They’d put something over his head, like a sack or something. Somebody was holding him around the waist and holding it down, so perhaps some kind of bargain-basement, easy-to-escape-when-able-to-move-one’s-arms species of sack. The fabric was thick and coarse, and it smelled of sweat and blood; from this he deduced that “bargain-basement sack over the head” was standard operating procedure for these guys, and they’d brought it with them.
Which was just silly. It was dark for gods’ sakes. And what policeman was going to take a report from a coloured guy about a street gang? Street gangs paid their bills and obeyed the rules or they didn’t remain street gangs very long. The other street gangs would take them out, like the working girls with licenses beat the unlicensed ones over the head with their pointy shoes. Stop making us look bad!
Mordecai’s internal critique of this particular gang’s style was interrupted by a crash and a shout, “We’ll be back for the kid!”
He thrashed a few times, but there was no help that way.
“Please don’t,” he said. “It’s my fault he’s here. I have the money. Take it and leave him alone.”
Somebody shoved him, and by necessity the person who was holding him, who managed to recover without falling. “We don’t want your stinking money! We want the race-traitors who give it to you!”
“Well, I don’t have them on me,” he said. A low moan escaped him and he tipped back his head. Oh, gods, can it, will you? You’re like one of those yappy little dogs that never shuts up! Nobody loves a smartass!
You’d prefer a dumbass, Dad?
If he could have, he would’ve hit himself.
Shut up. Just shut up, damn you. Shut up!
Someone said, “Pull it down. I want to make sure it’s him.”
Another one laughed and said, “Hey, Eddie, even if it isn’t…”
“I want to know,” came the reply.
Mordecai gasped an unobstructed breath and coughed it out. There were figures in the darkness around him, but before he could think of anything to do about that, a match flared to light under his nose and branded itself on his night vision.
There was a mouth speaking behind the match, with straight white teeth: “That blonde bitch warned you about me, didn’t she?”
“She said you’re calling yourselves the Vitts,” Mordecai said. He bit down on his tongue and only thought: So in the absence of further information, I’m going to assume you all have a mad passion for corduroy trousers.
“What?” said the mouth with the teeth. It blew out the match. “Not that blonde bitch, the other one! The one with the goggles and the smug expression!”
“Hyacinth?” said Mordecai, blinking. Who the hell was this person? All he could see was the photographic negative of a match.
“I said if I ever saw you again I’d kill you!” said the voice with the match.
“Well, I really do wish she’d mentioned it to me!” Mordecai replied. “Why don’t we have a walk over to Violena Street and talk to her about it?” …And she can merge the entire contents of the silverware drawer to your heads while we’re at it.
“It’s him,” said the voice with the match. “Keep him covered. This guy blows shit up.”
I do what now, you madman? But it only took a moment for his brain to catch up with what almost came out of his mouth. He had only blown up one thing in his entire life. Everything else, he helped other people to blow up.
Julia.
“Get back, I have a ’cello!” he cried.
Well, it almost worked. Then they tackled him and banged his head on the pavement until he quit struggling, and it got rather difficult to do anything at all.
◈◈◈
Semi-conscious, there was a thought drifting through his mind that he couldn’t quite grasp. It existed in the spaces between, oh, gods, I have a head injury, and, but I really need my intellect, and can Hyacinth fix this? and, where are they taking me?
This guy blows shit up.
We’ll be back for the kid.
Back for the kid.
We’ll be back for the kid?
Why weren’t they back there beating the crap out of the kid and that nice woman with the tiny shoes right now? For that matter, why didn’t they break in, pull the shades and beat the crap out of all three of them right in the shop? Why didn’t they block the exits and set the place on fire? Why didn’t they do whatever made that crashing noise earlier? They couldn’t be worried about the police or the Noughts and Crosses if they were willing to do that at all, so why wait?
Everything hurts. Why is this so important?
Oh, man, I really need my intellect…
They had arms around him and they were dragging him backwards. He could feel cobbles under his heels, but that could be anywhere. He couldn’t breathe through his nose. It felt like he had a broken light bulb screwed in the middle of his face.
I have to get back to Erik. They’ll hurt Erik…
Why aren’t they hurting Erik now?
It was almost as if he wanted them to be hurting Erik, but that wasn’t it…
He needed to throw up, but if he did that this whatever-it-was over his head was going to get a great deal more unpleasant.
Keep him covered. This guy blows shit up.
I don’t blow shit up. I don’t even have any arsenic for the gunpowder.
When they’re done beating me up they’re going to hurt Erik and I can’t…
Why would they wait? They weren’t worried about being seen, so why did they wait for him to climb over a tapas restaurant and down a fire escape to come kill him?
