Black Canary: The Warlord's Woman

He then pulled back and "punched" her gently on the chin. Then he gave her a wink, turned and entered the terminal. In a moment he was gone. Dinah was very pleased that he had kissed her before he left, but she couldn't quite accept the implied finality of it all, and in her heart she chose to ignore it.

Sunday for Dinah was filled with homework catchup, family dinners and much talk about all the events she had come to experience. She hadn't watched Sunday sports. She hadn't listened to the radio. Being out of town, she had missed her Kenpo class and had to fill a makeup on Sunday night. Monday morning was full of thoughts of the upcoming finals before the holiday break, and those subjects she had fallen behind on, because of her amorous preoccupations. Ever since Goalie had kissed her, he had remained in the back of her mind, wonderfully smiling away at her.

The girl's group of cheerleaders she always hung with in the mornings before the first bell, sat in a group at one of the cafeteria tables. They all seemed a bit "funked-out" and had serious expressions while talking quietly together. Dinah, holding her books in two hands, sat down and joined them while regarding their stressed attitudes.

"Good morning!" She said cheerfully, trying to break the grumpy guss moment between them all. "Did we all have way too much fun in Chicago?" She asked them with "sunshine" and Pollyanna in her demeanor.

LaWanda turned to her, not suspecting a thing about Dinah's position, and told her with a disappointed shake of her head, "Oh, honey we all bummed out about the news. It's a damn shame."

"What news?" Dinah asked trying to be understanding and kind.

They all turned and looked at her with curios expressions. LaWanda responded, "Oh, honey. Aint you heard? That sweet handsome man .... the one from the sports scouts.... the NFL scouts.... he daid."

Dinah froze as her chest swelled in pre-panic and needles ran up and down her spine. "Wh...who? What?" She stuttered trying to maintain her composure.

"Honey, his plane went down last Saturday and crashed. Nobody survived...." She said shaking her head in pity.

Dinah sat staring at LaWanda in frozen silence, trapped between disbelief and denial.. and the important notion of keeping her relationship a private matter. "Mr. ......uh, Washington....?" She asked meekly. Then she cleared her throat as it began to tighten and threatened to cut off her ability to breath.

"Yeah, Honey...." Mai Ling replied. "We were all talking about what beautiful babies those would have been......" she continued while shaking her own head in disappointment.

Dinah's breath caught in her chest, and her inner denial kicked into high gear. In a fight or flight reaction, combined with her heroine training and instincts, she instantly knew that there must have been a huge mistake. An identity misapplication .....and the news would be reported correctly on the library's computers.

With speed that shocked her buddies, she jumped up and over the table of girls with a light, almost cat like reflex. Her face was etched in a stony, tight expression of determination and in a blast of sprint even she had no idea she could accomplish, she headed out of the cafeteria and into the hallway headed for the stairs that would lead her to the third floor. The floor where the library computers would provide the solid rock foundation that would keep her heart from crushing into an avalanche of bloody pieces.

Up the stairs she rocketed for three flights, one or two giant leaps at a time, covering 13 stairs on each rise within a matter of seconds. NO! NO! NO! She insisted to herself privately as her eyes began to tear up and her hands began to lightly shake from the effects of her crumbling emotional underpinnings. Within less that 15 seconds she had cleared three floors and entered the library, her eyes frantically searching for a free computer. She found one instantly and without sitting at the desk, hammered out the request on the key board in the search engine. The request of the fate of flight 756 and its passengers headed for St. Louis.

Wiping her watering eyes with the back of her wrists she stood frantically reading the news reports. When she found the story, and the passenger list.... she stood staring at the computer screen frozen in shock. Her mouth was stretched wide in quiet anguish and her hands gripped the monitor as though to shake the truth out of the computer. She read it over and over again.... her panicked mind refusing to accept that which was clearly before her.

Flight 756 heading from Chicago to St. Louis, had indeed encountered technical troubles during its flight and also had run into wind sheer problems. It had crashed about 100 miles outside of St. Louis and there were no survivors. Among the list of those lost in the crash: Mr. Goalie Washington, NFL Sports Talent Scout.

