MIdnight Diner 1: Jesus vs. Cthulhu

by Chris Mikesell

  “Romans 3:10 says,” I pause. “Here, read it with me.” I turn the book on the coffee table nearby and we both lean over it. Not that he has a choice. “There is none righteous,” I quote, “no not one.”

  For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). “Sin,” I tell him, “Separates us from God. It keeps us out of heaven.”

  He looks at me. The shock and horror and fear in his eyes are prevalent. Maybe I’m getting through to him.

  “Please. Just leave me alone.” More tears.

  “I don’t think you really understand the weight of the situation here,” the gun is back on his head, “if I pull this trigger you will go to hell.” Nobody wants that.

  “If you shoot me,” he’s shaking as he says this, “you will have murdered me. Isn’t that going to keep you from heaven?”

  Good point.

  “Doesn’t it say ‘Thou shalt not murder’?” Exodus 20:13.

  “Won’t that separate you from God?”

  Even Satan quoted scripture back at Jesus. “Doesn’t sin lead to hell?”

  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through

  Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23).

  I was just getting to that.

  “Listen,” and the gun is back and imbedded into his forehead, “I’ll ask the questions.”

  “Who the hell are you? Who do you think you are?”

  “Let me show you God’s plan for your life,” I flip more pages. “Here, in

  5:8, it says that ‘God showed his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ Do you know what that means?”

  “I don’t care!” his tears are gone and his face is red and puffy. This is the point where hostility starts.

  He has the gun barrel.

  He’s twisting the gun out of my hand. He now has the gun.

  Crap.

  “Get the HELL out of my house!” he yells with the gun pointed at me. “There is no need to overreact,” my hands are up.

  “Oh, now you’re defensive?! Where’s God now?”

  And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores; and they did not repent of their deeds (Revelation 16:11).

  “Who’s all ‘daddy, daddy’ now?” This is not good.

  “The thing is,” I step backwards toward the door. I almost trip over a large shard of white painted wood, “I just wanted you to realize the seriousness of the moment. The imminence of it all,” I’m backtracking as glass crunches under-foot, “you could die at any moment. No one knows the day, nor the hour.”

  Mark 13:32.

  “I don’t want to hear from you or your God! No doubt the neighbors have called the police…”

  “I didn’t mean you any harm—‘

  “You had a fucking gun to my head! How is that harmless?!”

  Oh be careful little ears what you hear.

  “I know. That was extreme. I’m sorry,” I feel the gritty firmness of concrete under my shoes. A breeze blows my necktie up around my face.

  Neighbors are screaming.

  I hear sirens in the distance.

  “Listen,” I beg, “can I at least say one more thing?” “I’m warning you . . .”

  “I just want to tell you what 10:13 says.”

  “You don’t know when to give up,” the gun is now in my face, making a cross-eyed moron out of me.

  “Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord—”

  His finger is shaking subtly as two blurry guns focus into one very sharp image.

  “He shall be saved.”

  If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your hear t that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved (Romans 10:9).

  “I told you,” he’s angrily tense, “I didn’t want to hear any more of your shit!”

  “If you ever feel the desire to do that—”

  “SHUT UP! I will shoot you! I’m warning—” “Then just pray it—”

  The air rings with a deep click and pop as the trigger is pulled. I grab my forehead and stagger back.

  Neighbors gasp and scream.

  The man has a look of concerned shock on his face as he turns the gun sideways. There is no smoke from the barrel. Only the spots of orange where black marker missed.

  As I remove my hand he sees a reddish-pink dot that is welting. At my feet is the tap, tap, tap of a little green bouncing ball.

  “A BB gun! You threatened me with a BB gun!”

  “Technically,” I tap at my head for blood, “it’s an air-soft gun.”

  “You lying son of a bitch!” he throws the gun at me. It’s weighted just like a real gun so, as you can imagine, this hurts. “Who the hell are you? You’re crazy!”

  Call me a Jesus Freak.

  “You belong in jail you sick son of a bitch!” If loving God was a crime, I’d be an outlaw.

