Flick of a wrist - and innocence died.

I started listening to Queen already as a child. Killer Queen was heard every day on the radio.
One other early tune of theirs is "Flick of the wrist." from Sheer Heart Attack, 1974.
That title came to me this morning when I heard the news of a 14 year old boy committing murder in our country. What ever will become of him?? Why???It was indeed depressing news and I thought of the fact that the person who bombed the wedding in Turkey recently also was a teenage boy.
How easily a life can turn. From future to grave in a second, a flick of the wrist only. A moment of anger, hatred, or total disorder. Oh dear Lord, how awful isn't this ??!!

And so I remembered something that happened when I was about 10-12 years old, about 1975 perhaps?  This is something I will never forget, now perhaps I can share it.
I grew up in a neighbourhood of apartments in three, four and eightstory buildings. Most of my schoolmates lived in apartments and spent there sparetime in the yard or around the blocks, close to the small tobaccostores and groceriestores that kept us alive with bubblegum and candy. A few playgrounds completed the scenery but getting older that was forbidden grounds.  One tobaccostore in particular was popular, the owner always had time for us and if money was scarce he could hand us something anyway. His teenaged son was very friendly.
Many teenagers gathered in a gang. In this gang was , let's call him Marcus, a tall, blond boy about 16-17 years old. He was also very nice , strong, friendly and always laughing. His friends loved him . He was nice to us children too. The teenagers in our block where not so bad. 
Everybody was smoking in those days, few exceptions.  Teenagers stayed out late, we children did not.
As a young girl I was constantly in love with one or other of the older boys, but we knew our place and went home when teenage time started. Sulking a bit, perhaps.

This warm evening I went home, many of the older stayed out for a while, maybe school was out for the week, that part I don't recall..but we heard sirens that night, wondering about them until next morning when the disaster fell upon us:
There had been a murder and Marcus was dead. Marcus was dead!  Murdered. There was still blood where he fell. He was actually dead. It was incomprehensible. He stood there smiling friendly when I left, hours later he dragged himself bleeding in to the tobaccostore and died on the floor.  For a child this was so shocking that I didn't know what to say, feel or do.

Later we heard from his best friend, who saw him die, that there had been some arguing during
the evening. A gang from some blocks away arrived and started to make fuss. Marcus wanted 
everything to quiet down and started talking to them. They turned to him and asked for matches for their cigarettes and he declined because he wasn't a smoker, one of the few.
Somehow the voices raised and there was shouting and shuffling and everybody in that yard was getting nervous and before they knew, a fight broke out and all of a sudden Marcus screamed and the other gang made a quick departure. His friends saw him stagger and head for the store, hands tightly gripping his chest. He had been stabbed.  Blood was, they told us later on, flooding from him. I don't remember the details, we were all in shock, but his best friend, standing in the store, later told us this the most horrifying experience he had ever had. A nightmare.  Who would have thought it could happend where we lived?  

I was too young to notice much of what happened after those first days. If I did I don't remember any longer.  If the boy was captured, if Marcus's family got any help to get over it, how many people came to church, how his friends reacted, if there was any talk of revenge. My mother didn't know his parents. I so hope they are alright and got help . 
We talked about it for a long time, it was so strange and foreign to these times and our neighbourhood.  People didn't get killed like that. Only in the States, everybody knew that. A few years later that 16 year old schoolgirl didn't like mondays and shot her schoolfriends. That is when my world started to change badly. Being an outsider already , I started to see the world around me as an evil place. And evil was closing up.

"Flick of the wrist and you're dead , baby."  And now that is a truth spilling blood all over and all the time.  My innocent childhood died with Marcus. Like so many many innocent childhoods die every second.  We can't let this go on. We can't let evil flick its wrist every split second, destroying life and future in whatever name he uses.  There is a better name to use.
"He who is within you are stronger than he who is in the world"  When he flicks his wrist - evil backs off.  That's a flick I like.  Darkness can't prevail - the light is stronger. 
And the lyrics for that song is still very very current and valid.