Stixx
The first time I see her, she stands at the bar, her red hair haloed by the low lights, glowing in a ruby haze that reminds me of fire. When she laughs, she tips back her head, throat exposed, the sound catching in my chest. Bright green eyes glint with mischief, flicking to mine from across the club for a moment before darting back to Olivia behind the bar. Their mouths move but I can’t read lips, certainly not in English, nor can I hear what they’re saying from where I’m posted up by the stage, in the back, in the shadows. From the moment she caught my eye, I haven’t been able to look away.
“Who is that?” I ask Vaughn as he joins me.
The younger biker leans on the wall beside me, twisting open a fresh bottle of water. “Why?” He wiggles dark eyebrows at me. “You trying to hit that?”
“‘That,’” Cliff says, bumping Vaughn’s bottle from the bottom as he passes, “is my cousin, so show some respect.” Water splashes Vaughn in the face, and his hand tightens in reflex, dousing him with the rest. Cliff keeps on walking.
“I was just kidding.” Vaughn tosses the empty into the trash.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get worse,” I tell him. “I’ll get you another.” Before I can think about what I’m doing, I jump up and go to the bar. I’m mentally rehearsing my hello as I get closer to Lucy, then she slips off her cardigan, revealing a lacy tank top beneath. She turns, dropping the sweater onto the stool beside her, the swell of her belly dropping me back into reality.
Lucy is pregnant.
She belongs to another man—one who doesn’t burn down Catholic schools or kill for his club. I should get the waters and back to the stage where I’m supposed to monitor for patrons getting too grabby with our dancers. Instead, I linger near Lucy. I drink her in because if this is as close as I’m ever going to get, then I’m remembering the finer details, like the way her hair falls to just her shoulders, a loose strand tucked behind an ear pierced with hoops and studs.
She doesn’t wear a ring on her finger. The stool beside her is empty.
Maybe she belongs to no one. I wish she belonged to me.
In no world would she ever be mine. I’d have to get through Cliff first, and even though we’re the same height, he’s got at least fifty to seventy-five pounds of muscle on me. I’m lean and fast where he’s solid, powerful fists fueled by rage. The club’s lore is built on how far Cliff would go to protect Lucy. He did a life stint in prison for her, so I can only imagine what he’d do to me. I’d probably outrun him, but no one can run forever.
Olivia pours Lucy another Shirley Temple, hopping up and reaching over the bar to tuck a strand of red hair behind her ear. It’s a tender gesture, a side of her I’m not used to seeing it. I love that Lucy brings that out in her.
I stand close enough to smell the citrus vanilla of Lucy’s perfume, but not too close, almost one stool over.
“Hey Stixx,” Olivia says. “Whiskey neat?”
I shake my head, senses flooded by Lucy’s scent, all vocabulary evaporated from my synapses.
“On duty tonight?” She slides a bottle of water to me.
I’m certain I’m supposed to do something, but I feel the heat from Lucy’s body, turned away from me again. It burns into me, an empty ache. We might as well not even be on the same planet. I swallow, throat dry, brain stuck. Condensation from the cold bottle drips from my hand, reminding me what I came for. “Another for Vaughn, too, please.”
Members don’t pay for drinks, but I tip Olivia anyway. She was a good bartender before she got patched, and the table voted her in unanimously, making her the first woman to join the River Reapers MC. It wasn’t entirely a progressive move. She didn’t leave Ravage—or any of us—much of a choice. Not that it was her fault.
Lucy doesn’t say another word while I wait for Vaughn’s bottle. She scrolls through social media on her phone, photo after photo of tags from friends and family. I don’t mean to snoop, but I stand right over her. It’s right under my nose. There’s a shot of her napping with Olivia’s orange cat asleep on her head. I stifle a laugh. She waits until Olivia passes me another water, then holds up the phone for her to see. “When did you take this?” she laughs.
Hanging around would be weird, so I don’t hear her answer. In another life, I’d stay, make a joke about how the cat feels right at home. She’d swat at me, her nose crinkling and the corners of her mouth lifting like she does when Olivia replies and I’m too far away to hear.
I pass a well-dressed man sitting at a table wearing a city inspector’s badge, his piercing glare fixed on Lucy’s back. Despite his clean appearance, dark circles shutter his eyes, his face closed.
“I’d heard her sister was fucking a biker,” he says, voice dripping with contempt.
I turn to ask him who the fuck he thinks he’s talking to. There’s a white Apple earbud in his lughole. Of course. I scowl.
