Survival Of The Fittest

Criticism of a child who murdered is fucking bullshit

Stop. Breathe. Start again.

Criticism of a child who murdered is unacceptable in today’s society because their brains aren’t even fully developed yet, and there’s many scientific journals that would tell you so, you fucking

Stop. Citation needed. Start again.

Criticism of a child

Stop. Context. Show them context.

Criticism of the survivors of the ACT’s kidnapping is unacceptable in today’s society because their brains aren’t even fully developed yet, and there are many easily accessible scientific journals that can tell you so. Murder is an act of passion in most cases, but in their cases I’d argue it was far more an act of necessity. I think you could argue for manslaughter

Stop. Don’t back down. No weakness.

Criticism of the survivors

Stop. Shorten it. Punchier.

Criticism of the kids that survived ACT’s

Stop. That’s not shorter. Try it.

Critics who go after kids that survivied

Stop. You spelled survived wrong. Start again.

Critics who go after kids that survived the ACT’s kidnapping is unacceptable in today’s society because their brains aren’t fully developed yet, as many easily accessible scientific journals that can tell you. Further, they’re in an impossible situation - not only is criticising them wrong in the objective, scientific truth, it’s wrong in the subjective moral capacity too. We cannot even begin to comprehend the amount of pressure that is put upon these children, let alone the stress of being fifteen to seventeen years old at the time of kidnapping. We don’t even know what we ourselves would do in their position - let alone what we would do at

Stop. You’re in this piece. Remove yourself.

Stop altogether. You’re wasting your breath.

The first light that hit Ray’s face as a free man was met in equal force with a cold, bitter wind. January in Chicago loomed towards him as he stood, duffel bag in one hand, watching a dusky gold, beat to shit Toyota Corolla pull up in front of the wide swinging gates of the MCC. Squinting against the light and switching his grip so that the duffel hung over his shoulder instead of limply at his side, he walked down the half-dozen steps to the curb, hesitating four steps away from the car.

The figure in the driver’s seat was vaguely familiar, though after a time they all tended to blur together. This one had a set jaw and a shaved head, sunglasses perched on a straight nose as a defense to the cloudless Chicago winter sky. His hands were gloved, which struck Ray as an odd choice - did people really use driving gloves still? Was it an intimidation thing? If you’re going to wear leather to protect leather, wasn’t there just leather-on-leather crimes between gloves and the steering wheel?

Ray thought about how, in all of those TV shows and movies, the ex-con gets out to someone waiting at the car - maybe sitting on the hood - and they would meet their newly freed companion, share some witty dialogue, hand shake, and both would circle the car together to hop behind the wheel.

The figure didn’t exit the car.

This should be Carey, Ray thought, still keeping his distance. He could’ve called Carey. They wanted him to know he didn’t have options, but he did - he could have called her. He’d spent so much time thinking of her face, summoning her eyes, holding his, her slender hands snaking across his shoulders. But he hadn’t wanted to - or couldn’t - and so he was here, staring at this beat up Corolla.

After a few more moments of waiting, Ray closed the distance, popped open the back door, and took a seat behind the driver.

“Safest spot in the vehicle,” he muttered, staring out his window. The driver didn’t acknowledge it.

The Corolla pulled away from the curb with a slight squeak of braking system, rolled back into Chicago midafternoon traffic. Van Buren led to Clark street, and they were headed south, away from his home for the past three years. The Corolla stopped and started in fits, the onward push slowed significantly by other drivers in the same lulling rhythm - stop, start. Stop, start. Lots of time in that rhythm to be lulled to sleep - a morning of paperwork, waiting, talking to stuffy men in uniform who eyed Ray with the sort of contempt only a man convicted of illegally gambling on a murder island can muster. Ray fought his closing eyelids during the entire drive, staring at the sidewalk and the people walking upon it. If he jumped out, what would the driver do? What kind of instructions did he have?

“This your full time gig or…?”

No answer.

“Like, what, so you drive around ex-cons for the big guy? Sit in this piece of shit car and wait for the call on your Motorolla T-600 flip phone?”

That got a huff - humour or annoyance, Ray didn’t know. Either worked. He mostly did it for the reaction, anyway. Ray rolled his head back against the seat, touching the ends of his hair with his fingertips. He played with it for a moment, curling it around a finger, wondering if his barber would make a house call tomorrow. Special occasion and all that.

“How many of you guys does he have on call, anyways? Do they make you in a fuckin’ vat?”

“Don’t curse,” came the growl from the driver, wheeling the car right on a red light, narrowly - and expertly - fitting the beater neatly between a beat up Ranger and a shiny looking lexus.

Ray opened his mouth to retort to this, then closed it, idly scratching at a scar that ran down one side of his pale face, half-hidden behind the pathetic growth of stubble he’d cultivated for six months. He’d been given the scar as a little reminder, in his first week. A little badge of what the uniformed gentlemen in MCC felt about people who bet on child murderers. Both uniforms had gotten in on it - those in orange had held him still and those in blue had turned their backs.

It had been a long three years.

“My bad,” Ray said, “but if you’re going to give me the silent treatment for much longer-”

The driver left one hand on the wheel for a moment, reached inside his jacket pocket, and tossed a sleek looking cell phone in Ray’s direction. It was scuffed at the corners as if it had taken a beating, and when the light hit the screen he could see a spider web of hairline cracks, stretching across the lower half of it.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Sandwich,” the driver responded dryly, before adding, “turn it on.”

