Hello nobody in particular, the sad blogger took interest in the concept of, "a Tale of Steve" and was kind enough to write his own kick ass version of it. I figured it deserved better than my email inbox, enjoy!
My first reaction to our unheralded introduction was jealousy. Pure, unabashed jealousy. To be as suave as him, to be a fraction of what he was.
People would worship me.
He appeared as I stared through the endless dark void beyond my feet. I knew that somewhere far below was a cold, poured-concrete escape. They weren’t going to catch me now, not alive anyways. The wail of approaching sirens was pleasing in a way. To know that after all the hell they had put me through, all the effort they had put into their chase would end in a couple of hours scraping gore and spattered viscera off the sidewalk. The thought, however, was abruptly interrupted by a voice that grated with decades of chain smoking in dark and unsavory places.
“Now why would you go and do a stupid thing like that, son?”
I turned with a start, squinting into the shadows of the ducts and pipes, and out of the darkness stepped the devil.
I had never in my life seen this man before, yet his face and his voice performed competitive breaststrokes in my memories. There was no doubting who and what he was. His face was lean and beaming with youth, but also bore a tiredness that was physically disquieting. It was in his eyes. Glinting with intelligence and clouded with knowledge. I couldn’t have made a guess at his age as he emerged further from the shadows. His tall, slender body moved with graceful confidence but obvious effort and the walking stick held nimbly between his black-gloved fingers could have been for…well, walking or purely decoration. The stick itself was of a shocking substance, blacker even than the urban maw now yawning open behind me. It couldn’t have been thicker than maybe two inches, yet I felt as though I stared a thousand feet down into its smoky core before noticing the veins of flame licking their way upwards, as if trying to escape their otherworldly prison.
But even given the confounding rod he carried with him, my gaze could not help returning to those eyes.
He moved casually and deliberately toward me, “Oh don’t let me interrupt your little ritual, there. Rather windy out tonight, don’t you think?”
I wanted desperately to get it over with but my legs forgot our current objective and took a step down towards the beautiful, terrifying man. The, “Holy shit,” had formed in my mind but decided to quiver nervously and silently at the back of my tongue. So feeling somewhat faint and frustrated at my body’s sudden mutiny, I let the echo of, “Holy shit,” bounce around in my head as I watched him approach me. The devil stopped just feet away from me and grimaced, “Mmmm, not quite. Bit too on the nose if you ask me,” then flashed a toothy grin before belching out a thunderous guffaw. I didn’t know what to think about this Lord of the Underworld laughing at his stupid joke like my uncle Bradley at Thanksgiving dinner. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he’d read my mind.
“What do you want?” I blurted impatiently and immediately wished I hadn’t.
“Oh you know,” he drawled while he inspected his cuticles, “just your soul, eternal damnation, endless torture, et cetera.”
His casual demeanor was affecting my confidence.
“Well if it’s my soul you want, why the pointless bush-beating? Why stop me jumping? Slow night in Hell?”
This rewarded me with another of his uncomfortable gales of laughter, “Ahhh, Nick! That is why I’ve always liked you. You get right to the point, right to the heart of the matter. No bullshit. Yes, I supposed it would seem stupid for me to stop you. The answer to your question, however, is simple. It’s the Game”
We stood staring at each other as frustration grew on my face and amusement grew on his. Finally, I couldn’t stand his stupid grin any longer,
“Well? What’s the fucking Game?!”
Another immediate regret as the air became heavy and all the noises of the city disappeared. The grin disappeared also and the intelligence in the devil’s eyes was replaced with passion.
“What is the Game?” he breathed reverently.
“What is the Game?” I heard myself murmur from a mile away.
“The game is what I live for!” he shouted with merriment, “It’s the essence of my being, my one passion! We define each other.”
His veneration was unnerving as he went on, “Without the Game I am nothing and without me it cannot exist. There are only two players of any importance, and before you ask, no, you are not one of them.”
I was still feeling out-of-body and could only watch the titanic game of Connect the Dots going on behind my face before my eyes looked back up at him and I heard myself exclaim, full of awe, “You’re talking about your battle with God!”
“You humans are so quick to define things,” he sighed, clearly annoyed, “Yes, I suppose it’s a battle, but not in the sense of your petty wars with guns and sharp sticks. It is a battle of cunning, like a game of poker and you humans are the chips. Except in this game, the chips are the ones being played. Yes, Todd and I have been at the Game for a long, long time.”
