Little Mouse
My name is Mugnig, which means Little Mouse, and I am being paid forty bucks to kill the last twelve surviving Lutherans on earth. Mugnig is not my real name; William the Bastard gave it to me. Mugnig means Little Mouse in Lutheran.
I don’t know who put up the money. I do not know who would pay forty dollars for twelve dead Lutherans.
“It doesn’t work that way, Mugnig,” William the Bastard will tell me. “Ten bucks a head, times twelve, divided by the five of us. That’s forty for you.” He’s right. He sounds like he is wrong, but he’s right. But I still do not know who put up the hundred and twenty dollars.
“You don’t have to know, Mousey,” William the Bastard will tell me. He’s right. He closes the suitcase with the hundred and twenty five dollars in it. I do not know what the extra five are for.
There are five of us. There have been as many as eight. People come and go. I would like to go, but who would let me? This is not a job I want. This is a job I got roped into, long ago. And one time I almost escaped, so now they keep checking up on me, wherever I go.
That was in a karaoke bar. That was also long ago. And also long ago was when I got shanghaied, through clever machinations.
“Keep your mind on your work, Little Mouse,” William the Bastard will tell me. “You’re dreaming bitter thoughts again.” He’s right. And I am important today. That is why I will get a double share. That is why the math is right, although it looked wrong. I, Little Mouse, will get a double share.
I knock on the door of the movie theater. They are holed up in a movie theater, old and abandoned. They know there is danger. They are the last twelve. They are Lutherans.
“I am Little Mouse,” I say. “You absolutely must let me in.” I act serious.
“Go away, Little Mouse.” They say, “There will be no movies showing today.”
They are in the place where you go to watch the actual movie, the place with the sloping floor and all those chairs bolted to the floor. They have unbolted the chairs. I know this because chairs have been strewn about the lobby, lying near the ticket taker’s ticket taking stand, bobbing in the congealed oil of the popcorn machine. Their seats flap in the breeze, on hinges. The breeze comes through the gaps in the walls.
I have an answering machine. I have a telephone, with a long long cord. There is something in the answering machine.
“I am Mugnig. You absolutely must let me in.”
The telephone rings. It is William the Bastard. “But I’m trying,” I tell him, and hang up. He is on the other end of the cord. He is not in the movie theater; that would be suspicious. I am not suspicious. I am Mugnig.
“Did you say you were Mugnig?” Their voices are muffled through the door, but you can hear their Lutheran accents.
“Yes, yes. I am Mugnig. Why will you not let me in?”
“Just where did you get the name Mugnig?” This is what they want to know. I do not tell them that William the Bastard gave it to me. That would be suspicious.
“My parents gave it to me.” This is a lie. My parents were not so stupid as to give me a Lutheran name. That is why they lived so long. My mother even changed her name, disguised her accent, and never appeared in bright light, thereby obscuring her Lutheran features, she was so clever. My features hardly need obscuring, unless you look so hard. So there is nothing to let you know I am half Lutheran unless I tell you.
I am half Lutheran.
That is why William the Bastard thought I ought to have a Lutheran name. I watch the door. Tiny curlicues of plastic are spiraling off it. There is a drill boring through it. This is not me drilling in. This is them drilling out. It is a little hand-driven drill.
“Stand back. We are drilling,” they say, with their Lutheran accents. I stand back. I am not so stupid.
When they are done drilling they put their beady eyes up to the hole in the door. Some call out in fear because the light is so bright. The sun is streaming into the lobby through the gaps that time and wild beasts have made in the old movie-theater-lobby walls. Really, these walls are quite dilapidated. I am surprised that the movie room, the place the Lutherans are in, does not have holes in its walls. That is why they have locked themselves in there, there are no holes to get through. But I am a Little Mouse, and I will gnaw my way into their hearts.
“Are you paying attention? We are trying to ask you questions.”
I was dreaming thoughts again. “Ask me then,” I say.
“Why are you here?”
“I seek asylum. We are the last thirteen.”
“He doesn’t sound like a Lutheran to me,” says one voice.
“He doesn’t look like a Lutheran to me,” says another.
