“That it is!” boomed the CEO, his face a distorted clown’s grin. “Not the word I had in mind, though. I was thinking more along the lines of gorgeous or gratifying.” He belched and immediately coned a martini glass around his mouth and tilted back, his eyes darting discretely behind the liquid.
Bradley wiped his mouth with a sleeve and yelled to a white passerby whose eye was shut and contused.
“Black is beautiful . . . but white is worthless!” He laughed huskily, and tendrils of crimson explored his gray cheeks.
Rick’s heart sank at the insult. He stopped, smiled brightly at his wife and son, then weakly at the CEO.
“So good to see you again, Mr. Bradley. Your house is lovely,” Cathy spoke up. “How have you been?”
“Oh, I’ve been splendid, Mrs. Wilkerson. Hopefully we haven’t been working this pale little peon too hard.” Bradley squeezed Rick’s upper arm, and pulled back with a look of consternation. “Have you been bringing in too many heavy boxes from the mail room, Rick?”
Before he could answer, Laurence interjected.
“By Divine Color, that sure is a nasty looking shiner.” He nudged Bradley. “Looks like some kind of dog or something. Do you think he can bark?”
Bradley’s mouth opened wide in laughter and putrescence charged out, quick as death. Cathy and Blake grimaced and took a step back. Self-consciously, the martini glass shot back like an oxygen mask.
“Do you think we should call him Spot?” continued the attorney.
Bradley nodded in confirmation.
“Hey, Spot,” Laurence looked directly at Rick. “Go fetch me another glass of wine.”
Bradley couldn’t restrain himself and guffawed, his breath now a free-flowing toxin. Trisha looked pityingly on the white family, and put a restraining arm on her husband’s shoulder.
“You’re a big boy. You can go get yourself a glass of wine,” retorted Rick.
“Cathy, you look so pretty tonight.” Trisha moved forward. “And is this your handsome little boy?”
“Oh, thank you, Trisha. You look wonderful yourself. And yes, this is our son, Blake.”
All eyes trained on the fourth grader, who was staring fixedly at Bradley. The CEO brushed Cathy’s arm to get her attention.
“Nice job on squirting him out before the Twenty-Ninth Amendment.” Then Bradley turned to Laurence. “Too bad he won’t be having any brothers and sisters.” The two laughed like schoolyard boys.
“I propose a toast,” declared Rick, his voice deep and strong.
“Don’t you think it’s rather presumptuous for you to propose a toast,” challenged the attorney. “Maybe instead you should propose a better way to arrange the company’s incoming mail. Or perhaps you should propose a novel way to oppress your wife. Is that how you got your shiner? Did she get sick of being dragged down by her white-boy husband and decide to kick your ass?”
Rick set his jaw, and the insults washed over him like small arms fire against a tank.
“You don’t know anything about how I treat my wife,” Rick uttered coolly.
“Rick treats me wonderfully, you pompous asshole.” Cathy seethed.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I must have you confused with someone on television,” clarified Laurence, mockingly.
“You need to be a little more deferential, there, Wilkerson. All joking aside—I’m serious.” Bradley glowered at Rick and his wife. The large man raised a finger to his cheek in contemplation. “Rick, have you ever stared into the eyes of a fucked-up Muslim Jihadist? You know, his face all covered in rags, with only his eyes visible.”
“If I had I probably wouldn’t be here now.”
“Precisely.” Bradley chortled. “Those eyes, that image . . . it’s one of my worst recurring nightmares. It makes me want to soil my pants.”
Laurence nodded in agreement.
This time it was Rick’s turn to speak. “Do you also dream about hearing the crackle of his electric scimitar? Do you dream about him hacking you here,” Rick poked Bradley’s gut with a finger, “and being simultaneously electrocuted and disemboweled?”
Bradley frowned at the white man and his family.
“I don’t quite know how to interpret that. What I was getting at is that if you and your family don’t decide to come around and become Americans, all of you may find yourselves on a one way cruise to Europe.”
“Actually, Mr. Bradley, I think I’m finally starting to come around.”
“Are you?” Bradley laughed. “Well that’s good, because the sooner you’re American, the sooner you can be reinstated in your position as environmental engineer.”
