My beautiful wife lies besides me after a night of passionate lovemaking. Her name is Lasouda. And she is the Queen of the Bagayobo people of Mali, deep within the motherland of Africa. Anyone looking at her would see a six-foot-tall, dark-skinned young Black woman in her twenties. And that's fine because that's what they are meant to see. If only they knew what she truly is. A goddess among men and women. Today, she rules a Kingdom spanning hundreds of miles and well over two hundred thousand people make up the multitude of her subjects. Her Capital City of Bayoko Fanta alone houses eleven thousand people. I am here to tell you about a time of great trouble for her Kingdom, and the saviours who came to them from another time.
The motherland of Africa is the cradle of mankind. Long before man, other creatures lived here. Unfortunately, not all of them vanished from existence after the rise of man. Such creatures are the Others. I have battled them since I arrived here. My wife's mother, the beautiful and wise Queen Karidja lost her life in the war against the Others. Things that looked like men but aren't human. They feast on human flesh and blood. They are exceptionally strong and brutal. And they are very hard to kill. The Others hate us humans. According to the Elders of the Bagayobo people, the Others lived in the motherland of Africa at a time when the ancestors of man still feared the ancient beasts and had yet to discover fire or the means of making weapons.
The Others have often preyed on the peoples of various African kingdoms. When they came to the Bagayobo kingdom, the citizens vowed to fight eternally against their kind. Their endless wars against them cost many lives. The bravest women and men of the kingdom were no match for them. What good were swords, spears and bows and arrows against man-like creatures of superhuman strength and speed? The people of the kingdom cried out for a hero. And the Gods of Mali answered their prayers. They sent for a hero, and he came to them from the distant world of twenty-first century America. His name is Jackson Anderson, and he is by far the strangest African man that ancient Africa has ever seen. Even stranger than the creatures previously mentioned.
Hey, there. My name is Jackson Anderson. The hero of this story. Let me put in my two cents. Man, I'm having a strange time with this. It's definitely a weird story and I still find certain parts of it unbelievable even though I've lived it. I was born in the City of Cap-Haitien, Republic of Haiti, in 1984. My family moved to Washington D.C. five years later. My father Antoine Anderson worked as a bus driver. My mother Geraldine Pierre Anderson worked as a nurse's aide. I grew up in D.C. and eventually attended Howard University. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice in 2007. Yeah, I'm the guy who's often been called a slacker. I get accused of being too rough around the edges and too into rap and hip hop. However, I'm still an educated man. Take that, haters! Since then, I've been working odd jobs while trying to come up with the funds to attend Law School. Howard University is the best school on the planet in this Haitian-American brother's humble opinion. I wanted to attend Howard University Law School so bad I could taste it. That's how I ended up working in this jewelry store owned by this old Black lady named Aminata. She's straight from Africa, in the region of Mali I think.
The jewelry store was really nice, housing a ton of expensive stuff. All of it authentic African jewels, as well as artwork, gadgets and priceless collectibles. The old lady was paying me sixteen bucks per hour to mind the store. Now, I'm a college graduate and should be making a lot more than that. However, I got fired from my job at Bank of America where I was a teller for nine months. I needed something to pay the bills, man. Otherwise I'm fucked. The old lady I worked for was really strict, and she forbade me from touching any of the stuff. Truth be told, I knew the old bat had cameras everywhere so I wasn't going to try anything. I just wish she trusted me more, you know?
One day, I was in the back, chilling. The old lady's equally weird nephew Hassan was minding the front of the store and I was on my break. After eating some delicious Chinese food from Manchu Wok, I relaxed in the backroom. I had this month's copy of BIG BLACK BUTT magazine. I've been a loyal subscriber for years. Needless to say I was a little busy when that idiot Hassan yelled that we were being robbed. I had to readjust my clothes real fast as I ran out of the back. If anything was taken, I'd be a dead man. The old bat would fire me on the spot. Somebody tried to rob us before, some neighbourhood punks who didn't even have guns. These fools actually showed up with bats if you could believe that. Who carries baseball bats as weapons in this day and age? Especially in a violent town like Washington D.C.? Anyhow, I ran to the front. And found Hassan struggling with two Black guys with durags on their heads. And they both had guns. Oh, shit.
One of them pointed his guns at me. I recognized the fool. Jamal Woods. I went to high school with that bastard if you can believe that. He banged Nerina Johnson, this fine-ass Jamaican chick I had a thing for. She was a religious chick who believed in waiting for marriage while dating me but she gave up the booty to Jamal. I've hated Jamal ever since. Especially since he got Nerina pregnant and then dumped her ass. He corrupted a good woman and made a decent brother like me look like a fool. When I saw Jamal, I forgot about his guns. I just went up to that punk and punched him right on his mouth. I don't know who was more surprised, him or me. Jamal staggered under the force of the blow. He fell but I guess his backpack broke his fall because he didn't seem to be hurting from hitting the floor. At the same time, I noticed he had a gold chain with a weird Medallion around his neck. It was The Medallion. A priceless jewel belonging to the old lady from Mali. I snatched it from his neck...and then all hell broke loose.
I'm not sure how or why, but the Medallion began to glow, and blue-white energy came out of it. Just like something out of the Sci-Fi Channel, fam. A vortex was formed by the energy, and it sucked both Jamal and I inside. And just like that, two Black guys from America found themselves transported from Washington D.C. in the summer of 2011 to the strange world of Mali in Africa, circa 800 B.C. The first thing I noticed when I landed was that I sure as hell wasn't in Washington D.C. anymore. D.C. has some rough spots but it's a concrete jungle, not an actual jungle. I landed in a puddle, right beside Jamal's dumb ass. We were still struggling. I was on top of the fool, trying to knock him out when we crashed through space and time. I think the water and our weird surroundings sobered us up, but I'm not sure. We definitely weren't in D.C. anymore.
