Chuck Palahniuk - Lullaby

On the table is a newspaper, folded, with the headline saying:

Seven Dead in Mystery Plague

The subhead says:

Esteemed Local Editor and Public Leader

Believed to Be First Victim

Whom they mean, I have to read. It's Duncan, and it turns out his first name was Leslie. It's anybody's guess where they got the esteemed part. And theleader part.

So much for the journalist and the news being mutually exclusive.

Nash taps the newspaper with his finger and says, «You see this?»

And I tell him I've been out of the office all afternoon. And damn it. I forgot to file my next installment on crib death. Reading the front page, I see myself quoted. Duncan was more than just my editor, I'm saying, more than just my mentor. Leslie Duncan was like a father to me. Damn Oliphant and his sweaty hands.

Hitting me as fast as a chill, chilling me all down my back, the culling song spins through my head, and the body count grows. Somewhere, Oliphant must be sliding to the floor or toppling out of his chair. All my powder keg rage issues, they strike again.

The more people die, the more things stay the same.

An empty paper plate sits in front of Nash with just some waxed paper and yellow smears of potato salad on it, and Nash is twisting a paper napkin between his hands, twisting it into a long, thick cord, and, looking at me across the candle from him, he says, «We picked up the guy in your apartment building this afternoon.» He says, «Between the guy's cats and the cockroaches, there's not much to autopsy.»

The guy we saw fall down in here this morning, the sideburns guy with the cell phone, Nash says the medical examiner's stumped. Plus after that, three people dropped dead between here and the newspaper building.

«Then they found another one in the newspaper building,» he says. «Died waiting for an elevator.»

He says the medical examiner thinks these folks could all be dead of the same cause. They're saying plague, Nash says.

«But the police are really thinking drugs,» he says. «Probably succinylcholine, either self-administered or somebody gave them an injection. It's a neuromuscular blocking agent. It relaxes you so much you quit breathing and die of anoxia.»

The woman, the one behind the barricade at the movie shoot who came running with her arm out to stop me, the one with the walkie-talkie, the details of her were long black hair, a tight T-shirt over right-up tits. She had a decent little pooper in tight jeans. It could be she and Nash took the scenic route back to the hospital.

Another conquest.

Whatever Nash is so hot to tell me, I don't want to know.

He says, «But I think the police are wrong.»

Nash whips the rolled paper napkin through the candle flame, and the flame jumps, stuttering up a curl of black smoke. The flame goes back to normal, and Nash says, «In case you want to take care of me the same's you took care of those other people,» he says, «you have to know I wrote a letter explaining all this, and I left it with a friend, saying what I know at this point.»

And I smile and ask what he means. What does he know?

And Nash holds the tip of his twisted paper a little over the candle flame and says, «I know you thought your neighbor was dead. I know I saw a guy drop dead in this bar with you looking at him, and four more died when you walked past them on your way back to work.»

The tip of the paper's getting brown, and Nash says, «Granted, it's not much, but it's more than the police have right now.»

The tip puffs into flame, just a tiny flame, and Nash says, «Maybe you can fill the police in on the rest of it.»

The flame's getting bigger. There's people enough here that somebody's going to notice. Nash sitting here, setting fires in a bar, people are going to call the police.

And I say he's deluded.

The little torch is getting bigger.

The bartender looks over at us, at Nash's little fuse burning shorter and shorter.

Nash just watches the fire in his hand growing out of control.

The heat of it on my lips, the smoke in my eyes.

The bartender yells, «Hey! Quit screwing around!»

And Nash moves the burning napkin toward the waxed paper and paper plate on the table.

And I grab his wrist, his uniform cuff smeared yellow with mustard, and his skin underneath loose and soft, and I tell him, okay. I say, just stop, okay?

I say he has to promise never to tell.

And with the fuse still burning between us, Nash says, «Sure.» He says, «I promise.»

Helen walks up with a wineglass in her hand, just a glimpse of red in the bottom, the glass almost empty.

And Mona says, «Where'd you get that?»

«My drink?» Helen says. She's wearing a thick coat made of some fur in different shades of brown with white on each tip. It's open in the front with a powder-blue suit underneath. She sips the last of the wine and says, «I got it off the bar. Over there, next to the bowl of oranges and that little brass statue.»

And Mona digs both hands into her own red and black dreadlocks and squeezes the top of her head. She says, «That's the altar. » She points to the empty glass and says, «You just drank my sacrifice toThe Goddess. »

Helen presses the empty glass into Mona's hand and says, «Well, how about you get The Goddess another sacrifice, but make it a double this time.»

We're in Mona's apartment, where all the furniture is pushed out onto a little patio behind sliding glass doors and covered with a blue plastic tarp. All that's left is the empty living room with a little room branching off one side where the dinette set should be. The walls and shag carpet are beige. The bowl of oranges and the brass statue of somebody Hindu, dancing, they're on the fireplace mantel with yellow daisies and pink carnations scattered around them. The light switches are taped over with masking tape so you can't use them. Instead, Mona's got some flat rocks on the floor with candles set on them, purple and white candles, some lit, some not. In the fireplace, instead of a fire, more candles are burning. Strands of white smoke drift up from little cones of brown incense set on the flat rocks with the candles.

The only real light is when Mona opens the refrigerator or the microwave oven.

Through the walls come horses screaming and cannon fire. Either a brave, stubborn southern belle is trying to keep the Union army from burning the apartment next door, or somebody's television is too loud.

Down through the ceiling comes a fire siren and people screaming that we're supposed to ignore. Then gunshots and tires squealing, sounds we have to pretend are okay. They don't mean anything. It's just television. An explosion vibrates down from the upstairs. A woman begs someone not to rape her. It's not real. It's just a movie. We're the culture that cried wolf.

These drama-holics. These peace-ophobics.

With her black fingernails, Mona takes the empty wineglass, the lip smeared with Helen's pink lipstick, and she walks away barefoot, wearing a white terry-cloth bathrobe into the kitchen.

The doorbell rings.

Mona crosses back through the living room. Putting another glass of red wine on the mantel, she says, «Do not embarrass me in front of my coven,» and she opens the door.

On the doorstep is a short woman wearing glasses with thick frames of black plastic. The woman's wearing oven mitts and holding a covered casserole dish in front of her.

I brought a deli take-out box of three-bean salad. Helen brought pasta from Chez Chef.

The glasses woman scrapes her clogs on the doormat. She looks at Helen and me and says, «Mulberry, you have guests.»

And Mona conks herself in the temple with the heel of her hand and says, «That's me she means. That's my Wiccan name, I mean. Mulberry.» She says, «Sparrow, this is Mr. Streator.»