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Death Stakes a Man its Way
by
Ralph Greco
The chip singing from the felt didn’t bother me as much as the roulette wheel flying free from its pocket. The entire casino now ‘time-locked’ as I merely sat where I was, sipped my weak screwdriver and tried to keep my tired pale face as calm as possible. This was quite a display even for them: cards dancing to the ceiling; slot machines spitting coins yards from their maws; dice ricocheting off every surface…not to mention past my head! All quite amazing if I hadn’t seen it before from the three creatures hovering across the green and gold carpet to me then.
“You are overdue,” the one in the middle bellowed.
It bent its head to shake a shard of nighttime from the blackness of it’s hood. As always, there was a hollow inward ‘whoosh whoosh’ behind them, as all light, sound and a good amount of casino debris sucked into the misty gray pit that eternally surrounded this trio.
“I’m ona roll fellas,” I defended, sipping. It was all I could to do keep my hand steady and not spill the screwdriver all over my new black jeans.
“You are overdue,” the middle one repeated and together they took another glide towards me.
Now I am as brave as the next guy, I am! I have lived (if you can call it living) long enough to see some really scary shit, but in any one man’s lifetime he should face only one reaper! Maybe there are a few times that death appears, ready to do his business and we manage to crawl away from an accident or the bullet just grazes our skull. But in the end most of us only ever experience that final clutch from one hooded guy. Here were the three of them and not only had I been unlucky enough to learn that there were indeed three, (it is a big world after all, event these dudes of death can’t be everywhere somebody is dying) I had also learned how these death-dealing brothers loved to gamble!
I reached into my pocket to produce the pitiful handful of chips I had left. It was a chalky rainbow of colors but only added to three hundred and forty dollars.
“Like I said, I am on a roll,” I coughed. “It’s just that I’m just startin’ on it.”
Never try humor where death is concerned.
The trio took another glide as the mayhem in the casino stopped and I felt that familiar tug of manure- smelling wind. This is exactly how it had happened a hundred and fifty years ago when I had first been ‘called’. One of these three, (I don’t really know which one and didn’t much care) appeared after I fell from a horse and rammed my head into a rather nasty pile of stones on my father’s farm. I smelled that wind as I looked up into the blackness of the reaper’s face and his bony hand shook to me. It was then that I had stuttered an offer to save my skin.
An offer that had saved me my life, but had left me a slave these many years since.
“You are overdue,” the middle one repeated and produced a skeleton hand from under his wide sleeve.
I closed my eyes, braced myself; you can only die once, but it had been a long time coming for me. All three were here, this was going to be a big death I was sure! I felt that sharp chill-blade digit poke the middle of my chest as my heart stopped, my mind screamed and then:
“Move over to Black-Jack,” the reaper announced.
I opened my eyes as the sounds and smells of the casino came to me fully: no flying dice; the roulette wheels “chit-chit-chitting” back in their places. Drink still in hand, I gulped the rest and got up from the table, my measly three hundred dollars of chalky chips sweating in my ice-cold palm.
Cards, shit! That was what had got me in this mess in the first place. If I hadn’t been so good a poker player back on the farm I never would have coughed: “Cut ya for it.” to the reaper as I lay sprawling on my back, the life rushing out of my twenty-two year old body. Reapers are great at seeing possibilities and from that day onward, in saloons, river-boats and now from Monaco to Las Vegas, I had been their man, the only human on this musty crazy dust ball that they saw fit to stake. Lots of people make deals with their last breaths, the reaper brothers seemed to have felt I was their guy to seriously gamble for them in places they couldn’t do so.
Should I be flattered or damned?
But Jesus, I thought, “Black-Jack”? That really wasn’t my best game, though here in The Monte Carlo tonight I wasn’t showing anybody my best game.
But, hell, I had to admit it. Black was their color
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© Greco, 2006
Ralph Greco is an internationally published author of short stories, poems, one-act plays and songs. His pieces have appeared on-line, on buttons, coffee-can lables, in major market and in small press.