literature at Northeastern University. She claimed to be the Avatar of the Archangel Gabriel, and urged me to come with her. Man, for some reason this freak really freaked me out. But not half as much as this strange-looking, tall and heavyset Asian guy with the blazing yellow eyes did. He didn't bother with introductions. He just came at me with a Samurai sword. As I fled from my latest interlocutor, the so-called Archangel chick got between him and me.

Before my amazed eyes, they fought. Rosalind brandished a sword of her own and faced the Asian dude. I heard her call him Azazel. It was like something out of a movie, folks. Watching the two of them fight with skill and speed that were nothing short of uncanny. I was absolutely amazed by what they could do. So amazed that I didn't notice Mr. Jackson as he seemingly materialized besides me. He laid his hand on my shoulder, startling the hell out of me. He pulled me away from the battle scene, telling me we'd best get going. I don't know why but I went with him. We left the campus, and he took me to this little restaurant in Brighton, about a couple miles from the campus.

We sat at a table, and ate some delicious Haitian cuisine. Apparently, the Avatar of the Archangel Raphael was fond of Caribbean cuisine. Since he was paying, I was more than willing to seriously chow down. As you can imagine, I had a lot of questions for him. For example, why in hell were he and his blonde female friend so interested in me? And why did this weird Asian guy try to chop my frigging head off in the school parking lot? Yeah, I had a lot of questions. And it really pissed me off that Mr. Leander Jackson/the Archangel Raphael took his sweet time answering. Especially when it came to explaining the bit about Angels and Demons.

Looking me in the eye, he told me the truth. And I wished I hadn't asked. According to him, there were powerful forces at work on the planet Earth. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the last remnants of an alien civilization came to the planet Earth. A race of sentient creatures. Members of a race so old they had forgotten their own name. They were avian creatures who transferred their consciousness into the bodies of ordinary men and women. They called their host bodies their Avatars. Any Avatar of one of these creatures undergoes a metamorphosis, gaining superhuman strength and stamina, along with keen vision, super hearing and the power of flight due to retractable wings.

I stared at Mr. Jackson, amazed. Smiling, he stood up and took off his long black leather trench coat. Before my amazed eyes, he unfolded magnificent dark gray wings. They simply grew from between his shoulder blades. The kind of wings a pigeon might have, only they were bigger than my whole frigging body. As I gawked at him, he retracted his wings and they returned into the tiny holes between his shoulder blades. The holes from which they sprang closed. His back looked no different from a normal person's back. Wow.

I gazed at him with newfound respect. The man was telling the truth, as amazing as it sounded. Suddenly, Mr. Jackson looked up, and smiled as his erstwhile friend Rosalind came into the restaurant. For someone who had been fighting for her life moments ago, she didn't look a bit disheveled. She came and sat with us. With a casual wink at me, she shook hands with Mr. Jackson, then called the waitress. She ordered rice and beans, along with fried chicken and a bottle of coke. Tapping her hands on the table, she asked me how I was doing. I told her I was okay, and she smiled at Jackson. A look passed between them, then he resumed telling his story.

According to Mr. Jackson, hundreds of thousands of the avian aliens landed on the planet Earth over two hundred thousand years ago. They took many human hosts, as Avatars. Many of them interbred with the primitive humans who peopled the planet at the time, and out of these interbreeding came a new race. Homo Sapiens. A race completely separate from the hominid species that were around at the time. In time, Homo Sapiens became the dominant species on the planet. For many thousands of years, the humans worshiped their space-faring ancestors as various deities.

The various groups of the Avian Ones were in conflict with each other. Two powerful leaders arose among them. One whom humanity would eventually call Michael. He was a smart, stern and talented leader. The inventor of martial arts on the planet Earth. His fiercest rival and deadliest enemy was his former friend Lucifer. They were anomalies among the Avian Ones. All of the Avian Ones are immortal. As long as they can find human bodies to inhabit, they will live forever. Michael and Lucifer were two exceptions among them. These two were more than merely immortal. They had vast powers the likes of which other Avian Ones could only dream of. Any Avian whose Avatar was destroyed was automatically uploaded into the Repository, to await his or her turn to return to the planet Earth in a new human body.

All of the Avian Ones originally came to the planet Earth on a massive, sentient spaceship three times the size of planet Earth's Moon. It was a self-contained ecosystem. Basically a small planet equipped with titanic machinery which enabled it to soar through space. It contained vast cities which floated in artificial gravity. A solar-powered force field surrounded the spaceship, which the Avian Ones called Heaven. The force field shielded it from any harm. Inside the spaceship was the Repository, where the consciousness of all Avian Ones, past and present, resided. Many of them were living on the planet Earth. Countless others were still onboard Heaven, awaiting to be installed into human bodies. A difference in philosophy divided the followers of Lucifer from the devotees of Michael. The Archangel Michael believed that the race of Homo Sapiens was the rightful owner of the planet Earth. The Avian Ones should leave them alone and watch them from afar until the time came that humans evolved enough to join the Avian Ones onboard Heaven, not as servants or worshipers but as equals.