He seemed to sense the confusion about to bubble onto my face, “Humanity has many names for Todd. It all started back when those Bible idiots overheard a conversation between him and one of his angels. You’ll notice they got Gabriel’s name right, but they misheard Todd’s name and have been calling him God ever since.”
“So what should I call you, then? Lucifer? Beelzebub? Satan?”
He winced at the sound of each name. He locked eyes with me and growled, “The first two are curses in the tongue of the angels. I despise those names. The third was over- and misheard in that same conversation with Gabriel. So I supposed if you’re to call me anything, you may use that name.”
Extending his arms in an eloquent bow, he tapped his cane once on the ground and smirked, “My name…is Kevin.”
I was once again tasked with the back-breaking burden of not really knowing how to react. It was difficult to grasp that two of the biggest supernatural beings of our universe had been sensationalized for all these centuries with the wrong names. And because some ancient dopes with pens had misheard a conversation between God…or I guess I mean Todd and an angel?
“So…um…Kevin, where did Belial and Abbadon come from? Are those curses as well? Don’t hit me.”
He turned to me and snorted loudly before his face softened and the snort melted into a warm chuckle, “You know, Nick? You ain’t that bad. Those were names I used to use when we’d play Dungeons and Dragons with the Norse gods. Those guys are some freaks.”
I just nodded.
The devil pulled a cigarette case from his breast pocket and offered one to me before sliding one between his own lips, “So! Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
A flame seemed to almost slide into the tip of his cigarette as it twitched up and down in the corner of his mouth, and before my ever-present shock and confusion could form themselves into a loud, awful outburst, an identical flame appeared at the tip of mine as though the fire had simply been breathed into existence. I watched the powerful exhaust burst from his nostrils and the wispy, jet-black talons of smoke gather above his head as I inhaled my own sweet poison. Black was a theme with this guy, I mused to myself as I let the delicious pollution escape from my lungs, suddenly calm.
With a single deep breath, Kevin’s cigarette burned down to within a hair from his lips and he blew the ash away in an unthinkable cloud of smoke, from which he dramatically stepped a moment later, “Walk with me, Nick.”
This amused me slightly, “Where? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re still on top of a buildi-…”
My reply was cut short as within a flash shorter than a fraction of a second, the devil pulled me into the cloud of smoke, my feet left the ground, and were immediately slammed back into it. The dull hum of downtown night-traffic was replaced with the unmistakable sound of urban hustle-and-bustle: the lunch crowd clamoring from office building to office building, street performers wasting their talents on the apathetic crowds of tourists and joggers, moronic drivers leaning on their horns at whomever they happened to actually notice being as inattentive as they. I squinted up into the midday sky and caught the gleam of sunlight on metal.
“Is that the St. Louis Gateway Arch?” I wheezed.
“You bet!” Kevin cackled and turned toward Market Street, “Walk!”
I leaped to catch up with his long strides as he made his way down Market and into the heart of downtown St. Louis. I noticed, unsurprised this time, that he had no shadow and that as he walked, almost unnoticeable fleur-de-lis of smoke burst from his footprints. If he seemed out of place back on top of that building, his presence was downright impossible here in the carefree, sunlit urban center.
“So, uh, why St. Louis?” I was looking around nervously in case anybody was staring.
Kevin glanced back at me, his face emotionless, “This is my home.”
“Your home?” I was feeling stupid. The cigarette made more sense at the moment. He stopped and turned to arch his brow at me,
“Hell, of course.”
I had always imagined Hell to be a vast landscape of ash and fire, crowded with ominous black mountains, molten rock and thick smoke spewing from great chasms. You know, rivers of flame and magma cascading over endless barren steppes, the landscape covered in rotted-out trees, their skeletal branches extended towards the ash-choked sky as if pleading for rain to drown the forsaken plain.
St. Louis made sense, though.
We resumed our stroll through the city and Kevin launched into his story,
“Long ago, before your people or even the universe you exist in were even suggestions of ideas, Todd and I were the grand architects of creation. We were the force that shaped all things that your people know of and more. Together we wrote worlds, galaxies, universes, and dimensions into the realm of existence. We painted life and death. There was only one law greater than ours: Balance. Everything must follow the law of Balance, even Todd and I. He could not exist without me, or I without he. Our powers negated each other’s. He created life and I created death to fulfill the Balance. When I created dark, he then created light. It was only by our differences that we could hope to satisfy Balance, and it was the absoluteness of those differences that we achieved perfection. Ironically, it was Balance that gave us unlimited power and at the same time enslaved us to each other. Like I said, if Todd created something, I had no choice but to create its opposite. Balance was the true creator of everything; Todd and I were merely tools.
