Texas Hold'em

by Wild Cards Trust

  Bacho stepped in front of Dina, arm raised to fend them off. Jax pressed his chest against it, fuming. “Move it, Bacho! This is between me and her.” To Dina: “This is your fault. You turned me into a fucking joker!”

  Dina looked them over. “I had no idea you guys were so fashionable. That tie is a nice touch, but, a skirt?”

  Looking sheepish, Darryl said, “I had to change into something and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Jax, unable to contain his anger, thrashed his arms like a child going full-on temper tantrum. “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”

  “We are,” Antonia said.

  “I’m hideous!” He abruptly stopped his thrashing. His snout twitched and face paled, as if the reality of what he just said drained the life out of him. He mumbled, “I’m a … a…”

  “Yeah, we know,” Dina said. “You’re a joker. Surprise! And don’t worry about thanking me. The looks on your faces are all the thanks I need.”

  Jax looked baffled, at a loss for words. For once, there was no cockiness in his voice. “What type of monster are you?”

  Dina held up her fleshy arms, jiggled them. “I doubt there’s a name for it. Other than joker. It’s quite a catchall term, really.”

  “We are so screwed!” Jax yelled. “My dad will sue you. He’ll sue the DJ, the club. He’ll sue—”

  “If your parents don’t disown you first. That happens, you know. Not everyone—including parents—wants a joker as a child.”

  Something about thinking of his mother blew away the last remnants of the club’s magic. Oh my God, Bacho thought. How would he tell her? How could he explain it? How would she respond? He wanted her here, right now, and yet the thought of her seeing him terrified him. They’d really all been turned into jokers. In the club it had been all awesome, but now they were outside in the real world. All around him, newly minted jokers walked down the street, trickling out into the city’s streets. None of them seemed troubled by it, but a feeling of dread began to squeeze him.

  “Dina?” he asked, his voice a whisper that she didn’t hear the first time. He tried again. “Dina?” She cut off whatever she was saying to Jax and looked at him. “Are we really … changed … into this?”

  For a second it looked like she was going to say something sarcastic. Whatever it was, she let it go. She inhaled a long audible breath through her snout, paced away a little. Somehow, despite being a short, pudgy, cottage cheese version of herself, her clothes still fit. “Okay, I guess it’s about time for me to explain. That’s fair. So … obviously DJ Tod isn’t just any DJ. He’s an ace. His ability is what you experienced. He turns people into jokers.”

  As if this were news, Jax said, “Oh, fuck! Fuck! I knew it.”

  “Would you stop with the hissy fit and listen? It’s not like you think. You’re not permanently a joker. The last change lasts for about a day. It’s a little bit different for everyone, but at some point tomorrow you’ll all just realize you’re back to normal. You probably won’t notice when it happens, but I promise it will happen. I’ve done it plenty of times. All the regulars in the club have.” She paused, but the boys stared at her, waiting for more. “You guys were being such jerks, over the whole competition, really. All your anti-joker crap. I just … thought you should see the world from the other side.”

  “You had no right,” Jax said. “People will see us and think we’re jokers!”

  Dina dipped her head to one side and observed, “Right now you are jokers.”

  “I am not! I’m exactly the same person I was before I went into the stupid club. Nothing’s changed except”—again, he jerked and twisted in exasperation—“the way I look.”

  “Exactly,” Dina said. “You’re the same person you were before. Nothing’s changed except the way you look. Exactly what I was hoping you’d learn.” She reached out and pinched him on the cheek.

  Jax squirmed away, ranting again, vomiting vitriol.

  Dina ignored him. She turned to Bacho. Her voice softened. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s just … I didn’t know what you were like until things were already happening. I hope you don’t hate me.”

  “You hope he doesn’t hate you?!” Jax cried. “After what you did? Of course we—”

  “Didn’t you feel something in there?” Dina asked Bacho. She spoke close to him, gesturing with her hands, her snout twitching with the passion she clearly felt. “Each time the beat dropped. Each time we changed. The beauty of it. The connection. Didn’t you feel that?”

