The Taser darts hit Night Mare’s chest. The hero stops. Just for a second he jumps, his hands shooting straight out at his sides. But then the darts fall out. And Night Mare begins to beat the living shit out of that man with his own fucking mantis head. Just beat him and beat him and beat him, in the face, with that head. I hear Lord Mantis’s broken voice yell, “Oh God, I’m so sorry!” about halfway through too, but Night Mare just keeps dropping that cartoon cabeza on his ass. That ain’t right … .

  I joined that gym. They say you got a coupon for 20 percent off on membership, but there’s still that initiation fee—that’s how they get you. But I had cash. I made more in a day from that Mantis freak than I’d made in months, and all I’d done was sit in the back of a van. Not that I was trying to get any more henching work, but still.

  Thing is, I kept hearing that wet sound the poor bastard’s head made in the end when the hero was hitting it. So I was at the gym, lifting, in the back of my head thinking I was never going to let no man do me like that. I’m a bruiser, always have been, but just seeing a man get gacked like that had me pumping iron, thinking about what I would have done if it was me. See, that was the thing: I saw Night Mare, I saw the way the dude moved, and I thought I could take him. I’m not saying he was a punk, hell no. I’m just saying that I wasn’t either. But that was the thing, a lot of people had thought they could take the Night Mare. And they’d been wrong.

  “Hey. Hey, buddy. You were one of the Manti, right? The other day? I’m Gary.” I look over and there’s The Muskrat. I get a good look at him now: he’s got reddish brown hair that’s receding back towards his ponytail. That belly, it’s still there, except for the moment it’s covered by a fading T-shirt that tells me BITCHES AIN’T NOTHING BUT HOES AND TRICKS in black, two-inch lettering. “Man, I told you that guy didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. Was I right or what?”

  “Well, Gary, you were right,” I tell him. Then I go back to lifting, lean back on the bench press, take a grip. This guy, he just starts spotting me like I asked him.

  “No wonder the guy could only get newbies to work for him. In this town, you got to do it right: create some kind of distraction, a fire at an orphanage or something to keep that Night Mare psycho busy. That’s the key. You certainly don’t plan a heist right on the big guy’s route.” His belly so big that I clipped it while I’m pushing up. He keeps talking. “Shit, man, you’re strong as hell. You could villain some day, no problem. Look, you need some work? I got this gig tonight, it’s with a legit contender.”

  “If he’s legit, then why can’t he find henchmen?”

  “He can, that’s the thing. He needs just sixty of them.”

  “You, my friends, are the Sixty Second Men. If you have questions, ask them now, this will be your last time.”

  That night, I’m in a bunker standing with a bunch of other recruits, listening to our new boss while we were dressed up like those Revolutionary War re-enactors.

  “I’m sorry,” a henchie pipes in from the row behind me. “Are we the Sixty-Second Men, or are we the Second Men, and there is sixty of us?” I can see out the corner of my mask that this other guy is still putting on his outfit, snapping up his buttons. These outfits, they were some kind of colonial thing, red, white and blue with buttons all up and down the front. They took forever to get on, and I couldn’t image having to fight in one: I could barely swing my arms around.

  The boss guy, calls himself the Ultra-Nationalist, he doesn’t even say anything for about four seconds. He just stands there in his white wig and his George Washington damn outfit while his face goes red—got a real temper this one.

  “You are the Sixty Second Men! Any other questions?”

  This same dude, this little weasely white dude with a little soul patch, he’s too busy trying to get all those damn buttons straight to even notice how tense this Ultra-Nationalist is, or how he’s fingering that musket of his like he’s getting ready to use it.

  “Yeah. Then why don’t we call ourselves the Minute Men? Y’know, with your whole anti-immigration theme and the Revolutionary War costumes and all. Wouldn’t that make more sense?”

