Midnight Lullaby

by James D F Hannah

  "They're pillow cases, Ms. Mayhew," Mike said. "We wouldn't waste good hoods on race traitors."

  "Whatever. Just get 'em up off the ground."

  They weren't gentle pulling us up as they yanked the pillow cases off. There were four men, all of them brandishing automatic weapons. They were an assortment of white guys with shaved heads, bad facial hair and white power tattoos. None of them looked like they kept up with current events or were a few credits shy on their graduate work.

  The woman was nearly six foot tall, hair so blonde it was almost white, cut in a longish bob, and dressed all in black, including driving gloves, an ankle-length wool coat, and boots with four-inch heels. She smiled a mouthful of the most even, white teeth I'd ever seen.

  "So," she said, still smiling, "which one of you cocksuckers is Henry Malone?"

  "He is," Woody said without missing a beat.

  The blonde walked up to me. She smelled like expensive perfume you would not find at the Parker County Walmart. Closer up, I could see how taut her skin was, drawn tight over high cheekbones, and her eyes had a feverish wildness that shone in the moonlight. She was scary as shit, the chick you weren’t sure would fuck you or kill you, and depending on the circumstance, you wouldn’t care. This wasn’t one of those circumstances.

  "Do you know who I am?" she said. Her pupils were pinpricks that danced in the darkness.

  "The Lindbergh baby?"

  She laughed. "Try again."

  "Winner of 'Best Interracial Anal Scene' at the 2015 Adult Film Awards? Because if so, I love your work."

  She laughed again, with less enthusiasm and fewer teeth this time. "Once again," she said, almost purring. "With emotion this time."

  "Probably not someone who swallows?"

  She belted me. Right hook, connected with the jaw. My vision blurred. Cartoon bluebirds circled my head for a second. There was way more muscle behind that punch than I had expected.

  She massaged her fist with her other hand. "I am Monica Mayhew. You may be familiar with me."

  "I've heard of you," I said. I shifted my jaw back and forth, making sure nothing was broken. "I was wrong about that part where you don't swallow, then."

  She hit me again. This one wasn't as unbridled as before, and I was more prepared for it, but it still hurt. I sucked cold air into my lungs and shifted my weight to keep steady,

  She took a step back from me. The tail of the overcoat waved like a cape, and I bet she’d practiced that move, trying to look cool. It worked. "Just so you know, I can keep this up as long as you can, and when I get tired, I'll have someone else beat the fuck out of you."

  My ears rang, and there wasn't two of everything, but nothing was solid either, slipping into ghostly images before sliding back into itself. I watched the Casper version of Monica Mayhew pace back and forth in front of me, looking like a business-minded dominatrix.

  She made clicking noises with her tongue. "Mr. Malone, this isn't the part of the movie where you and I will exchange witty unpleasantries with one another." She reached underneath her coat and brought out a revolver, pressed the barrel against my forehead, and cocked the hammer. The metal felt cold and weirdly refreshing. "This is the part of the movie where you'll tell me what I want to know, or I'll shoot you in the head."

  "Go for it," I said. "But you'll be amazed at all the shit I don't know."

  Her blood-red lips drew into a smile. She brought the gun away from my forehead and walked over to Woody and pushed the barrel just above his ear. Woody never moved. Her smile got cockier.

  "Then let's say I kill your friend here," she said. "What do you say that about that?"

  "I say, 'I'll avenge your death, Woody.'"

  Woody said, "Much appreciated." He otherwise maintained his Easter Island aesthetic.

  Monica Mayhew pulled the gun back, flipped it in the air, caught it by the barrel, and smashed the grip across Woody's head. He wobbled but worked to seem unfazed. She re-holstered the weapon and found a position where Woody and I could both see her. She put her hands on her hips, elbows out, face full of determination, like a Valkyrie, except out of her goddamn mind.

  “Why do you insist in making this all so goddamn difficult?” she said. “You’re already responsible for the deaths of two men tonight, and the likelihood of me killing you is high, so explain why d'you want to being pains in the ass on top of everything else.”

  I jerked my head in Mike's direction. "Sgt. Slaughter over there was the one blowing your guys away. Not us."

