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Flash Fiction Challenge -Gamblers Paradise

The prompts: Ghost Story / Casino / Colored Contact Lenses

The air was too high. It might be a hundred and twenty in the shade outside, but it was positively frigid in this place. Her short-skirt and sleeveless top were in no way adequate for this icy onslaught. It made her exposed skin tingle, especially her legs, though that may have had more to do with her precarious perch atop a pair of fifteen minute heels. She thought if she let out a puff of breath, she might very well be able to see it. At least, she might if the toxic cigarette fog weren’t so thick.

“Wow, this place is packed,” Casey said behind her in an uncharacteristically chipper voice.

Miranda committed her whole face to a frown that was in danger of cracking, if not her face, certainly her foundation. This place was a lot of things, packed wasn’t one of them. It was filthy and lit only by the faintest flickering lights, but she could plainly see an empty slots floor. Only the jangling whir and auditory glitter suggested otherwise. She spun around, catching Casey’s eyes, something she immediately regretted. They were glowing a brilliant shade of white, reminiscent of a white shirt under black lights, punctuated by the little black dots of her pupils.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?”

Lisa and Abbey, the other two in their casino hopping party, also turned to look at her. Both pulled faces as though a sack of garbage had been dropped on Casey’s head.

“Oh,” Casey chirped, “Are they glowing? It’s my new contact lenses, they’re supposed to make my eyes more blue and also glow under black lights. Fun, right? Come on, let’s go, I want to check this place out, it looks great.”

Before Miranda could ask her about the place being packed or what she thought was great about it, Casey brushed past her and began weaving around a completely vacant slot floor. Even pausing and holding her hand out at one point.

“How much has she had to drink today?” Abbey asked.

Lisa gave a toothy smile dripping with guilt. “We may have had a couple of shots.”

Abbey groaned. “You know she’s a cheap date.”

“We’d better catch up,” Miranda said. “I don’t want to spend any more time here than we have to.”

Lisa wrinkled her nose. “It is pretty gross in here.”

The three of them walked out amongst the slots. Casey had already disappeared in the maze of color and noise. So far on their trek, they had entered some very empty places, but none quite like this. Usually, there was at least the odd chain-smoker alternating between puffs and hits from an oxygen tank while intently poking away at the machine. All she saw here were empty chairs and machines happily carrying on by themselves.

They rounded a corner and found Casey standing in front of a huge machine with a big digital display at the top flashing $5.00 per play. One Million Jackpot! Her eyes were as bright as ever. A chill ran up Miranda’s spine. This was what they’d come for. Every casino seemed to have one like it. Their game for the weekend was to find one in every casino they came to, placing one bet each. All they had to do now was stuff a few dollars into the machine hit the button and they could go.

“Did you see this weird screen?” Abbey asked.

Miranda turned her head. It was a mirror image of the casino, except that in the mirror, the floor was full of people. No, not quite people. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and if her hair hadn’t been so well stabilized with product, it would have done as well. It couldn’t have been a mirror. She didn’t see herself.

“What am I looking at?” Miranda asked.

“I like this place,” Casey said. “We should stay.”

At that moment, Miranda, and presumably Abbey and Lisa realized they were, in fact, looking at a mirror but only Casey had a reflection. Miranda held a shaking hand to her mouth as she drew in a sharp breath that stuck in her chest, refusing to leave.

“We should just go,” Abbey said in a strangled voice.

“Yes. Now,” Lisa breathed.

“But this place is great,” Casey said.

Her voice hadn’t come from where she was standing, in fact she wasn’t standing there anymore. The voice came from the mirror itself. Casey’s face suddenly seemed bonier, she had a gaunt unfed look about her, rather, the reflection that looked like Casey did. Then, the reflection reached out, pushing its hand into the glass and through, losing its flesh, revealing pale, but very real bones.

Perhaps it was because there were three of them, and they were all doing it, the air in her chest finally broke free to a bone-rattling volume. The half-formed faces in the mirror looked up at them. Only, they weren’t on the other side of the mirror anymore. They were all around, sitting at the slots. All of their eyes glowed the same as Casey’s. None of them spoke a single word, yet the cold thought came into Miranda’s head, Don’t leave.

Running in heels is a bad idea at any time, but horribly twisted ankles and scraped knees seemed a fair price as all three of them spun around and charged through the crowd of semi-substantial figures with glowing eyes boring holes into them. The three of them burst through the doors and into the stifling desert heat simultaneously. Tears were running down Miranda’s face, making a hideous mess of her makeup.

