HELP! WANTED: Tales of On-the-Job Terror

by Edited by Peter Giglio

  While still reserving enough time to pursue his own fiction aspirations, Henry continues to be active in the writing community through classes, editing services and advice.

  Henry lives with his wife, fellow author and editor Hollie Snider, son—poet Josh Snider—and numerous neurotic animals, including, of course, Alexander, the black cat. Find out more about him at http://www.henrysnider.com.

  Playing Blackjack with Mr. Paws

  Craig Saunders

  The building that housed the Fordham Town Herald offices was built in 1805. Originally it was a playhouse, holding productions of local theatre and travelling shows alike. Theatre had been big business back in the 19th century. That, and drinking.

  Many a patron of the playhouse had come to see the shows, but the most popular of all was the famous gambling mouse, Mr. Paws.

  The Marvelous Mr. Paws, the billing proclaimed. The only card playing mouse in the world!

  But the sign sold the act a bit short. After all, Mr. Paws was always something more than a mere card playing mouse.

  ***

  21 grand. That’s what Clive Greenwood reckoned his life was worth after the government took its cut. It was all it would ever be worth. He stood no chance of promotion beyond junior editor. Ever.

  “Morning,” he grunted at the office, pulling himself awkwardly into an office chair that was too tall for one of such diminutive stature.

  With a jaunty heave, he was in.

  The senior editor sniggered behind his computer monitor. Clive knew they set his chair higher every night after he left. The chair needed weight on it to be lowered, so he had to climb up every morning. Just another in a long list of wounds he wished he could redress against his colleagues and the world in general.

  He looked around the office. Senior editor, sub editor, assistant editor, and some cunt called Paul. Clive had no idea what Paul did. He thought he sold advertising space, but all he seemed to do was smoke and swear into the phone.

  Neck aching already, feet dangling high above the floor, Clive switched the computer monitor on.

  21 grand. That’s what a life was worth.

  21 grams. That’s what a soul weighed. Some boffin called Dr. Duncan MacDougall weighed the departed and found they weighed 21 grams less dead than they had while living. Turned out he was full of shit.

  He reached down and fiddled with the lever to lower his chair. It was difficult enough to lower an office chair with normal arms, and Clive could barely reach.

  Would he sell his soul, all 21 grams of it, for a little more height? For normal arms and legs? For a body that matched his head?

  Fucking right he would. Then these bastards wouldn’t be able to take the piss out of him every day.

  Like their insistence on calling him a little person. Clive wasn’t a little person. A little person was a kid. He was nearly forty years old.

  And he was also a dwarf, with Achondroplasia. The real deal. Not a “little person.” Not some bearded axe-wielding manic, either. Just a plain old dwarf.

  “Clive!”

  He jumped and pulled the lever to raise his chair. His senior editor had somehow got behind him and shouted on purpose.

  “David?” he said.

  “Mouse, Clive. Mouse in the attic.”

  “And?”

  “I want you to sort it out, young man.”

  “Young man” rankled, but Clive bit his tongue. He was used to it. Used to the insults and the jibes. His heart was protected by a layering of keloid scars that no bastard could penetrate, and certainly not David Corn, his senior editor and ultimate boss.

  “I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said Clive. “I’m a junior editor, not a mouse catcher.”

  “Troublesome little bugger,” David continued as though he hadn’t heard Clive’s protest. “The attic space is too low for the rest of us. Just thought...you know...”

  “Because I’m a dwarf.”

  “Ha. Little person, Clive. Little person.”

  Clive couldn’t believe his ears, but fuck it. What could he do? What could you do in the face of the endless torments but ride them?

  “Here’s a torch,” said David with a smarmy smile, because he already knew that Clive wouldn’t refuse. He never did.

  But he kept tally, all right.

  ***

  The old playhouse, once grandly titled the Theatre Royal, though no royalty had ever visited in its two hundred year history, had been renovated many times. The last was in 2003, when the Fordham Town Herald adopted it as their offices.