A time came, however, when we finally defied the one rule that governed us. I suppose it was my fault. After several hundred million years of experimenting with life and death on the planet you call Earth, Todd came up with the idea of humans. He liked to design various vessels for his more complex creations. When he set himself on these smaller projects, it gave me time to come up with new masterpieces. So during that particular stretch of downtime, I set to work on my seminal creation. At almost the same time that Todd proudly released Adam and Steve into the worl-”
“Wait a second! Adam and Steve?”
“Oh yes that half-witted argument that Hate Extremists have been yelling for decades is complete shit. We weren’t bestowed with any sort of sexual tendencies or inclinations. That was actually my idea,” he winked at me, “No, Todd knew he wanted his first human to have a companion, much like he and I were partners, but he never considered making them different from each other. Adam and Steve were essentially identical copies of Todd. He didn’t actually come up with women for another two-hundred years. That was when I came up with love and Todd created ha-”
“WAIT A SECOND! YOU came up with LOVE?”
Kevin smiled that odd soft smile again and explained,
“Oh yes, not quite the devil I’ve been made out to be. Todd designed biological reproduction back when we were playing with mammals, but because he’d imparted humans with a higher intellect, reason, and the ability to make decisions, we couldn’t get the first batch of men and women to mate intuitively. So I came up with lust, but Todd didn’t want to have to create disgust. He said it was ‘too primitive’ and contradicted the point of humans in the first place. So I designed love to act as an emotional concept that was more complex than the simple reactionary, monkey-see-monkey-want properties of lust and Todd got to design hatred. He agreed that it gave the humans more emotional freedom and they wouldn’t be slaves to it. Of course, I ended up building lust into love, because--and I’m sure you’ll back me up on this one--lust rules.”
I didn’t know what to say again.
“ANYHOW! Shortly after Todd introduced his first attempt at humans, I proudly unveiled my grandest of designs. That was when I created Hell.”
I perked up excitedly; glad to be on the same page for once, “You mean St. Louis!”
Kevin chuckled and patted me lightly on the head,
“Not quite yet. I only moved Hell to St. Louis in the past century. In the beginning it was just a thought. Hell was an intangible nightmare, and in creating it, Todd was forced to create Heaven, the eternal daydream. Heaven and Hell were our crowning achievements and yet our most loathsome creations. They freed us from our slavery to each other, but clipped our wings at the same time. Our final designs killed Balance.”
I walked and listened, dumbfounded by the devil’s tale.
“But I don’t understand how the creation of concepts like Heaven and Hell could have killed something that was already just concept itself.”
Kevin’s hard eyes gave me a pitying look, “Oh, Nick, you’re a naïve boy. Balance was no concept. It was the single most important aspect of existence. Before, if something was created that did not fulfill Balance, it would eventually destroy itself. When we created Heaven and Hell, we integrated within them the ability to interpret and defy the law of Balance. I’ll simplify it for you. Before Heaven and Hell, if a human died, his body would return to the earth and the energy that had given him life, what some of you humans call a soul, would return to the universe, maintaining the Balance in existence. If you think of a scale, the weight of death would even out the weight caused by life. But the introduction of Heaven and Hell created a bypass of sorts around that scale. Heaven would claim the energy from a human who had lived a life that pleased Todd and Hell would claim the energy from humans that lived according to my ideals. As our respective creations grew, Balance began to die out, leaving Todd and I with only a fraction of our original powers. Everything we tried to create would destroy itself. Soon everything else in existence started to decay and crumble without Balance. Galaxies imploded, universes ripped themselves apart, and dimensions collided violently. Our final creation and the death of Balance gave birth to Chaos. Chaos is now the lawless ruler of existence and it is slowly obliterating everything.”
I waited for him to keep going. He was looking at me like he was done. He couldn’t be done. There had to be more to the story. Who ends a story with the announcement that everything is being obliterated? Panic began to set in. All I could manage was:
“So without Balance and everything is obliterated then how without do we what happens how long do we have? HOW LONG DO WE HAVE?!”
I had long ago forgotten the cigarette hanging limply from my mortified mouth, smouldering against my chin. Kevin reached forward and freed me from the pain and embarrassment I wasn’t even feeling.
