by David Paul
“I’m in,” the vampire said.
“Good,” Sinatra said, “because drinks are on the house.” Sinatra made everyone laugh with his Robert Deniro impersonation.
The vampire’s focus is drawn back to the game. The only opponent that could possibly have more card-playing experience is Lucifer. David has been all over in his travels. In the American riverboat days, the vampire was known as Mr. Midnight inside those floating casinos. He would arrive late dressed in a black suit with a crisp top hat, and he would disappear with everyone’s money before dawn’s light. Poker actually helped the vampire combat boredom and gave him some of his humanity back. It was the vampire’s brief escape from his terrible existence.
The vampire also made a significant amount of money during that period of time. Even with his vast knowledge of the game, the odds are stacked against him at this table. This isn’t the ordinary Friday night poker game between buddies. David has been eagerly anticipating a showdown with Lucifer. After all of the wait and buildup, the big showdown comes in the unlikely form of a poker game. The vampire imagined something completely different. He pictured an epic battle of the mind on a different playing field.
The creepy dealer smiles and awaits Lucifer’s command to deal. The Devil smiles back. Lucifer beheads the dealer with a backhanded strike to the throat. The dealer’s head rolls onto the gaudy carpet, eyes wide open with a frozen bloody smile. His body remains in the chair with his neck spewing blood all over his dingy tuxedo. There is silence at the table. The bartender hobbles awkwardly from behind the bar. The hunchback bartender quickly recovers the severed head and starts to wipe up the blood with his silken rag.
“Leave it be,” the Prince of Darkness commanded.
“Yesss, my massster,” the bartender said. The bartender spoke in an annoying hissing voice that bothered David, almost like fingernails on a chalkboard.
The bartender slowly sits the skull on the table with a shaky hand. The decapitated head smiles morbidly at the vampire. The dealer has the same expression on his face that he had before being beheaded. The hunchback scampers clumsily back to his post. Lucifer calmly takes the messy deck of cards from the hands of the seated corpse. The silence continues, and the table eagerly anticipates the Devil’s next move.
The Devil whips two blurs at the table that land perfectly in front the vampire. David receives the two face-down cards, which he checks slowly and sees that he has an Ace of Clubs, and a King of hearts. Lucifer deals in the rest of the table. The design of the deck has hidden images buried beneath a standard looking pack of Bicycle Playing Cards. David has already noticed several riders with horns and various ideograms on the mystical deck’s artwork. The blood evaporates from the cards. The vampire leaves his cards in front of him. Everyone folds, except Elvis. Elvis decides to raise. David simply calls the bet without re-raising it for a chance to sneak into the hand.
A sequence of three cards are placed face up with blinding speed: An Ace, a King, and a three…each of a different suit.
The vampire has top-two pair, which is not a bad hand at all. David doesn’t move a muscle or show any signs that he has a good hand. His facial features are Stoic. Elvis checks, so the vampire bets. Elvis pauses briefly, and his lip quivers when he raises all of his chips on top of what the vampire has already bet. Just a few moments ago, Elvis had done the same against Lucifer, and he won a nice pot with a superior hand. In the vampire’s hand, it is a check-raise, which signifies that Elvis has a better hand and is trying to get the vampire to commit more money to the growing pot.
David suspects that Elvis is not bluffing at the pot. The vampire’s gut is telling him to fold. Even though the vampire has top-two pair, he does not have the best possible hand. David can lose to three of a kind, which is most likely what Elvis has and is one of the most difficult hands to sniff out in the game. The way that this hand unfolded makes it a trap hand for the vampire. Most poker players would fall into this type of trap and lose all of their chips. David folds his hand. The vampire will wait until he is holding the right cards under the best circumstances.
“Thank you very much,” Elvis said. He rakes in his winnings and flips over the pair of threes that he was dealt to show off the winning hand: a set of threes. He did have a superior hand to David’s, and the slick vampire avoided a potentially disastrous outcome.
