side of the tall stoop he can make out bags of garbage stacked high on the trash cans. He kicks open the iron gate and starts down the steps to the basement apartment. The front door is set into the side of the stoop. He pats his pockets as he tries to get his fogged brain to remember where he put his damned keys. He hears a small metallic sound somewhere in his jacket. He reaches into one of his inside pockets, finds the key. He inserts it into the keyhole and turns. Pushes the door open.
The shape is on him in an instant.
It floats down from the street level. Barely seems to touch the steps. The slightest of sounds is all it makes. Wheaton has time to turn only a fraction before the dark shape is level with him. And although it seems to Wheaton that this must be some terrible ethereal demon to be able to travel so quickly and silently, when it strikes he discovers just how solid it actually is. Something — a fist, a weapon, he doesn’t know — connects with the side of his head with force enough to make everything go temporarily black, and when he next can see again, it’s the tiles of his floor he’s staring at.
He feels hands sliding over his back. At least he presumes they are hands. Right now he’s not even sure his attacker is human. What if these are some kind of feelers or claws running over him?
He hears a whimper, and realizes it’s himself.
He feels his jacket being yanked up and the Beretta snatched from under his belt. Now he’s utterly defenseless. Something grabs him at shoulder level. It lifts him from the ground slightly. Starts to drag him along the floor and into the interior of the apartment. There are no lights on in here. He cannot see anything. He feels like he’s being dragged into the lair of a giant insect of some kind, to be trussed up and eaten at its leisure.
Another whimper. Then he remembers he has a voice. ‘Hey! HEY! What is this? Who are-’
He gets hit again. Another blow to the right side of his head. He grunts, then starts to feel the burning pain in his ear.
His arms are grabbed and pulled behind his back. Something is tied tightly around his wrists, binding them together.
He raises his head from the floor. ‘Please, man. . Whoever you are. . Please. .’
He knows he’s making no sense, but he has no idea what is going on here. He doesn’t know what he should say, what he can do to stop this.
Something presses to his face. It forces his head back onto the cold floor. It’s a hand — a human hand. He’s sure of this now.
The hand is gloved. He can smell the leather as he struggles to draw air into his lungs.
And then his ear burns some more, but this time because hot breath is being blown onto it. Breath that carries three simple words that explain all this.
‘Mojo says hello.’
So this is it. The moment he has been preparing for but which, deep in his heart, he never really thought would come. He thought it was all bluster on Mojo’s part. Trying to sound big. Trying to maintain control through fear. All part of the game. The game that Wheaton has been playing too. Carrying that piece to show that he is also a warrior, ready to do battle at any time, even though he believed he would never have to pull the trigger.
And now that time has actually come, and he has already lost. He is about to die. Here in his mother’s place, where he ought to be safe. And tomorrow she will come home and find her only son with a bullet-hole in his skull, and his blood and brain matter spilled across her cold tiled floor.
‘I got money,’ he says. ‘I can get it for you. Just don’t-’
But his words are lost when the sack comes over his head and is fastened tight around his neck. He hears only his own breath now, coming fast and shallow, and his pulse, booming in his head. He closes his eyes. Even though he can see nothing anyway, he screws his eyes up tight and clenches his teeth and waits for the gunshot.
But it’s not going to be so quick and easy. His mental torture is not yet over.
‘Sing,’ the voice hisses against the cloth. At least that’s what it sounds like to Wheaton.
‘Wh-What?’
‘I want you to sing.’
‘Sing? You want me to fuckin’ sing? S-sing what?’
‘Whatever. You choose.’
Wheaton’s mind races. He can’t focus on songs right now.
For his hesitation he receives a slap through the hood.
‘I said, “Sing!”’
‘I–I can’t think. The words won’t come. I can’t-’
‘All right, then.
‘What? You fucking with me, right? You want this nigger to sing ’bout a
‘Just do it.’
‘I. . I can’t. I only know the first line. Bill Cosby ain’t exactly my thing, yo.’
‘All right, then. “Jingle Bells”. The chorus, okay? Everybody knows the chorus to “Jingle Bells”.’
‘But. . but it ain’t even Christmas. Why the fuck do you-’
Another slap. ‘Do it! Now!’
‘Aiight! I’m doing it, I’m doing it. . Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. .”’
‘
‘. . Oh what fun, di-dah-di-dah, on a sumthin’ sumthin’ sleigh, hey!’
‘Again, Lorenze. Even louder. Keep repeating it. Stop and you’re dead, hear?’
Wheaton knows he’s dead anyway. He doesn’t know why he’s singing, but he does it. In truth, he’s glad of it. It takes his mind away from what’s about to happen. He doesn’t want to hear a round being chambered or a safety being flicked off or a hammer being cocked. So he sings. Louder and louder. Sings like he’s trying to fill Carnegie Hall with his tuneless voice. Sings like he really does want this to be Christmas, and he’s standing in the cold air of Washington Square Park, belting out his festive chorus for all to hear, for all to know just how wonderful he feels at this happy, happy time of peace and generosity and good will to all men. Sings like he knows it will-
Where the fuck is that bullet?
He stops singing. Strains to listen through the thick cloth. Hears nothing.
‘Yo,’ he says quietly. He tenses, still expecting the gunshot. When it doesn’t come, he risks raising his voice. ‘Yo, you still there?’
Still nothing.
He dares to move. Lifts his head from the floor first of all. Rotates it in all directions while he tries to detect the slightest sound. Any indication that he is not alone.
Silence.
He rolls onto his side, brings his knees up and manages to push himself up into a sitting position.
‘Hey!’ he calls. ‘Whatchoo doin’? Where you at?’
It takes Wheaton a while to convince himself that his attacker is not still here, playing some kind of cruel joke for which the punchline is a bullet to Wheaton’s brain. And when he eventually does manage to believe it, he still can’t understand what this was all about. Why is he still alive? Was this simply some kind of warning? A message to let him know that he’s not untouchable and can be taken out at any time?
He sits cross-legged in the darkness of his mother’s apartment. The hood still on his head. His hands still bound behind his back.
‘Fuck!’ he says. ‘Fuck you, motherfucker!’
His outburst is fueled by anger, but also by self-loathing. He wishes he had fought back more. He wishes he had been more of a man in the face of death. Above all, he wishes it had been the truth when he told himself he was not afraid.
He was very afraid. He knows it now, and it stings.
He could try denying it again. Try acting the hard man he wants everyone else to see.
But his lie would be betrayed by the tears on his cheeks.
