skonen_blades | Entries tagged with cards

The sound of the cards hitting the table was like a shark giving up on life. A drainpipe stuffed with explosive diarrhea on a stormy night finally giving up the blockage to the rain in a gush beside the house. It was a flat sound of dismay lost among many others.

In a casino, life savings get lost every second. People drown in amongst the waves of jangling noise and flashing lights. Sure there are distractions to make sure that you don’t leave, that you don’t look down, that you don’t go to sleep. But there are also distractions to make sure you don’t notice the people around you dying.

Juggy Peters had just lost his entire house and was in debt for 500 thousand dollars. And it wasn’t debt owed to the nice kind of person that would loan money to losers in Nevada. Juggy wouldn’t have hands in the morning if he was lucky. He’d be dead if he wasn’t.

Reeling, he stepped back from the busted hand, the shit river, and the thieving flop that had killed him. Of course he blamed the dealer. Of course he blamed the cards. Of course he blamed the gods themselves. He had felt the track. He had felt the real winter of luck coming spiraling down the slide into his body. He knew he’d been possessed by the probability dragon. He could feel it searing his veins. He eyes glowed with x-ray right choices and no whammies.

He maintained that he wasn’t wrong about that.

As he tried to shimmy around the slots, possibly even in between the air molecules to another dimension, his doom gave him a lightheadedness. This was the end of a very long road. A road he was tired of.

He didn’t recognize self-destruction or implosion. He wondered if he would recognize insanity. His lovers and wives had all left. His children didn’t speak to him. He had no friends except a royal flush, full house, or four of a kind.

The problem was that he had been really good. Untouchable for an entire year.

After that, it was like jumping out of a plane in a great parachute. A beautiful, slow, and totally unstoppable descent.

Even this casino was a last straw of sorts. The big houses wouldn’t let him in anymore after those vulgar displays of spittle and rage. Not that it made a difference. A few cocktail servers had to change their uniforms after he splashed drinks on them. A few bouncers had to wash their suits after he bled on them. A few decks of cards needed to be switched out after he threw them. Just ripples after a small rock hitting a pond. Minor rearrangements of the taught elastic fabric of reality, immediately oscillating back to straight and static. Like a plucked string shuddering back to normal.

He hadn’t caused any hardship. He’d barely caused annoyance.

What a greased slide his life had been. Nice and easy down the chute.

And here he was. Not at the bottom yet but very near the impact waiting for him at the end.

He straightened his tie and headed out the front of the casino. He wasn’t going to be thrown out of this one.

He took two steps.

He felt the large, polite, gentle-for-now hand on his shoulder and looked up into night-time sunglasses perched on a very flat boxer’s nose.

“Juggy Peters?” graveled the wall of flesh stuffed into the black suit.

“What? No. He’s back there at the roulette wheel. My name’s…….yeah. I’m Juggy Peters.” he said. The reflex of running kicking up a last rabbit of spasming self-preservation before laying still.

“Nice. Nice. That’s what I like to see. Let’s go the limo. Donnie’s waiting. We know you don’t have the money. It’s okay. It’s okay.” he soothed and slowly pushed him towards an open limo door. It was like being pushed by the ocean. No resistance was possible. He slowly surfed into the car, pouring into the leather seat. The car even rocked just the smallest bit on its suspension. A small sway before settling.

Donnie was inside sitting across from him. The door closed. The limo pulled away. Donnie leaned forward.

“You know, Juggy. I like these moments. It’s because of the honesty, y’know? You don’t have to promise me some bullshit promise and I don’t have to bullshit that I believe your bullshit promise. We both know this is it. You came quietly and you’ve always been a stand-up guy so I’m going to do what I can to make sure it’s not painful and if you want me to get word to any of your people, I can do that, y’know?” Donnie said to me.

Donnie was Juggy’s age. That made it worse. It made it evident that he’d left the right track some time ago. If Donnie had been twenty years older than Juggy, he could have kidded himself that with the right win and the right moxy, he could straighten up. But no. There’d be no straightening up. That was evident.

“No. No people. You don’t have to send word to anyone.” said Juggy.

“Good. That’s good. Sad, but good. Makes things easier all around. You sit back and enjoy the ride. We’ll be in the desert in about an hour. We can talk if you want. I’m a good listener.”

So Juggy talked. He told Donnie about his life and his failures and his hopes and his ideas. He poured it all out. Even the dark secrets. He wasn’t sure when it became a confession or when he started crying but it all happened. It sounded so short when he finally said it all out loud. So depressingly normal. Just another average human bottoming out. Just another death for avoidable reasons in Vegas. His whole life, his whole list of things to say, didn’t even take the hour.

When Donnie knelt him down in the salt flats and aimed the gun at his forehead, Juggy closed his eyes and took the donkey-kick bullet that shattered through the stained glass window of his mind as a kindness.

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Five elements make up the earth. Five points a pentagram.
There were five wounds on Jesus Christ. Five fingers on a hand.
The number five’s significant. It’s all through ancient lore.
And yet our playing cards have suits that number only four.