“Look here, around the nose,” I say. “And the ear flaps.” They mutter and I make sure to add, “I’m only half.”
They deliberate. “Can we let him in if he is only half Lutheran?” That is what they wonder.
The phone rings in my hand. “Almost,” I tell William the Bastard, and hang up.
“You can come in,” they say. The door opens.
It is dark inside the theater. There are still some seats, here and there, bolted to the floor. They close the door on the phone cord. I tug, but the cord will not slide. It is slammed in the door. I stand near the doors.
“Hello,” I say.
The Lutherans are dressed in plaid overcoats and babushka head wraps. Some have feathers in their hair, and shoes. Their children are huddled in tents near the screen.
“Hello,” they say.
The phone rings, and I ask them, “Where do you go to the bathroom?”
They point towards a corner near the door. It is curtained off. The phone is still ringing. “Excuse me,” I say.
This is what I do. I pull the phone towards the corner. The cord has a little slack I can play out, but still it does not reach. Then I pick up the receiver and stretch the curly cord that connects it to the phone. If I pull it so tight that the curls disappear and the phone hovers off the ground, I can stand inside the curtain of the bathroom.
The floor slopes downward here. There is a big pot, the kind you make stew in.
“Are you dreaming again?” William the Bastard asks me over the phone. “I am almost ready to believe that they have caught you, that they know it all.”
“No, I am here,” I tell him.
“I almost set it off right now, I was just about to. I thought they had you. I almost set it off, inside or outside, just in the hopes I’d get one or two.”
“I am on target. I will report more later,” I tell him.
“I just want to know if you’re in yet.”
“More later soon bye.”
“Soon, or I’m setting it off, hell or high water,” but I hardly hear him. I am too busy hanging up. I exit the bathroom.
“Hello, fellow Lutherans,” I say. They suspect nothing. Maybe I suspect something.
“It’s true, he’s one of us,” an old woman says. “Look around the nose, and at the ear flaps.” She tries to touch me with a withered, dusty claw.
“There is something I must do,” I say. I bend down to the answering machine. I do not tell them there is a bomb inside it. There is a bomb inside it. I did not build it, but I know it is there. “I must sing the Let Me In Song,” I tell them. “It is a custom of my people.”
“It is not a custom of the Lutherans,” a man with a beard that has grown in in tufts says.
“You forget that I am only half Lutheran.” I say. “I am also half Iroquois.” And they let me sing.
I sing into the answering machine. I have pressed record. Just because there is a bomb in it does not mean it does not work.
I sing:
“Let me in, let me in
Or I’ll kick you in the shin.
Oh, why can’t you believe that I
Am one half Lu-ther-an.”
I sing it eight times. Then I say, into the tape, “My! I am in!” and press stop.
“Why do the Iroquois sing a song that goes I’m a Half a Lutheran?” asks a little girl with scurvy.
“That is a good question,” I commend her. The man with beard tufts beams with pride.
He says, “That is my girl.”
“It is stuffy in here. I will go out for some air,” I say. I am pleased that I could win their trust, with my Lutheranesque face, and my charm, and my Lutheran name.
They protest, and the little scurvy girl says, “Stay here and play with me mister. Play with my dolly.” The doll has been contrived out of tin cans and strings, rigged up in the shape of a doll. I am pleased that I am the only one, out of all of the five of us, who could have done this job, but I know that William the Bastard will never give me a double share.
“You must stay with us,” they say, but I say:
“I will be gone for only a minute. Do not answer the phone.” It is already ringing as I shut the door. They suspect nothing.
I run through the lobby; I run past the candy counter. There is so much dust in the carpet that it flies up in billows behind me; it must look like I am running so fast I am smoking. I leap through a gap in the wall.
I cannot hear what happens but I know what it will be. This is what must happen:
The phone will ring until the answering machine goes on. William the Bastard will hear me singing. He will hear Let Me In. He will hear it eight times. By that time I will have run far away. Then he will think I am inside the movie place. He will set off the bomb. He will get his one hundred and twenty dollars, ten dollars a head for twelve Lutherans. He will have to give back his five dollars for the head of the half a Lutheran.
Who will be far away.