“Todd and I realized what was happening. We tried out best to stop it, but with our remaining power, we could not fully replicate the perfection of Balance. That’s why we created the Game. The growth of Heaven and Hell fuels Chaos, but the Game allows us to keep the growth in check. At first Todd and I understood the importance of the Game and collected energy at a mutual rate, making sure that one did not grow at a rate faster than the other. In this way, Balance was mimicked and Chaos was held at bay. Over the millennia, however, Todd and I have neglected the true purpose of the Game and turned it into a competition to see whose realm can collect the most energy. That’s the relationship that your Bible writers started to catch on to. Obviously they never knew specifically what was going on between us, but they got the gist of it. That part was actually Todd’s idea. He figured if we could bring the Game to the humans, we would have more time to come up with other ways to restore Balance. Religions and cults introduce the notion of the Game to humans and instead of us trying to convince them individually to surrender their essence to us, they would fight amongst themselves and do their own convincing.”
“You know, I’m a human too.”
Kevin made a face that looked almost truly apologetic, “Sorry if I’m sounding insensitive.”
“Oh it’s okay, go ahead.” What else was I going to say?
“Anyhow the competition soon turned into a bet. Whoever would be the first to attain an set amount of energy would be the winner. We agreed on an amount so staggering, your human mind would not be able to comprehend its value. Unfortunately, despite the seeming untouchable ceiling we had given ourselves, either way we had given a finite boundary to the limits of Heaven and Hell. Whoever reaches the ultimate goal first will win and the Game is over, and so too will the slowing of Chaos end. When the game ends, everything in existence will be annihilated.”
“So…are either of you close t-“
“I have almost won.”
The air felt heavy again. My stomach knotted up and my legs buckled as the consequences of Kevin’s story added up in my mind. I wanted another cigarette. I could feel my eyes releasing whatever moisture that had been lurking behind them as I stared up into the devil’s sad face.
“Everything?” It was barely a whimper. A noise men make in movies when they catch their wife cheating or find out they have cancer.
He nodded, glancing up as a cloud passed over the sun. It was so quiet for a busy thoroughfare. Hordes of people continued to the surge past the smaller islands of families and couples leisurely wandering past window displays and into coffee shops. Cars still wound their slug-trails through the congested urban streets with all the stubborn resolve of a cat straining to open a cupboard door. Yet they made no sound as I sat pathetically before the devil and mourned the demise of the human race.
“Then what’s the fucking point?” I finally demanded, “Why try? Why do anything? If we’re all just fucking careening towards annihilation, why fucking even be here?!”
I could feel the hot tears carving down towards my chin but they were comforting,
“What’s the goddamn FUCKING POINT?!!”
Then the devil looked at me and did the last thing I could have expected. He smiled and held out his hand, pulling me to my feet. Then he gripped my shoulders and leaned down until we were nose to nose. Still smiling and staring into my eyes, he exhaled,
“The point, Nick, is to live. Live and enjoy every one of those ‘goddamn’ seconds you have. That’s why I came to you in what would have been your final moments. If I had not intervened, you would be in Hell right now and I would be celebrating a short-lived victory as the entirety of existence was plunged into nothingness. The Game is all I have to live for now, there is nothing I enjoy so much as the Game and the manipulation of the chips. I intend to make this motherfucker last as long as possible, even if it means giving a few chips a second chance. Now let’s get going, we’re almost there.”
We continued down Market Street, crossing South 18th Street and coming to a stop outside a Panda Express. A “Sorry We’re Closed” sign hung askew in the window but a faint light emanated from a beneath a door in the back. Kevin pulled a key ring from his pocket that a high school janitor might have balked at and fingered through a couple of keys before coming to the one he wanted. Sliding the key into the lock and pulling the door open, he turned, gesturing into the restaurant,
“Care to join me?”
Whatever our purpose was, I wasn’t one to turn down Panda Express. I jolted to his side and looked to him, my face a question mark, as I shuffled into the Mecca of Chinese fast-food. Shadows moved in the light from the back door and the stiff silence was perforated with muffled grunts.
“Chaos is preparing for us,” Kevin mused.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up and my stomach re-knotted.
“So I was going to Hell but you are giving me a second chance because if you gather one more soul, you win?”
“Yes, but you presume too much,” he admonished me with his eyes, “I am not giving you your soul back for free. It’s not in my nature. You have to win it back.”
This scared and angered me, “What if I lose? What if I don’t reclaim my soul? What if I go to Hell as you say?”
“Then I win,” he stared out the window at the sluggish traffic, “and we all lose.”