“Exactly, Mr. Bradley. Now, how about my toast?”
“Let’s hear it.” The CEO nodded, and raised a glass. Laurence, Trisha, and Cathy followed Bradley’s lead.
Rick’s eyes were luminous.
“To revolution—to change—to equality—may those who strive for justice be successful in their pursuits.”
“Well said, Rick. Rest assured that we are meeting with great success so far in our pursuits.” Bradley inverted the glass over his reeking mouth, then surveyed the sea of faces waiting patiently for his audience. “Well, all, it was a pleasure. I have to make the rounds. Perhaps the next time I see you, some of you will be hued in gorgeous gray.”
“Oh, most assuredly, sir.” Trisha lavished, and Laurence gave a thumbs up. “Blake, have you met my son Kevin? He’s about your age.” Trisha turned around, then realized she hadn’t felt her son’s hand in hers since she introduced him to Bradley. “Honey, have you seen Kevin?” she asked her husband.
“No, I haven’t.” The attorney looked quickly around the room, then began a hurried stride toward the backyard pool. “He’s not out here,” Laurence reported.
“Oh, I bet he’s getting more soda or snacks,” Trisha said, wedging into the crowd near the buffet tables. Laurence partially ascended a stair case to get a better view of the crowd. Moments later each parent’s stride had quickened, their drinks were put down, and they were poised to explore the unlit rooms and recesses of the house.
Bradley made his way over to Laurence, who was headed toward a solid double doors.
“Just where are you going?” the CEO inquired, his eyes suddenly lucid.
“We can’t find Kevin. I was thinking he might have wandered somewhere in your house. Have you seen him?”
“No, I haven’t,” he replied. “You and your wife stay here in the party area. I’ll go and look for Kevin.”
Suddenly, the little boy scrambled from the mouth of a long corridor. He was bare chested, and long scratches zigzagged down his arms. Tears streamed from his eyes, and he was screaming.
“Mommy, mommy, mommy!” he cried, and collided with Trisha, burying his face in her green dress. Laurence rushed over.
“Baby, what happened to you? Tell your mommy what happened.” She stroked Kevin’s head as a crowd began to gather.
“He . . . he was trying to touch me. He told me to follow him to get more shrimp. But then he wanted to touch me and I wouldn’t let him. Mommie, he was going to hurt me!” Kevin wailed, looking over his shoulder. The boy’s face contorted in horror, and he screeched, reburying his face in his mother’s dress.
From the depths of the corridor emerged a gray pursuer. In his left hand he carried Kevin’s torn dress shirt. His teeth were parted and his mouth foamed ravenously. His black eyes were wide and fixed predaciously on the boy.
“He’s mine!” the fiend growled, and wrenched the boy from his mother with a cruel tug. He then scooped Kevin up effortlessly under one arm, and began to lope back into the darkness.
Trisha screamed—it was as if an alligator had just pulled her son back beneath dark water. After a moment of paralysis, Laurence launched himself at the abductor, and all three went down. Kevin rolled free, rushed to his mother, and grabbed fistfuls of her dress. He had ceased to cry, but stared over his shoulder vacantly at his father and the gray man as they scrambled for an upper hand on the f
loor. Despite the crowd, Kevin thought that if the abductor overcame his father and mother, he would be reclaimed. He imagined the crowd would watch much as people do when a hawk swoops down to steal a puppy. Someone would call the police. It would be too late.
Laurence wrecked his fist against the abductor’s craggy jaw, and the gray head snapped back. The tuxedo-clad man recuperated instantly, and threw a wild hook that caught Laurence on the side of his temple, staggering him.
“What, did you think I was just another brilliant pianist?” the fiend spat, and closed with the attorney. Gray fingers seized Laurence’s throat and began to constrict with seeming pneumatic pressure. Slowly, inexorably, he bent the attorney back over a table laden with wine and glasses.
Laurence’s vision wavered, and filled with the viscous saliva steaming from the pianist’s mouth. Blinking, he tried his utmost to pry the fingers asphyxiating him, but each was like animated granite.