  Bacho thought for a moment, and then answered, honestly, “It was like love.”

  Jax, annoyed, snapped, “Oh, shut up!”

  “Yes! Exactly. We all loved each other in there. Even you two.” Dina crossed her pudgy arms. “Tell me you didn’t feel it.”

  “Whatever I felt wasn’t real,” Jax said. “It was all part of a scam! That’s what it is. No, it’s a crime! I’m pressing charges.” Suddenly inspired, Jax struggled to get his phone out of his pocket. It was made harder because of both his pudgy fingers and the tightness of his pants over his thickened thighs. He twisted and hopped on one foot and finally got the phone free. His efforts to dial with his chubby fingers were soon too much for him. He had a fit, looking like he was on the verge of smashing the phone on the pavement.

  “Hey, look,” Darryl said, pointing.

  They all followed his finger. DJ Tod and a small entourage walked down the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

  “Hey, you,” Jax called, “DJ guy, you’ve got to do something!” He ran out into the street, causing a Toyota truck to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting him. The driver shouted out the open window, leaned on his horn. Jax ignored them. While the truck was still stopped, the rest of the group crossed. Bacho waved at the driver apologetically.

  When they reached the other side, Jax was already pleading with DJ Tod to turn them back to normal. With the DJ wearing a mask, Bacho could only see his eyes, but something about the way he held himself suggested that he was staring blankly at the teenager.

  “Change us back! I want to be normal again.”

  “Oh, I see,” DJ Tod said, “you got a bit more than you expected, huh?”

  “I could call the cops. Look what you did!”

  DJ Tod shrugged. The tilt of his head somehow conveyed his boredom with the conversation. “Law enforcement has weighed in on this already. There’s no crime. You’ll all be back to normal tomorrow. No damage done. There have been cases already and they’ve gone nowhere. Anyway, if you were in the club, it means you signed the terms and conditions.”

  “But I didn’t read it!”

  “Your signature says that you did. There are no grounds for a claim of harm. And, even if there was, it won’t change you back to your old self any sooner. Wait it out, kid. Try seeing the world with different eyes for a little while. It’ll do you good.”

  “You could do it if you want to,” Darryl said, though it was more of a whine than a real assertion.

  “No can do.” The DJ shook his head. He began to back away, his companions protectively close. Speaking loudly so others in the passing crowd could hear him, he said, “I show people the joker light. Not the other way around. Man, just find peace with yourself, and with all jokers.”

  “I’m not a joker!”

  Bacho could hear the smile in the man’s voice. “You keep telling yourself that. But, truth is, we’re all jokers, kid.”

  Jax went into convulsions again, barely managing to stay on his feet. He didn’t seem used to the change in his center of gravity yet.

  Bacho couldn’t help it. He laughed. Dina and Antonia did as well. A good, long, bellyaching laugh.

  Walking back to the hotel, Bacho, Dina, and Antonia played through the best moments of the night again. They talked about the weirdest changes, argued about which were the most enjoyable joker bodies to dance as. They’d seen so much, almost too much to believe. Speaking about it, they fed off one another, remembering more a
nd more things as they walked, slow and casual, caught up in their conversation. The streets were quiet, dawn not far away, the air lovely cool. Bacho felt comfortable with these two in a way he never had with Jax and Darryl. Yeah, he was crushing on Dina, but … in a cool way, not terribly awkward. And Antonia had let down her brittle exterior armor. She was relaxed in a way Bacho had never seen her. It was nice. Her tentacled hands? Well, they weren’t tentacled just now, but the very thought that he’d once found them weird seemed foreign to him now.

  The streets were quiet enough that they paused in the middle of an intersection, enjoying the way the empty streets made them the center of an asphalt X. Dina said, “What about when we got all rubbery?” She made a rather pathetic attempt at a wave. Bacho caught it as it left her thick fingertips and let the wave flow from his wrist through his elbow and shoulder, and then down his chest all the way to his feet and back up again. It was a funky little dance, made all the more amusing by his joker body. All three laughed.