The spades that dig , the hearts that love, the clubs that bludgeon heads
The diamonds glitter. Every suit in shades of blacks and reds.
The cards can tell a story of deceit and sex and death.
Money, shovels, baseball bats, a lover’s dying breath

The cards can also educate about society
Royalty’s outnumbered but they have the power, see?
So many of the cards that number down from ten to ace
Are cards that by design don’t even have a person’s face.

The symbols on the playing cards are metaphors for life
And like those metaphors they can bring happiness or strife
Parables, morality, mortality and more
But yet the suits involved in decks of cards are only four

Yet five’s the number echoing back through the centuries.
Why four suits? There’s more to this than everybody sees.
There was another suit existed sure as I’m alive
I swear upon a pirate’s grave, they used to number five

There was a suit that lit the rest. A suit that banished night.
A suit of lamps. A suit of stars. It was a suit of light.
Lanterns it was called back then. The lantern suit of cards.
Lanterns lit the spades, the clubs, the diamonds and the hearts

You can’t spade a grave by feel, and hearts are ruled by sight
Diamonds don’t shine in the dark and clubs need help at night
How the lantern suit was shaped is lost to history
Possibly a flame or star was its geometry

It’s known the suit was odd because the highest card was jack
Jack of Lanterns was the highest card in every pack
For Jack had killed the Lantern King and claimed his lantern throne
He told the Queen to leave his house and now he ruled alone.

And so the King of Lanterns only had a leering skull
The Queen had running makeup tears, with racoon eyes gone dull
While Jack became the lantern made to light the crooked way.
The ray of light, the ray of hope, was Jack O Lantern’s ray.

Jack of Lantern’s rebel ways inspired all the players.
Gave them hope against the rich and lifted all their cares
Jack was always pictured with a horrid, leering smile.
Friendly, charming, scary, daring, rakish, full of guile

The suit was banned in 1410 by order of the lash.
Within a decade every deck of cards was burned to ash
And every hand that held a card was severed from its arm
Decks of cards were decks of death. They brought the owner harm.

It looked as though all playing cards were gone forever then
Along with all the thousand card games kept in mortal ken
The King who banned the cards? His name’s forgotten. Or erased?
Records of the royal family ruling can’t be traced

Decks of cards did not exist for one whole century
The only place they dared to come again was deep at sea
Pirates made new decks of cards away from legal eyes
Half-remembered one-eye jacks, and kings of suicide

The harshest laws regarding cards were focused on the lights
Most cards came back but lanterns stayed in darkness due to fright
Lanterns stayed a secret suit that no one dared to play
No one dared, and no one played, and so it went away

One thing you can’t do with light is keep it in the dark
It might change but it’ll find a way to keep the spark
Jack of Lanterns drifted into legend, myth and fable
Even though his suit was gone from every poker table

Cards survived but lights did not. The suit became extinct.
Yet every Halloween you’ll see a symbol that is linked
When settlers came to foreign soil, they brought Jackie, too.
And now from every pumpkin head, Jackie looks at you.

Jack O’Lantern stares from houses giving kids the treats
His smile lights the houses stairs as tiny teeth eat sweets
He smiles at the pranks and tricks all played on Hallow’s eve
Jackie lives. That king is dead and he is not bereaved.

Affection, violence, labour, wealth, REBELLION is the key
Rebel against the definitions of society
Define yourSELF and hope will lead the path you dare to tread
For Jack is nimble. Jack is quick. Despite the pumpkin head.

So every Halloween remember Jack O Lantern’s face.
It is a suit of cards integral to the human race.
Remember Jack the fearless one, the one that lit the way
Although his suit’s forgotten, Jackie never went away.

tags

Five elements make up the earth. Five points a pentagram.
There were five wounds on Jesus Christ. Five fingers on a hand.
The number five’s significant. It’s all through ancient lore.
And yet our playing cards have suits that number only four.

The spades that dig , the hearts that love, the clubs that bludgeon heads
The diamonds glitter. Every suit in shades of blacks and reds.
The cards can tell a story of deceit and sex and death.
Money, shovels, baseball bats, a lover’s dying breath

The cards can also educate about society
Royalty’s outnumbered but they have the power, see?
So many of the cards that number down from ten to ace
Are cards that by design don’t even have a person’s face.

The symbols on the playing cards are metaphors for life
And like those metaphors they can bring happiness or strife
Parables, morality, mortality and more
But yet the suits involved in decks of cards are only four

Yet five’s the number echoing back through the centuries.
Why four suits? There’s more to this than everybody sees.
There was another suit existed sure as I’m alive
I swear upon a pirate’s grave, they used to number five

There was a suit that lit the rest. A suit that banished night.
A suit of lamps. A suit of stars. It was a suit of light.
Lanterns it was called back then. The lantern suit of cards.
Lanterns lit the spades, the clubs, the diamonds and the hearts

You can’t spade a grave by feel, and hearts are ruled by sight
Diamonds don’t shine in the dark and clubs need help at night
How the lantern suit was shaped is lost to history
Possibly a flame or star was its geometry

It’s known the suit was odd because the highest card was jack
Jack of Lanterns was the highest card in every pack
For Jack had killed the Lantern King and claimed his lantern throne
He told the Queen to leave his house and now he ruled alone.