  I hear the squeal of brakes, the staccato of clacking shined shoes on asphalt, the hushed crush of grass. I hear the rattling of keys.

  And clicks.

  “PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!” The police.

  “GET ON THE GROUND! FACE DOWN!”

  The clacking and crushing gets closer. My hands are jerked behind my back as the atheist tells them that I had him hostage.

  That I kicked his door in.

  That I put a gun in his face. That I read the Bible to him.

  I feel my circulation restrict to the sound of plastic zips. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

  I have nothing to say.

  “You have the right to an attorney . . .”

  He goes on and on as I am placed in the backseat of a squad car, my head cupped so I don’t bump it.

  I’ve already sustained enough head trauma for one day.

  The door is shut and the grumble of gas announces my departure. Through tinted glass I see the atheist sitting on his front porch with an officer at his side. He takes out the little blue and white tract from his pocket and looks toward me. I’d wave if I my hands weren’t zipped behind my back.

  So I smile.

  Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance (James 1:2-3).

  I look into the rear-view and meet my driver’s eyes. So I smile.

  His brow furrows.

  “Can I ask you a question?” His eyebrows rise.

  “If you were to die tonight, would you know one hundred percent if you were going to heaven?”

  His letterboxed brow relaxes a little.

  “Because I know how you can be . . .”

  NIGHT TRAIN TO BERLIN

  SUZAN ROBERTSON

  I’m often asked how I came to be in Berlin when World War II started. I always begin my story with that night in a Paris café, three days before the world went mad.

  I’d only been in Café Hugo thirty minutes when she emerged from the haze of cigarette smoke like an angel in a violet dress. I sighed when I glimpsed her long legs as she arranged herself in the indigo velvet banquette. The veil of her black hat, just a shade deeper than her hair, draped over one eye. She lit a cigarette, and the glow from the match illuminated her heavenly face.

  I had to stop staring at the dame. Miss Claire Duncan was an absolute doll.

  “Would you like another, Monsieur Garrett?” the waiter asked.

  My whiskey glass sat empty in front of me. What I really wanted was another look at that woman’s legs. I sat in the shadows and watched her. I never expected a Nazi spy to be such a looker.

  I generally divided my time between advancing my career as a freelance journalist and completing assignments for a secret office of the British government. Although I was an American citizen, the Brits had politely asked me to take notice of certain people and report back to them. I could hardly refuse because I loathed Hitler and his thugs. For the last few months, the Brits had kept me busy traveling from my base in Paris to Vienna, Prague, and Rome. The good Lord
had been gracious enough to keep me safe the entire time.

  My London contact, “Uncle Harry,” recently asked me to gather information on Claire Duncan, a British woman they suspected was working

  intelligence for the Nazis. This upper crust gal had attended the best schools in Switzerland and knew all the right people on the Continent. Recently though, she’d been spotted associating with people of questionable loyalties in various European cities, especially Berlin.

  Done up in ironic black and blue, the Café Hugo was a favorite of the emotionally bruised and battered who whiled away their evenings with desperate flirtations and passionate conversations. Anxious glances at the door revealed that they, like most of Paris, waited in grotesque suspense for the whine of air raid sirens. Life in Europe, 29 August 1939. Not quite war. No peace.

  Despite government requests to evacuate Paris, the cafés still managed a brisk evening business. Painters, writers, displaced royalty, and especially of late, a steady stream of ordinary citizens who had fled from fascist or communist regimes, rounded out the clientele. Pavel, the poet, and his sullen Czech friends moped in a corner. At a table near the door, a group of Italians sapped the dwindling Chianti inventory.

  I delighted in watching the beautiful Claire Duncan as she sipped her champagne cocktail and smoked her cigarette. A man approached her. I thought I recognized him. Count this, or Baron that, Hungarian or Romanian, dressed in a dinner jacket and holding a pipe. Miss Duncan greeted him as he lowered himself into the banquette beside her and summoned the waiter. After his drink arrived, the two spoke quietly. Then the man finished his drink, kissed Claire’s hand, and drifted away. Soon after, she made moves like she was about to leave.

