Nighthawks at the Mission (The Long Preview)

by Forbes West

  Already just steps away from passing through, a Ni-Perchta in simple, medieval-style armor steps out and asks what your business is. Next to him is another Ni-Perchta in a blue military uniform, human style. Winniefreddie responds, “Going to Moondog Street, sir knight.”

  The Ni-Perchta frowns and lets you pass by. You look him up and down, still a little weirded out by seeing a true alien up close and personal.

  The village itself is of a good size, with winding and narrow streets snaking off in all directions. You walk on mud and cobblestones, avoiding the stares of the few Ni-Perchta still on the street. Their homes and shops are shuttered closed and all street lamps are doused. You walk in almost pitch darkness with only a few Coleman lamps left in windows and on street benches to guide your way. Ads for bars and restaurants dot the street, pasted onto Ni-Perchta homes.

  Coming around the corner after avoiding a couple of fat, drunk humans munching on carrots, you and the girls make a beeline down the street that the music, the shouting, and the yells are coming from—Moondog Street. Electricity is on in this section of town. Neon lights make their appearance. Women with green and red body paint covering their breasts also make an appearance. A couple of homeless human street musicians thump their musical shit through the air. Multiple bars, and what you assume to be strip clubs, dot the street. Ni-Perchta women alongside human women call out to you for lap dances and make obscene gestures. Cigarette smoke and the smell of food blow by with every gust of wind. You even hear firecrackers—or what you naively think to be firecrackers—popping off.

  Christmas lights are piled on buildings that look like they were built in some medieval Lord of the Rings-like world.

  “I’m so far away from home,” you say, bumping into one girl with no top who’s using body paint as a bra. In the distance there’s the guitar riff of Money for Nothing. You spot signs stating Human Only and Both Races Allowed in many of the shops.

  Winniefreddie and Treena look at each other. “Green Man?” Treena says. They stare at each other for a good moment and then nod.

  “The hell is this place? Did we just wake up in that part of Back of the Future Part Two where Biff controls everything?” you say over the yelling and the people shouting things to each other.

  Treena shrugs. “Shit, basically. Thunderdome meets the village of Bree.”

  You see Livesey’s Green Man. It’s a very large, medieval-looking tavern-like place standing in a field of high grass that perhaps was a common area or park at one time. Old wooden picnic tables dot the bare ground in front of the tavern. An odd flag that is yellow, red, blue, and white flies from Livesey’s Green Man—you’ve seen that flag once or twice since coming off-world and you try to make a mental note to discuss it sometime. A wooden statue of a person, well done and very intricate, stands outside the tavern, seven feet tall, painted a dark green. A string of Christmas lights, reds and greens, is strung around the statue. People are all over; the place is busy this hour.

  Each man and woman, all pretty young, has one of those orichalcum batons, with maybe a couple or more stones set into it, and each has a crossbow on them as well. Everyone has a red or yellow plastic tag on his or her chest or on his or her arms. They all look tired and spent. Men and women are grouped together, talking in pairs and in groups. Some have metal chainmail armor on, others thick, leather, padded motorcycle jackets and even old riot gear helmets.

  You walk up the front stairs and swing open the heavy wooden doors. The Green Man is one part roadhouse, one part casino, and one part place to get stabbed, you find out. Stepping inside as a twenty-year-old girl, you feel very alone and very overwhelmed in this dim, partially lit place.

  Passing a cardboard sign that says Check in All Weapons! NO EXCEPTIONS!, you come across an odd scene. There are roulette tables—those big wheels that spin so you can bet whether or not the tag will land on a 1, 5, 10, or 20. Men in bowler hats are dealers in probably rigged card games, and salvagers with stacks of money are laying down bets on craps tables left and right or duking it out over poker. A thick smell of cooking meat, cigar smoke, and sweat permeates the entire open space. A salsa and chip bar is off to one side, looking appetizing if presumably unhygienic.

  “Oh snap,” you say, seeing something that turns you on like nothing else. The two girls watch you as you drift over to the casino section of Livesey’s Green Man.