“You lucky bastard,” Sinatra said. Everyone laughs as the inebriated Sinatra entertains the guests at the table. “You got all the cards like a fucking Hallmark.” The others laugh, but David remains focused.
The vampire remains stone-faced for hours. David never panics or rattles, and this aspect makes him a fantastic poker player. The laughter and jesting continues, and they all play cards for what seems like an eternity. After hours of playing, the vampire takes out Elvis, Hitler, Capone, Sinatra, and Cobain one-by-one, until he is finally heads-up against Lucifer. The others have left the table.
The vampire outplayed everyone on the table in brilliant fashion. The poker playing nightwalker took his time until he was able to destroy each of his opponents. David has accumulated a massive amount of chips that rival what Lucifer has in front of him. Both contestants have a large wall of multicolored betting chips. Even the chips have hidden logos and signs on them. Some of the others watch the showdown from the bar.
“It is just you and I, David.”
“I knew it was going to come down to you and I,” David said. “With the exception of Sinatra and Capone, the entire table was amateur at best.”
The vampire laughs defiantly at the Devil.
“They are all in Hell. Did you think that I would allow them to experience the joy of winning?” Lucifer asked. Lucifer growls a wicked laugh. “Each time they play, they actually think that there is an opportunity to win. I let them build up their hopes by winning a few minor hands, and then I crush their collective spirits for my own entertainment.”
The vampire is face-to-face with the fallen angel, Lucifer. What David doesn’t understand is how the Devil missed his opportunity to take his soul much earlier. David had cursed God on the mountain that night when he thought Katerina was dead. His blasphemy could be heard all throughout the Black Forest and that strange mountain. The vampire admits to himself that the Devil would have had his best opportunity that evening. David feels like he would have willingly traded in his soul at that moment in time.
Maybe, it was Fate intervening, and it just wasn’t meant to be. Maybe, David had a sliver of luck mixed in with all of his misfortune. Perhaps, seeing the love of your life with her heart ripped out is too much for anyone to handle, and God gave him a pass. As much as one can analyze the past events, they are in the past and cannot be changed. Here and now are all that counts. Capello tried to tell the vampire this.
“Are you ready to hand over your soul to me?”
“I love your arrogance,” the vampire said.
“Truth is what I speak.” Lucifer shuffles the magical deck of cards. “It is not arrogance.”
“Demon,” David said, “your forked tongue speaks no truths.”
“You will come to the realization that what you think are lies, are really truths,” The Devil said. The Devil continues to shuffle. “Your creator has deceived you for many years.”
Lucifer actually believes in what he is saying. The Devil would pass any lie detector test that you could put on him. His words are complete lies to David, but they are the truth in the Devil’s own twisted reality and warped stream of consciousness. It depends on which perspective that one is viewing it from. The vampire and Satan have two clashing ideologies, which is odd. Normally, a vampire would have pledged his allegiance to the underworld without any fuss, and all of this courting would be unnecessary. Both the vampire and the demon are wading in uncharted waters. Even the Devil is experiencing something new and unique with this encounter.
Lucifer is expertly shuffling the deck of cards, and they are making that snapping noise that only a new deck of cards makes. He is n
onchalantly showing off some quality sleight-of-hand tricks with the cards. Lucifer does so with a stone face and a minor smirk. He definitely has all of the tricks down, including a few that the vampire has never seen. The Devil defies gravity and perception with his prestidigitation. In a sense, the vampire is not all that impressed with the Devil. Just like Devin lighting a cigarette with his flaming finger, the vampire thinks that the supposed highest supreme evil intelligence should have aspired to something greater than that of card tricks.
“Are you ready to seal your Fate?” The Devil asked.
The question raises a different question from within the vampire.
“What is in this for me?” David asked. “If I lose, my soul is yours. If I win, my soul is mine? My soul is already mine.” The vampire brings up a valid point. “It sounds like you need me,” David said, “and I have no use for you at all.”