  Antonia held up a hand to calm them. “Okay, that’s funny and all, but it’s not always like this. You know that, right? I mean it’s not always joy and laughter. For a lot of people the change is pain, suffering. Body and mind. Don’t forget that and think that being a … joker … is all a joke.”

  Dina took her hand. “Of course we won’t.” Bacho mumbled his agreement as well. They carried on walking, quieter now, but still talking.

  They reached the park they’d cut across earlier. They were about to cut through it when Antonia said, “Hey, do you see that?”

  Down a little ways, a group of nat guys had a couple of jokers surrounded. It was Jax and Darryl. The four guys hemmed them in like pack hunters around prey. It didn’t take more than a glance to know they’d had a long night of drinking, or to assess that they were trouble. As if to confirm it, one of the guys shoved Jax, who stumbled, tripped, and landed hard on his substantial bottom. The nats hooted with laughter.

  “What do we do?” Antonia asked.

  “Go get help,” Bacho said. “Wake someone up and come back.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Dina asked. “By the time we’d explained everything it would be too late.” She paused a moment, watching the nats get bolder. One of them offered Darryl a drink, but when he reached to accept it the guy yanked it back, punching him with his other fist instead. Jax tried to run, but one of the nats clotheslined him and tossed him back into the circle.

  “We can’t leave them,” Dina said. “This is my fault.” She started running toward them.

  “Shit,” Bacho said. His short legs had to work to keep up with Dina. He tried to think. He wasn’t a fighter. Never had been. He avoided conflict whenever he could. And that was before, in his own body. As a four-foot-tall, stubby, fleshy joker? He’d be toast. They all would be. But none of that stopped him from pulling up beside Dina, and then passing her as they neared the group. Still not having the slightest plan, he ran between two of the guys, right into the circle that had Darryl and Jax trapped. He stood with them, trying to look larger than he was.

  “Whoa! What the hell do we have here?” the guy with the bottle asked. “More of them? Holy shit. Look at them! Oh God, there are girls, too.”

  Dina and Antonia joined them. Both girls crossed their arms defiantly, the sight of which made the nats howl. “We don’t want any trouble,” Bacho said. “We’re just walking back to our hotel. These are our friends.”

  One of the nats dangled the half-empty bottle of bourbon from his fingers. He took a swig of it. He was a white guy, wearing khaki shorts and a polo shirt. He had the build of an athlete, the swagger of privilege, and the hungry eyes of a guy who’d just found a bit of amusement after a night that might have been lacking it. “Why do people who are about to get their asses kicked always say that?”

  “Try being more original,” another one, a light-skinned black guy sporting a lacrosse jersey, said. The other two, also athletic-looking white guys, added their two cents.

  “I told you they’d be out again,” the leader said. “Every Saturday. Sun comes up. Fucking jokers come out. Where do you all come from? Do you hide somewhere during the day? I bet you do. Like vampires.”

  “B-b-but I told you,” Jax stammered, “I’m not a joker.” He gestured at his decidedly joker body. “This is just … a … thing. I’ll be normal tomorrow. Like you. I play baseball.”

  “Normal like me?” The guy took a swig and then passed the bottle to one of his friends. “Yeah, right.”

  “You don’t understand. Oh, God…” Jax scrunched his eyes closed. His snout trembled with fear. “There’s a club where—”

  “Shut up,” Dina said. She cast her voice low, but it was rock hard. To the nats, she said, “We’re going. Okay? We’re just going.”

  She began to slip between them, but they closed the gap. “You’re not going anywhere until we say you are. Your kind nearly destroyed the fucking world. Nice try, shitheads. Now it’s payback time.” He glanced at his friends. “Let’s take this into the park.”

  “We’re not going into the park,” Dina said.

  The leader looked at her, strangely contemplative all of a sudden. Then he said, “Deal with the rest of them. This one’s mine.”

  The others sprang into action. They surged forward, shoving the jokers from the sidewalk into the trees at the edge of the park. The leader grabbed Dina by the wrist, yanked her to him, and then lifted her, screaming and kicking, off the ground. He began to carry her away, into the shadows and toward a thick clump of bushes.

