Sample – Casino of Change

Casino Change

 

Christie spun the roulette wheel, dropping the ball and giggling as it clattered and rolled around the perimeter, bouncing and finally settling on double-zeroes.

“Yay!” she clapped, bouncing.  From a table away, Wallace watched her breasts bounce beneath the tank top.

He’d felt them, sucked the tight, brown nipple between his teeth and sucked, but he was nowhere near tired of the experience or the taste of her.  She was bright and vivacious and she fucked like a world champion.  With his long-ish hair and strong chin, Wallace was no slouch himself, but Christie was hot in a whole other league.  It felt like a privilege to touch her, and he doted on her, spoiled her, made other men seem unimportant to her, or so he hoped.  She had given him no reason to be jealous, and he had certainly not entertained the idea of straying.  Their relationship might be superficial, he mused, but it was committed kind of superficial.

“A real looker, eh?”

Wallace jerked his head away from her and found himself face-to-face with a dark-haired man, grinning with a gold tooth.  His parted hair was oily and shining under the dim light provided by Christie’s phone in the near distance.

“Who-?”

“Girl like that needs a real man to take care of her,” the stranger grinned.  “You that kind of man, Wallace?”

Wallace spun fully towards him, glancing back to see if Christie had seen him.  She appeared to take no notice.

“Who are you?”

The man spread his arms in introduction, and Wallace saw that he held half a stack of playing cards in each hand.

“Dyer’s the name.  I’m the dealer.  Blackjack.  That’s your game, I bet.  And then you bet.”  He chuckled at his own joke.

“Where did you come from?”

“Me?” Dyer asked, shuffling the cards from his dealer’s place behind the table.  “I’ve always been here, son.  And you?”

“We’re from L.A.”

“City of Angels,” Dyer mused, completing the shuffle.  He placed a card face-down in front of Wallace and another in front of himself.  Then another, face-up in front of each of them.

Wallace looked down at the ace staring up at him.  He hazarded a peek at the card beneath.  A ten.  Before Dyer was an eight of hearts.

“What’ll you wager?”  Dyer’s tooth gleamed.  The card in front of him was a seven.

“I didn’t bring any money.  Just my debit card.”

Dyer shook his head and “tsk”ed.  “You got it all wrong, kid.  We don’t play for money here.  Money comes and goes.  It’s fleeting.  We play for higher stakes at The Lucky Eye.”

“What then?”

“Flesh and mind, body and soul,” Dyer winked.

“I don’t understand.”

Around him, Wallace could smell tobacco burning and the acrid scent of liquor.  Faintly, he could hear the sounds of bells and the rattle of coins falling from the slots.  When he looked back at Christie, she was faint, partially hidden by the transparent forms of a crowd of people, all dressed in the style of the seventies.  She appeared to be unaware of the apparitions all around her, the ones that were growing more distinct for Wallace by the second.  When he turned back to Dyer, the lights of the casino were on, flashing brilliantly in the smoky room.

“Your fondest desires, Wallace.  All you could ever dream of, and all you have to do is play.  Look there, an ace, a lucky card.  Tell me what it is you wish most of all in that young mind.”

“I- I don’t know,” Wallace stammered.  It was unreal, yes, but what if it was true?  He had a natural blackjack.  Whatever he wished, the man said, would be his.  He glanced back at the beautiful girl he had come in with, so far away now.  “I want her to love me, I guess.”

“Love,” Dyer mused, “is not something that’s mine to give.  But, I can give her reasons to stay with you.”  He pointed with a finger toward Wallace’s crotch.  “Perhaps a little something to make her squeal?”

“Oh, yeah.  I mean, sure.”

“Excellent.  Now, the dealer shows eight.  Dealer stays.  And you?”

“Stay.”

Dyer turned his hidden card over.  Another ace, giving him nineteen.  “Dealer stays.”

“Check this out.”  Wallace turned his ten over and Dyer beamed, clapping his hands together a single time.

“Blackjack!”

Wallace squirmed as he felt the shift in his jeans, the bulging, tingling sensation of flesh packed tight against his crotch.  He reached a hand beneath the table and felt the girth and length of his cock, not hard by any means, but long and thick.  He couldn’t but imagine how it would feel inside Christie, how she would buck and scream as he filled her so thoroughly.

“Well done.  Another hand?”

“Sure.”  He was imagining himself more muscular now, a real stud.  Someone Christie would never dream of leaving.

Dyer dealt.  This time it was a six for Wallace and a ten for the dealer.  Beneath the six was a five of clubs.

“Hit me,” Wallace said.

Dyer smiled and flipped a card over for him.  A four.

Wallace’s fingers drummed the felt as the sound of the casino roared around him.  Shouts and ringing slot machines and the clinking of ice in glasses.

“Hit me.”

An eight.  Busted.

“Dealer has seventeen.  House wins.”

“So, what do you win?”

“Your thoughts, my boy.  Your memories.  But don’t worry, we won’t leave a hole.  Nature abhors a vacuum after all.  You’ll have something new to fill that space.”

Wallace gripped the raised edge of the table, head twisting, eyes squeezed shut.  It felt like something reached into his brain and scooped out something that was essential, but he couldn’t quite place a finger on it.  Just as fast, he felt another rush, only this time it was as if his head were being stuffed, and he had a fleeting image of a teddy bear bursting at the seams with its white filling, ready to explode in a deluge of fur and felt.

When it passed, he stared back at Dyer.  He looked at his hands, frowning.  They looked unfamiliar somehow.

“Better?”

“I-”  He paused.  What had he been doing?  Playing blackjack, yes, but before that?  He squinted.  He remembered coming to Reno, but he remembered coming alone, his scuffed red heels on the dirty airport carpet, luggage rolling behind him, a red suitcase to match his shoes.  He had been invited here, a special invitation by Madame Rouge herself.

“Another hand?”

“Alright,” he said, more obliging than interested in another hand.  He felt out of sorts and confused.

“An ace.  Always a good way to begin.”

Wallace looked down at the ace staring up at him.  Beneath was a seven.  Eighteen.  Stay.

Dyer turned over his cards.  Sixteen.  Wallace smiled.

“Dealer hits.”

A four.  Twenty.  Shit.

Again, the rush of sensation as his mind was invaded and some invisible hand filed through his thoughts and memories, extracting some, inserting others.  He didn’t realize he’d bent his head to the table until he was raising it again, tossing hair that wasn’t there over his shoulder.  He crossed his legs, one bent sharply over the other knee.  He swung his foot, surprised he didn’t feel a heel dangling from his toes.

“Feeling well, sir?”

“Sir?” he asked incredulous.  The whole reason he’d come to The Lucky Eye was to leave those days behind, when his small-town neighbors had scorned him for wearing polish on his fingers and stockings on his legs.  He had been a pariah in that town, and had been delighted when he came home to find a personal letter from Madame Rouge awaiting him, inviting him to the casino.  A permanent room, she had promised, and he had come, ready to give up everything before so that he could live the life he had chosen.

Elsewhere in the casino, a wispy apparition crept closer, seeing the body that was claiming it.  For this shapeless form, it was remembering things it had never experienced, friends that wandered the halls of the casino while it played blackjack with an odd-looking man with a mustache.  It felt its own memories filling this body as it recalled new memories of its own.  It gasped, delighted.  It knew what was happening – the trade was being made.  The Lucky Eye was coming back to life.

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