Ray’s fingers ran over the phone again, nail catching on the spider web, one by one. His thumb touched the side, the little power button, and the phone flared to life. A Saumsung logo that swooped and winked with an obnoxious ding. He tapped at it impatiently, waiting for it to go away. He was greeted with a home screen with a single, cheerful icon on it.

“Listen,” Ray said, but the sentence died in his mouth, crumbling to ash.

This couldn’t possibly be happening again.

“Look,” he tried again, “I don’t know if-”


“I’m just the driver.” Just-The-Driver said.

“But I didn’t sign up for - look man, I need to get my shit together. I need to find a job, show up at the halfway, meet with my P.O. I can’t- you guys can’t expect me to-”

The Opera icon stared at him, a little, cheerful O in red and white, meaning so many things to a precious few. He’d used it extensively, religiously, cracked doors with it. He’d used it to observe six variations of the same theme - hopelessness and relentlessness, a march of death where numbers dwindled from three digits to the loneliest digit. He’d bore witness to an insurmountable, undeniably large amount of violence, of transgressions before God, as part of a community that didn’t turn its back on such things but examined them clearly and closely.

He’d argued passionately if decapitation with a knife counted as death by knife wound. He’d groaned in horrified elation as a bright young girl with a sunny smile devoured - literally - the competition. He’d slowed frames down to see if the time of death he’d predicted came true, if the figures in the purple smoke were the boy or the girl. He’d gone on ASL websites to figure out what that one dude had signed to the asian chick after she’d ganked him.

All behind that little, cheerful red and white O.

“I don’t- I can’t,” Ray said, speaking it plainly to the open, flavoured air of the fucked-up Corolla, the smell of stale booze and recent cigarettes suddenly filling his nostrils as the car took a sharp left and the vents caught his face for a brief moment, blasting hot air over him.

Holding his thumb over the O made it wiggle slightly, but no red X appeared on it for deletion. He tapped elsewhere on the screen to stop its dance.

“I can’t, man. If they catch me again - if they…”

“I’m just the driver,” repeated good ol’ JTD. JTD was cool as a cucumber, his stupid driving gloves sure and confident on the steering wheel, the squeak of leather-on-leather crimes making Ray’s head spin.

“Fucking Bill,” Ray spat, “it’s all fucking Bill’s fault. He had to go and fucking ghost which meant the fucking cops which meant his fucking phone history. Building a case for four fucking years. Fucking Bill. I bet he’s not even fucking dead. I bet he’s fucking holding his fucking-”

“Language!” good ol’ JTD barked, glaring at Ray from behind his black tinted sunglasses, one amber eye visible through the gap between temple and glass.

“Bill deserves language bucko,” Ray said, but quieted nonetheless. The phone went to sleep mode. Ray woke it up with a tap on the power button, but it stayed in his lap, limply pointed towards his inner thigh. His gaze was drawn back to the sidewalk, and his thoughts were drawn back to jumping out. JTD wasn’t even driving that fast - he could hit the pavement and be out, the phone and the little cheerful red and white O left far behind.

But JTD had a boss, and JTD’s boss probably wouldn’t let him get that far.

He should’ve asked Carey to pick him up instead. He’d have had to grovel, sure, but Carey might have been talked into it, if he had said he was sorry. Fuck, she might have been happy to do it if he’d just told her the truth about what he did for a living.

But he hadn’t asked Carey because he was a loser. When the big guy called him personally and asked if he needed a favour, Ray had accepted, because that’s what you did when the big guy called. Especially when you’d spent the last time losing money - yours, Carey’s, the big guy’s.

Carey probably didn’t want to see him again.

The screen went dark again. Ray’s fingers idly went towards the window control, cracked it a little to let some of the cold air in, then cracked it wider, measuring the phone width between his thumb and forefinger.

JTD turned his head slightly, just to make Ray aware of his awareness. Ray closed the window.

“So I don’t have a choice?” Ray asked, rubbing the skin between dark brows.

“Just-”

“-the driver?”

“He said you were quick.”

Ray exhaled in amusement, shifting in his seat, staring a hole in the back of JTD’s head. Finally, he pushed the power button, lit the screen up, and tapped the little cheerful red and white O.

The app knew where to go. The app knew where it wanted him. In a blink, it lit up - black screen, white text, familiar Courier New font blinking for him, inviting him. Beyond this page was the feed that he’d spent most of his young life on. Beyond this screen was an archive of extensive footage, hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage from every available stream of the events.

Ray clicked on the black, and the keyboard popped up at the bottom half of the phone. Slowly, he began to type.

username: XRay99
Password: ********************

He let go of the keyboard and set the phone aside, waiting as it encrypted, processed, spat out data. The screen went dark again, but Ray didn’t touch it, feeling slightly sick to his stomach, a hit of the Hub, when he was three years sober.

He didn’t know why, but he felt like crying.

Ray tapped the screen again, and the feeds were open, dormant. Chat wasn’t scrolling past. The Bill event had resulted in security being tighter, more furious.