  “There is a copyright issue with the ‘Minute Men’ title and that is all you need to know. Now, tonight, we take a stand at our borders. Tonight, we take on those who would seek to infiltrate our great country and bring her to her knees. Tonight …” The whole time the Ultra-Nationalist is going on with his speech, that little weasely bastard is just buttoning all those buttons. And then, when he’s done, he’s counting, pointing from one person to the next as he mouthed the numbers. I don’t know what the hell the Ultra-Nationalist was talking about, something about Mexicans, I was too busy watching this scrawny guy doing his head count. Just like I thought he would, as soon as the little guy was done he interrupted the Ultra-Nationalist straight out.

  “But there’s only 47 of us here,” he said, incredulous.

  The Ultra-Nationalist swung his musket onto his shoulder and fired. A red laser came out. When I looked back at the weasel, his head is gone. Where his face used to be, just smoke rising up from his shoulders. Past him I see The Muskrat, busting out of his uniform, looking at the decapitated smart ass, then over at me. He gives me the thumbs up, his face all happy and shit. Fucking awesome, his lips mouth to me.

  An hour latter I’m on a helicopter flying to the Mexican border. It’s a red, white and blue helicopter with stripes painted both inside and out, but besides that it’s just a helicopter, maybe government issue. The seats are too small and I have to sit next to The Muskrat, again. “I love Mexican food,” he yells next to me over the drone of the rotors. Ignoring him, I look at my musket. And for the first time I notice something: there’s no goddamn hole at the end of the muzzle. No laser, no nothing.

  “What the hell kind of gun is this?” I yell, pointing this out to Gary.

  “It’s a prop. A fetish. Henchmen don’t use real guns, man. We use our fists. That’s the henchmen’s noble code,” he said, waving a pudgy, French-fry smelling fist under my nose.

  At least we’ll be out of town, away from the Night Mare, is what I tell myself. We’re driving straight towards a fight, and the other Sixty Second Men seem to mind that.

  “Today, men,” says the boss, “we’re ambushing an illegal human smuggling operation on the border. Today we protect America from El Coyote and his Pups, who would overrun Mother Liberty with the terrorists and job-stealing hordes. Today, you are not just henchmen. Today, you are your nation’s bravest heroes!”

  This makes the guys happy. I can tell a lot of them don’t want to be henching. What they want to do is be heroing, there’s just no money in it. Villainy is a self-financing gig. Heroing, that’s just for the rich. A trust fund venture if you wanted to do it full time. Custom equipment, private doctors, who can afford that? But tonight, the way the Ultra-Nationalist’s talking, we were going to get to be heroes. Of course, all that Mexican hating didn’t really sit with me, but it was a job.

  This I’ll say for the Ultra-Nationalist: he’s a professional. Got good intel and he didn’t waste time. Within two hours of showing up for work, the helicopters came to our destination, and his order came through. But as for leading, the guy had his head up his stocking-wearing ass.

  “Sixty Second Men, attack the invading hordes!”

  That’s all I hear: there’re no other directions. Next thing you know we run off the helicopter into a fight with a bunch of dudes who shout in Spanish and are dressed up like gray dogs. Like, they got on gray fur outfits and gray combat boots and these rubber masks with little doggie noses on them. They look sillier than we did. So we just start hitting them. I mean, I assume we’re supposed to be fighting these guys because when I got off the chopper some of the other Sixty Second Men were already smacking them in the head with these useless-ass muskets. No planning, no stealth attack, we just drop in the middle of the desert … at night … and are told to attack.

  I don’t know, maybe the Ultra-Nationalist was worried about losing the element of surprise. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m surprised. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. So I just start kicking puppy ass … .

  It was dark and all, but there’re some pyrotechnics going on, some flashes in the battle, and I spot the Ultra-Nationalist up on a hill fighting some dog guy, some big lanky dog guy but this time with a snout and big dog hands and everything.

  “El Coyote,” I heard one of the furries saying. Crazy shit: the guy doesn’t even seem to be wearing a mask. For real, he looks like his dad had laid down screwed a dog and the bitch got pregnant with a dog-boy mutant! Him and the Ultra-Nationalist are punching away at each other, having a good old show of it. Some of the other guys even pause to watch them go at it. I couldn’t believe that: you’re supposed to be fighting and you’re acting like you’re at the movies.