Dinah began to shake with horror of the news. Huge tears flooded from her eyes as a heavy grief she had never known fell in huge granite rocks inside of her mind, her body .... and her very soul. This couldn't be possible! She told herself. How could she have gone around all Sunday and not known this had happened? How could she have studied for school, gone to Judo class and had casual dinner time with her family while Goalie had come to a tragic end???

Surely, the connection between them was such that she would have instantly known.... she would have felt something... had some disconnect ......surely somewhere ....somehow..... she was ultimately to become Mrs. Goalie Washington......

"Aggghh!" She screamed out loud and turning quickly, blinded by tears and grief, headed instinctively for the ladies room. If anyone saw her dissolve and explosion, she had no clue... for her whole world had just turned on an ugly, soul crushing and.... final event. A very final event.

Stumbling and fumbling and groping her way to the restroom, she finally made it and closed her self up in one of the stalls. She sat on the toilet, drew up her knees to her face and hugged them. She then emptied her inner guts in long, drawn out groans and sobs of grief. It was a crushing, exhausting grief that in her young life she had never known, one that tore her heart from her heaving breast and drained her of her ability to cry for several days afterward. The tragedy had hit her so hard, fast and close to home that it left an indelible footprint on the young girl's whole being... and it would change the person of Black Canary forever.

*******

Its immense head slammed against the wall and the snake let out with a disgusting, angry hiss. His large, round body slithered along the stone and wood ground and left shiny, wet trails. His body, like a long black fire hose filled with water, was looped upon looped upon looped of coiled and reticulating convolutions. But the coils didn't just lay there. They were a terrible reflection of the snake's virulent anger. They spun and twisted with surreal motions. Its tail slapping and whipping the surrounding walls of the hut with mephisitc intent. His head rose up from having slammed into the wall and showed his huge fangs grounded in the white-pink inner flesh of his oral cavity. His hiss was like a huge hydrolic machine that had just released several tons of air pressured waste.

"HHHaaaaaSSSSSSHHHHHH!!!!" Shot out of its angry maw.

Black Canary, spinning and summer salting in and around his massive coils, dodged and then tumbled below his chin. She swung the small stone tube she held in her left hand and slammed its rounded end into the softness of the snake's flesh just below its jaw. The snake's head flew backwards in pain and she quickly followed up with a right handed slam of the other stone pole she held, into the back of his skull as the head continued its reactionary projection. She jumped behind him as coils reached for her naked form, always churning, always slithering, always looking to find a grip on the naked woman's oil covered body. But Black Canary never paused a moment, never stopped to consider a move without locomotion, and she maintained a step ahead of her adversary at every turn.

"Where are you, Voodoo?" She called out into the main chamber. "You can't expect your giant black snake to do all the work, can you?" She queried as she spun and danced and landed glancing blow after glancing blow across the snake's huge, extended body.

"Wo-man...." The big booming deep base voice responded. "You are intrepid beyond good sense." And with that, on one wall highly decorated with images of death and magic, a huge representation of Warlord Voodoo's face mask faded into view. Black Canary had not seen her adversary before this, and she regarded for a moment the large oval face mask with the glowing white eyes, no mouth or nose and it's perimeter surrounded with a "sunray" type blast of twigs, branches and grass plumes.

"Impressive..." She told him nodding. Then she dodged and parried again with the huge snake that was trying to subdue her. She darted and danced so much that the snake could hardly get a grip on the woman.

"But that's not the real you.... are you ....(agh!) afraid to face.... (uh!) a naked woman?" She then threw one of the stones hard at the snake's head and it blanched with the impact then closed its eye and moved away with a nasty hiss.

"You impress me.... far beyond what I could have imagined.....I have chosen well.....of course...." Warlord Voodoo intoned with pride. Snake coils attempted to slither around Black Canary's form and entrap her in their vile, slimy grip, but she ducked, rolled, and spun away.

"Your warriors are incapacitated.... your people cowed... there (agh!) is nowhere for you to hide....(agh! uh!) from me......(huff! agh!) and I will find you.... once I have... (ahggh!) taken down the black snake here....(ugh!) which by the way.... is so wrong.... I mean in so many ways....(uggh!)

"You seek to confuse me, woman?"