Ray tossed the phone on the passenger seat, sighed, leaned his head against the headrest and closed his eyes. JTD was driving him, and his account was logged in.

The car moved through a winter Chicago morning, moving closer and closer outside of the city border. JTD handled the wheel with squeaks of leather on leather. The phone sat beside him, unlocked and logged in, waiting for input. Ray succumbed to the exhaustion, curled slightly in his seat, his head on the cool glass of the car window. He tried to summon an image of Carey’s face.

It didn’t arrive.

A bang was heard in the office of Michael Miller, it was a loud bang followed by the clattering of various objects hitting the floor around him. Lucky for him he was working from his home office that day.

He frowned as he stared at his screen. A stream playing showed a dead body, one of many at this point, but that was not why Michael was frowning.

He had placed a bad bet, put his hopes on this dead person in front of him. His hand was curled into a fist as he slammed it into his desk again.

Shit.

He had hoped to earn some money real quick, something to deal with some debts he had accrued, and this dead child was now an example for him.

In a Goliath vs David situation, bet on Goliath.

His eyes glazed over to his username on the screen, Brut64. A dumb mix of an old and new love of his, he needed a name for this and it couldn’t be ones he’d use elsewhere. He could not let anyone know that this is where he would get his money from.

His phone beeped and his eyes darted over to it, picking it up and studied the name only made his frown worse. Tracee04. Eyes narrowed as he typed back to them.

good luck so far Brut?
No.
shit really? who was it?
B034, the kid who walked away from that lighthouse in one piece. Got himself killed by G030 like an idiot.
oof, feels bad man.

Michael snorted to himself, feels bad was an understatement in that moment.

What about yours?
still kicking baby!
Really?
yeah no one taking ace out i tell ya! gonna earn some from that
B010? Are you for real?
hell yeah man! all the way!

Michael mentally cursed himself, if he had known he would have bet on him instead. Instead he put his bets on B002 and B046 early and then on B034 after the lighthouse. He had a gut feeling when he placed those. Well, that and it was a no brainer to put it on the first two.

And look at where that got him.

He looked away from his phone and at his ceiling, starting taking deep breaths. Soon that frown was gone and a smirk had replaced it.

There was one more.
He looked back to his phone,

Still got a shot.
oh? who?
G008.
her?! she freaky dude! why her?

This was the tricky part, it wasn’t like Michael couldn't admit he’d placed his bets on a gut feeling, might as well been a stomach cramp with how much good it had done him.

How else would he explain it though?

She gave me a good feeling.
for real? she creepy as hell.
Exactly, that’s why.
dafuq?
Come on, think about it. The winners have always been off in some way. B001, B012, G027, B058… do I need to go on?
calvert wasnt off dude
What the fuck are you talking about? He was playing for someone else than himself, how is that not off?
bullshit! with what he had to deal with? no shit he wanted someone else to get out.
We’re not gonna argue about this. Look, I got a good feeling on her and I think I got a good shot with this.
whatever you say man.

He placed his phone back down and reached over to his mouse, a few clicks and he had a new stream up, and there she was.

G008.

And she was with B010. He had his gun out.

Great.

Michael placed his face into his hands. He slid his face down his hands until they were on top of his head, holding his hair back. His eyes downcast as they bored holes into his floor.

He could hear the gunshots.

Then he heard her voice and his eyes widened and he stared at the screen as she left to talk with G056.

There was still a shot. This had to be good.

It just had to.

It was a difficult process, extracting dried blood and tissue, fused together in a sticky mess, from one’s nostril. Ray managed it with a quiet wince, a curling body over a bathroom sink that was tinged yellow with smoke and father time. He exhaled slowly, carefully, as he pulled the clotted kleenex between thumb and forefinger, letting it dangle before releasing it to the ceramic with a muffled flap.

His nose whistled as his breath sung through it, aggravating the raw skin. He tilted his head back, examining the damage through his good eye, tilting his head left and right. The bathroom light was dingy, but acted as both spotlight and mask on the purple and yellow bruises, swollen lips, bloody shoulder that was his current form. Like a picasso painting, he mused, or one of those fragmented mirrors that you can look at in a funhouse, your features all stretched or swollen depending on where the glass warped.

Ray leaned his forehead against the glass and exhaled again - his breaths were as careful now as his words had been in that room, JTD’s hand on the back of his neck, the touch gentle but forceful, an anchor around him. It had been an office setup - plate glass windows framing a single big leather armchair that the big guy had sat in, flanked by two more JTD-lites. The big guy hadn’t actually gotten to the why’s and how’s of his money yet, even though Ray had clicked the O and let him in. That was the thing about The Hub - if you weren’t in the know, you didn’t - well, know. It wasn’t exactly user friendly - there weren’t designers making things dance and jiggle and gleam and eye-catching. It didn’t feed your id or stroke your ego.

It was just… The Hub. Child murder gambling. Slapped together with duct tape.

The tremors that had started since JTD had placed a friendly hand on the back of his neck quivered through him again, forcing his head to sink slightly lower against the glass, his eyes squeezing carefully closed. The big guy had wanted to know how to get an account, and Ray had told him. The big guy wanted to know what would happen if you gambled on two accounts, and Ray had told him that, too - expecting and experiencing the twisted rage that came from his answer.