  “Blackjack!” one of the old women dealers cries out, clapping her hands as she’s nailed a blackjack. The other players look pissed, folding up their cards and giving them back to her. They are playing with bundles of red money and casino chips. You take a look at the table between chip bites. One shoe. The dealer is only using one card shoe to deal, so the cards are barely getting mixed up.

  You are pretty good at math. When you were small, you used to play a little casino night with your Dad and could always count the cards—you were doing that when you were eleven, twelve years old. You move over to the blackjack table. Treena and Winniefreddie shrug and walk over to the bar to pick up a libation or three. They ask if you want something to drink and you reply, “What do you think?”

  You sit down just as another player is leaving. The old woman dealer in a bowler hat gives you the dirtiest look in the world, her wrinkled and over-made-up face seeming to crack with petty hate. “You of age, Missy?” she says.

  You stare at her. You say nothing. The old woman shrugs. “It’s another planet anyway. Who the beep cares, amiright?”

  She starts to deal out the cards. From that one shoe, you think, amazed at how this place is being run. You know from television that casinos back home, in Vegas, usually use six shoes to prevent what you are going to do. With six shoes there would be so many card combinations that no one could ever figure it out. In this half-assed Oberon, they didn’t think of it at all.

  You get your first card: a queen. You start to play; beginning very carefully, scoping out the territory, seeing how they flop down. You are playing next to a guy who looks like an older, more beaten up version of Brad Pitt and a very attractive older woman with heavy mascara who is drinking beer from a copper cup. With two extra players, the dealer and you, you’ll have no problem figuring the flow of play.

  A human waiter comes by and asks if you want a beer. “Of course,” you say. “I’m old enough.” The dealer gives you a fake smile with nice golden teeth. You start to drink the beer, feeling pretty good now. Treena gives you an extra beer. She blows a raspberry after seeing you already have one. You are about to destroy this casino, you just know it. One shoe! Holy Christ, what an opening, you think. You cross yourself in front of everyone before the second deal, muttering a prayer to God, thanking Him and His son.

  It is about the fourth deal when you start winning big, figuring what is in the shoe and at play. You get dealt a queen and a deuce—this combination is usually shit, but you know that there’s a nine coming up, and there it is. From then on in, you blow up Livesey’s Green Man.

  You play and play and drink and drink, beer after beer, in copper cups and plastic cups, depending on what the Ni-Perchta waiters can throw to you. You see your mountain of chips in clear, double vision, and scoop up the mountain into a plastic bucket that somebody handed to you earlier. A crowd has gathered, quite amazed at your dexterity and also waiting to see if at any moment you will be hauled off for cheating.

  You fall off your stool, still holding the bucket upright, still holding your beer upright. You are laughing hard, managing to somehow, in a very difficult (at least for you) motion, stand up with the cup of fresh beer and the bucket of casino winnings. Seeing that everyone is looking at you, you take a bow. The older woman with mascara is laughing very hard and gives you a thumbs up. Older Brad Pitt is there, laughing, and you decide to go up and kiss him on the mouth for no particular reason.

  “Alright! ‘Kay, thanks, bye!” you yell to the casino, the other salvagers cheering you on as you grope your way across the place to the bar counter where the Page sisters are talking
with the bartender, who wears a blue leather jacket. A bouncer comes over, a thick, big-bellied bastard with a bald head. “I’m the bouncer here, and I am asking if you need assistance to your car or vehicle-” he says before you interrupt him.

  “Why don’t you bounce on over and get me a drink, then?” you say, winking at him and stumbling backwards. The bouncer just looks annoyed and leaves.

  You manage to face the man in the blue leather jacket. “Ch-change ‘em out.” The man shakes both of his heads looking at the four Page sisters, and then takes your chips. He opens a door marked Private behind him.

  You stand there rocking out to music that may or may not be there.

  After five minutes the man in the blue leather jacket gives you your winnings. You count the stacks. 500,500 Dii-Yaa or, in real money, 35,750 dollars. Not too bad.

  You give a few thousand bucks to the Page sisters, who shake your hand, then stuff the rest into every available pocket.

  “We gotta be hanging out with her more, man. We gotta. We just gotta, we gotta, we gotta…” Winniefreddie says.