  I placed some francs on the table beneath my glass, picked up my hat, and followed her outside where darkness greeted me. Though Paris was under a blackout order, some had not complied despite the instructions on avis à la population posters that had recently appeared throughout the city.

  A sultry mist crept in as I followed her to her hotel, just down the street from mine, around the corner from St. Sulpice. Leaning in the doorway opposite, I smoked my cigarette to the nub, and decided I’d better find out what she was up to and stop mooning over her looks. Just another assignment, I reminded myself.

  I walked back to my hotel and cabled Uncle Harry, relating that I’d spotted “Aunt Marie,” their name for Claire. After that, I tossed and turned in bed for several hours. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed the Nazis, led by Claire, had taken over Dublin.

  The next morning I awoke early. I dressed quickly as the humidity in my room clung to me like paste on wallpaper. I strolled down the street to a millinery shop closed for holiday. There I waited in the shadows for Claire to leave her hotel. When she emerged, I followed and tried not to notice the shapely cut of her navy dress. She walked straight ahead without looking around, apparently familiar with Paris and not worried about being seen.

  Entering Café Jazie, my regular breakfast joint, she took a table facing the door. I sat at a table next to hers. She picked up a section of a newspaper and folded it in front of her. The waiter took her order for café crème and a croissant, and I ordered the same.

  “May I?” I asked in English, pointing to another section of the paper. She handed it to me and I smiled.

  “Thank you, miss.”

  “American?” she asked, in a voice trimmed with satin.

  “Guilty, I’m afraid.” I half-stood and tipped my hat. “Michael Garrett.”

  “Claire Duncan. Mr. Garrett, I detected a slight lilt in that American accent. Irish, perhaps?”

  “Guilty again, Miss Duncan. I’m from New York, by way of Dublin and

  London.” I lit a cigarette and she watched, so I lit another and passed it to her.

  She took it. “I see that you too have developed a taste for Gitanes.” “Miss Duncan, if you don’t mind me asking, where are you from?”

  She smiled and waved a delicate hand. “Oh, here and there. Everywhere, really. We moved around a lot when I was growing up. I’m a British citizen.” I joined the mystery woman’s table. The waiter brought our petit

  déjeuner and winked at me in approval.

  Claire looked at her watch and saw that I’d noticed. “I’m meeting some friends shortly. I don’t want to be late.”

  I looked at her and smiled. “I didn’t even get a chance to flirt with you.” Her lips curled into a lazy, sexy smile. She might be working for the

  Nazis, but I couldn’t help growing more attracted to her as the minutes ticked by. The dame was getting under my skin. It must have shown.

  “Oh, poor boy, don’t look so grumpy. Perhaps we might have dinner?”

  I nodded, helpless as an orphan. Since I had to shadow this Mata Hari,

  taking her to dinner wouldn’t hurt.

  She ate her croissant with gusto, not picking at it like those fashionable French ladies. She downed the last of her coffee, straightened her navy beret, and picked up her purse. “I’m staying at the Hotel LeClerc, just down the street. I’ll meet you there at eight?”

  I nodded. She opened her purse, but I waved her away.

  “Breakfast is on me.” I signaled Claude to put it on my tab. “Why, thank you, Mr. Garrett. You’re quite kind.”

  If she only knew what I was really up to, her opinion of me might become somewhat tarnished. I tried not to think of my friend Aaron, killed by the Nazis in Prague. Tried not to think of the unspeakable things I’d seen elsewhere. The Brits at the SIS office suspected Claire, and anyone who would help the Nazis

  After she’d left the café, I put on my hat, gave her a lead, then followed. I spotted her turning right at the end of the block. She walked toward the Sorbonne, then past it, finally stopping at one of those seedy little student cafés in the Latin Quarter. Claire joined three men and a woman sitting at an outside table. She kissed the young blonde woman on both cheeks. One man was a little older, and there was something familiar about his profile but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him. The other two men looked about twenty years old.