  Anguished, Bacho fought to break free and get to her. But the guys were too fast, too brutal and strong. They kept knocking them back. One punched Darryl in the gut. Another lifted Jax with one arm and body slammed him. The two others converged on Bacho. He saw them coming, but his eyes looked past them. They locked with Dina’s for a brief moment, before she and the leader disappeared into the bushes.

  “Noooo!!!” Bacho yelled.

  The two guys were upon him, but suddenly he wasn’t scared of them. Fury filled him. As it did, something strange happened. His vision doubled. He saw the men with his normal eyes, almost frozen in time, reaching for him, one with his fists cocked and starting toward him. But also a second pair of eyes rose to a higher vantage, as if another version of him was growing out of his back. He tried for a moment to find Dina. With astounding clarity and detail, he saw the trembling in the bushes that indicated where they were.

  That made his rage complete. His Noooo became a roar. He looked down at the two men, so close to his joker body, so large and fierce next to it. He shot out a hand—not his normal hand, not his pudgy joker hand, but a large, long-fingered claw of a hand—and grabbed the fist of the man punching him. He crushed it in his grip until he felt small bones begin to break, and then flung the man away. He backhanded the other man, impacting with his head so hard the man’s feet came out from underneath him and he dropped to the ground.

  Bacho ran toward the bushes that hid Dina and her attacker, but his legs were too short. He couldn’t run with the speed he wanted. His eyes could, though. His view through his second pair of eyes shot forward at incredible speed, tracking the faint signs of motion. Doubled vision. And with it two different views. From the vantage of his running joker body, Bacho saw a large, dark shadow leap over him and bound, wolflike, into the bushes. His second set of eyes, he realized, saw from within that canine body. They took the wolf crashing through the bushes, arriving as the attacker pulled back his hand to smack Dina, who was still struggling to pull away from him. The wolf bit down on the man’s arm and yanked it savagely. He felt the man’s shoulder dislocate, the arm go limp. He heard the man scream, his voice high-pitched and frantic. Bacho shoved him away. It was Dina that mattered.

  She stood leaning back into the bushes as if she’d been thrown there, arms stretched out to hold her up. She stared, mystified, into the wolf’s eyes. The joker Bacho ran all the more frantically, worried that she would be afraid, desperate that she not
be. He scrabbled through the bushes, saw the hulking, shadowy form of the wolf, highlighted at times by shimmering waves of silver light. It was a tangible form, and yet Bacho walked right through it. His joker vision went dark for a second, and then he pushed through and there was Dina. His two pairs of eyes saw her from slightly different angles, but they saw the same scene again.

  When Bacho reached out, gently offering his hands, Dina’s eyes left the wolf, saw him. After a long moment, she reached out to him as well.

  When Bacho emerged from the bushes with Dina, the spectral wolf hulked behind and above him. It moved as he moved, paused when he paused. It stretched to nine feet or so, a bulky form that had substance and yet was ethereal as well. Wide shoulders, long arms, furred in glistening black. Above the shape was that wolf head, long-muzzled, with black canine eyes that glimmered as they moved.

  Seeing him, their attackers fled. Two of the men took off running. The third urged the man with the crushed hand to walk faster. Their leader clutched his dislocated arm to his chest, flinching as the slightest movement sent jolts of pain through him. They all kept looking back, clearly fearful of Bacho following them. He didn’t. He just stood, his little fists clenched, panting as he watched them go. The wolf shared the posture, watching as well. The rage in Bacho burned hot, but instead of feeding it by chasing them down and tearing them apart—as he knew he could do—he embraced the fury and let it fill him. But just because he could have torn them apart didn’t mean he wanted to, or should. He’d done enough. He let the anger burn itself out, saddening slightly as he felt it fade away.

  Around him, the others stared. First at the retreating attackers, and then at Bacho himself. The vision through his second pair of eyes faded, blinked a few times, and then cut out completely. He was one being again.

  “What was that?” Antonia asked. “You all saw that, right? The … the…”

  “It was like a werewolf,” Darryl said.