by Joe Hart
I slipped easily between the rounded bodies of the things in the water and sunk a few feet below the surface of the waves. I looked around and tried to get my bearings in the utterly alien place as the lightning flashed once more above water, bathing the surrounding ocean in a vivid white.
I pushed and kicked myself back to the surface and pushed between the hard spiny creatures and gasped for air. The nubs on the round animals dug painfully into my back and sides, and I absently wondered if I was getting poisoned at every touch from the things in the water. Luckily, I came up only a few feet from the boat and could see Will’s small brown head poked over the side watching my progress as I pushed the hard spheres out of my way. Eventually I was able to grab the gunwale and pull myself back on board and down below deck to sit and write these words.
To my sweet Gale: I love you more than anything I’ve ever known on this earth. I hope you find every happiness the world has to offer, and if God is kind at all, I’ll be waiting for you somewhere beyond this place. Please savor life and take your time getting to wherever I‘ll be waiting.
As I said earlier, this entry is a warning. After writing this I will attach this journal to a buoy, and I hope with all my soul that someone will find it. I know now what is happening to us out here on the lonely sea, for I saw what was under the water when the lightning flashed.
An enormous spiny tentacle trailed up from the depths below our boat, and there is no doubt in my mind that the very end of the hideous thing stops in a sharp gray point with a black tip. It’s been towing us around for the past five days or so. It must have impaled us during the storm, thinking our boat was some sort of food for its offspring. Because that’s what it’s doing, that thing that’s sitting below us in the darkness of the deep ocean, it’s giving birth to the spheres all around us. It’s been killing the fish in the area with its sounds, making sure when the time comes and its babies hatch that they have plenty to feed upon.
Well, I’m not going to be something that those fuckers are going to bite into, that’s for sure. I won’t wait until they come scraping across the deck with their taloned fins to find me cowering down here in the darkness. When I’m done writing this, I’m going to fill a syringe full of the morphine that was in the first-aid kit (hey, I said I paid for the very best) and put Will to sleep. I can’t bring myself to think about him suffering in the snapping jaws of the things floating around the boat. Then I’m going to slice my wrists with the razor blade that’s sitting next to me on the floor and hope I fade away quickly, and that, as they say, will be that. I can hear them now out in the water. They’re hatching or opening or whatever. They’ll be down here soon, I can’t wait much longer.
I only ask whoever finds this to take my words seriously and launch a search for the thing that’s hooked to the bottom of our boat and kill it when they find it, because I think each one of those little creatures out there could eventually become the size of the monstrosity that attached itself to us. And if that’s the truth, then it’s only a matter of time before human beings become their food source. There’s only so many fish in the sea.
I love you, Gale, and I set out on this trip to marry you. I’ll see you again someday, I can feel it.
Nathan Vannek
BLACKJACK
The hazy smoke-filled room, air full of the sounds of clanging coins in metal trays and calls for liquor or luck, filled Sam’s senses. Behind the cacophony of money being put down, he could hear the lulling background music (better suited for the elevators) at either end of the large casino pouring through the overhead speakers that were concealed well in the high ceiling.
Sam gazed at the cards that were laid out like two dead men side by side before him on the green-felted table. A jack and a two stared back at him. The jack’s one visible eye seemed focused on Sam, instead of traditionally gazing at the staff held up ceremoniously in a white-gloved hand before him. Sam’s eyes flicked up to the ten exposed in front of the dealer, which partially covered the other face-down card beneath it.
“Hit me,” Sam said, and he expelled the smoke he had held burning in his lungs for nearly twenty seconds.
The dealer slipped a card expertly from the bottom of the card holder and snapped it quickly down next to the jack. Now the jack had a companion: a queen that looked off to the right over Sam’s shoulder, as if embarrassed for what she had just caused.
“Bust,” the dealer called out in the flat tone that had grated on Sam’s ears all evening.