Satan is speechless and throws down two face-down cards with absolute precision.
“Look at your cards, nightwalker.”
David has an epiphany within his dream that is profound, yet obvious. No one ever gets entirely what one desires from the Devil. He makes his living on empty promises. Lucifer is like a used car salesman promising someone the world. Every one of his promises has a catch. Every deal with the beast has fine print that isn’t realized until it is too late. Look at the table of company that he was with earlier.
Everyone died relatively young except for Frank Sinatra. Everyone acquired their fame and power, but took it to the grave prematurely. A moron might sell his soul to the Devil for immortality and receive David’s fate of vampirism. In a sense the Devil would have kept his bargain bestowing the immortality, but the recipient would be cursed and undead. Hell is overflowing with souls that thought that they could outsmart the Devil at his own game. In that sense, Lucifer is a genius.
David looks down at his cards to find that he has been dealt the best starting hand that any poker player could ever ask for. The vampire has two Aces, which are affectionately known in poker circles as pocket rockets. In his case, he has red rockets. The Ace of Hearts and the Ace of Diamonds stare boldly at the Stoic vampire, and he lets them sit at rest. Numerous thoughts race through the vampire’s mind.
His thoughts are not so much about his dealt hand because any good poker player knows what to do with that hand. He ponders the significance of the cards themselves. Even though the vampire is inside of a dream, certain bits of information can be almost prophetic. The dream is a swirling mixture of the subconscious mind, the conscious mind, prophetic premonition, and the Devil’s influence. Information can be interpreted literally, figuratively, or with a combination of the two.
The vampire has a notion that this hand is more like a tarot card reading than a poker game. The Ace of Hearts could represent the constant struggle over David’s emotions, and the vampire’s lack of a beating heart. The Ace of Diamonds has yet to show its significance. It could be a mockery of David’s attempt to marry Katerina. The vampire is uncertain, but red is a befitting color for a beast that craves blood. The vampire wonders what the Devil is holding in his hand and what significance is to be correlated from his cards. Both of his two cards and Lucifer’s hand seem to be pulsing with wild energy. The designs are shifting or breathing while the cards sit still, and it resembles a visual from a heavy mescaline trip.
The Devil is first to act.
“Raise,” Lucifer said.
David thinks about it for a moment and deliberately stalls longer to create the appearance of a lesser hand.
“Re-raise.”
The vampire makes his move in this cat and mouse game.
“Call,” Lucifer said.
The Devil matches the vampire’s re-raise casually. The Devil flips over three cards with lightning speed, yet the cards appear in slow motion at the same time defying logic. Three kings appear: the King of Clubs, the King of Diamonds, and the King of Hearts.
The vampire just flopped a full house, which is coincidentally a monster hand in poker. The only hand that will beat David’s as of now is if the Devil has the last King in the deck. The likelihood of that is small, but the vampire is playing against the Devil, so anything is possible. The vampire is analyzing the entire dream and trying to deduce different conclusions. Lucifer theoretically has the King sitting twelve feet away, drinking bourbon at the bar. The vampire wonders if the irony of the predicament is an intentional or a coincidental occurrence.
“All-in,” Lucifer said.
The demon pushes all of his chips to the center of the table with a cocky triumphant smile.
The vampire has Lucifer covered and could take out the Devil in this one hand. David stares, and he looks the Devil in his lifeless eyes. David studies the two black voids that show no love or compassion. He feels their emptiness and absolute wickedness. David sees into the infinity of his evil soul. The Fate of the world could rest on one hand of poker. The vampire cannot fold his hand. No poker player in the history of the game would fold that hand because of the odds involved regardless of their opponent. The decision is made.
“Call,” David said.
The vampire puts all of his chips into the massive pot.
They both reveal their hands. The Devil has the Ace of Spades and the Ace of Clubs. The likelihood of them both having pocket Aces is rare, and the odds of them both flopping a full house from that starting hand is astronomically low in mathematical terms. The situation is at least one in a million…if that.