Oh, gods, I can’t…
Why was his damaged brain even doing this? He ought to have blacked out and be waking up an hour from now with everything over! He ought to…
…Because they didn’t want me to see them. They don’t care about other people seeing them, they don’t want me to see them. I blow shit up. The police thought I had a bomb. I messed up those men who were kicking Erik — I messed up that guy with the match, and probably one of those other guys, and all their friends here think I can do it again. Whenever I want.
He made a strangled sound that under ordinary circumstances would’ve been laughter.
Oh, my gods, this is an anti-magic blanket. These people think I’m a threat.
They didn’t know the guy they really had to be worried about was back drinking tea with Miss Gottschalk and hopefully too scared and upset to get any wild ideas!
They were all here to beat him up and none of them were back hurting Erik because they thought it would take all of them. They thought a guy who could get a mage light working on a good day might hurt them. They were protecting each other.
Can… Can I use this? Can I scare them? Can I get them to leave me alone? Not “get back, I have a ’cello !” but “get back, I’ll call a god!”? “I’ll hurt you”?
If they believed him, if they abandoned him bleeding on the sidewalk with a head injury and ran, they might go back and hurt Erik. They didn’t think Erik was a threat. They weren’t worried a little green kid might be chasing them down to kill them right now. They might go back and hurt Erik, or get Erik to hurt himself. He couldn’t beat them back to the shop. He didn’t know where he was, and a taxi was out of the question. Taxis rarely stopped for him when he looked, you know, nice.
If they didn’t believe him, and he couldn’t back up what he said, they might realize he wasn’t a threat and he did not require however-many-guys-it-was to beat him up. Then a couple of them might peel off and make sure their secondary target wasn’t making an escape.
(Which he very much hoped Erik was doing instead of obeying his too-glib advice to stay there where it was “safe.”)
If he fought back at all, they were also going to realize in very short order that he was about as dangerous as a ball of wet dough, and the same thing might happen.
What’s my play here? Let them hurt me and hope it takes them long enough to lay me out that Erik can get away?
No…
They had stopped moving. This place had the sickly sweet aroma of neglected trash cans and he couldn’t tell much else about it, except it was dark and he was up against a brick wall and standing in something wet.
“Mikey, you’re on lookout,” someone said.
“I’ll make a noise like a duck!”
“Yeah. Good.”
“Oh, one of the famous nocturnal Marselline urban ducks!” Mordecai said thickly. He was pretty sure they’d split his upper lip for him. He tasted blood. “That’s brilliant! I’m being menaced by one of those postmodern absurdist street gangs, aren’t I?”
Maybe that was a little too esoteric, but they finally realized he thought he was smarter than them or something, and one of them punched him in the gut.
…I have to make them hurt me, and keep doing it as long as I can. Make them keep kicking me even after I’m out.
Well, that isn’t hard, he told himself. Hell, I made Cathy hit me and she thought I was cute. Happy, well-adjusted people don’t build their own gangs.
Let’s just try not to think about how much this is gonna hurt…
He collapsed to his knees and the wet substance he’d been standing in seeped into his pants. He coughed. “You know…” He coughed again, looked up at them and smiled. There were six, assuming Mikey the Duck hadn’t peeled off yet. The surroundings otherwise could’ve appeared under the definition of “nondescript alley” in the dictionary. Or perhaps “crime scene.”
“You know why the Noughts and Crosses let you snipe victims off their territory and try to make their shopkeepers put up stupid little signs, don’t you?” he said. “It’s not because they respect you. It’s not because they approve of you. It’s certainly not because they’re afraid of you, all six of you. It’s because you’re beneath notice. Absolutely beneath notice.”
“Shut up!” A boot lodged itself in his side. There was a sharp pain like a stab that spiked and faded and he wondered if that was just a rib or if something in his lungs had let go. “You’ll notice us kicking your teeth in!”
Mordecai coughed and spat blood but, hell, he tended to do that anyway. That wasn’t impressive. “I don’t,” he said. “You’re not even worth fighting. You couldn’t hurt me if you were trying. Are you trying, children?”
They went for his face this time. His head knocked back against the wall, his teeth snapped together with a mousetrap sound, and the world exploded in white light like an impatient near-death experience.
Ah, that’ll be my, uh… visual cortex back there. My visual cortex? It’s not my language centre, I still word real good! Ha!
…I believe I might be dissociating. That there is what we call a “defence mechanism.” Maybe that’s why this doesn’t hurt as much as I thought.