Those that were, the people in charge, didn’t let cheaters prosper. It was part of their code.

The big guy had allowed Ray’s information - good little bird, singing on command, you fucking donkey - to wash over him, thanked him easily, a fist curling around an arm chair.

“Right, that brings us to the last thing,” he had said, and Ray had winced.

“I figured.”

“You know, there’s a rep we need to keep, you know? Like, we can’t have you walking in here with my boy and not leave without - you know, marks, feel?”

“We can’t,” Ray said, struggling not to make it a question.

“So like, here’s the thing. The thing is that you got snagged too fast, you know? They were all over you and like… you lost my money, Ray,”

Ray said nothing, the hand on his neck tightened. He glanced at JTD, who remained impassive. So much for their special relationship.

“You lost my money,” the big guy continued, “and so we come to my like, thing, that I wanted you for.”

JTD slowly pushed forwards, and Ray slowly bent at the waist, his eyes screwing shut. A squeak of leather, and the big guy unfolded, rising from his chair. JTD’s grip moved from Ray’s neck to his hair, held him in that position, as the big guy walked forwards, the Chicago winter sun beating down upon them all, framing Ray in the big guy’s shadow.

“Don’t stop bowing,” the big guy had said, and punched him in the stomach.

Ray opened his eyes, bleary and bloodshot, and eased his way back from the mirror. There was a face-shaped smudge of grease and dirt there, where if he really squinted, he could let his beaten face fade away and focus on how awfully dirty this bathroom was. The important things.

The apartment was a loaner from a friend - a shitty friend, but a friend - to get his PO off of his back. It was a studio in a crappy highrise with a tiny bathroom and a leaky showerhead, a sleeping bag stuck in the corner, a lamp that needed to be carried around from outlet to outlet and plugged in because none of the overhead lights worked. While his face healed he could fix it up some, leave it better than he had found it. He imagined it would feel better when it was cleaner and brighter and had more of his stuff in it.

He wondered where he would get stuff, now.

He wondered what the odds were that he’d come out the other side of all of this. What the odds were that he’d ever be something - anything - worth looking at.

Ray wondered about the odds.

She’d been on the clock when she got the text.

The temptation to fuck off early was there, it was a slow night and nobody wanted to come off their pockets. She played sweet regardless, the manic light in her eyes having nothing to do with the boring as fuck people in front of her and everything to do with what she’d be doing when she got home.

Apparently she’d looked like she’d been on something.

Good.

A reputation as a druggie wouldn’t hurt right now at all.

brag your heart out!!1 you know I’m rooting for you（･∀･)つ⑩
finally got g001, been gunning for that slot since riz took it back in the day.
think she’s a winner??? or are you holding out for yet another money-making award-winning fantastical traaaaaade???
not this time, so don’t bother asking. That’s a blue chip.

Rhapsody kicked off her seven-inch Pleasers, and Ashley slumped on the couch and waited for her little brother to double-check the VPNs or whatever the shit was on her burner phone. Whatever he’d been learning from his weirdo friends, Tony knew his shit about OPSEC, a term she’d learned from reddit with it’s overly enthusiastic cheaters.

He was sixteen, would be at his private school for two more years.

Every time a new batch of kids got nabbed it reminded her why the shit was worth it.

This was more play than it was work though. That was fucked up, but Ashley had learned that karma was a fake thing weak bitches used as a security blanket years ago. She would rather see rich bastards fight for their lives than teenagers, but she took what she could get.

Tony tossed her the phone, told her to have fun, and went off to his room. She hoped he’d take his ass to bed, hoped he wasn’t watching SOTF, knew that all her hope meant nothing in the end.

A birdy told me this class was loaded with good bets
that birdie also snatched the last football kid from meeeeeee
(╬ ಠ益ಠ)
like you won’t just pick the kids with the biggest sob story.
cause I’m such a softie!!! \o/
lying bitch <3
cut the shit

Because she wasn’t dumb enough to pin her hopes and dreams on this, why her grinding never stopped. Side bets were more fun anyway, and as long as she got at least one kid to top thirty it would be more than enough funds to flip into something legit.

None of these people seemed to realize the dangers of being too good at what you did, even after that spiteful bitch almost got them all taken down over some bullshit vendetta. She’d only been in since version five, but it didn’t take a vet to know not to blow up the spot.

B064 is a fuckup with mister riz’s weapon, G015 seems savage af lowkey, B043 apparently started off popping off and... ah, help me out!!! Last one, gimme something good please please please pleaseeee
G041
you’re so funny
⊂二二二（＾ω＾）二⊃

Joke suggestion or not, it was sound. Girl was injured enough for sympathy ploys and seemed used to being taken care of. As long as she didn’t go uberbitch on anyone it was good enough to get her by for a bit.

She locked her kids in, wished them luck they probably wouldn’t get.

so who’s flipped their shit already???
gimmie the deets!!!
0:3

“You know,” John teased, “there are easier - and shorter - ways of getting a face to face.”

Ray slumped lower in the squeaky diner seats, his bandaged hand gently stirring a spoon in a swirling, milky chocolate textured cup of coffee. Moments ago he’d sprinkled granules of pre-packaged sugar, watched them sink slowly into the mixture, watched them fade from the surface and drown, to dissolve and become something new, albeit something less - a part of a whole as opposed to an individual. It was the first time that he’d so clearly empathized with a food product, and he had to roll bloodshot eyes at his own melodrama.