“She told me it’s my baby, but what’s she doing? Sitting in a biker bar. She’s probably getting plugged by one, too,” he continues.
He can’t be talking about Lucy. I want to hit him, anyway. This is not my fight, though.
“I’m inviting her over to talk, and when she’s not looking, I’ll drop some Plan B or whatever into her drink and take care of it. I’ve done it before,” he says, and now I’m positive he’s lookin’ at my girl.
He jeers his way to the men’s room, and I decide better safe than sorry.
I drop the cold bottles onto Vaughn’s lap. “Gotta piss,” I call over my shoulder, following the stranger.
The men’s room in the club dampens the music some, my head throbbing to the beat. The man pisses into a urinal, facing away from me, his expensive suit out of place in our club. The Wet Mermaid is very much a bikers’ strip club, our usual hangarounds working class. Suits like him prefer private parties, that way they can sexually assault the dancers without a bouncer Cliff’s size beating the shit out of them. I take the urinal next to him.
I work better on an empty bladder.
“A few times,” he continues, still on his call. “It’s almost too easy. The guys would come over for poker and we’d place bets on how many glasses of wine would put Lucy out. I was the one pouring her red and benzos, so I always won.” His shit-eating grin tells me he thinks he always wins.
Zipping up, I debate whether to wash my hands before or after I make sure he never drugs another woman again.
“I told her I don’t want anything to do with her or her bastard,” he goes on. “I asked her to marry me and she refused. Then she turns up pregnant? I decide when to put a baby in her. She’s making me look weak. She’s all done, whether I put it in her or not.” He stumbles from the urinal. Bumping past me, he reaches for soap. The dispenser whirs and whines, empty. He sneers. “This place is disgusting. I have to go handle this, make sure she knows we’re really over.”
I pluck out his earbud, drop it onto the floor, and crush it under the heel of my boot.
His mouth twists. “You can’t—”
Driving the hard part of my forearm into his throat, I shove him back into the urinal. Piss soaks the seat of his pants. “How many?” I growl.
“Wha—?” he sputters.
I shake him. “How many times have you drugged her?”
“A few times a week,” he says with a smirk. “Otherwise she’d just talk and talk. This and that problem at work with her students. She’s such a lightweight, doesn’t take much. I’d tuck her in, make love to her—”
Grabbing the back of his head, I help him kiss the top of the urinal. Blood gushes from his lip. I shove his head over the bowl to catch it. “What’s your name?”
He coughs, splattering the porcelain with meaty red. “You fucking her too? Do I gotta get tested?”
I pull my Zippo out of my pocket and flip it open with a metallic snick. He jumps when I click the wheel. Flame shoots up in my hand. “How much alcohol’s in that hair gel you use?” I ask him.
“Benjamin,” he says, going pale beneath his tanner.
He thrashes in my grip. He’s got muscle on me, yeah, but I got one thing he doesn’t: a heart that beats for her. It’s what pins him in place.
“Benjamin,” I say, “I’m Stixx. Earned that name when the River Reapers MC patched me in ‘cuz I play with matches. I gave myself an X for every building I burned down to save someone from a rapist.” I lean into him so that we’re close enough to kiss. “What you did to Lucy is rape, Benjamin. You raped her. I don’t give myself Xs anymore because it’d just get outta control. But I still burn down buildings to cleanse the world from people like you. So I’m gonna ask you again, Benjamin. What’s the alcohol content in your hair gel?”
I tip the lighter toward his hair, let it catch just enough to roll over his gelmet in a whoosh. The sour stench of burning hair stings my nostrils. He screams, not that anybody out on the floor can hear him, and a dark wet stain blooms across the crotch of his pants.
“You’re just full of piss, aren’t you?” I flush the urinal, dipping his head to extinguish him. His skull cracks into the porcelain. The weak flow of water flushes his waste, but barely douses his hair. Flames engulf his scalp, the smell of roasting skin and sweat wrinkling my nose. I drop him onto the floor, stepping back so I don’t catch. Mark, the MC’s treasurer, won’t be happy if I rack up an emergency services bill, never mind all the damage that comes with fire: ash, smoke, water. While Benjamin writhes on the floor screaming, I check the bathroom for an extinguisher. There isn’t even a sprinkler.
That’s a code violation.
“Did you inspect this building?” I ask him, but he’s not moving. “Benjamin?” I nudge him with the toe of my boot. Right on cue, my fire runs out of gel fuel and blinks out. Benjamin doesn’t move.
I check the pulse in his wrist, his neck too raw to find one. There’s none.