Or possibly brain damage! Hosanna!
“The only people low enough to notice you were other people as low as you, or even lower,” he heard himself say. Or something like that. The ringing in his head was very loud. “So you think you’ll team up with each other and take it out on people even lower than that. Except those people don’t even exist! You are insects crawling on the underside of a rock. I bet even the flies you swat don’t feel it.”
Oh, wow, it was a good thing his mouth worked even when his brain didn’t!
Like one of those yappy little dogs, right, Dad? he thought, grinning after repeated blows. It was like being on a red carpet in Miramar with all the flashbulbs going off.
What was that little purse-rat that wanted to gnaw off my ankles after the police tried to punch my teeth down my throat? Genevieve? Fifi?
Gigi!
“Your parents don’t even notice you, do they? Hah, the ones that still have ‘em. I expect the rest of ‘em didn’t care enough to stick around, or died in a gutter trying to drink away the shame.”
Gigi, I am and shall forever be better at biting than you. You continue to live your tiny, rage-filled life only because I’ve been trying to be a better person.
“My dad died in the war, you son of a bitch!” someone said. Possibly the one with the match whom he’d messed up with the ’cello, or the other guy who’d hurt Erik. Mordecai sure hoped so.
He coughed and spat out a fragment of tooth. He couldn’t even feel his mouth talking. His face felt like a cheap piece of meat he’d been tenderizing. Somehow, he was still intelligible. “Fathers who love their children don’t go to war,” he said. “It’s your fault he’s dead.”
Was it possible he was enjoying this? Just a bit?
“Shut up!” someone snarled, but he thought he detected pain in the voice.
“Shut up?” Mordecai said. He choked out a laugh. It sounded like barking. “I don’t shut up, you insects. You fleas. This is what I do! I talk to people!”
He couldn’t feel things anymore. He didn’t even stop for the punching. Coughing broke up his words like a telegram, or maybe like Erik, but he got them out. He took them apart.
Hey, here are some vulnerable people who desperately need to think they’re tough and they matter. They probably think they’re avenging angels, fighting evil, cleaning up the streets, making a difference. Getting revenge for their friends with the ’cello wounds. We got him! We got that guy who hurt you Eddie… and other man whose name I didn’t catch who is undoubtedly here somewhere! We’ll pay him back! We’ll make him suffer!
How about I rip that up in front of you, right in front of you, and then take a big ol’ shit right in the middle of it? How about that? How ‘bout I ruin everything you like to think about yourselves, like I ruined the concept of suicide for Seth? Hurts, doesn’t it?
He was pretty sure he made one of them cry. In any case, the voice that shrieked, “Shut up, Dad! You don’t know what it’s like out there! You don’t know what I’m going through!” sounded very upset and one of the other voices retreated to talk to it in lower tones he couldn’t decipher.
“Well, he sounds just the same, goddammit!” the upset one said.
“You’re the reason he drinks,” Mordecai said, smiling. And it might’ve been coughing, or it might’ve been laughing. It hurt either way, but it also felt… Justified.
It doesn’t matter! I can say any horrible thing that pops into my head! Nobody cares about these people! They are bad!
Oh my gods, they are going to keep kicking me an hour after I stop just to make sure, like a horror movie monster.
I kinda hope they don’t kill me? I mean… I have stuff I should be doing. Probably?
He was… He was kind of having a hard time putting together why he started abusing them, but he guessed it didn’t matter. It was pretty fun. He had fifty-eight years of compressed anger at his situation and society in general, and finally a safe target to unload on. The strikes and occasional snapping sounds didn’t signify much. He could still hear his mouth going. His mouth was pretty much invincible, although getting rather distant.
Aw, man. Come on. Stupid fragile human consciousness. I could do another forty-five minutes on how disappointing they are…
“Hey!” someone said, and he was pretty sure that wasn’t him…? “Hey” wasn’t very insulting.
Oh. What’s that? A new person to harm? He lifted his head and tried to make out some physical details for a judgment call. They had him pinned against the wall, still somehow wrapped in that dirty blanket, and he slid down it like… like a slidey thing.
Shit, I think they did get my language centre…
“Leave that guy alone! I’m calling the police!” the new voice said.
“Quack,” someone said.
“Can it, Mikey.”
“Postmodern absurdist street gang,” Mordecai muttered.
“You’re not calling anyone,” someone said. Matches. That guy with the matches. Eddie. “Where’s the phone, Johnny?”
Johnny? Hey, Johnny! You’re probably really disappointing too! Does your dad drink?
