Go to this casino with this player’s club card and search for this particular slot machine, I was told. 5 cents a line. 15 cents if I played all three lines at once. Found the machine at the far back where a former Hollywood star was holding court and gamblers chain smoked themselves into a stupor.
The machines and the card is not rigged. I’ll have the same odds as everyone else, I was told. But the machine woke under my touch and defied its programming to give me high wins with every pull. A 1 credit bet returned 60 credits. A 3 credit bet returned 800 credits. Despite the machine’s lack of sound, I quickly had everyone’s attention.
“You’re playing my machine.” I wondered why he reminded me of Alec Baldwin. “Those are my winnings you’re stealing.” To everyone else, he was only kidding. But I wasn’t enthralled by him. I heard clearly the threat he promised.
Before I could respond, an angry presence came up behind me. “GamblING! Is a siN! Against the L…awD!” The other gamblers shrunk in their seats but did not leave the area. The actor clasped his hands and nodded in submission.
Where the faded actor wore a black suit. The preacher wore a time stained white suit. No bleach would ever remove that dingy hue from his clothes. A plain silver ring hung loosely on a finger. No other jewelry adorned him. But his eyes betrayed his nature. Sparks of unnatural light shone through his pupils, made even more dramatic by the black iris of his eyes.
“I’ll keep that in mind should I encounter any of his followers. Remind them gently about their freewill choice to be here. And such.” Another pull. Another small jackpot.
“You! Are a grievous sinna’! And are defying… the worD… of GawD!” The preacher raised his hand as a testament against me. I continued to play the machine without giving him a response.
“Listen.” The actor leaned over the machine in an attempt to take a position of domination over me. “You’re new here, so I’ll try to help you out. You don’t belong here. This.. corner… of the casino is special. We’re trying to help gambling addicts here, and you winning with every pull is only making things worse.”
I know this corner is special. That’s why the casino owner called for me and sent me here. Gamblers are seen coming into this corner, and never leaving. Their cards track their winnings and their deposits. Once their balance is cleaned out, they stop. But the balance isn’t being used up in the machines, it’s being transferred to one particular card. But the person that card is registered to is dead. Died in his seat at the slot machine. The slot machine I’m sitting at.
“Listen. You’ve just met me, so I’ll try to help you out. You don’t own me nor this machine. There are no gambling addict meetings on the floor of a casino. What kind of fool do you think I am?”
“YIELD! To the L’ord, and HE will grant you forgiveness for your audacity. Whore. Yield, or the fires of Hell will consume you where you sit!” The preacher brought his hand down sharply but stopped an inch away from touching me. I could feel the heat in his hand. He wasn’t bluffing about fire.
“Hey, Preacher-man. Not at this chair. Lemme get her to another chair, but not this one.” The actor tried to slap the preacher’s hand away but was singed on contact. I noted the effect but said nothing.
“NO UNCLEAN WHORE WILL HAVE POWER OVER ME!” I stifled a yawn at his outburst. I did have a problem to deal with. Like most cheap ass, tight margin casinos, this one wasn’t up to fire code. An overenthusiastic flame would burn up the entire building in minutes. I could not fight fire with fire. Not here.
The preacher’s hand jerked forward and gripped my still healing shoulder with enthusiasm. I winced noticeably at the sharp pain of unhealed bones grinding against each other. The preacher interpreted that as direct harm caused by him and gloated. “Your corpse shall be a warning to the heathen and the idolater. Only those that yield to the mighty hand of God shall be spared!”
Many of those gamblers that were laughing at stale jokes just minutes earlier were now on their feet. They wanted to flee, but something kept them from abandoning the machines entirely. The actor was not enjoying the preacher’s show. “Fine. Torch her ass and be done with it. As long as she’s alive, I can’t pull the winnings off her card anyway.”
So that’s why the bodies disappeared. Preacher would kill them and reduce them to ash. Actor would bleed the card dry and then destroy that as well. “Hell is an empty threat. Your breath is more damaging than any spurts you can fart out.” I brushed the preacher’s unnaturally hot hand off my shoulder. The pain of the mistreated joint was still there, but I had become used to it again.
As expected, the preacher became enraged by my dismissal. As the actor began yelling at him to calm down, the preacher revealed his infernal nature. The fire in his eyes poured out from behind the false globes and poured over him. He became an animated burning corpse. I could smell eau de sulphur coming off of him. It was hard not to laugh. Not often I find someone that actually sold their soul to a devil in exchange for power. “HELL OPENS FOR YOU AND YOU SHALL SWALLOW IT IN FULL!”