  I walked to the end of the street, crossed to the other side and slipped into a table in the section behind Claire and the others. I snatched up a discarded newspaper. The waiter came and I ordered espresso. Holding the paper in front of me, I strained to hear, but sat too far away. The group didn’t seem to take notice of me.

  I moved my head past the paper and glanced at them. The young woman handed Claire a scrap of paper, which she shoved inside her purse. Then the woman touched Claire’s arm and gave it a squeeze in a gesture of affection. Claire got up and left the table. The woman called “Auf Wiedersehen,” then placed her hand over her mouth and looked around, as if she’d made a mistake. The older man at the table frowned at the blonde.

  Then it hit me. I almost smacked myself in the head. I remembered where I’d seen that familiar man before. Peter Berger, a German journalist. He’d made no secret of his affection for the Nazis in his magazine articles. I’d met him in Munich several years ago.

  I blinked a few times and watched Claire walk away. Disappointment and disgust welled up. I swallowed them down. Was charming, gorgeous Claire Duncan a Nazi sympathizer? I hated to believe that. It irked me that she’d already made me feel things I didn’t wish to feel. My reputation as a man cautious in matters of the heart had begun to disintegrate since I’d spotted her at Café Hugo.

  I tailed Claire back to her hotel. I waited a few minutes, but she didn’t reappear, so I walked back to my room to think things through.

  I tried to work on my novel, but after two hours, the paper inside my typewriter remained stark white. Every time I stared down at that damned page, all I could see was Claire’s face. Music blared from the radio. I heard nothing but her voice.

  I’d cared for a dame or two before, but this was a sickness. The thought of falling for a Nazi was repugnant. I had to get away. Even returning to Prague didn’t seem so horrible now.

  I swit
ched the radio to another station. A reporter droned on, speculating about when war would begin. Perhaps I might be needed somewhere more important. Somewhere far away from Claire. I went downstairs and wrote a cable to Uncle Harry.

  Can someone else escort Aunt Marie? Other matters I can attend?

  I handed the cable to Pierre, the manager, and returned upstairs. I’d given him a little extra money to get my cables off at a quicker pace than was usual, and he’d complied, telling me confidentially that he liked to get out from behind the desk and away from his nagging wife.

  I had to get off this roller coaster. Stories were unfolding out there without me. I wasn’t officially beholden to London. They didn’t run my life. I smoked half a pack of Gitanes and waited for a reply. The knock finally came, and Pierre handed me an envelope.

  Imperative. Remain with Aunt Marie.

  I crumpled the piece of paper and flicked it at the window. It bounced off and landed on my typewriter. Damn Hitler and Mussolini for making a mess of it all. Groaning, I looked at my watch. It was almost eight.

  I threw cold water on my face and hoped it would break her spell. I changed into my best suit and adjusted my tie and combed my hair, taking an extra moment to shove back that unruly lock that usually fell forward of its own accord.

  I thought about how I’d almost been expelled from college. Part poet, part ruffian, I’d gotten mixed up in a hell-raising event that nearly landed me in jail. Some of my friends were from the wrong part of town. Living on the edge was one of my favorite extracurricular activities, along with writing poetry and short stories. And chasing pretty girls.

  Then God put His hand on me and I left behind most of my reckless behavior. I retained the desire to travel and write. With an ear for languages and that insatiable curiosity, my chosen career as freelance journalist fit me like my favorite fedora. Apprehensive of my thirst for excitement and intrigue, my mother warned it would get me into trouble some day.

  That trouble had finally arrived in the form of a fallen angel named

  Claire Duncan.

  It had begun to rain, and as I stepped outside I pulled down my hat and turned up the collar of my trench coat. Resembling a drowned cat, I arrived at Claire’s hotel. She stood right inside the door. Her smile said she didn’t mind my rain-dampened appearance. We stepped outside. I pointed in the direction of a small restaurant just down the street, Chez Jacques, and she nodded and opened an umbrella. We walked to the restaurant through a dark and subdued Paris.