  The first renovation began in 1849, six weeks after it almost burned to the ground.

  1849 was also the year that Harris Jakes lost a game of cards to an old, white mouse named Mr. Paws.

  ***

  Clive poked his head into the small attic space above the old playhouse. His colleagues gathered below the hatch, looking up as Clive swung the torch in wide arcs, into the dark corners, running the light over the beams and rafters.

  “There’s nothing up here,” he said, knowing what the reply would be.

  “Pesky buggers,” said David. “Little blighters are sneaky.”

  Paul barked a laugh, and Clive bit his tongue once again.

  “You’ll have to get up there, in deep,” said the sub-editor.

  “Root around. Get to understand it. Get down to the mouse’s level,” said the assistant editor, kind of laughing, too, but held in check, even though Clive knew the laugh was there in the man’s head, an actual laugh never more than a breath away.

  Clive sighed and went up the last few steps of the ladder. The light from the torch let him see enough to know he didn’t want to be up here among the cobwebs and giant spiders and bats and nesting birds and mice. All kinds of things to fall on his neck and make him scream and he really, really, didn’t want to give the bastards below that kind of satisfaction.

  Something skittered across the joists. He swung his torch toward the sound, and the mouse darted the other way. The torch flicked back and forth, until he finally caught the mouse in his sights.

  It must have been the oldest rodent in the world. It was almost pure white, covered in thick hair, which he’d never seen on a mouse. The thing’s whiskers were about six inches long, longer than the mouse’s body. Its nose twitched, as though sniffing for intruders, but Clive got the impression that it could see perfectly well, because little red eyes fixed on him straight away. It was a bold stare.

  Clive didn’t return the stare. “I’m not getting into a staring contest with a fucking mouse,” he muttered.

  It was dead centre in the glare of the torch, and for some stupid reason Clive figured he could hit it and be done. So he threw the torch at it. The torch flipped end over end, then landed against an old oak beam, shattering the lens.

  “Clive,” said a voice that he didn’t recognise.

  The hatch banged shut and the darkness was total. And for some reason Clive thought the voice might just belong to the mouse.

  ***

  “You there, Sir! Care to wager?”

  Harris Jakes nodded, because all evening he’d been hoping he’d be the one to get the call. He was a drinking man, but, first and foremost, he was a gambling man. He had ten shillings in his pocket—the last of his money, all he owned in the world. He had no home since his wife had run off with a fat butcher. He had no kids. He didn’t even have a dog.

  Ten shillings was a lot of money to wager, but double that up...double it again...and…

  “Yes, Sir, I would,” he called out. Applause exploded from the eager audience.

  He stepped carefully over the other patrons’ legs in the cheap seats and worked his way to the front of the theatre. It wasn’t a large theatre, housing roughly a hundred people, although sometimes more stood at the back.

  The stage was lit with lanterns for atmosphere, and the only things on that stage were the mouse’s handler, a round table with green baize on top, a pack of cards, and one small, wizened mouse. That mouse must ha
ve been ancient.

  The mouse was sprightly enough, though. It ran down the handler’s arm and hopped onto the table, then stood behind the pack of cards, nose twitching excitedly.

  “What, Sir, is your name?”

  “Harris Jakes,” he said, smiling. The mouse was on its hind legs, sniffing. The air, or him, Harris didn’t know.

  “And what would you care to wager?”

  “Ten shillings,” he said, and an appreciative murmur spread through the crowd.

  “The mouse is the house, ladies and gentlemen! Ten shillings it is...Mr. Jakes, shuffle away, blackjack’s the game of the day!”

  The crowd clapped politely, and Harris shuffled, tapped the deck, and, at the handler’s nod, laid the cards before the happy old mouse.

  Mr. Paws capered forward, so small that the people at the back of the theatre couldn’t possibly see it. With its nose it pushed the first card toward Harris, the second toward itself.

