The Klansman

It was bone chilling cold and totally silent except for the chirping of crickets and the sound of Art Bell on the radio. It was almost completely dark except for moonlight and the neon glow of the city in the distance. Jeff Zemura was out camping yet again on what would be another long, hot summer night in the Texas wilderness were it not for the curiously cold temperature. He always spends his time off with one of his only friends, mother nature, and hasen't had the chance to do so since last summer. Upon setting up camp alone at a spot he hasen't before, he had been hearing creepy, disturbed, pained moans from the distant darkness that scared the wits out of the 36 year old medium build man. Stationed at a spot free from high trees, Jeff was able to make out the various stars and distant mountains. A set of mountains, about a mile away and visible to Jeff, is where he would have guessed the moans to have come from.

After about an hour of sitting in the darkness listening to the radio and no sign of the moans, Jeff heard the rapid tapping of hoofs generally associated with horses. He heard the gallop and the "Hee-ya!" cries of its jockey come closer and closer, until Jeff turned the radio off and laid down in a hidden spot in the shadows. A horse enshrouded in white came bursting out of the darkness about 10 feet away from Jeff. Its jockey was wearing an all white sheet with eye holes and a cone head. He had a flaming spear which illuminated the entire camp but kept from breeching Jeff's hiding spot in his left hand. As the man in white glanced around at the camp Jeff had set up, Jeff was able to make out a symbol of what looked like a cross with a circle around it on the spot in which the mans heart should be on his robe. As the horse in white robes strode foward, the source of the moans became clear to Jeff; an african american man was tied to a rope by the neck and was being dragged along by the horse. The man in white emited another "Hee-ya!" and kicked the horse to ride toward the mountains. Jeff waited until he was totally certain that the man was gone before he emerged and took a cell phone out of his tent. He tried calling his friend, Philip, to come and pick him up but the signal was terrible. While trying to phone the police of a potential murder Jeff took a chance glance toward the mountains; he saw the red-orange glow of something lit on fire. It looked like a verticle pole with a horizontal line going through its upper half, making the shape of a cross. Jeff's heart pounded as he realized what he had seen: a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Jeff always carried around a hunting rifle when he went camping. He enjoyed using random vermin in the area as target practice. He now had the chance to use his sharpshooting for a good cause. He packed up everything into his locked tent, took a jacket and a rifle, and hiked up to the mountains in which the cross burned. After about 20 minutes, Jeff reached the top of a mountain in which he could see all of the going ons down below where the cross burned. He saw seven KKK members in white along with an eighth in green forming a circle around the cross and a gagged and beaten black man next to it. After a few minutes of chanting, the member in green stood up to speak. "As we know now, the government dosen't care about the racial purity of our society. So now we must take the law into out own hands and sacrifice this color in the name of God!" He said in a deep, southern accent. Jeff knew it had the range, and he knew that the man in green deserved to die, but could he really bring himself to do it? He raised his rifle and tried to. He couldn't decide which one to shoot first. Who's life should be cut short by the pulling of a trigger? Who's decision should it be? Fate? Should he flip a coin? Fire blindly and risk missing and giving away his position? Not do anything and have an innocent man killed? He trembled and lowered his rifle to try and calm himself down and get a rescue plan in order.

"Hey!" said a rednecky voice not altogether different from the man on the horse. Jeff turned around and saw that it was indeed him. By sheer instinct he fired, shooting him in the chest and sending him flying off of the horse. He quickly mounted the horse and rode down the mountain toward the rally. The rifle had an 8 round clip, and Jeff emptied it wildly taking down a Klansman in the process. The man in green set fire to an arrow and fired it at the horse, knocking it down. Jeff quickly stumbled off and ran straight for the man in green, tackling him to the ground with huge force, knocking the wind out of both of them. He hit the man as hard as he could, and in the shuffle ripped the mans mask off...

...and looked right into the eyes of an african american man.

Jeff stopped in his tracks. It made no sense. Why is a black man killing a fellow black man? For that matter, why is a human being killing another? The other klansmen ripped Jeff off of him and promptly shot him in the head with his rifle, knocking him into the cross's fire. The rifle was then pointed at the black prisoner, and the gunholder looked toward the black klansman, as if for confirmation. "Do it", he said. The Klansmans actions demonstrated generations of hypocracy and hate. A backwards mutated reality that should never be but exists anyway. The Klansman represents all that is wrong with the world. A man racist to his own kind, ignoring the fact that we're all human beings anyway, is a blatant demonstration of stupidity that happens nonetheless. The wounded Klansmen burned the dead, and continued the rally, which lasted through the night. When one camps in the wilderness, the most dangerous thing he might find isn't wildlife.