The grunting ceased and Kevin motioned me toward the back. Terror suddenly gripped me. I didn’t know what was happening but whatever it was, it was happening too quickly.
“I…I…I can’t do this,” I stammered.
The devil locked the front door and turned, piercing me with his gaze, “You don’t have a choice.”
He led me through the door and down hallway littered with stainless steel cabinetry and grease-stained clothing. The light was coming from a single bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling and another door stood open at the other end of the hall, harsh fluorescent light flooding from it. Standing still, the hallway was dead quiet, but as I took a nervous step towards the open door, the air shook with a mindnumbing wail. Like thousands broken PAs screeching with feedback. I could literally feel the sound on my skin. I spun back towards Kevin, clasping my ears and searching his face for answers. The wail had dissipated.
“A reminder,” he purred, “Of all that I have taken from this world.”
Digging my fingers into my ears and only wishing I could tear out my own eardrums, I shivered once and sprinted to the open door. The screaming clawed at every inch of my body, tugging on my clothes and pulling my clenched eyelids open as tears that felt like lava streamed across my cheeks. I would rather have drowned a hundred times. Collapsing through the doorway and letting the horror wash off my skin, I didn’t notice the attractive young woman slouching lazily in a dilapidated sofa across from me. Not until Kevin meandered through the door with a warm, “Good afternoon, Rachel,” did I even realize somebody else was even in the room. Slowly bringing my eyes up to meet hers, I could see that despite her youth, she had the same knowing look in her face as Kevin.
“Good afternoon, Nicholas,” her happy face beamed.
“I…hello,” was all I could cough out.
The devil rested his hand on my shoulder as I struggled to my feet, “Nick, I’d like you to meet Rachel. She was our first female.”
“Oh. Oh! Well it’s very nice to m-”
“She will be performing your first trial today.”
I looked back and forth between Kevin’s hard eyes and Rachel’s broad smile, “I still don’t know exactly what’s…”
Before I could finish, Rachel had stepped in front of me and pulled me into a tight embrace, pressing her lips against mine and sucking the rest of the words out of my mouth. I felt immediately calmed before my body started to go limp and the ground disappeared from beneath me as I fell into a pitch black warmth. I felt separate from my body. Not like before, but like my mind was a free-floating entity that took up the entirety of the darkness. But there was another presence.
“Stay calm,” Rachel’s voice was my own thoughts, “I’m just going to examine your conscience.”
And then the darkness was a collage of colors and shapes as every crime, every wrongdoing, every sin I had ever committed was played out before me in a swirl of memories. Pain like nothing I could have ever imagined seared through my conscience. It wasn’t a physical pain like the body can feel, but remorse personified. Guilt and shame tore through my imagination, riddling my psyche with a million deep wounds no blade could ever recreate. So this was Hell.
All at once the pain and the visions and the darkness itself melted away and I was back in the fluorescent room with Kevin and Rachel. I felt her lips leave mine and she chuckled at my last thought, “Not even close, Nicholas,” she looked to Kevin and patted me on the chest, “He passed.”
She flashed me one last bubbly smile before flopping back down onto her sofa. Still somewhat shaken, Kevin guided me toward a door beyond the sofa that I had also not noticed.
“Chaos is ready for us,” he whispered into my ear. I didn’t have it in me to react.
Through the door, a smaller, similarly lit room was occupied only by a mahogany card table covered in green felt. Three cheap metal folding chairs surrounded the table and upon one of the chairs sat an obese Chinese man dressed in clothes identical to those in the malefic hallway. I felt like Alice approaching the mad tea party. As though everything that had happened today wasn’t completely insane, the innocuousness of Chef Wong here was enough to make me wonder if it was real.
“It is,” Kevin’s voice was back in my ear, “We’re almost done.”
He pushed me into one of the open chairs and seated himself in the other. The chef was shuffling a deck of cards. Twenty poker chips apiece stacked themselves in front of the devil and I,
“Nick, I’d like you to meet Chaos,” he mumbled as another lit cigarette extended itself from his lips. I wondered why I didn’t get one.
“Um. Hi.”
The chef continued to shuffle and grunted once without looking at me. Kevin tossed a single chip into the center of the table and caught my eyes as I followed suit,
“Do not presume that I will let you win or even go easy on you. As I have said, it’s not in my nature. Your soul is yours to win back,” he turned to the chef, “Deal.”