The bruises on his face were healing nicely, but not nearly fast enough for his liking. Companies couldn’t hear bruises on your face over the phone, at least, and the two times in the past two weeks he’d tried those particular avenues had gone okay. It’s equally hard to hear interest and judgement over the phone from trained HR professionals.

Ray met John’s eyes, tapping the spoon against the small ceramic mug. He’d paid 1.75 for the coffee and it was bottomless. It was one-tenth of his remaining savings.

“Did Bill ever collect?” Ray asked, laying the spoon on a napkin he wasn’t going to use.

John steepled his fingers. “We’re talking about this? Here?”

“This, here. As public as possible.”

The diner wasn’t crowded, but it was small, and the dozen or so patrons made the space seem much more full, more lively. There was enough pleasant chatter and the sound of cooking that talking at a normal volume allowed you to kind of blend into the generic crowd noise as opposed to be swallowed up by it.

“He bet on Mara,” Ray continued, as if reminding John of trivia he hadn’t heard in years, “and ghosted. He can’t have stayed a ghost with that much money on the line. So did he collect?”

John toyed with his own coffee, though he had taken it black for years. Left kind of an empty space for his hands, since he couldn’t pour milk or sugar into it. Ray watched him lift his spoon, place it back down, rotate the mug one eighty, then touch the side of it. Fidgeting. John wasn’t a fidgeter.

“I know he was your boy, and I know you liked him better than me. That’s fucking- that’s not what I’m here about. Past is past. I’m just asking about his winnings.”

“Remember last time we spoke about this, Ray?” the bigger man asked, folding his hands in front of him and boring his gaze into Ray’s.

He did. It was during the last spiral, when he’d borrowed enough money from the big guy to put it all on the big threat - the only threat - left in the sixth version. He’d wanted to hedge, argued that the Hub was keeping a rainy-day fund in the form of Bill’s winnings, argued that if Bill couldn’t collect it, it should be paid out to everyone, a return on investment.

Ray’d argued that stance until Fiyori had walked off the fucking roof.

“How many bookies,” Ray asked, “keep the winnings of gamblers when there’s a fault in the system?”

“The smart ones do.”

“The ones who are betting one-offs do. The smart ones know that they need to keep customers coming back. So if there’s a fault in the system, a fatal flaw, it voids the contract and the bettors get paid back out.”

“There’s no fault in the system,” John said, hands still steepled, that cold Chicago sun sparkling off of his wavy blonde hair. An adonis in the flesh, sitting apart from a man who was scar faced and bruised, who looked like he’d just crawled over glass and sat down for coffee.

“The system,” Ray said, “is that we all place bets on four candidates and the winner gets the pot. Nobody claimed the pot.”

“That’s not a flaw. You still lost.”

“It’s absolutely a flaw. Nobody’s ever left that amount of money on the table, John. Nobody. There’s no way you and Chuck have a system in place-”

“We’re taking it case by case, Ray. We take it case by case all the time. Trades were established the second go-round on a case-by-case. Hell, the betting on it the first time came out of a need - it was case by case. It’s not a perfect system. We’re not Vegas. It’s part of the inherent contract that you agree to-”

“As opposed to the actual contract we sign,” Ray put in.

“That you agree to when you enter The Hub.”

“We agree to an actual, legitimate contract, John. Nowhere in that contract does it state that if nobody claims the prize, The Hub gets to keep the fucking pot.”

“Well, we’re not Vegas.”

Ray huffed. “You’re sure not, John.”

Silence descended as the waitress arrived, placing a plate of food in front of John - bacon, sausages, eggs, home fries. It smelled delicious, looked like crap. She also placed a single pancake in front of Ray, refilling his coffee in practiced movements. She looked like she didn’t want to meet his eyes, and he didn’t try to meet hers, staring sullenly at the tabletop.

“Did you buy me a pancake?” Ray asked, when she was hurrying away.

“Yes,” John said, picking up his fork and knife and cutting into the meal.

“Did the sixth version’s pot grow because of all the capitol you have now that Bill disappeared?”

“Drop this, Ray.”

“John,” Ray said, his voice soft, pleading.

“John,” he repeated, when the larger man didn’t look up from gouging his eggs apart with his knife. Finally, John looked at him.

“How much are you guys sitting on?”

John sighed, biting into his breakfast, chewing thoughtfully.

“Around three point two. Fifth version was lucrative.”

Ray leaned back in his bench, squeezing his eyes shut, remembering the look of the big guy’s shoes filling his vision, that first punch in his gut, the way JTB had plucked the phone he’d logged into from the passenger seat and slipped it into his pocket when they’d arrived to the office. He rubbed a hand on his scar, scratched his scalp, looked at John as the bigger man tucked into his eggs and bacon. He remembered begging them - Chuck and John both, separately and together - for funds to pay back the big guy, any loan, any amount of help, anything. He remembered saying nothing - not a fucking thing - when men in black jackets and white shirts and blue ties shone a light in his face and asked him who had built this thing, this system he’d taken part in, this amoral and disgusting and heinous thing that he dared use. He remembered being denied food and water as they asked him over and over and over and not once did he utter anything rhyming with ‘fuck’ or ‘lawn’.