  Both turned at the same time, the handler turning the mouse’s card for him.

  “Mr. Harris has a ten of hearts, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Paws holds a queen of spades!”

  A gentle kind of excitement mounted, because the wager was high.

  The mouse pushed the next card across the table, and with his clever nose, Mr. Paws dealt himself one next.

  Harris turned his. The ace of spades.

  The handler turned the next card. The ace of hearts.

  “The house wins!”

  Harris was suddenly very angry. It was the last of his money, and now he was destitute. He slammed his fist on the table, aiming for Mr. Paws, but the mouse was nimble. It ran up the handler’s arm and down under his collar. Cards flew into the air and the table turned over.

  “Cheat! Dirty bastard cheats!” Harris roared, and swung wildly at the handler, who stepped smartly to one side and rapped Harris on the head with a different kind of blackjack.

  ***

  “Gambling man, Mr. Greenwood?” said the mouse, sitting up on its hind legs. It didn’t look easy for the mouse to do it, either. It was ancient, looked older than a twenty year old dog.

  He didn’t wonder at a mouse talking. And he didn’t think about the red glow that suffused the attic, the eerie light, the way it flickered, or the smell coming from below. None of that seemed important.

  Just the green baize on the table, and the little old mouse, and a pack of cards.

  Had the table been here before? He didn’t remember, though it seemed to him perfectly reasonable that it was.

  He stared dumbly at the mouse.

  “No,” he said. “Not really.” He’d never gambled in his life.

  “Know blackjack, though, right?”

  Clive shook his head. “I played Rummy as a boy with my father.” He shrugged and wanted to make the mouse happy, but he couldn’t very well lie. If they were going to play cards he wouldn’t be able to cover his ignorance.

  He wasn’t sure he did want to play cards, but the mouse was very old, and if cards made it happy...

  More than anything he wanted to make the mouse happy.

  But why?

  It was so...

  So old.

  But more importantly the mouse was little.

  Just like him. A strange reason to trust a talking mouse, but—

  “Simple game,” said the mouse. “Aiming for twenty-one. That’s all there is to it. Five cards, bust. Over twenty one, bust. Stick on sixteen. Ace is one or eleven. Jack, Queen, King, ten. House rules, Mr. Greenwood, and believe me when I say, I am the house. Understand?”

  “Not really,” said Clive.

  “Good,” said the mouse with a laugh. You wouldn’t think a mouse could laugh. But—what the hell?—this one talked, and you wouldn’t expect that, either. Clive laughed right along with the mouse’s joke, because it was a cute little thing, and Jesus, it wasn’t just a talking, card playing mouse. It was a laughing mouse, too.

  “What are we playing for?” Clive asked.

  “What have you got?”

  Clive shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he said, turning out his pockets. All he could think of was his watch, but even that wasn’t worth much, and he didn’t want to disappoint the mouse.

  The mouse seemed amused.

  “How ‘bout...twenty-one grams?”

  Clive almost laughed, but then he thought he saw the flicker of flames coming up through the ceiling, off to the right, between him and the eaves. A dim kind of daylight came in through the eaves where birds made their nests.

  For a moment, looking at that sliver of daylight, his head seemed to clear.

  This is dangerous, he thought, but then smoke swirled and the daylight was lost. All that remained was that flitting firelight and an old, old mouse, whiskers twitching, pushing a card toward him.

  “One for you,” said the mouse. “One for me. One for you. One for me.”

  The mouse turned first.

  “That’s ten, right?” it said. Clive shrugged and nodded. A king, could be ten...he didn’t really know. The cards didn’t seem quite as important to him as the mouse. He watched the mouse and forgot about his cards. Then the mouse coughed politely.

  “Come along, Mr. Greenwood. I’m getting old waiting for that damn card, and in case you hadn’t noticed,” it said, flicking its head to the right, where flames were now leaping, “time’s short for both of us.”

  Clive shrugged again. What did he care if his bastard colleagues burned to death below?