Chaos dealt us two cards each; the devil glanced at his and threw two more chips into the pile. I had peeked down at my own seven of spades and seven of diamonds. A decent start. I threw down three chips. Kevin’s eyes narrowed and he searched my face, trying to see through the curtain of cold sweat. Finally, he grabbed another chip and flicked it down. The fat chef’s awful heaving pants were the only sound in the room as he burned one card and placed three more face up on the table with his massive grubby hands.
The three of spades, queen of clubs, and five of hearts scowled up from the table. Kevin reached into his pile and threw another chip down. I matched him. A card was burned and another flipped; now the six of spades sat in the row. Once again, we both added a chip to the pot. Chaos dealt again and the seven of hearts joined the part on the felt. A spike of hope drilled through my mind! Three of a kind, I thought joyfully! I glanced at the devil as he casually tossed another chip and I raised him three. His hard eyes returned to study my face before he, too, added to the pot.
A sound gurgled up from the fat chef’s throat that sounded suspiciously like, “Flip your cards.”
I triumphantly threw down my hand and turned to examine Kevin’s. Ha! A pair of threes! The devil’s face may as well have been his cane. If he was perturbed at just having lost half his chips in the first hand, it wasn’t on his face. I gathered the chips and added them to my pile, feeling smug at having beat the devil at his own Game. We proceeded to ante and the chef dealt our cards. This time and came out with a nine of diamonds and a king of spades. The bet was mine and I decided to play it safe, betting a single chip. Kevin matched.
Two of hearts, queen of hearts, ten of clubs.
This is starting to look interesting, I mused to myself and licked my lips. We both gave up another chip for the fourth card.
Jack of clubs.
This round is mine, my mind screamed gleefully! I threw down two chips and the devil matched. The final card came up four of hearts and I responded arrogantly with three more chips. Kevin raised two and went all in.
Is he really enough of a fool to go all in on the second round? My mind was racing. Could he not see the victory painted across me face? I watched the devil’s stone face, seeking for a tell. Nothing. If he was bluffing, he was doing a damn find job. I couldn’t help giggling aloud at the notion of the devil being a good card player. I called his bluff and matched him, throwing down my cards defiantly. I stared at his face, watching for a reaction, before glancing down at his hand. Five hearts glowered up at me from the table and a chill crawled down my already sweat-soaked spine. He hadn’t been bluffing! He had taken my straight with a flush and just as easily tied the game up!
My mind silently hurled curses at him as he gathered up the pot. I chose to fold the next round after the turn; I only had fourteen chips. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair and played the next round cautiously with a two pair, but still lost to Kevin’s higher two pair. The chef chose this time to grace us with one of his rare speeches, “Devil win.”
Oh fuck you, I thought to myself and felt my mind sear with blazing heat. Now I only had nine chips left. Why did I think I could beat the devil? I had no choice but to continue.
Kevin and I both anteed up, and Chaos, having just sneezed, dealt the grimy cards amidst the slapping of his multitude of chins. Hope resurfaced in the form of a pair of kings. I bet one chip and Kevin matched. The chef placed a six of clubs, ten of clubs, and three of hearts on the felt and we each bet a chip. Twelve different kinds of panic railed through my body as I eyed my chips. The six of hearts now lay on the table. Another chip each.
King of spades. There! Full house! I couldn’t lose!
“All in!” I shouted ecstatically.
With my heart hammering in my chest, I had never felt so alive. All my chips on the table but it did not matter. The round was mine. I watched fearlessly as the devil matched my bet, his face unchanging. Chaos allowed another gurgle to escape his great mass. I threw my cards down violently and leaned forward, shouting, “Full house! Kings and sixes!”
I was exuberant, laughing long and hard. Just as I had stood at the edge of that building and reveled in the pointlessness I would be forcing on those who had pursued me, I perched now on the edge of the card table and reveled in my victory over the devil. I turned to laugh in his face and abruptly shut up when I realized he and the chef were gazing silently at me. My eyes fell slowly to the cards laid out in front of Kevin. My blood froze. Four sixes grinned demonically back up at me. As the realization of what had just happened washed over me in sharp, icy waves, the fluorescent lights began to flicker and the walls were peeled away as if by a cosmic can opener. Beyond the small room were whole universes consumed by fire. Chaos began to revolve slowly, his mouth opening wider and wider until it was larger than his massive, grotesque body. Entire dimensions were swallowed into the gaping maw that was this monster’s mouth. Before we were sucked into eternal nothing, I looked to Kevin.
A sad smile broke the devil’s poker face. He had won the Game.