  "I'm aware of how those men died. The Brotherhood doesn't tolerate failure, and neither Mr. Thompson nor Mr. Moss fit into our long-term business goals."

  Woody laughed. The sound was like cold air blasting in your face

  "Mr. Arbogast," Monica Mayhew said to Woody, turning to him. Woody's eyebrows lifted. "I'm well aware of who you are, as I was aware also of who Mr. Malone is. I asked only to see who would be most willing to self-identify, and who would be most willing to sell the other one out."

  "I'm not selling anyone out," Woody said. "You asked a question earlier, and I answered it. I was taught it was polite to answer a lady's questions, even if she's a fucking pinhead. And as far as not accepting failure as an option, I've got to tell you, honey, these slant-skulled motherfuckers you call 'followers' are so accustomed to failure, they wouldn't even make it leave the money on the dresser first before the hour started."

  Monica Mayhew pushed close into Woody’s face. Much closer, and their eyeballs would have touched. "It's a shame you don't see the greater purpose of what the Brotherhood is trying to accomplish, Mr. Arbogast."

  Woody spit on the ground. More of it was blood than saliva. "Don't act like you're feeding the hungry, or buying coats for the homeless. You're selling drugs to buy guns because your paranoid inbreds are scared of dark-skinned people. You want a gold star for that?"

  She walked over to Woody. "No, Mr. Arbogast, I do not. What I want is for you to see that what we're doing will save your stupid cracker ass from the mongrel nations that threaten to—"

  "Jesus Christ on a crispy cracker, are you going to shoot us or monologue us to death?" Woody said. "Because if it's the monologue, you can shoot me instead."

  Monica Mayhew drove the toe of her left boot into Woody’s nuts. Woody grunted and his body doubled over. He strained to hold it all in as his face reddened and his eyes swelled. Monica Mayhew brought her foot back, ready to kick Woody’s grape sack back inside him.

  I moved like I was about to charge forward. Monica Mayhew caught sight of the motion and stopped. One of the skinheads saw me also, and he stepped up and smacked me across the face with the butt of his rifle. The blow dropped me hard, sent me backwards. There was a cracking noise I suspected was my nose breaking. I landed on my ass. I struggled to catch my breath, everything so fast and painful my brain couldn’t process it fast enough. My face felt warm and wet. Blood. Yep, there was my nose. Fuck.

  I rolled onto my front and brought myself up onto my knees. Blood dripped off my chin. I burped and tasted bile.

  I pushed my good leg and knee out and sucked in some air, bracing for the roar of pain that would come when I tried to bend my other knee. I bit down on the inside of the cheek, and I wasn’t disappointed when I moved my other knee. The hurt shot through any nerve it could reach in my body like angry lightning. My eyes rolled backwards, and I grunted and groaned until I was standing upright.

  Monica Mayhew did the sarcastic show handclap. “How fucking heroic of you, Mr. Malone. Your perseverance is admirable. It’s a shame you’re a goddamn retard, though.”

  I spit out a mouthful of blood. “I would tell you to fuck off, Mayhew, but you caught me on a day where I’m fresh out of fucks to give.”

  The skinhead who’d so kindly broken my nose brought his rifle back to clock me again when Monica Mayhew said, “Stop.” The skinhead froze in mid-movement and dropped his weapon to his side. She walked over in front of me. Her eyes met mine. They were feral, hungry eyes. Her app
eal made a sick sense in that moment, and I could see why Walters had fucked her, though Walters would probably fuck anything with a pulse, and I wasn’t sure about the pulse.

  She licked her lips. They gleamed in the moonlight. Next, she’d try to tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue. I’d bet it was a party trick that worked on men she didn’t smack around. Or the smacking around came later; I didn’t judge. Yet, for some odd reason, perhaps the sensation of warm, thick blood dribbling down my face, or the dead bodies a few feet away, I wasn’t getting stirred up in my nether regions.

  “You’re not my type,” I said. “I go for a different kind for psycho, but thanks anyway. The ones who aren't racist lunatics.”

  She looked taken aback. Maybe she wasn’t used to it not working. “Oh well. Make this as difficult as you like. I don’t care.”