“Okay, John. You’re right,” he said, standing and leaving his pancake and coffee untouched. He left another 1.75 for the waitress, because tipping 10% of his remaining savings should be enough for excellent service and no vocal judgement. John continued to eat as he stepped past him, laying a bandaged hand on the larger man’s shoulder.

“Thanks for the pancake,” Ray said.

June 7, 2015

Pyxie Styx Gentlemen’s Club, Garland, Nevada


Tatiana stood behind the curtain and closed her eyes. She breathed in and out, keeping her breathing out of sync with the dubstep music playing behind her. Closing her eyes gave her a brief reprieve from the red lights and laser balls that made Pyxie Styx a nightmare to work in for those with sensitive eyes. But she soon opened her large blue eyes and saw spots as her eyes focused on the red curtain before her. The DJ was changing the track to Meg Myers’ Desire, so she had to get ready.

As the song began, Tatiana forced the curtain open. Before her sat a paunchy man with a greasy face, an eyebrow piercing, a tattoo on his neck that read “Limitless” in font that made it look like it said “Lintless,” and a t-shirt with sweat stains starting to form under his pits and his man-tits. He was smiling, revealing his one misaligned tooth that was carefully holding his toothpick in place.

Tatiana groaned internally. She knew right away this was gonna suck, but at least he had the cash for what she was about to do.

She began to walk over very slowly to the man. She only knew him as Albert. He was a regular at Pyxie Styx, although she, for the life of her, could never figure out what he did for a living or why he seemed to have so much free time to spend there. He smelled like old tobacco and semen-stained underwear, smells she was used to from working as a stripper, but that seemed extra unpleasant around him. Most times, Tatiana just knew Albert as that one guy who never stopped hooting and hollering while she and the other girls danced, as if he was adding to the soundtrack in a way that elevated it to the Los Angeles philharmonic. He barely had tip money to make up for his piggishness, but tonight, he was able to request her for a private dance in the back room.

So Tatiana got behind her curtain, had the track loaded, and began her dance by flinging the curtain open with a single swipe. She knew it would be easy to make this guy happy. Straddle him a bit, let him feel her tits, rub her ass into his chest, and then charge him for additional time. She could go through the motions and get it done. She had learned really quickly to just go with the flow in the six months she had worked here, and it was part of the game. She’d indulge his fantasy, and he’d help her pay for the next semester of college.

“Oh yeah, Tati,” Albert said as Tatiana put her leg on his shoulder. “That’s how I like it.”

Tatiana moved closer, inching her groin closer to his face. She presumed this was probably the closest he ever got to a pussy.

“I know you do, baby,” she said.

She quickly moved her leg off and spun around. She moved her body down, expecting his eyes to follow her ass. She could start to feel him tossing money at her back. It was working.

“Oh my god, I’m so glad this is happening,” Albert said.

Tatiana moved closer until she was sitting in Albert’s lap. She could feel his hard cock through his jeans. Well, barely, but it was there.

“Just enjoy it,” she said in her carefully practiced sexy voice. “Let me indulge you tonight.”

She grabbed one of his hands and placed it on her abdomen, slowly moving it up and down her body.

“Oh baby, yes,” Albert said. “I gotta give you more for that.”

Tatiana felt Albert grinding his erection into her backside. But then she felt some more cash fall onto her breasts, and the discomfort vanished.

“I’m surprised,” she told him. “You’ve never asked for a dance before.”

“I couldn’t afford one,” Albert said. “I finally have some real cash to burn.”

“Why? Win the lottery or something?”

“No, I bet correctly and won big,” he said.

“I didn’t know there was a race track near here,” Tatiana said, hoping that playing along with the banter would help her get more cash out of this pile of lard.

“There’s not,” Albert explained. “I got it from betting on SOTF.”

Tatiana paused a bit.

“The television event?”

Tatiana knew that wasn’t the right term for hundreds of teens being forced to fight to the death, but it was the first thing to come to mind. She had only recently finished her first year of college, so she, like many people her age, could finally breathe easy knowing they weren’t going to be abducted. Still, to hear that she was one year removed from the kids who were taken was a bit of a shock.

“Yeah, the battle royale,” Albert explained as Tatiana continued to grind on him. “There’s a site where you can bet on what will happen in the game. I bet on four people who would make it to the halfway point, and I got three correct. That eyepatch chick didn’t make it, but tonight is on the girls who did. I got to have a real steak dinner, and I could finally get a dance from the hottest bitch here.”

“Aw, you’re too sweet,” Tatiana said, whipping her ponytail as she listened to this guy.

She spun around so she was now facing Albert.

“Yeah,” he said, grabbing his cash pile. “I got the money wired, so you can thank tonight on Asuka-”

Albert swiped the top bill off the stack so it flew off and landed on Tatiana.

“Vanessa-”

He swiped another.

“And Blair.”

He swiped another.

“Those ladies made it rain!” he proclaimed, chuckling to himself.

Tatiana barely paid mind as she whipped her head again.

“You actually made money off that?” she asked.

“Yep!” he said, putting his hands on her ass. “There’s a lot of bets going on, and if you win, they send you the money almost instantly. I got a few hundred for just getting ¾ through.”