At that moment a forearm snaked under the pianist’s throat. Right hand clasped left bicep for support. Left hand pushed forward on the back of the pianist’s neck, forcing it into the waiting meat and bone of the right forearm. A cry rasped from the gray man’s mouth, his eyes shot wide, and he released Laurence. The attorney rolled from the table to the floor, gasping.
Rick constricted with all his strength as fingers clawed blindly backward for his face. He shut his eyes and maximized the pressure, so that the wandering fingers were recalled to try to loosen the grip. The once gray face was now an engorged, claret beet, the black eyes seething behind wincing lids. Blake watched as the pianist staggered this way and that, his father shadowing him, each arm lethal and pythonic.
Bradley stepped forward, sneering, and splintered a chair across Rick’s exposed back. The choke hold was released, and the pianist hit the floor like a cadaver dumped from a body bag. Rick fell to a knee, and scanned the crowd in an attempt to locate the new assailant.
“You filthy Alien!” roared Bradley, kicking Rick repeatedly. “What gives you the right to lay a hand on an American citizen? And you too, you fawning little Alien
scum . . .” The CEO shrugged off the attorney, who had risen and was attempting to aid Rick. The big man threw a hard right fist that sent Laurence back to the floor. He then grabbed a chair leg and cudgeled the back of Rick’s head.
Cathy began pounding on Bradley’s girth, and Trisha followed her lead.
“Stop it, stop it damn you. Leave them alone! Somebody, help us!” Cathy screamed.
Bradley gurgled with laughter. A kick delivered by Cathy missed his groin and dug into his pelvis.
“Not as easy as it is in the movies, is it, ladies?” His face was liquored and Luciferian. “Come on, bring it on. Bring on some kind of magic karate shit.” He slugged Trisha with a wild fist that shattered her nose and sent her down. Her head cracked against the wooden floor. With agility startling for a man of his size, he then wheeled and seized Cathy’s hammering fists in mid swing.
“I’m going to do something special to you, you little Alien bitch.” She tried to extricate from the gray hands, but was unable, and was pushed back toward the bar. Bradley released one of her wrists and clutched a fistful of her long black hair. Rick groped shakily toward them on all fours, blood streaking between his eyebrows and down his face.
“My, my, you do look like a dog there crawling along the floor. See the edge of this counter, Rick?” Bradley inquired. “It’s solid stone. I’m going to dash your wife’s head against it for a while as you watch. I’m going to dash it till no more heresy fills her brain.”
“No . . .” Rick protested feebly, raising a hand, and Cathy screamed. Her eyes searched the crowd pleadingly. The gray faces in the audience looked on with eagerness. The others gazed in fear, but no one stepped forward. Many people turned their backs, and engaged in nervous banter.
The first blow against the corner was mitigated by Cathy’s undulations and squirming, but it dazed her sufficiently for her body to slacken. The grays in the audience slavered ghoulishly, some laughing, all grinning.
“This next one will be better,” assured the CEO, licking his thin purple lips with relish.
Blake charged up to Bradley and seized his massive upper leg.
“Stop it, stop it! You’re hurting my mom,” he pleaded, his face red from hard crying.
“Ahhh . . . poor little boy,” Bradley mocked. “I’ll brain you, too, after I’m done with your mother. Think of it as a retroactive application of the Twenty-Ninth Amendment.” A large gray hand fisted a generous swath of Blake’s hair. Cathy renewed her struggle knowing that her son was captured too. Rick had regained the majority of his senses, but was held fast by three leering gray men.
The large man drew back Cathy’s head repeatedly in practice motions, each gesture stirring the gray onlookers to cheers. Suddenly, Bradley took a step back and arced her dazed eyes toward the ceiling. The motion, the momentum, the intent was obvious. She could hear, distantly, Rick’s screams of protest and the cries of her child. She waited for the downward plunge, forehead-first, into the corner. In anticipation, she pulled against the direction of the planned trajectory. And she fell to the floor.
The fingers that dropped her twitched spastically, trying to reach the kitchen knife implanted in Bradley’s mid-back. He spun like a grazed piñata, his face a spectrum of reds and purples, then slumped down.
Trisha withdrew a few steps, left hand wiping gushing blood from her nose. Her right hand, the hand that had sunk home the blade, was shaking.