  You and the Page sisters keep drinking until all the words coming out of your mouths become slurred and slow versions of themselves. You three laugh the night away and dance in some club connected to the Green Man with people who look like the Manson family. You listen to typical club songs being played by live human bands.

  ~~~~

  YOU and the Page sisters stumble out of Livesey’s Green Man laughing like the inebriated hyenas you are. Dawn has arrived in the Walled Village. There is still some music playing somewhere.

  You and the Page sisters take turns peeing in a Porta Potti set up on a street corner.

  Exiting Moondog Street, you are back in the true Ni-Perchta part of town, trying to roam back to the Benbow.

  Flush with a bit of cash, drunk, and happy, you three come onto a disturbing little scene when you exit the walls of the village.

  Next to a parking lot is a group of humans surrounding a group of Ni-Perchta who are on a makeshift wooden platform. Ni-Perchta guards in armor and in soldiers’ uniforms stand by.

  Even in the little you can see, there is a handmade sign stating: Dawn Auction of Assigned Persons. An excited Ni-Perchta rambling in Perchta is pointing at the Ni-Perchta in chains. The auctioneer is touching their arms, their legs, patting their behinds as he speaks as fast as any auctioneer back home. Some of the Ni-Perchta in chains are children. A small, weasel-like, bastard human is shouting out the translation at the same time.

  “What is dis?” you slur, pointing at it. You still have a plastic cup filled with beer in hand.

  “Assignment auction shit. The Ni-Perchta—if you get caught—caughted, I should say—doing a non-violent, non-religious crime, they sentence you to be bought as someone’s slave, servant, for a period of time. Five to fifteen years, unless they release you early. For minor, little aggressions. Failure to respect the Witch-Lord, petty theft under 500 Dii-Yaa, stuff like that…” Treena says, and then burps. “I’m going to be puking.”

  Winniefreddie pats her on the back. Treena hiccups and gives her a thumbs up.

  “What? Slavery? You kiddin’ me?” you say. You see a little girl Ni-Perchta crying her eyes out as some pedophile-looking human starts to raise up his hand to purchase her “service.” You get a sick feeling in your stomach watching the display.

  “Whoa, whoa,” you say, stepping forward, taking out all your cash. “How much? How much?” you yell; other people and Ni-Perchta look at your demented appearance as you rush through. The crowd parts in two to let you in.

  ~~~~

  YOU walk back to the Benbow with the Ni-Perchta girl in hand. The girl holds hands with a couple of other Ni-Perchta kids; you’ve bought them as well.

  Treena and Winniefreddie stare at you in wonder. “You just spent all that cash on these little Oliver Twist bastards,” Winniefreddie says. “Jesus, you got some heart. Brains, no. Heart, oh yeah.”

  Treena shakes her head. “No, no, it’s a good thing, Winnie.”

  The children look at you in awe as you say to them, “I got no idea where you can go, but you can go.” They look at you in wonder, their eyes wide.

  The Ni-Perchta girl starts to speak haltingly in broken English. “My- my dad- he up that way- up that way.”

  You turn and see that a Ni-Perchta male has been following you the whole way from the village. He’s tall, regal looking, and afraid.

  You let the children go, and they follow the first girl over the hills to her dad.

  “Hey! Screw the Witch-Lord! I escaped from his dungeon, and you can all escape too! Fuck the police!”

  Winniefreddie looks at you sideways. “You’re that girl?”

  You sober up a little, staring as the children run off. “Winniefreddie’s right. That was stupid. Drinkin’ makes you do silly things. There goes, how much money? I still technically own their contracts, right?” You look down at a piece of parchment that was given to you, and then throw it away. You notice it just sits on top of the soil. You kick up some dirt and halfway bury it.

  You slap Winniefreddie on the arm and start to dance a bit. “All day, all night, all day, all night. What the fuck…”

  You and the other girls start to dance and giggle in the morning air.

  “Going to get more money, right girls? Right girls? I went to Spain and saw people partying…”

  Winniefreddie and Treena look at you and say almost at the same time, “You’re good people. We’ll be in touch.”