  “You go first,” he said. “Seems fair. Do them all at once.”

  “That’s not the way the game’s played,” said the mouse. It seemed thoughtful, though. “Unfair advantage to you, you see?”

  “No,” admitted Clive.

  The mouse was delighted at the answer and laughed again. “Oh, Mr. Greenwood, you are a card! Well, then, care to change the wager?”

  Clive couldn’t seem to remember what the wager was in the first place, so he just shook his head and coughed, smoke from the fire below tickling his nostrils.

  The mouse flicked its second card over, an ace.

  “Twenty-one,” said the mouse. It sounded triumphant.

  “Turn away,” it said, so Clive did.

  “Oh,” said the mouse, because Clive held the jokers in the pack. Two of them with jester’s hats adorned in bells.

  In the distance, a little bell tinkled.

  Clive reached up to find a jester’s hat on his own head. He frowned.

  “What’s it mean?” he asked the mouse.

  The mouse laughed again, full of good humour, even though the old playhouse was burning down around them.

  “How much is that, then?” he said again, because the mouse just carried right on laughing.

  “Joker’s wild!” said the mouse, capering up Clive’s jester suit to sit on his hat. The bells tinkled as Clive’s head swayed, giddy from the smoke.

  “Joker’s wild,” the mouse repeated, whispering in Clive’s ear. “And they’re worth whatever you want them to be...”

  ***

  Harris woke in the gutter bathed in the dim light of a street lamp. His head hurt like a bastard and when he felt around he found a knot the size of an egg just behind his right ear. He sat up with a groan and shivered, because someone had stolen his coat.

  Mr. Harris Jakes was not only a gambling and drinking man, he was also a smoking man. Fortunately, he kept his matches in his trouser pocket.

  He reached in and pulled out the matches, then walked unsteadily down a dirty alleyway where the light didn’t reach, an alleyway that ran along the back of the Theatre Royal.

  He tripped over a pile of rubbish and fell badly. He twisted his right hand and dropped the matches, but his left hand hit upon something hard. He felt around and discovered the object was a rolling pin.

  Perfect.

  He rummaged through the rubbish, swearing, until eventually he found his matches.

  Then he smashed in a window and cleared away the glass and pulled himself wit
h a groan over the sill.

  “Bastard friggers,” he said, setting fire to the curtains.

  Mr. Harris Jakes died two weeks later in a bar fight over a tab. He didn’t die easy. People said he was unlucky, the way he went, but then maybe luck had nothing to do with it.

  Luck’s not personal, but sometimes it can be, too. Like when you cross the wrong mouse, a mouse named Mr. Paws, and a mouse that maybe wasn’t a mouse at all.

  ***

  Clive rapped his knuckles on the hatch, the bells on his jester costume jingle-jangling.

  His colleagues giggled below, despite the fires licking at the ladder.

  As he descended they all smiled and their smiles looked… somehow…terrified.

  “Saw old Mr. Paws, did you, young man?” said David, his senior editor. “Good man. Good man.”

  Clive nodded.

  “Join the club,” said Paul. “Lost, of course, but won, too. Sold my soul to that damn mouse, but I’ve got a sweet wife with big—”

  “Never mind that now,” said David. The sub editor giggled as flames leapt around his feet.

  The smell of charred flesh filled the offices of the Fordham Town Herald, where the damned worked, sometimes for twenty-one grand, and sometimes for twenty-one grams.

  “What’d he offer for your soul, eh?” said the assistant editor.

  “Nothing,” said Clive. “Nothing at all.”

  “What do you mean?” said David.

  “I didn’t lose my soul in a game of cards. I’ve still got a soul.” Clive nodded madly, flicking his head side to side to set his bells ringing.

  “You won?” said David.

  He kept nodding, bells going mad.

  “Devious buggers, little people,” said David sagely. The assistant editor and the sub editor and the man named Paul all nodded at this pearl of wisdom.

  “What did you win?” asked Paul.