Rick’s captors rushed forward to aid Bradley. One activated a cellular phone embedded in his ear to call police and ambulance while the other tended to the CEO. The black family and white family each reunited in small huddles, crying and hugging.
Hand-in-hand, Laurence, Trisha, and Kevin headed for the front door.
“You’d better get out of here, Rick. Find a place to go. You have to escape,” the attorney called over his shoulder. His speech was slurred and distant.
“But the police are coming . . . everything will be okay when they get here,” Cathy reasoned, her face nestled against her husband’s shoulder.
“No . . . no it won’t.” Laurence looked at the battered white family, then fled into the night.
Arm-in-arm, Rick and his family approached the front door. Rick tried to look strong in case a furious gray should decide to assault them. The grays in the crowd glared back militantly, men and women, but did not advance. Rick’s hair was spiked and red from dried blood, and he saw Blake flash him a look of wonder. Moments later, the Wilkersons were in their car, speeding down the highway.
Chapter 7
Juan Guerrero was tired of studying maps of the western United States. He collapsed on a leather sofa, and loosened his tie.
“TV—on—location four,” he said dully, and a rectangular image began to materialize in mid-air near the ceiling. Paper thin and initially translucent, within seconds a live broadcast coalesced that was opaque and tangible. The bottom right corner of the image was missing, and with a sigh the president eyed a black orb on a table in the room’s center. His son’s action figures were gripped in frozen combat partially obscuring one of the orb’s numerous lenses. Rising, Guerrero grabbed the two toys and returned to the sofa, and the picture expanded to its proper dimensions.
“Good old Captain Aztlan,” the president mused, while examining one of the fully articulated figures. The toy was clothed in a jade body suit that showcased the underlying highly defined musculature. An eagle etched on the figure’s pectorals perched upon a cactus, a serpent writhing in its beak. The figure’s hair was worn in a black mane, and eagle feathers decorated his costume. In his right hand the Captain brandished an Aztec sword studded with obsidian shards; in his left he wielded a laser pistol.
“Every hero needs a villain to fight,” affirmed Guerrero, and examined the other figure. It was a white man, equally muscled, donned in red, white, and blue.
“Of course, Saxon Anglo.” The pre
sident ran his thumb along the plastic blond crew-cut in thought. In one fist the figure held a hunting rifle. In the other he gripped chains. Upon the t-shirt of the white figure, near the American flag, was written ‘Minuteman.’”
Setting the figures aside, he lied down and propped his head on a pillow.
“Channel—Federal Prime two,” he said, and the screen flipped channels to channel 02. “So what are those bastards playing on Saturday afternoon?” Guerrero carelessly rubbed the stubble along his cheek arising from a missed morning shave.
The screen depicted a table at a restaurant where at were seated a white woman, a white man, and a black man. The lady was attractive, and was speaking to her companions.
“I just can’t take any more from Richard. It was the final straw last weekend when he said I couldn’t go out with my girlfriends on Friday night clubbing. He said that if he caught me dancing with other guys one more time he’d divorce me.” She looked plaintively at the two men.
“What a tyrant,” uttered the black man in disgust, taking the woman’s hand. “Lisa, you can’t let Richard hold you down any longer. You can’t let him ruin your life. You’re way too good for that. I think it’s finally time you start thinking about yourself for a change.”
“Oh, thank you Bobby. You’re such a strong, noble guy. I’m so lucky to have you in my life,” she said tenderly. “And you too, Frederick. I don’t know what I’d do without you two to turn to.”
“I’d say we’re the lucky ones, Lisa,” the white man spoke in a feminine voice with pronounced lisp.
“No, I’m the lucky one, Frederick. And you know what else? Richard was mentioning the other day, before he blew up at me, that we should think about having a baby sometime soon.”
“A baby?” Frederick gasped. “In violation of constitutional amendment?”
“Yes,” Lisa said dejectedly, her voice breaking with emotion.
“I’m gonna report that crazy dude to the police,” vowed Bobby.
“Not only the amendment—but you’ve got your career to think about, Lisa,” reminded the effeminate man. “Look, you’re only thirty-eight years old. You should be thinking about promotions, not carrying the evil child of some dirty white man. You should be thinking about yourself, sweetie.”
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