“How many hundred?” Tatiana asked.

Albert chuckled, then pushed down on Tatiana’s ass so she was now making full contact with his lap instead of hovering over it.

“Well, how many do you want?” he asked.

Tatiana stared at Albert as he made a disgusting smile at her. She could see bits of peppercorn between some of his teeth.

“Just so you know,” Tatiana explained. “Emilio over there will stop you from trying to do those kinds of things.”

Tatiana gestured to the bouncer in the corner of the room, a brick wall of a man with a near-constant scowl on his face.

“And I don’t do off-hour work,” she continued.

“Aw, but I’m willing,” Albert said.

Tatiana pecked him on the cheek and stood off Albert.

“Nice try, but I’m not that desperate for cash,” Tatiana said.

“I thought all strippers were,” Albert said.

Tatiana moved behind him, keeping her hand on his chin and she moved behind him.

“Maybe some, but I’ve got it all worked out. I’ll put this place behind me and trade up for a glamorous career flipping houses. So while your offer could help, for now, I think I’ll just stick to private dances.”

Albert huffed.

“Maybe I should have asked Cheryl for a dance instead,” Albert muttered. “I hear she makes those kinds of deals.”

“You could, but again, Emilio,” Tatiana said.

Albert glanced over at Emilio.

“But forget about what could have been,” Tatiana said, pushing her breasts into Albert’s back as she stroked his chest, “and just enjoy the present.”

Albert chuckled.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll enjoy this. And when I win the whole moolah from the game, I’ll be able to take you and Cheryl out on a real date.”

Tatiana chuckled.

“Good luck. I might not be here when that happens.”

---

July 23, 2018

Pyxie Styx Gentlemen’s Club, Garland, Nevada


Tatiana stared at her phone. She was between sets at Pyxie Styx, sitting at her spot in the dressing room. All around her, the other girls were chatting, changing their outfits, smoking, snorting, and laughing to themselves. Tatiana stared at the message on her screen.

You just won $5,000! Congratulations!

Tatiana smiled. That was the biggest amount of cash she won so far, and she couldn’t believe how easy it was. All she had to say was that on Day 10, someone will get multiple kills and die the same day. Lori Martin just gave her a nice amount of cash for that, and it was going straight into her fund.

Tatiana giggled to herself. It had been quite a crazy few years since she learned about the betting site. Aside from the numerous periods she thought she wasn’t going to afford tuition, or the catastrophe of her apartment flooding, the worst part of all was that she was still working at Pyxie Styx. She was done with college, but was having trouble finding work. There weren’t as many prospects in her field in this area, and the hope of starting her own home renovation company was eluding her with each pole dance and drop split.

It wasn’t until she saw Albert weeping at the bar over his fourth kid dying before the third announcement that she remembered the betting site he told her about during that lap dance years prior. She walked over to Albert, feigned sympathy, bought him a drink, let him cry into her breasts, and then got the URL out of him. It was quite easy.

Signing up wasn’t too hard, and once she saw exactly what it entailed, she began to make her bets. She tried various things, ranging from wider bets on the over/under of boys and girls at specific stages, the number of kills by firearm or blunt instrument, and the surprise bit of cash she got from the LSD betting pool. The game was in the Final 30, and she had accumulated close to $8,000.

Of course, Tatiana knew she had to get more. $8,000 wasn’t going to be enough for her to start a company, but it could help her win an auction. All she had to do was flip her first home and sell it for profit, and she could springboard from there. Her future awaited her, and she still had 2/4 of her kids in the Final 30. Whether or not Blaise and Marceline won at the end, she was sure to get a bit of money for betting on them.

“Hey, Tati,” she heard from the girl next to her who was painting her nails. “What’s got you so happy?”

Tatiana closed the window on her phone and stuffed her phone in her bag.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just a dumb meme one of my friends sent me.”

“Lemme see it.”

“Eh, it’s too esoteric for you, Kylie.”

“Eso-what?”

Tatiana smiled and patted her friend on the back.

“Hey, hey, I’m painting here!” Kylie said, startled by Tatiana’s patting.

“Sorry. Anyways, I think I’m on deck, so I’ll be back.”

Tatiana stood up and walked over to the entrance of the stage. She was really getting close to her dream job. All the nights covered in body glitter and leered at by slimy men were going to pay off. Maybe she didn’t have as much integrity as before she started this job, but she made more money from these bets than she did in a single night of dancing.

And after all, this work is all about indulgence, so why couldn’t this just be another part of it?

Tatiana stood behind the curtain, ready for her next pole routine. She closed her eyes and breathed in and out, her breathing out of sync with the trap music. She went over the routine in her mind, then reminded herself she had to check the update on the bet about how many kids were going to have more than ten kills before the end of the game. Either way, she was in control, and that made her feel more powerful than all the men waving cash for her out there.

She smiled, then stepped out. It was her time.

These are his days of the week.

Saturday comes and he mopes. He feels sorry for himself and whispers words into dark spaces that nobody could possibly be hearing that he didn’t really mean this, it just got out of hand. Only in these dark spaces the words he whispers are still lies told to the shadows and he absolutely had meant it and would’ve likely done it again and it was totally in hand until Bill had fucked it up.