Immediately, more cards were flicked down at the request of the other two people at Sam’s table. The old man with white eyebrows and dark-rimmed glasses smiled through what must have been dentures as he was dealt nineteen, and the woman with too much eyeliner and lipstick blew air out of her overdone lips as she watched a king fall on her ten and three that sat before her.
The dealer flipped his face-down card, revealing a two, and proceeded to snap down two more cards in rapid succession, one being a four and the next being a six.
“House busts, winner on the corner,” the dealer said in monotone as he slid a hundred dollars in chips to the elderly man, who smiled through the acrylic resin that resembled teeth.
“Fuck this,” the woman with too much makeup said, and she stood and grabbed the remaining fifty-dollar chip that lay near her seat.
As she slung her jacket around her shoulders, she winked suggestively at Sam. He politely smiled, not knowing what else to do when rebuffing the advances of someone he found unattractive. To avoid further eye contact, he pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and shook the red-and-white package, confirming that there were only two white sticks remaining within the folds of plastic and foil.
Sam pulled one of the remaining cigarettes from the pack and lit it from the dying embers of the last coffin nail. He pulled long and deep, and as he exhaled he stared through the white smoke that billowed up before him at the dealer, who was looking back at him without expression. That bastard had taken another forty dollars from him. That was part of the rent sliding away from him on the green felt. What would Ellen say if she saw him sitting here in this oh-so-familiar spot? Would she slap him? Here, in front of hundreds of strangers? His Ellen, who was normally so reserved until it came to his addiction?
He knew exactly what she’d say: I’m taking Josh away.
Sam licked his lips and pushed his hand through his thinning blonde hair, trying to shove the images of his wife’s and son’s disappointed faces from the forefront of his mind. The dealer looked to him again for his bet. Sam slid another forty dollars into the circle made by the decorative wheat designs emblazoned on the table every foot or so. Dentures plopped down three hundred, emboldened by his last hand.
Did anyone really think they could beat the house? Sam wondered. The randomness of how the cards fell, the fate that they carried no matter if you busted or hit twenty-one—it seemed exactly how it should be. Of course, the house could be beat, but not consistently. Not enough to make this a paying job. Not enough to pay off the debts owed to men who talked of the weather and of breaking bones in the same sentence. Not enough to dig yourself out from under the pressure of the addiction that lay over the people of this place like an old stinking blanket. Just enough to keep you coming back.
Sam glanced at the dwindling pile of chips sitting to his right and fought the urge to cash out and leave, to walk out the doors into the warm afternoon sun and drive the ten miles home to his family. Tell Ellen everything. Beg her forgiveness. Swear to counseling. Tell her his job was gone. How the last project wasn’t done on schedule, and there was nowhere to point the finger this time. Tell her he owed their next three months of rent to two different loan sharks. Tell her that everything was gone: all the savings, his severance check, even Josh’s college money. Gone.
Instead, he stared down at the cards that had fallen before him from the deft hand of the dealer. Two fives. Dentures had a four and a six. The dealer had a king showing.
“Split,” Sam intoned, and m
otioned to the cards.
The dealer leaned over and slid the cards slightly apart and snapped a seven next to the five on the right.
“Hit me.”
Another seven landed beside the first. Sam waved his hand over the cards as if flicking water from his fingers. The dealer flipped a ten next to the five on the left.
“Hit me.”
A four silently landed on the felt. Again Sam waved his hand, feeling this could be the beginning of a streak. If that card face-down in front of him wasn’t an ace, he might be okay.
While he was contemplating the odds within his head, Sam heard Dentures swear loudly as he busted after trying to run up his cards. The dealer wasted no time and flipped the face-down card over with a scooping motion of his king.
The ace of spades, bold and black under the overhead lighting, sat beside the king. The tip of the spade pointed toward Sam, and he nearly nodded to himself. This was how it was, of course. He was kidding himself to think differently.
“Blackjack,” the dealer said in his flat tone.