“Where have you three been?” A voice shouted from up the street. “You left me!” It was Casey, striding toward them.

Miranda’s heart thumped hard. The woman inside hadn’t been Casey. She looked back up at the casino they’d just left. There wasn’t one. It was a tall wooden wall with a bland sign reading gamblers paradise – coming soon.

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A Real Ending – Thoughts on Terry Pratchett’s last Novel

Today on my commute home I finished Terry Pratchett’s final book, The Shepard’s Crown. As it happens, this is only the 3rd one of his books I’ve read (or listened to as the case is).

Uh, Dave?

Yes?

You claim to be a fantasy writer and you’ve only read 3 of Terry Pratchett’s books?

Uh, yeah, I’m ashamed to say that yes, just the 3, and I listened to them on Audiobook, actually. To put a slightly finer point on my deep and utter failure as a human being, I only just picked one up by random accident. My wife just happened to go out and grab a random audio book and loaded it up on my iPod a couple of weeks ago.

Really though, I don’t want to talk about how I somehow made it nearly to the age of 40 without ever having picked up one of his books. What I really want to talk about is the book itself. I suppose it would have been easy enough to type a paragraph into Goodreads, but when I finished this book it demanded that I do more, say more. As you’ll see shortly I didn’t, but I wanted to say slightly more than a routine review might cover anyhow.

The Shepard’s crown is among dozens set in the Diskworld universe. It’s part of the Tiffany Aching series. I think it’s important to note that not only did I not know it was his final book when I started reading it, I wasn’t really aware that he very probably knew it was his last book. From the very outset, the book has a much more somber tone than the previous one in that series. I felt vaguely sad and reflective from the get-go. A key character dies very early in the book. It’s not a violent death, but the sort of death that perhaps any one of us might hope for. At home, after a good long life and with friends to mourn our passing. It’s written in such a way as to be just a departure to a new land rather than anything particularly final, though it’s that too.

The theme of dying and new beginnings, and in particular, new beginnings someone might not be around to see, is present throughout. It’s a slightly melancholy undertone across the whole thing, but far from ruining the story, it gives it emotional punch without being overdone. The end of the book basically gets to the point of: Life goes on, but without you and someone else will be there in your place and while that’ll be different, it’s okay. In a lot of ways, I felt that this was a commentary on Pratchett’s own departure. I mean, even after death he’s not only spinning quite a lovely yarn to readers, but also inspiring writers. That said, at no point did the book have a ‘feel sorry for me’ vibe, it was more of a, this is how it is and nobody likes it, but that’s the way of things so let’s get on with it.

While it’s true that the book isn’t quite as polished as the previous in the series, and there are a few clear loose ends, it’s every bit as good. One of the key items I was expecting to be wrapped up wasn’t, but I also wasn’t surprised to find that Neil Gaiman commented on this specifically, and that comment can be found on Wikipedia. When you run short on time, sometimes things get missed out. However, if I don’t read another one of his books, I still feel sufficiently satisfied that a slightly uneven final work can be forgiven. After all, even with some awkward transitions and a small missing element at the end, it’s still a much finer piece of work than so many other books you might compare it to.

For me, what makes this book all the sadder is that it marks the ending for a truly remarkable writer. I heard about his passing last year, but I didn’t really realize what that mean to the world. I do now and I’m not happy about it. Not at all. I feel both smarter and inspired to be a better writer after just having listened to what he’d written.

In the end though it’s an extremely fitting final book. It may be that this is why his estate has said they won’t be publishing any posthumous works, after all, why would you continue to pile more stuff on the ice-cream once the cherry has been placed?

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The best cup of coffee ever, ever.

Tonight I went out on a tourist walk with some former coworkers and friends. It was a really good time. Catching up with folks over good times and a good story is always worth going out for. Unfortunately, as these things go, you also have to catch up on any of the bad news that hasn’t quite cycled through. While I was able to laugh heartily about the one time one of my direct reports told me my new haircut made me look like Fred Flintstone, and the other time we interviewed ‘banana guy’ and also the time a bunch of coworkers dressed up as their favorite asshole for Halloween (incidentally all of them dressed like me, including me, as it turns out), I also got a bit of rather unpleasant news. It’s the sort of news you get more frequently as you get older, it seems, even for a young person like me.