  Thing is, we’re at war. Guns or no guns, dudes are getting their teeth kicked in. By me, mostly. Now, Ultra-Nationalist and this El Coyote guy, they aren’t doing nothing but smacking each other. Their troops, they’re just a bunch of wild men, just acting like the bunch of hired losers in silly costumes that they were. And me, maybe I am a perfectionist and shit, but I wasn’t having that.

  “Pick up my flank!” I yell in the direction to a bunch of Sixty Second Men just standing there staring as the villains bang it out. Then I go on the attack, right into the middle of the canine Hispanic horde. The other guys, they see what I’m doing, and they join in. Me, I’m breaking heads and flinging limbs, and the rest of the guys are coming in behind me, building a wedge behind my point. Why no one ever thought to actually lead their own henchmen once in battle I don’t know, but that’s what I was doing, and it looked to be working. We cut the other group in half and then surrounded them in two circles.

  “Stay down,” I start yelling as I smacked their hides, my fists pretty bloody but so numb by then I could feel none of it. We were winning. The fight would be over, and then we could all go home, Pups and Sixty Second Men, regardless of silly costume or employer. I’m thinking there’s a cash bonus in victory. Just thinking about that money gives me the energy to grab the nearest mutt by his neck and throttle him.

  “Fuck you, gringo,” the little doggy in my hands growls, and just barely because my fingers are wrapped around his neck. Still, the air that did manage to make it out of his mouth is putrid, rotting, obscene.

  “Manny?”

  “Taurrance? That you? Cuneo … you almost killed me.”

  “What the hell you doing all the way out here?” Despite the smell, I drag him close to my face to ask that. Still choking him, but now it’s just for show.

  “Man, this guy came down to the spot last week, picked up a bunch of us for henching. This coyote outfit itches like crazy but I’m helping people get over the border safe and hey bro, it pays fucking sweet.”

  I’m just thinking about how I’m supposed to respond to that when I realize I hear the roar of a plane coming in. Thing is, it’s getting louder and louder, then it’s so loud it sounds like it’s coming right at me. I look up and there, silhouetted against the moonlight, I see in the sky this massive horseshoe. The Hoof of Darkness. Night Mare’s plane. My brother had a plastic toy one with little fake smart bombs when he was ten years old.

  It’s dropping something out of its cargo bay. Big, real smart bombs …

  When the first explosion goes off, I smell death and hear screaming, but that just turns out to be Manny freaking out. My hand still on him, I yell, “Retreat!” to the crowd. Then I just start running for one of the helicopters, taking Manny with me.

  Night Mare’s launching grenades from the Hoof’s wing pods now. The other dudes start running behind me. Sixty Second Men and Pups—maybe they see me and Manny together or maybe with everything blowing up they got no choice.

  When we get to one of the helicopters, the pilot, he starts acting funny when he sees Coyote’s dudes jumping in with us. “What about the Ultra-Nationalist?”

  “He’s going down as a patriot and a martyr. Now fly this goddamn thing the hell out of here before I kick your ass!” I see the other helicopters filling up as well.

  When we lift off I see Night Mare rappel down a rope from his hovering plane right in between the Ultra-Nationalist and El Coyote. Then The Muskrat, sweaty and huffing and red-faced, gets in my way.

  “You … are … a super hero,” he yells to me, hand on my shoulder. I don’t like to be touched, so I knock his hand off. I look around and all the other guys, even some of the mutts I’d been beating down minutes before, are clapping slowly, nodding, staring at me. They’re like little fucking girls, most of these guys.

  I look out the side window, get a glimpse of that hill before we’re too far away. Last thing I catch is Night Mare swinging the dog man by his furry ankles and slamming him into the Ultra-Nationalist. Even from that distance, it’s ugly. You could hear the Coyote’s lonely call for miles, even over the chopper’s roar.

  Two days later I’m back at the gym. My body, it hurt, but it’s still alive. This Tisn’t digging ditches type pain, this pain’s something I’m actually proud of. I’m a warrior. I liked that. Wherever I went—the sauna, the cardio room, the free weights—the other guys get out of my way, jumping off equipment as a show of respect. Crazy.