Sam felt like jumping across the table and throttling the other man just for how he said it.
“Bullshit,” Dentures said just loud enough to be heard, and he scooped his remaining chips off the table and walked away in the humped-over manner only the elderly can accomplish.
Sam looked at his pile of chips. There were four left. A ten and three twenties. Seventy dollars. For some reason the sight of the last of his family’s money lying there on the green felt, which he had seen several times before, evoked a sadness he hadn’t known existed. That was his family’s future lying there. His future. Although, it seemed the two wouldn’t coexist for much longer. Ellen had sworn if he stepped foot in a place like this again she would leave, and he believed her.
With a quick thrust of his hand, Sam shoved the seventy dollars into the chip circle and looked up at the dealer. This was the first time he had really looked at the man’s face; he had been preoccupied with what the man’s hands had been doing.
The dealer was young, really young. He seemed no older than some of the interns who worked at the advertising firm he used to be employed by. His hair was dark and lank and was combed off to one side as was the style these days. It hung down close to the top of the man’s right eye, which was a solid blue. The blue of ice chips from an aquifer in the arctic. His mouth was pulled straight across his face. He blinked once and then looked down at Sam’s chips on the table.
“That’s all you’ve got,” the dealer said as he began dealing the next hand.
“What?” Sam asked, surprised at the deviation of conversation.
“That’s all the money you’ve got. I can see it in the way you look at it. Like it owes you something, and it had better pay.”
A four and a ten lay before Sam. The dealer had a seven visible on the table.
“You’re very astute, my young friend,” Sam said, looking into the cold blue of the man’s eyes. “Hit me.”
The dealer flipped a card from the deck next to him and laid it carefully on the table. A seven. Twenty-one.
The dealer flipped his card, a queen, and stacked chips in front of Sam’s seventy. Now he had one-forty. He had come here with twelve hundred. He wouldn’t leave with less than that. Sam caught a passing waitress and ordered a whiskey sour and waited until it arrived before continuing.
The next hand brought him a win at eighteen when the dealer busted. The hand after that won at twenty. The one after that he doubled down and won when the dealer stayed on seventeen.
Sam glanced at the growing pile of chips next to him. A rough estimate totaled at six hundred dollars. He let himself smile for a moment in the murky light. Fumbling for his drink, he realized it was empty. He motioned to another waitress, and after a minute a new whiskey was set before him.
As the waitress leaned close to him and then away he caught a whiff of something. It wasn’t the sweet smell of lavender or jasmine like several of the other girls seemed to wear. It wasn’t even the musky scent of tobacco that one would expect in this environment. It was decay. Plain and simple rot. The girl had smelled like a deer he had found on the side of the road after it had been hit by a semi when he was a kid. The carcass had been out in the sun for days. Bloated and open to the air, its insides had started to ferment, and the smell of death had wafted for several yards around.
Sam shook his head and looked after the waitress. She was limping away from him toward the other side of the room. Her strange gait was almost unnoticeable, but when Sam looked down at her left heel, he saw that instead of a stiletto jutting down there was a black claw that sprouted directly from her foot and stabbed into the soft carpet each time she took a step.
Sam blinked, and when he looked again, the waitress had disappeared behind a row of slot machines.
“Sir, place your bet,” the dealer said. The monotone was becoming quieter, almost a whisper.
Sam glanced at him, and the blue eyes flashed downward at Sam’s pile of chips. Sam slid two hundred in front of him and watched the cards fall. He took a sip of his whiskey and surveyed the two and the jack that lay before him. His eyes went up and found the nine sitting before the dealer.
He also noticed that the dealer’s heavy leather belt was moving. It was slithering around the young man’s waist, and suddenly two amber eyes glowed at Sam from beneath the dealer’s tucked-in shirt. A forked tongue flicked into sight and tasted the air before the living belt slid quickly off the dealer’s waist and fell to the floor with a soft thump.