  "I’m unclear what the hell this is," I said. "You’re buying guns for what reason? You think you'll take back the nation? I hate to break it to you, but as soon as you as your moron masses opt to attack, there’s gonna be a swarm of tanks and drones that’ll turn you all into red mist. You fuckers have fun with that."

  She reached out and ran a finger along my jaw. I shook off her touch. She grabbed me by the neck and gave a good squeeze, thumb denting into my carotid enough to let me know it was there.

  “Nothing so plebeian as that, Mr. Malone" Her voice shifted into something just beyond a growl. "What you’re suggesting is passive, and short-sighted. What we will do is a wholesale change of thought for every right-minded man, woman and child in the nation. See, the guns that Mr. Walters helped us buy, we're going to make sure they find their way into every major inner city. Every crack smoker, every wetback, every brownskin that has worked to push out the white way of life, is going to find himself armed. And then, Mr. Malone, we, the Brotherhood, we do nothing. We wait for the bullets to start flying, and for people to die.”

  She pressed harder on the big artery and pushed her palm into my windpipe and I felt myself getting lightheaded. I focused on her words, on staying in the moment. "At first, it won’t be anyone important, just niggers and spics and ragheads, wiping one another out, but as they get braver, they’ll move on and out and they’ll find themselves in suburbs and the white enclaves of America, and when white people start dying at the hands of inner city street trash, that is when people will care what’s happening. Then, the Brotherhood will be there to help instruct people on what to do, on how to keep themselves safe, and that race war we've been waiting for for generations, it will be here. White America will rise up and reclaim itself. The white, Christian nation that America was meant to be will again reassert itself as the rightful leader of this world."

  She loosened her grip on my throat. What blood I wasn’t wearing rushed toward my brain. "Anyway, I suspect that grand plans aren’t anything small-minded thinkers such as yourself care about. Perhaps we can move on to what's important."

  “Thank Jesus,” Woody said. “A point.” There was a lot of pain in his voice, not that I could blame him.

  Monica Mayhew ignored Woody. She said, "You were looking for Bobbi Fisher, is that correct?"

  I shook my head, not as a response to her but to move the blood in my head around. "You've got this annoying tendency toward asking questions you already know the answers to."

  "Those are always the best ones to ask. There's less guesswork. We'll move on to a question I don't have the answer and you sure as fuck had better hope you do." She patted me on the cheek. “Where's the three hundred thousand dollars that cunt stole?"

  32

  "Three. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars." She spoke each word as if it were its own thought. "Bobbi Fisher was fucking Richard Walters, and when she disappeared, so did three hundred thousand dollars of the Brotherhood's money from his possession."

  Just when you think shit can’t get worse ...

  “We don't know anything about any money,” I said.

  "You should, because you are aware of the whereabouts of Ms. Fisher, and she has our money," Monica Mayhew said. "It's simple: she gives us back our money, and almost everyone gets to live."

  "We're talking about cash from your meth operation, aren't we?"

  “Where the money came from is irrelevant, Mr. Malone. What matters is it’s gone, and we want it back.”

  She wagged a finger at the skinhead. Nodded to him. I braced myself for it, but don’t kid yourself that there’s ever a way to be ready for a rifle butt to the stomach. He rammed it hard into my gut. I pushed back what would be a spray of vomit and instead hocked up and spat out a glob of something that might have been my spleen.

  Monica Mayhew watched it with bland interest, like the preparation of a meal she wasn’t hungry for. She rested her hands on her hips.

  My knee chose then to not want to work anymore, and I stumbled forward. I caught myself in time, dropped to the knee, and screamed under my breath. I took a breath and stood up. Real. Fucking. Slowly. Guns raised and aimed at me. I gritted my teeth and tried to muster up a Sylvester Stallone/"Rambo"-era tone.

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  Monica Mayhew sighed. "Do you insist on continuing to be the tough guy, Mr. Malone? There's no profit in it, and frankly you’re not good at it."

  I pulled in air through my mouth since my nose had clotting blood in the way. "Let me reiterate, that you can go to hell."

  "Fine, fine, fine. Let’s try another tact." She tapped one of her soldiers on the shoulder. "From the van." He nodded and ran past me to an old panel van. "Tell me how you found the location of this cook house?"