  I’m doing leg presses when my phone rings. The caller ID said PeoplePower.

  “You’re the big man now, Mr. Green.”

  “How’s that?” I ask him. As soon as I heard from the Mexican guys on the helicopter that they were only getting $12 an hour, I gave them PeoplePower’s number. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company’s hiring them up and pocketing a killing.

  “Your leadership out in the desert. Saved a lot of our employees a lot of jail time. Or worse. That’s what everybody’s saying. They say you fought like a Class III villain too, before that. Congratulations, Mr. Green. You’re moving up. I’ve got a new assignment for you. This isn’t just a temp assignment: you could go perm on this one. It’s the big time. Mr. Giggles has an opening.”

  Used to be, when I was a kid, you could buy a Mr. Giggles doll and a Night Mare doll in the same box, that’s how closely tied their hero versus villain battles were. I must have driven by the gates to his mansion over on Callowhill a thousand times over the years, and I always wondered what was going on in there, or even if he was even there at all since it seemed like half the time the guy was locked up for something. But here I am after all this time, going through those gates every morning. Got a little high on, I got to tell you, every time those multicolored wrought iron doors opened and I walked in.

  Mr. Giggles has to be hitting eighty, but of course he was the kind of white man that always looked older than he was: the kind that did a lot of drugs, not the least of those being nicotine. He used to smoke these Mexican cigarillo numbers, half cigarette half cigar things I used to see some of the old Peruvian day laborers sucking on. In fact, I smelled the man days before I met him, caught a whiff of his exhaust down the long corridors of the place while I was handling my job, which mostly seemed to consist of standing by the inside of the kitchen, watching the room around me and listening through the door in case anyone attacked the guards stationed at the service entrance outside.

  It’s different from what I expected. First of all, we aren’t getting paid in cash every day, a business quirk of the industry I had quickly adjusted to. This is a real job, not just a one-shot costume ball. Sure, I’m dressed up like a mime, and wield a rubber fish packed heavy with lead as a weapon, but this’s just a regular security guard gig, just like the kind I’d worked before.

  There’s nobody to talk to. The other guys are stationed elsewhere in the building, with different lunch breaks. And even when somebody slipped into my station to use the microwave, they weren’t the most talkative bunch.

  That morning Mr. Giggles is more coughs than giggles, shuffling in his old bathrobe and in his even older liver-spotted feet. He drinks his coffee, sighs a bit. That’s it. Usually, I don’t like being around the boss at a job: that’s the best way to get fired. This guy, Mr. Giggles himself, he’s all right. First thing he says to me is:

  “I heard about that incident down at the border. Most of these henchmen, they dream of the big time, but they don’t want to lead. They want to star. Good job, home slice.” I don’t like it when white people try to talk black (matter fact I hate that shit), but I let it slide because he’s fucking Mr. Giggles. He’s a cool old white guy, which is a hard thing to be, so he gets props just for that.

  So over the first week, between sips of his cups, looking up from his paper, he starts asking me about me. Just being polite, but nice. And after a while, I start asking him about him too. Just being polite as well, but he really answers me.

  “I feel like shit, to be quite honest, but who feels like hearing an old man complain? Not even me. I look around, at all I’ve done, and I’m happy with that. It was quite a performance.”

  “And you got rich,” I compliment him.

  “Rich? I didn’t get rich. Are you kidding? Come with me.” The old man puts his hand over mine, started tugging on it. His skin’s calloused and hard. I went with him before any part of the man could break off.

  “You got this fine house, sir. This mansion.” The damn thing’s like a hotel, it’s that big, although I only see him living there.

  “You kidding? Man, I don’t own this thing. This was Judy. She still owns it. I don’t talk to her that much, but it’s her place. She moved back to Germany, back in the eighties. Came from a rich family; I was her rebellious stage. Boy, she had huge tits. You like big tits, Taurrance?” He stops in the hall to ask me this, turns around to look at me close like this was an important question, so I tell him I did.