David suspects foul play. The two eagerly await the last two cards to fall. The Devil flips over the turn card. The next card is a Queen of Hearts. Perhaps, more significance, but it is not obvious to the vampire. The last card is the Jack of Diamonds, which could also mean something profound. After all of the cards fall, they both have a full house. It is a split pot and the game continues.
“I reckon you had an Ace up your sleeve,” David said. The vampire accused the Devil of cheating.
“Fate is deciding your hand, David, and I had nothing to do with it.”
The Devil deals out another hand because he wants to continue the game.
“You never answered my question from earlier,” the vampire said. The demon remains silent. “You are silent because you have no answer that can sway my mind. If it wasn’t for trickery, you would have nothing.”
The vampire spits in the Devil’s face. The demon remains still.
“I can twist your soul by hurting those you love,” The Devil said. He spoke, but he left the spit on his face.
David knows that what Lucifer said was true. The vampire is quite aware of their methods and how they operate.
“You will never have me no matter what you do,” David said.
“We will see,” the demon said.
“I will take down the Legion of Hell brick-by-brick.”
“Give it your best shot, nightwalker,” Lucifer said.
The Devil sets the card table afire.
The burning cards animate the story of the fallen angel, Lucifer, with sparks and smoke in a surreal demonic cartoon. In the tale, the Devil falls from heaven and regains his grace when he constructs his evil empire. Real flames animate the pictograph of Hellfire as the story sensationalizes the unholy glory of Hell. It’s a narcissistic and grandiose representation of himself and all that the demon stands for.
It is just more demonic propaganda and trickery from the famous snake oil salesman. This is propaganda much like Hitler had used in pre-WW2 Germany. The Devil is the master of smoke and mirrors. Take away the smoke and mirrors, and there is nothing there. He creates the illusion of substance from nothingness.
“You really are that delusional to think that you will prevail over all that is righteous and just?” David asked.
“Take a look around, nightwalker. I already have.” He laughs heartily.
“The Sun still rises,” David said, “and your darkness has not eclipsed that star yet.”
“Yet…”
The demon smiled.
“What makes you so confident?” David asked. “You have always been the outcast striving to overcome your creator. Lost in the shadows, you have never shined. It has been this way since you were cast down. It will always be this way until your creator forgives you for being so foolish and ambitious. It is in your nature to be foolish and ambitious, and so you shall never receive his mercy. For eternity, you will wallow in the netherworld as a deceiver and a complete failure.”
Everyone in the room seemed afraid as the vampire insulted the Dark Prince.
“Have faith, David. Time will reveal my beautiful design. It is already the latest fashion.”
“Maybe in your mind,” The vampire said.
“You will feel my wrath and wish that you had taken my hand,” Lucifer said. “The great worm will eat the carrion flesh of those that oppose, and the dead will walk the Earth in search of their lost souls. Darkness shall forever shade the mighty maggot while it dines on the blood of the angels. The forked road to Hell is long and arduous. You may have avoided this pitfall, but your journey is not complete or without peril.”
“You will not twist my soul any further,” David said.
“Your soul is forever twisted, and you are not immune to the pleasures of the flesh. Beg for my crooked hand, you will.” The Devil showed his wicked sign with his bony fingers. “You will know and fear the number of the Beast.”
The Devil spoke in a devious, yet monotonous tone lacking any aggressive emotion. For the first time, David heard Lucifer in his real voice. Gone is the grandiose charlatan’s braggart tone. The demon’s bitter words have a haunting sincerity with an evil indifferent annunciation.
The vampire had wanted to shout at the Devil for centuries. Spitting in his face was even more pleasurable, even if it happened in the dream world. In a weird sense, being a vampire has helped David resist the temptations of the Devil. The human mind is so much frailer. David has held onto a bitter grudge against the Devil and all of his kind for centuries. It has driven a proverbial wedge between them.