Oh, damn, his mouth didn’t seem to be on board with this endeavour any longer. Perhaps a rude gesture? If he could convince a couple fingers to back him up…
“I mean I called them just now!” Johnny said.
“Eddie,” someone said, maybe Mikey the Duck.
“Get off me! This dumbass magician-lover can barely remember how to sit the right way on a toilet seat! He didn’t call anyone! I said I’d kill this guy…” Mordecai heard the sound of a familiar mechanism which he now associated with the near-fatal error of attempting to teach the street school.
Oh, gods, I’m sorry we kidnapped your teacher and locked him in the basement! It wasn’t my idea!
“Eddie, this fucker’s not even magic! Put it away!”
“Eddie, he can see us!”
“Cut it out, Ed!”
“Cops aren’t going to listen to a fucking preet fagboy, and if he tries it, I’ll stick him and his mom and his little brother and sister… And the dog!” Eddie laughed. “Your little dog, too, how about that?”
Johnny’s gay? Oh, man, that’s a real shame. I bet he’s super sensitive about it and insecure…
The distant wail of a siren made Mordecai straighten automatically. He felt his head go from side to side looking for an escape route or a shop to duck into, even though his eyes were not relaying much visual information to his brain.
“I called them before I even left the store, Ed,” Johnny said.
Sounds of a scuffle. The hands that were holding him abandoned him, and he slid down the rest of the way to the ground. It was cold and damp and sort of comfy. He was not going to be able to duck into a shop. He thought maybe he’d lie here and go to sleep.
Okay, he told himself. No matter how many times they hit you in the face when you wake up, do not tell them you are a revolutionary. Forget the brain damage. Remember this.
“…I have time,” Ed’s voice said darkly.
“No you don’t,” Johnny said. “Because if you hurt him, if you come after my family, or you come after Erik… I’m gonna tell all your new friends how come you know I’m a fucking fagboy. How about that, Ed?”
“You… I… You…”
“How about you fuck off, Ed? You’re out of time.”
Oh, I guess I’d better get it out of the oven, Mordecai thought. He faded out.
◈◈◈
Someone had hands on him and he jerked and straightened.
“Mr. Eidel?”
“I am not a revolutionary,” Mordecai muttered. “This isn’t even my coat…” He faded again, but not all the way. It came back like someone adjusted a dial and turned up the volume on reality.
“Please. I’m sorry. Can you walk? I don’t think I can carry you. Can you stand?”
“What? Oh, gods…” It didn’t even hurt. There was just this sensation of crumbling and he knew he was going to go out again. “I’m going into shock. Blood… Blood pressure…”
“I have to get you back to the truck. I can get you to the hospital, but I have to get you back to the truck. I left Erik back in the truck.”
“Erik?” Mordecai blinked and looked up. He saw large, dark eyes in a dark face, but everything was dark, really. “Who are you?”
“I’m John.”
“That is absolutely meaningless, John.”
“I’m… I’m a friend.”
“…Okay,” Mordecai allowed. He guessed anyone not currently engaged in punching him must be one of those.
“I need to get you up. It’s not far, but I need to get you up.”
“I appreciate that, but I think my blood pressure is tanking and I’m either going to faint or…”
“…Mr. Eidel? Mr. Eidel!”
“Can we get an audio check, please? I’m not getting any signal,” Mordecai said.
“Huh?”
“John, I can’t really figure if I’m dying right now or not. If you want me to get up, you’re gonna have to help me.” He winced. “And it’s gonna suck.”
“Are you hurt?” John said.
Mordecai stared at him, such as he was able. “Are you stupid?”
“Yes,” John said. “Usually. Here, let’s try…”
There was a certain amount of swearing, but mainly he said “ow” and he almost fainted but not quite. Then he was sitting up and looking at his arm in his lap, which he could not feel. The arm or the lap. He was sort of this presence floating near a familiar-looking body with clothing he thought he recognized. That suit was on clearance…
It needed ironing. And dry-cleaning. At the damn dry cleaner’s with no phone, probably.
It did need ironing, but it took him a couple moments more to parse that the condition of the suit could not account for the position of the sleeve, not unless the arm inside of it had spontaneously generated an extra joint between the wrist and elbow. “Oh, boy, that is not supposed to be like that,” he said. He laughed weakly. “Okay, I’m going out again, hang on…”
“Please don’t. Stay with me. I don’t know what to do.”
There was a convenient shoulder which prevented him from flopping over altogether, but his head lolled forward and he shut his eyes. “Hospital,” he said.
“Okay…”
“Don’t,” Mordecai said. “Our Lady… Our Lord… Oh, shit, I can’t remember the goddamn hospital.”