She kicked and spun, used the snakes body to swing from and then grabbed its tail and flung it at its own head. The tail whipped the snakes face and it coiled back with a hiss once again. "Oh, come on....(ugh!) .... a huge black snake..... a naked woman.... and a white woman.... (agh!) it's all so wrong.... a naked woman battling a big black snake....?"

The snake lunged to snap at her, but she avoided him to one side, then cracked him over the head with the stone tube in her right hand. He coiled back and lunged again with open fanged mouth but she dodged a second time and hit him in the head again. Frustrated, the snake hissed and spat. His coils picked up speed and rumbled like a babbling river all around the room.

"What do you speak of?" Warlord Voodoo asked. "Is that some American thing... where color and race are protested under every rock? The snake is black because it is black.... not because it signifies some puerile sexual-populist fantasy."

"If you say so...." She told him and battered the face of the snake with a full on attack of multiple two fisted fury as the snake again recoiled at the swiftness and brutality that she was capable of.

"You must submit.... woman.... you must allow Papa Ghede to mount you and Papa Legba to assimilate your unique talents and gifts into the African tree." The voice boomed in casual, laconic speech.

She tossed another stone tube at the snake's circling body, and then watched as it ricocheted from one coil to another and then again slammed into this head. She jumped, ducked and twirled and then caught the tube as it began to spin away from his recoiling head.

"Nope..... don't count on it.... no one is going to be mounted today!"

"So be it then...." He intoned. "You have managed to recover quickly from your preparation session..... held off Papa Gheded like no warrior I have ever witnessed.... you have managed to find your way here.... into my inner chamber..... truly you are the stock most worthy of being graphted into the vine.... and this had little to do with you being white skinned ...... "

"Uh-huh." She replied as she kicked, spun and then grabbed hold of the snakes head in an arm lock with her legs wrapped around his neck. He hissed and tried to grab her, but had difficulty not grabbing his own head due to its three foot width which she was positioned behind. His maw opened in an angry hiss of frustration. He swung back and forth with a panicked motion as she closed off his windpipe and squeezed tightly. His coils rippled and fissured and slapped at the walls with a splattering of rhytm notes.

Beneath her, Black Canary felt the body of the snake begin to become lighter and lighter. She looked around the chamber and noticed that she could once again see the pale stone and weed grass hut walls through the coils of the snake. They disappeared gradually until she no longer had anything to hold onto and then allowed herself to fall to the ground, where she landed on her toes, tumbled and rolled with the momentum and then finally stood up and turned to face Warlord Voodoo's mask.

"It's just you and me now...." She told him, palming one of the stone tubes.

From behind her, there came a voice in response. It wasn't the booming, lambastic echo of Warlord Voodo. It was the voice of a real man. It was slightly nasal, slightly soft in its intonation. And it was also familiar. It was a voice from the grave.

"I thought that's what you always wanted, Dinah." The voice began. "Just you an me."

When she heard it, it was like a knife in her brain. She spun hard and backed away. She looked up and there before her was the beautiful, naked brown body of Goalie Washington. He stood there, real as could be, all smiles and handsome face, ripped stomach and blessed manhood. And he reached out to her with both hands, gesturing for her to come forward.

Dinah's mouth dropped open in amazement at the real-ness of the vision before her. She backed up to the wall of the hut, frozen in wide eyed disbelief. All around them now was a garden jungle filled with trees, multi-colored flowering plants and lush, green foliage. A light breeze blew and caressed her breasts with soft, gentle kisses. There was also long grass around her feet and somewhere off in the distance a brook slowly babbled.

It was a shock to her,‭ ‬the scene before her of her past brimming lust and animal sexual attraction.‭ S‬he was duly taken with the black,‭ ‬naked figure of Goalie before her.‭ ‬Like viewing an accident on the freeway,‭ ‬she found it impossible to look away.‭

He was like something out of the ancient Greek statues she had seen in art history class.‭ ‬Chiseled,‭ ‬muscular,‭ ‬and with a cock that could hit home runs in any ball park.‭ ‬His body magnetized her presence there before him.‭ ‬She tingled and burned in strange places all over her body.‭ ‬Faced for the first time with his black member that seemed to point her out as the next object of of its pulsing attention,‭ ‬something deep within her commanded her to stay. To be obedient.‭

"Noooooo....NO!" She objected. "You are a real bastard if you think you can get into my head like this! That was eight years ago..... eight long years ago!"

