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The lights outside the casino are blinding, illuminating the desert around it as you approach, luring you closer like a hypnotist’s tricks. The name, bright and bold, is clear to all who wander past this little area in the middle of nowhere, but you do not need to read it. The signs illuminated are brilliant, like nothing else you’ve seen, and before you know it you have strolled through the streets and made your way to the legendary casino. There are so many stories you’ve heard about this place: some good, some bad (all secondhand, all distorted, all decidedly off ).
You ignore the shiver down your spine as the bouncer stares you down with green eyes and a frown hidden behind a gas mask. He lets you in, though, so you make your way inside and ignore the stories you’ve heard of a Warden that speak of a man just like this one (stone cold and cruel beneath his mask, hardened by his duty; blood dripping down his front as he walks, followed by the screams of a man he once seemed to love).
A man stands on a field, white headband holding his hair back as he holds a ball in his hands. The image is shown on a dozen televisions clustered together in a small corner of the casino surrounded by flashing screens that boil with letters and numbers, showing odds that are ever changing. Employees encourage you to “play the over—you got it, you got it” or “go with the under, nothin’s gonna happen,” each wearing the same wide grin, brimming with more excitement than you ever think you have felt in your life. (you look back at the man on the glowing screens. he stands alone, silent, still. he should be alive, energetic, fiery, anything other than the statue on the screen. what did they do to him? the game never starts. the field never fills. he just stands there, silent and solitary. you look away)
If you speak to the right people and grease the correct palms with just enough cash, there is a chance to play this fabled game. Nobody tells you the rules, but you persevere anyways because that’s all you know how to do—and why shouldn’t you? You came to this place to play, after all! (the rules are consistent and the game always looks the same, but it’s like that card game that children play where after every round the winner changes a rule and doesn’t tell a soul. you can’t explain the rules to any newcomers either, after all that’s breaking a rule, and you wouldn't dare chance that).
It’s better not to try in the end, because every broken rule leads to a fine, and every fine comes with a higher cost (there is no way to win, not that you would ever think to ask).
You turn away, brushing through the crowd that has formed and watches the man on the screen. Supposedly, there is a bar somewhere within this mess and your sights are set on finding it.
There is no legal drinking age in Las Nevadas. It was formed on the basis of freedom, after all, as all the adverts tell you. (Freedom in name only. You are free to sell your soul to the house, free to waste your days away doing all it is you never wanted to do, free to numb your brain with drugs and booze, all just so long as you can pay the price. It is never free. You seek it anyways.)
There is something in the corners that flickers when you try and face it head-on (it’s just the haze of drunken binging over your vision, combining with the mental anguish and exhaustion coursing through your system, nothing to worry about at all).
It is orange and purple and green and your eyes refuse to focus on it. It's surely just another slot machine. (The shapes were rounded, separate, almost human-like, if not for the colors and the way they seemed distinctly off. They were nothing like a boxy machine. They looked like a fallen star and an ancient being and the sad, lonely fox you fed one day when you saw it lying next to the road). It glows softly as you try and focus to make out what it is, and your eyes droop ever lower before your head tilts forward and slams into the bar.
Sliding you another drink to add to the empty glasses that sit next to you, the barkeep winces slightly. He seems far too kind for this job, golden skin glimmering beneath the shadowed lights. You think you might’ve seen him out in town, walking around followed by a toddler that looks so similar to him. His eyes (emerald and filled with pain every time they meet your own) are softer than any your slipping mind recalls. You try and thank him, but the only words that come out are slurred beyond comprehension. He gives you a glass of water and a look of pity. The world goes black again; this time, though, he catches your head before it hits the counter. (You would thank him if you were anything near aware. Instead, he sighs and leaves you there. He is so so tired. He will not leave.)
You stand from the barstool you haven’t left in hours and trip on nothing, as a dark tendril uncurls from around your ankle before slipping into the shadows under the bar. (You have been sitting for hours after all, and had barely any food, no wonder your blood all rushed to your head and made you weak. There is an empty chair next to the dealer, go and take a seat next to him—just to return to your bearings).
The man in the seat next to where you just were groans, his beard wild and his white dress shirt wrinkled under old-fashioned suspenders. He says something to the person behind the counter, gesturing at your retreating form, but you cannot hear a word, much less understand what you might hear. (All the same, there is a desperation to his movements, frantic in a way that should inspire the same in you. At one point, he might've saved you, but now it is too late. His eyes shine with grief as the bartender waves him off and you walk away. It is more human than anything you have seen tonight. You do not meet his eyes. You do not see it.)
Cards jumping from hand to hand capture your gaze, the showman’s gold tooth flashing as he grins at you, smiling none-to-nicely when it takes you a moment to respond to his call for players. You walk over anyways, eyes darting away from the dancing suits, to the frankly enormous sum left on the table, all up for grabs if you still recall your grandmother’s teachings correctly. That amount of money would be useful, some part of you registers (still though, even it cannot recall what exactly you would use it for other than trying out a few more of the games on the floor here. Is there more than that which exists here? You cannot recall. Surely not).
It can’t hurt to play a game, this man seems honest (his hands are fast and seem to disappear in moments that your mind can’t quite register, too caught up in the shimmering on the table, the fluid movement of the cards, the confidence in his voice as he cries out lies and empty promises to a room that seems frozen around him).
Golden feathers frame him from behind making him look like something from a fresco (like the angel he pretends to be, instead of the devil in his heart); something holy and righteous and just. Someone you can trust, who is on your side despite it all (he is never on your side, knife at your throat, sword aimed at your back; he is greed and gluttony and sin and evil all rolled up into one.)
“C’mon pal,” he says (the ink is pooled around your feet, is in his eyes, is at your throat, is all you see as his voice echoes around you, and as you shake his hand). “Let’s make a deal.”
(He is the owner of this place, some part of you recognizes. Why would you
not
trust him?)