  The bottom fell out of my stomach and a fresh wave of nausea whipped through me as the skinhead pushed someone past me. Earl Teller had his hands tied behind his back and duct tape wrapped around his eyes and mouth. The skinhead positioned him in front of Monica Mayhew, pushing him down onto his knees.

  "It wasn't difficult to piece it together," she said. "Instinctually, you know who will be strong, who will be weak. Jesus could tell who would betray him long before it happened."

  Monica Mayhew ripped the duct tape from over Teller’s eyes. His scream was strained through the tape over his mouth, but it was still audible, and it paled in comparison to what he let out when she took the duct tape off of his mouth. He looked as though he'd lost a bar fight with an entire bar. His eyes were swollen shut, his face puffy and misshapen, trails of dried blood mapping every contour.

  She patted him on the head. "People tend to be friendly toward the Brotherhood, and they're willing to share when someone strays and drives off with someone they should not be associating with."

  Teller looked pathetic. His eyes met mine. They were mournful, contrite, regretful he had spoken to me, or met me. I puffed out my chest and worked to sound like I didn't give a shit.

  “Forgive me if I'm not broken-hearted because you knocked around an asshole who beat the fuck out of me,” I said.

  She walked around Teller, surveying him like livestock. "We had suspicions about where Mr. Teller's true loyalties might lie. He seemed to have an affinity for the tastes of inferior cultures."

  "You mean he listens rap music."

  "It's a slippery slope, Mr. Malone, from poor music choices to betraying the cause which will set you free." She propped an arm up on Teller and leaned against him. "When you and Mr. Arbogast showed up tonight, it didn't take long to put the puzzle together. We couldn't assume, though, so we had to make sure we were right. Eventually, Mr. Teller was forthcoming about what he told you that night." She snapped her fingers, and another skinhead broke away and ran back to the van. He came back a moment later with a rusted gas can and emptied its contents all over Teller.

  Teller gagged and sputtered as the gas ran all across him. The skinhead cracked the can against Teller's head. He finished dousing Teller and handed an old Zippo cigarette lighter to Monica Mayhew.

  I didn’t even try to stop myself. I lunged forward and vomited. It came in waves, pausing long enough for me to get my breath befo
re another round arrived. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and my mouth burned as strings of acidic spit ran down my chin and neck.

  Monica Mayhew looked as me as if I were a disappointing puppy who’d just dropped a shit on the rug. "You must not have the stomach for the costs of war," she said.

  "This isn't a fucking war," I said, my voice wet and strained.

  "But it is, Mr. Malone." Her voice was so fucking calm, practiced. Akin to explaining the warranty options for a vacuum cleaner. "We're in a war for the survival of our race. There are people streaming over our border by the thousands daily, thousands more in sand-infested shitholes training to murder us, and their only goal is nothing less than to take from us the lives we’ve worked to have, and I, for one, refuse to allow that. You do what you have to do."

  She flicked the lighter, and a flame rose from it. She closed the lid, the flame disappeared, and she repeated the action, over and over and over, the click and pop of the lighter lid rhythmic.

  “I will ask you again: where's the three hundred thousand Bobbi Fisher stole?” she said.

  I blinked, trying to push away the tears, but it didn't work, and the flame became a soft blue light held aloft by a silhouette.

  "I don't know." Puke and slobber dripped off of me. The stink was terrible.

  "Bullshit." Emotion edged into her voice. "If you wait for us to find her, there will be casualties beyond anything you can imagine. I'll paint walls with blood if I have to. If she hasn't told you where the money is, I’d recommend you find out, or it's going to get very unpleasant, Mr. Malone."

  “What makes you so sure she has the money?”

  “Because she’s the only loose end left. Plus, she’s stupid enough of a cunt to believe she can get away with this. Trust me that she will not. I'm aware of her two precious daughters, and if she doesn’t see fit to return what’s ours, those girls will vanish, and she’ll wonder for the rest of her pathetic life what happened to them. Then think about your own father, Mr. Malone. He’s an old man. He doesn’t have much longer for this world, but that time will get significantly shorter.” She turned to Woody. “As for you, that pack of mutts you keep, they’ll litter your lawn like cut grass.”