“Whoopsie.”
Forget Mark, now I’ve gotta deal with Ravage, the president of the MC.
The door starts to open, music blasting in, and I slam it shut with my boot, throwing the lock.
“Out of order!” I shout, texting on my phone with one thumb. My other hand tugs at my hair. I didn’t think this through. The way he ran his mouth about Lucy, all I saw was red.
Killing a man in the Mermaid during broad daylight could get me kicked out of the club—or worse.
<< Stixx: Come to the men’s room. Be discreet. >>
<< Vaughn: Thanks, but I prefer women. >>
I crack open the door and watch for his approach, pulling him in and locking it again behind us.
“What—whoa,” he says when he sees Benjamin. “Who’s he?”
“Lucy’s ex.”
He whistles. “Cliff see him in here?”
“I don’t think any of them have. Can we make him go away? I don’t want to tell Ravage.”
“I get illegal shit off the dark web, I can’t make whole bodies disappear,” he says. “Not by myself, anyway. Usually this is a club thing.” He gives me a pained look. “He stinks.”
“My bad?” I shrug. “He’s been drugging and raping Lucy. He was gonna hurt her and her baby.”
“We should tell Cliff, Olivia, and Ravage, then.” He rubs at the stubble on his chiseled chin. Vaughn looks like a bad boy TikTok model and has the mind of a serial killer.
“This is a lot stronger than I wanted to come on when I ask for Cliff’s blessing. We’re not there yet.” I give him a dark look.
“Oh yeah, day one and you’re stalking her? He’ll for sure kill you.” He sighs. “I’ll call Donny.” Before I protest, he says, “It’s either him or Ravage. They’re the only ones who know how to contact the manure man.”
“You hear that, Benjamin? You’re gonna be Connecticut corn.”
“I need the manure man in the men’s room at the Mermaid,” Vaughn says, already on the phone. Whatever Donny says makes him smirk at me. “It’s better if you don’t know.” Hanging up, he shakes his head at me, dark hair falling back into his eyes. “Only you could make me call Donny and use that brand new sentence.”
“Poetic alliteration.” I kiss my fingers.
In less than half an hour, someone who isn’t the manure man backs a beer delivery truck near the rear employees’ door. He rolls in a keg, steel buckets, and an industrial hand blender on a dolly, and tells us to stay out of the men’s room. A minute later, a septic truck pulls up, too. No one gets out.
The music drowns whatever “keg guy” is doing in there, and I almost don’t notice “septic guy” snaking a hose into the bathroom that leads to his truck. I smoke a cigarette, watching Benjamin make his exit from Lucy’s life. I wave as the trucks leave, the happy mistake paving the way for us to meet.
I wash my hands in the reopened men’s room, assess the damage, but the porcelain is harder than Lucy’s ex. Apart from a drop of blood in the urinal and broken earbud on the floor, it’s like he was never here. I flush away the last traces.
“So, you ready for tomorrow?” Vaughn asks when I rejoin him on the floor.
I grunt, my gaze already back on Lucy. She’s part of the club’s history, and my future. Cliff went to prison to protect her, sacrificing and upending everything to keep her safe.
I’ll take it from here.
Now that I’ve seen her, I don’t ever want to be apart. I want to say hello, at least, before either of us walk out of this bar.
I should’ve made the joke about the cat. I’ll never get an opening like that again.
“The Fishers will ride with you, then get any girls out while you’re doing the return,” Vaughn continues, and I realize he’s been talking.
I should pay attention. Tomorrow’s run’s a big one. I might never get another chance to be around Lucy, though. It’s now or never. I start toward her.
She stands, draping her cardigan over one arm and grabbing her bag. Olivia hops up and reaches over the bar to hug her goodbye. The closer Lucy gets to the door, the farther she gets from me, and the slower I move. She slips into the parking lot, leaving me standing in the middle of the floor washed in neon lights.
Vaughn claps my shoulder. “Burners will be in your mailbox in the morning. I gotta take over bar back so Cliff can cover the door. You good here?”
I nod, dazed, disappointed in myself for letting the moment slip through my fingers.
I’ll see her again. It’s a matter of time. When I do, I’ll say hello.
The above excerpt has been lightly edited and revised, and may not reflect the final published product.
Copyright 2026.
These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic or mechanical—without permission in writing from the author.
Arsonist’s Lullaby
Available October 2026
She’s burnt out. I’ll give her spark back if it kills her.
Discover more from Elizabeth Barone
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.