"Dinah....this really IS me.... no one else."

"You're Warlord Voodoo and I am no idiot!!!!" She spat. "HOW DARE YOU!!!!!" She almost screamed with clenched teeth, her face reddening with anger at the very implication of Voodoo's intent.

Goalie put on his most respectful and patient face and assured her, "Dinah, I promise .... in every way that counts..... every way that is now possible.... I AM Goalie Washington. Really."

It was quite the impressive psychological feat that Warlord Voodoo had pulled off. Everything was indeed real, from the grass at her feet to the big, friendly white toothed smile of the man before her. He stood chiseled, and firm skinned. He was as athletic as the day she had last seen him, and radiated health, warmth and that special charmed kindness that had won her heart so long ago.

"You .... are .... out of your ..... mind ...if you think I will..." She began to growl.

He nodded. "You remember that day, don't you..." He began.

"STOP!" She ordered him, her breath catching in her chest with each word he spoke, her heart racing in her muscled throat. "I am NOT doing this!!!!!" She shouted.

"I know you remember.... and you still miss me....."

"STOP!!!!!" She insisted while covering her ears, but it did no good, for her hands seemed unable to impeded his voice.

"You haven't been able to go to the movies...... watch a newscast with distressed people...."

"AAAAGGHHH! Get OUT of my head...!"

"You still tear up quite easily whenever you see suffering.... sadness.... tragic loss of life...."

Beyond herself with rage and gulping for air, she couldn't find words or methods for stopping the infuriatingly intrusive assault upon her inner being. "You....will...... stop!!!!" She gulped out between heavy breaths.

"Why do you think you cry so easily, Dinah?" He asked her while rubbing his hands together.

"None....uhhhhh.... none of your....." She tried to respond but the hurt and pain and pent up grief she had learned to disavow had begun to swell within her to unimaginable amounts, so much so she could barely find breath and was becoming woozy.

He moved a few steps toward her and said rather casually, "It's because this wound has never really healed....never full resolved itself."

She shook in frustration as tears began to flow freely down her cheeks and over her naked torso, right past her knees. "Stopppppppp!"

He held his hands together as if to pray and said, "Let me help you close that wound, Dinah. You do something for me.... and I will heal you in return. Me, Goalie Washington, I will do this from the private little place in your heart where you have held me for so long."

She grimaced and made a whining sound as the words cut right into her unprotected soul. There was no defense for this newest of strategies.

He held his hand out toward her and said, "You really loved me, didn't you, sweetheart?"

The term 'sweetheart', coming from Goalie's lips and with his voice cut into her harder than the snake's fangs ever could have and she grabbed her hair with her hands as she whined in response. Tears broke forth like a collapsed dam of river water and she felt as though she could faint from the psychological strain of it all, right there on the jungle floor.

"You know what? I really loved you, too." He said with a charming smile.

She grunted and exhaustion returned with this new unimaginable experience. Everything he had said was of course, true. She couldn't argue with her own experience. It was true that she now had cried at the drop of a hat ever since Goalie had died. It was true that if anyone around her became emotional, she too would loose control.

She couldn't understand it at first, but ultimately she accepted that Goalie had left a hole in her heart the day he had died, and there was nothing she could ever do about it. It was also true that she continued to love him, even years after his demise.

"Come here, Dinah." He said reaching out to her. "Let me fill you. Let me close the hole within you." He requested. "Let me..... love you."

Crushed that anyone anywhere could have so completely gotten inside of her very being, she hesitated a moment.... knowing full well that Voodoo held all the cards now, and then she reached out to hold his hand.

He WAS warm, his hand strong, firm and yet soft..... just as she had remembered. His dark brown skin shone in the brilliant sunlight and her flesh tingled at his touch. "You..... you ARE real..... your hand... it's just like I remember......"

"He nodded and gave her that big smile. "Uh-huh..... do you see that it's really just you and me now?"

She regarded him with reddened, watery eyes and replied, "It....can't be..... it's can't be......"