Lucifer and his followers believed differently. Many of them believed that the race of Homo Sapiens was a species of dumb brutes who ought to be exterminated, lest the rest of the universe pay for allowing them to live. Among the Avian Ones, the two most powerful groups were the Demons, as the followers of the Archangel Lucifer were called. The second most powerful group was that of the Angels. The followers of the Archangel Michael. The two groups had been fighting for tens of thousands of years. Since both groups were immortal, neither side could claim a decisive victory. Which is why both the Angels and the Demons were on Earth, searching for the One.

I interrupted Jackson's spiel, and looked at him and Rosalind questioningly. Who in hell was the One? Jackson took a deep breath, then nodded at Rosalind. Looking me in the eye, Rosalind demanded my full attention. Well, she had it. According to her, the Avian Ones were the oldest intelligent race in the universe. They had been traveling from galaxy to galaxy at the time when dinosaurs ruled the world. Their race came into existence when the planet Earth was still cooling and forming from the effects of the Big Bang. They had been around the block a few times. For millions of years, they were the protectors and guardians of tens of thousands of worlds across many galaxies. They mapped the cosmos from one end to the next. They helped thousands of intelligent alien races rise. They were the shepherds of the intelligent species of the universe. A thousand worlds knew them as the benevolent ones. This seemingly all-powerful race had the technology to build entire worlds. They were responsible for spawning tens of thousands of different races over the course of eons.

Yet they too had a humble origin. Just like the human species had a humble origin. Nearly a billion years ago, according to Avian legend, a powerful being came to the Avian home world. This powerful being was sentient. He saw that the ancestors of the Avian ones had promise. He protected them from predators. He gave them technology, culture, and life. He showed them the wonders of the cosmos. He opened the gates of the universe to them. He was the father of their race. For he passed his essence into them. A small part of him lives inside every Avian who has ever existed. Going back nearly a billion years. He gave them a fraction of his intelligence, his wisdom, his curiosity, his compassion and his generosity. He also gave them a portion of the darkness he carried within him. He raised them from the darkness and gave the universe to them. A universe they gladly took.

For millions of years, the Avian Ones had been searching for the One. They were the oldest intelligent race in the universe. Older than any alien civilization. They had the power to create an artificial sun. They could literally build a planet. They could engineer sentient life. And they did these things gloriously. And countless worlds remember them fondly for it. Yet like all creatures, the Avian Ones longed to know the secret of their origin.

They roamed the cosmos for millions of years, looking for the One. They finally located traces of his presence on the planet Earth. The sensors of their mother ship Heaven discovered that a being of unimaginable power had visited the planet Earth. That same being had been visiting millions of worlds throughout the galaxies for over a billion years.

As evidence of his passage, the being often left certain formations on the planetary surface. He simply changed the form of the continents to his liking. And he did enough times that the space-faring intelligent races of various galaxies took that as evidence of his passage on myriad worlds. His pattern was not natural, but one of intelligent design. They were desperately looking for him. Many intelligent alien species thought of the One as a truly supreme being who might be the oldest intelligence in the cosmos. Or simply the architect of the universe itself. They had a trillion questions which only he could answer.

Rosalind paused, and looked at me. There was something unsettling in her gaze. I looked at Jackson, and saw the same look mirrored in his visage. They'd been telling me some truly fascinating stories for the past hour, but neither of them had specifically told me what they wanted with me. Or why the Asian samurai guy tried to kill me. Jackson sighed, and told me there was a reason why I could heal faster than any human being on the planet. There was a reason why I sometimes experienced blackouts. And why I felt like there were some important things I should remember, but simply couldn't.

I looked at Jackson and Rosalind, and sighed. All of a sudden, many things made sense. A few days ago I wouldn't have believed a word they said but after all I'd seen and experienced, I was ready to believe the impossible. I took a deep breath, and asked them if I was one of the Avian Ones. Jackson smiled sadly, and Rosalind shook her head. In unison, they told me no, I wasn't one of the Avian Ones. I breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever else I might be, I wasn't a winged alien from outer space. What they told me next chilled me in my bones. According to them, I wasn't a human, or Avian, or any alien they'd ever heard of. I was something else entirely.

I looked at them, stunned. At this point, I really didn't want to know but I had to ask the question. What was I? This time, both Jackson and Rosalind looked at each other and took a deep breath before answering. According to them, I wasn't a creature, entity or being. I was something else entirely. In a class by myself. I was something which defied categorization. I was...the One. If lightning struck me, it wouldn't have shocked more. According to the Archangels, I was...God!