I stood up calmly and faced him. I had to put out his flames quickly or he would set the casino on fire. “Aww, you didn’t call me a whore this time. And I thought I was special.” I reached out with both hands and grabbed his flames. “Here. Let me show you a trick a djinn taught me.” Fire requires three things to burn. Fuel, oxygen, and heat. Even demonic flame obeys this principle. But djinn fire, doesn’t. Djinn fire can burn in freezing temperatures, does not require oxygen to continue, and can be said to not even require fuel as what keeps a djinn going is merely the desire to continue. So where the demonic preacher needs heat and air to increase himself, the djinn can function in a vacuum.
I changed form into such a djinn. The preacher exclaimed a triumph as he thought he could just subsume my flame into his own. But my fire absorbed heat, weakening him. Pulling him into my embrace, I shifted form again into an entwining pillar of cold smoke. No heat. No oxygen. The demonic preacher gasped and tried to burn me away to escape. He only used up his own reserves that much faster.
Not even a minute had passed from the preacher’s inflammation when his unconscious and cold human body fell to the floor. The back corner’s air temperature was now so cold, the heater had begun cycling in response. I returned to my Weaver self and stood over the fallen preacher. Only now did I note that I never felt anything living in him. He was the means by which the gamblers were being disposed of, but not what held them bound.
“You bitch! You ruined everything!” The actor had made an attacking jump off the machines in a very well launched arc. But I was bored of dramatic fight scenes so once I knew his angle of attack, I just placed my fist in the way. His jaw complained sharply about the lack of stunt-doubles, but his body surrendered to my directorship of the scene and crumpled on top of the inert preacher.
Nothing was burnt. The mystery of the disappearing gamblers was solved. No one else was hurt. And oh, hello casino guards. “Took you guys long enough!” I was going to complain further about their inability to patrol this area when I recognized two very nervous, very guilty faces in the eight-man team. “I think the owner needs to take a look at this.”
“No. You need to come with us and answer for this damage you have caused! The reputation of the casino has been damaged, but now we have the perpetrator and can get this cleared up!” I know they meant me.
“Yes. In fact, it’s a good thing I used his signalling device to call him over. Let’s just wait right here for a few minutes. Those two aren’t going anywhere.”
The two nervous guards began pressing their team leader to immediately remove me from the scene. The team leader is showing deep conflict on his face, making me wonder just how far had the corruption gone. Just as the team leader surrenders to fear and reaches for me, the owner comes around the corner.
“What the hell! Call paramedics! Why are there two patrons on the floor! Why do I smell smoke? You! Unhand her! She’s my agent and she only answers to me!” The owner walked over the bodies and sniffed around looking for the source of the fading scent of smoke. The team leader did not release me but started to argue about how suspicious it was that I was here when something of ill repute had happened.
The owner came to me and personally removed the team leader’s hand from my wrist. “What are they trying to hide from me by removing you?”
“That two of the members of this particular detail were adoring sycophants to the black suited guy, and that they probably have been scrubbing security video of this area to hide their, and others, membership in this adoring crowd, and that your entire security methods have been compromised and you need to bring in other outside teams to clean up what is going to be a very, very, messy infection among your staff. The black suited guy has charmed the fuck out of gamblers and that’s why you see them come in and stay. The white suited guy has demonic fire abilities that reduces bodies to ashes, and I question if he is still living or if he is a shell used by something else. You’ll want to keep an eye on him, he’s the reason there are no bodies around. Oh. And one of your machines is malfunctioning. It gave me jackpots on every pull.”
The owner retrieved my player’s card from the errant machine and handed it to me. “No, I had the system programmed to do that for you. Easier on the books if you won your fee instead of being outright paid a fee. As far as the tax board is concerned, you did this pro bono for me and you have my deepest gratitude.” I rolled my eyes as I took the card. This is going to be another mess to sort out.”
Together we walked to the front of the casino. On the way, the owner was calling in some favors from other casino owners to borrow security teams. Tight-wad motherfucker. He has a serious breach in his management and he’s going to patch it up with someone else’s problems. I looked at the card. What a liar gives, a liar can take away.
I stop at a card redemption machine and enter my player’s club card. The owner doesn’t realize I’m not dogging him until after the machine has printed out a cash voucher for my hard earned winnings. He complains, but stop when I mention I was going straight to the bank to deposit the legal tender voucher. “Good thing you have this marked as winnings in the books! If it bounces, there’s less paperwork for the bank to fill out after, but I’m sure they would be glad the regulation board wouldn’t be investigating them for it.” The owner sighs heavily and agrees.
I exit the casino and the dream.