Some years ago now I was a programmer/analyst, much as I am now, and I worked with another Dave. He was one of the first people I interacted with at the job when I first started. He, more than anybody, tried to help me become comfortable with the new job, even though he was quite ready to move on himself. We spent that first summer I worked at Fish and Game heading out to the back parking lot at lunch with some of the other IT guys around the building to play blue-grass music. It was excellent. Some years later, after he’d moved to Hawaii, Dave sent me a care-package from Kauai. Among other things, That care package contained about a half pound of coffee that had been grown in someone’s back yard and roasted in a popcorn popper. Hands-down, it was the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had and all other cups of coffee are measured against it’s memory. That, however, is not the most memorable thing he gave me. Turns out, the most impressive thing he gave me was a story, and it’s a story I want to relate, because it’s funny, and now he’s no longer around to share it himself.

Dave had only just gotten out of the US Coast Guard, and was heading across the desert southwest with the intention of reaching the grand canyon where he’d managed to land a job as a ranger. Being sometime in the late 80’s, the world was a slightly different place than it is today, but not so much different. There were no cell phones and if you were off on the side of a road by yourself, you really were by yourself. As a fairly young person, Dave had no money, and as people do when they’re broke, he was hitchhiking. He had is backpack containing a few changes of clothes and a few sundries. The only other thing he had was a sign reading, Grand Canyon or bust, or something very similar.

Standing on the dusty side of the road with his backpack, sign, and thumb out, the occasional car swished past. Finally, a boat of a car, something like an old Ford Galaxy or similar, pulled over. Dave jogged up to the car and looked into the window to find a heavy man with a pinched face and a sizable gut sitting behind the wheel.

“Where you headed?” He asked.

“Grand Canyon,” Dave said.

The man grunted. “You alone?”

“Yeah, it’s just me.”

“Get in.”

Dave thought this seemed like it might not be the best idea, but he needed a ride and here this guy was. So, he got in and they started down the road. The driver didn’t say much and they continued on a rather uncomfortable silence developed. After a few minutes, Dave noticed that the handle of the car was not only broken, it was completely non-functional. Not long after this observation, the man behind the wheel casually reached under his seat and produced a rather heavy and impressive handgun, probably a .45. Then, as one does with handguns, pointed it at Dave.
“Give me your money,” he said.

“I don’t have any money,” Dave said. “That’s why I’m hitch-hiking.”

“Hitch-hikers always have money. Empty your backpack.”

Dave leaned down and started pulling his things out of his bag. Of course, there was nothing of interest. Finally, the man pulled over and got out. Once again, Dave looked at the totally non-functional door handle. I’m going to die, he thought, as the man walked around to the back of the car, where he fiddled around for a few minutes. The man came around the car with his gun at the ready and threw open the door.

“Get out.”

Dave grabbed his things and dived on to the side of the road. The man got back into his car and pulled off. The license plate had been flipped down so that Dave couldn’t read it. So, sitting on the side of the road with the contents of his backpack mostly everywhere, Dave set his sign back up. As he put his backpack back together another car stopped.

Not thinking clearly about what had just happened, Dave climbed into the new car and shut the door. A few moments passed, and the new driver looked at Dave.

“Hey, you doing okay?” he asked.

“No, actually,” Dave said, then he relayed the events from just a few minutes before.

When he was done, the new guy looked at Dave for a second. “Man. That really happened didn’t it?”

“Yeah, it did.”

Then, the new driver reached under his seat. This was too much for Dave. As he watched the man reach down, he didn’t know what to think. The driver retrieved a bag of weed and handed it to Dave. “Here,” he said, “I think you need this more than I do.”

Dave let out a huge sigh of relief. The rest of the trip went just fine. Dave and the new driver got on just fine, eventually stopping at a bar for a drink and reportedly smoking all of the weed and even reaching the grand-canyon together.

I know I haven’t done justice to this story. He told it far better. There were pauses in the right places and heightened tension where it needed to be. The main point is that the story stuck with me because it’s the sort of thing you can’t make up, and however unflattering it may be, every time I think about Dave, I think about that story.

So, for the second time this year I’m finding myself looking at another loss. Even though he passed away more than a year ago, I’m only just now hearing about it and thinking about what a sad thing that was, but it’s life, isn’t it. The best I can do now is just say. ‘Thanks, Dave. Thanks for the coffee and the stories. You were a hell of a guy, sometimes annoying, but not more than anyone else and overall, you were good people. You’ll be missed.’