Sam leaned back quickly and looked in all directions under the table, searching for the slithering belt, but he could see nothing in the strange light that was beginning to envelope the room. Sam looked around at the other tables nearby and noticed everything was bathed in a reddish hue.
Maybe there was something in the drinks, Sam thought, straining his eyes open and looking down into his glass. Even the liquid in the glass looked red. Sam blinked several more times before the dealer’s voice interrupted his analysis of the state of the casino.
“Sir,” the dealer said, still a whisper, as if he was slowly becoming overtaken by laryngitis.
Sam glanced down at his cards. “Hit me.”
A nine flashed out and landed on his side of the table. The dealer smiled and slid two hundred in chips across the felt.
“Twenty-one, sir.”
Sam nodded and pulled a hundred off the pile of chips before him and let the remaining three hundred ride. Something was moving in the dealer’s hair. He could see the small furrows as it crawled back and forth just out of sight beneath the dark strands.
Sam looked to his left and saw there were two people sitting at a row of slot machines. The row stretched on and on into the distance until Sam lost sight of it in the red gloom that coated the room. The two people had their backs to him. Then suddenly he realized they were both naked and starving. That was the only explanation for the way the bones pressed against their skins like a set of operating tools beneath a sheet. Sam looked closer and could actually see nubs of their spines poking out, white against the pale skin that stretched over their bodies. Both people—he couldn’t discern what sex either one was—had stringy gray hair that hung limply down to their necks. Corpse hair. Didn’t the hair continue to grow after a person died? Didn’t it grow down in the coffins, down in the dark as the worms bided their time and inexorably closed in on the prize within the wood boxes?
The two corpses pulled the handles on the machines like robots on an assembly line. The harsh clicking as the handles were pulled and the loud dings as they were let go echoed across to Sam. One of the dead people swiveled its head toward Sam, as though it could feel his eyes upon its back. Sam turned his head quickly to the right when he saw a gaping hole where the face should have been.
There was only one table occupied off to the right, and Sam’s breath caught in his throat as he saw what was playing blackjack a few yards away. A man was leaning over his cards, a drink of some da
rk liquid clutched in his hand. His eyes were gone, and the top of his head was missing. Jagged chunks of skull etched the opening where his brain had been housed, and Sam could see the remnants of his gray matter plastered to the inside of his skull like some sort of ghastly plaster of Paris.
The dealer, who stood at the table waiting patiently for his player to decide what to do, was a twin of the man opposite Sam. The dark hair, the blue eyes—right down to the way he stood with his hands curled into fists on the green table top.
Sam was filled with the urge to run from the casino. To just get up from the table and sprint toward the door. Even though he knew he must be hallucinating, he still felt the desire to flee pulling at him. He even turned and glanced back over his shoulder toward the main entrance.
The front entryway now consisted of a single door instead of the four sets he had walked through on his way in. The light that shone through the glass of the door was a pure bright white, and Sam couldn’t make out the street beyond that he knew was there.
Instead of giving in to the urge to run, he turned and pushed all of his chips into the betting circle.
“All in,” Sam said, and swallowed the last of his whiskey in a quick toss of his head.
The dealer nodded and flipped an eight onto the table with a hand that had several more fingers than it should have had. Sam watched an ace of hearts appear before the dealer, and then a seven fell in next to Sam’s first card.
“You can still leave, you know,” the dealer whispered.
Sam looked up and saw that the other man’s face was now gone. There were no eyes or nose, just smooth skin with a small tear where the mouth should have been. A black pointed tongue darted out of the small tear and then receded like a water snake returning to its lair. Sam only stared at the face and wondered why he hadn’t fled when he had the chance.
Because the table was hot. That’s why. It was always why he stayed when he should’ve gone. It was why he had lost his job. It was why he was losing his family. It was why he was seemingly losing his sanity. But the pull of the cards was too great. The promise of the win, the exhilaration of seeing the right card turn up at the right time. It was fate, meant to be, the heaviness that the cards carried.