And so the King of Lanterns only had a leering skull
The Queen had running makeup tears, with racoon eyes gone dull
While Jack became the lantern made to light the crooked way.
The ray of light, the ray of hope, was Jack O Lantern’s ray.

Jack of Lantern’s rebel ways inspired all the players.
Gave them hope against the rich and lifted all their cares
Jack was always pictured with a horrid, leering smile.
Friendly, charming, scary, daring, rakish, full of guile

The suit was banned by King Chenisse who used the axe and lash.
Within a decade every deck of cards was burned to ash
And every hand that held a card was severed from its arm
Decks of cards were decks of death. They brought the owner harm.

Cards survived but Jack did not. His suit became extinct.
Yet every Halloween you’ll see a symbol that is linked
When settlers came to foreign soil, they brought Jackie, too.
And now from every pumpkin head, Jackie looks at you.

Jack O’Lantern stares from houses giving kids the treats
His smile lights the houses stairs as tiny teeth eat sweets
He smiles at the pranks and tricks all played on Hallow’s eve
Jackie lives. The king is dead and he is not bereaved.

So every Halloween remember Jack O Lantern’s face.
It is a suit of cards integral to the human race.
Remember Jack the fearless one, the one that lit the way
Although his suit’s forgotten, Jackie never went away.

tags

Haniffer Solowitz was a jackass.

I hated that guy. He’d grown up on Kessel station with us and he had a girl’s name. His father, Flint, had named him after his own grandmother. Then Flint had fled the station one night on a freighter bound for The Troubles.

Hannifer’s mother was not against the occasional bit of whoring to get food and money. His upbringing left a lot to be desired. Still, even that could have worked in his favour sympathy-wise if he hadn’t been such a jerkasaurus. The kid fought like a wolverine. Every day. It took nothing to set him off. We’d go make him mad when we were bored which, on a station this size, was all the time.

He hated women. Something about his mom. After puberty, though, boy! He’d go through them like a chainsaw. It made me ill. And they’d flock! The more hearts he broke, the more got in line to be broken. I can’t deny that we were all jealous but it made almost the entire male half of the class sullen. We’d made fun of Hannifer’s mom and his girly name all his life so we couldn’t blame him for not speaking to us.

I think that secretly, we would have welcomed pointers from him on how to get girls. It was too late for that now. We’d alienated him and he’d risen to the challenge instead of becoming a recluse. Oh, how the tables turn.

He hung out with people much older than us. Twice, I’d seen him through the shields at the station’s bar playing 3poker with tug pilots. They liked his spunk well enough but I’d watch their smiles fall when he won their money.

I remember once he showed up a black eye and keys to a racer. It was the kind of pretentious racer that only had room for two, if you know what I mean. It was also streamlined and arrow-shaped which was totally unnecessary in frictionless space. It would never have been able to withstand atmosphere so the design was just pretentious. He called the front airlocks ‘suicide doors’. And it was bright red.

And I would have given my left nut to have a ride in it, let alone own it.

If Haniffer’s stock amongst the ladies had been gold before, now it was hypercrystal.

I guess he just outgrew this place. He dropped out and started gambling full time. He even ran The Run a couple of times in that little racer of his. The tug pilots let him go out on short-haul missions with him. Some of the tug pilots were known smugglers. I doubt his mother even noticed he was gone.

She died in a messy decompression accident when he was away one time. He came home and trashed the bar when he heard the news. He was tasered and put in the brig. He was in prison during his mother’s funeral. It was an automated process and no one else showed up. The preacher's recorded voice spooled out the non-denominational ceremony to an empty room before her body was ‘locked.

He never came back after that. I had heard that he’d gone straight to the bar after getting out of jail and apologized to the owner. The owner had laughed and said it was okay. He’d seen his share of rough customers. Hannifer had asked if there were any real card games going on and the bar owner had pointed at a table full of legitimate gun-runners who belonged to a credited smuggler’s guild. The stakes were guaranteed to be high.

God only knows what he offered just to get into the game.

He walked away with one of their ships, though, and left Kessel station after winning The Run with it.

I didn’t see him again until ten years later. I remember I was eating spaghetti. The fork was paused, halfway to my mouth, as I goggled at the tri-d.

The Princess was pinning a medal on him for being a hero of the rebellion. I didn’t even know that the empire had fallen!

I should have been jealous but after a close-up on that crooked smile of his, I felt good. I felt like he was one of us and that one of us had made it.

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Took it a few days ago. I saw some playing cards lying in a driveway that had all been extremely weathered by the rain. It was a flash of red that caught my eye at first but I failed to find a queen of hearts or something heart-related. I got this Ace of Spades, though. Isn't the Ace of Spades the card of Death? I like that it, too, has died.