“Our Merciful Lord.”
“I don’t care what it is, they don’t take coloured people. I’m going to throw up.”
John or whoever-it-was helped him sit forward, and he did it between his bent knees onto the cobbled ground.
“Oh, my gods. When did I eat popcorn?”
“I have a truck,” John said. “I’ll take you to Hyacinth.”
“Hyacinth?” Mordecai said. He peered narrowly at John. Did he tell this person about Hyacinth? He must have, right?
“Oh. Right. I was at the movies,” Mordecai said. “Those guys… You’re supposed to loosen the bow when you put it away…”
“Come on, Mr. Eidel. Please. I don’t want to leave you to get Erik.”
“No, don’t get Erik,” Mordecai said. “I… Oh, gods, we have to get Erik…” He stood, stumbled, and someone helped hold him up. “I left him at the… at the… lady with little shoes…” She was blonde, but not like Hyacinth. “Chicken-something.”
“No, he’s here with me. I needed him to find you, but I left him in the truck.”
Mordecai looked pained. Emotionally. He still wasn’t really parsing the other kind. “I’m going to scare him,” he said weakly.
“Mr. Eidel, I don’t think it’s possible for him to be any more terrified. I’d just like to get you back to the truck and show him you’re not dead, okay?”
“…Okay.”
He wasn’t totally sure he knew how to walk, but it seemed to go all right. He had to stop and throw up again, but he didn’t think more than once. It was like… like the film kept skipping. It was an alley and then a street and then wingtip shoes with vomit on them, and then this old, rattletrap truck with slat sides in the back and paint on the door that he could almost read but it kept blurring.
“Patel’s Drug and Liquor”? Oh, I hope there’s some of that in there.
Then there was a door slam that made his heart jump in his chest and somebody was hugging his broken body so hard he wanted to scream and didn’t. He moved an arm, the one he could, and put a hand on a head in a nest of sweat-soaked hair that was cold and felt almost like slime on a rock. “Dear one, you need your coat,” he heard himself say. “I’m okay. I’m about to pass out, but please don’t…”
◈◈◈
John caught him and sat him on the tailgate, where he slumped over like a stuffed scarecrow. Erik crawled up next to him and continued the hug, sobbing quietly.
“Erik, be careful, his arm…”
“I… know.” Erik pulled on the sleeve and buttoned his uncle’s suit coat around it. It didn’t help much, but it looked a little better. He looked up. He looked stricken. “I… heard… police… You… stole… truck…”
“I didn’t necessarily steal it, I just told him I was taking it and I didn’t wait around for him to say okay,” John said. He made a shamefaced grin. “I’m allowed to drive it. I make deliveries.”
“Police,” Erik reminded him.
“Did they sound like this?” John asked. He drew a silver cigarette lighter out of his pocket and clicked it once. The wail of a distant siren ensued.
Mordecai straightened and spoke fuzzily, “I have not shot any police officers. I don’t know what you’re talking…” His eyes fluttered, and his head fell back. Erik pushed up to his knees and held it against him with both arms.
“He did,” the green boy said gravely. “But a long time ago. Is it a prank?” He indicated the lighter with a nod.
“No, it’s insurance,” John said. He clambered over the slatted side into the truck bed and pulled Erik’s uncle gently by the back of his coat. There was a tarp back there, but it wasn’t very soft. “Rob knows this guy who makes them. Two clicks is a whistle. We’ve got people who’d like to beat us up too.” He made a weak smile and shrugged. “At least when we’re together. And the real police don’t help much.”
“Not our police,” Erik said.
“I guess,” John said. He snickered. “I said I called them back at the store. I didn’t know where we were going when I was back at the store; I couldn’t order the police in advance. They didn’t notice. I’m not the only one who’s dumb.” He’d got Erik’s uncle situated so that all of him was in the back of the truck and the tarp was folded under his head, and he guessed that would have to do. “Erik, can you ride back here and try to keep him still? This thing jumps like a sewing machine needle when I’ve got it in gear.”
Erik nodded and curled up near his uncle’s head with one hand on the broken arm. “We can’t go to the… hospital. They… hate… us.”
“I know. I’ll take you home. Hyacinth can fix him, right?”
“Yeah,” Erik said. He leaned in and wrapped both arms around John, tight. “Thank… you.”
The young man shook his head and squirmed away. “Don’t. Not for this. This… this is what people should do.”
This is what I should’ve done the first time.
But he didn’t have to say it, not for Erik.
He’d been wearing a sweater when he ran out and he removed it. “Here. Wrap up. We’ve still got a ways to go.”