The week’s over - Friday, they had told him, was the end of the week - and so he had taken off his garish blue uniform and unclipped his nametag. When he got home yesterday he had thrown it into a pile in the corner with three other matching ones - a reminder that he needed to do laundry soon, and his laundry day crept ever earlier in his weekly cycle because they had only given him four shirts, and he worked every (week)day. Today he gathers the pile together, carts it down to the laundry room in the cold basement of his building with charming white walls. He stares at the thick paint that is encompassing the large brick like a bulging condom, thinks about how it reminded him of the prison hallways, until his laundry is done. Other residents give him funny looks - both at the black ink peeking from beneath his short sleeve on his left arm and the scar on his face that refuses to grow facial hair. When he stares at the walls, the looks persist. When he meets the looks they attempt to escape.

He’s been making lots of eye contact, lately.

He does a lot of reading today, because other people’s words chase away the words he whispers to the dark. He read Bleak House and The Game and Wuthering Heights and Emma, but he was taking a break from all of that and started reading The Minotaur Wars and finds it a lot more entertaining than attempting to figure out the dances that the english language did when evolving back into emojis, like it has in this day and age. Once in a while, John tries him again - likely because John and Chuck had talked about the breakfast meeting and the cold pancake that he had left behind. Chuck likely has a lot to say to John about how he conducted himself, and it’s hard to see these little calls as anything other than John attempting to damage control or walk anything back or correct himself. But, for all he knows, John is asking for his Amazon wish list.

The call goes to a voicemail every time, and it has since he’d picked up blocked numbers and heard a small click every two days.

Saturday ends with a call to his PO, twice a week. The calls, too, become routine, and it was hard to imagine a time where he was filled with anxiety about them. This is life, after all. This, too, has become routine.

Sunday comes and he always finds himself whispering a little more and it’s God’s day so of course he allows the whispers to carry hints of truth to them, hushed little confessions to the shadowed corners of his apartment carrying words like gamble and hated and lied. Once he whispered that he had genuine fantasies of strangling Bill, what it’d be like to turn the corner and see Bill’s knees at his eye level, swaying back and forth from a fixed and fortified position and to rub his finger around the pad of his thumb and still feel the rope burning. Another time he asked if he had ever loved Carey, if he was just using her, if she just liked him for his body and his money and to live dangerously, but the nice thing about shadows is that they can’t answer him - not honestly, anyways.

He reads a lot more. He’s been stocking up more and more novels through the week because his weekends mean he can’t muster the energy to leave his apartment and get funny looks, so he usually runs out of books and gathers them together in a neat stack beside his blue shirts and pressed black pants and the name tag that says ‘Ray: Sales Associate’. It’s apt, he muses, that he’s someone who’s associated with sales, because usually people don’t want to speak to the gruff quiet guy with the scar on him who clicks a stapler irritably in the electronics department.

He doesn’t make much commission, coincidentally.

Monday comes, and he’s up at seven to go for a run with his bookbag, and deposit his library books, pick up a new set. This time he opts for twelve instead of eight, and the library staff greet him as a familiar figure now which is a welcome change from the apprehensive greetings and clipped responses he’d received when he first started coming here. He grabs fistfulls of Dragonlance novels now, anything by Richard A. Knaak in general because he liked the Minotaur Wars and gets a recommendation from a fresh-faced kid stocking shelves named Kevin. He also picks up The Time Traveler’s Wife, but he doubts he’ll care for it.

He starts work at 9am, clicks his stapler, stocks shelves, directs people to the bathroom. There are no dark corners at work because it’s lit with fluorescents, so even his own frame doesn’t cast one. If he whispers, it’s silent mouth-movements that only truly ensure his commission will remain low. He does help someone with purchasing a server, though he’s careful not to look at the specs too closely. He doesn’t want to get ideas.

Tuesday comes, and he has ideas. Ideas born from trying to avoid thinking of ideas. It’d be easy, wouldn’t it, to just purchase a server. He lives well below his means and it’d have plenty of power to run - nobody needs to know that he’d be back in and his phone doesn’t even have the little red O so why would anyone - he can’t just sit around whispering all the time. If he doesn’t experience anything he’ll wither.

Maybe he deserves to wither.

He’s up at seven thirty, and he goes for a run. He didn’t read yesterday, and his energy is up in that well lit building, he’s more proactive with customers. His manager gives him a funny look, but it’s not related to scar nor ink and she actually seems pleasantly surprised as opposed to dully fascinated. His section has never looked neater, and he mostly assists people with buying laptops.

When an older gentleman asks him which computer he has at home, he directs him to a model on sale right now that he’s never owned.

Wednesday comes and he didn’t read yesterday. There’s space in the corner of his little ugly apartment for a desk, and a power outlet right beside it. He measures the space by walking, placing one foot directly in front of the other, tongue trapped in his teeth. He doesn’t whisper the entire time, though the shadows are long in this corner, his books tucked on his nightstand where he put them on Monday before heading out for work. He stared at the wall and whispered Sunday, and now he’s walking the space, carefully measuring. He makes it to work for 9am with the phrase ‘seven of my feet’ rattling around in his brain.

After work he walks carefully beside several of the desks they sell. Shelly smiles politely at him while he does this, same as she always does when she sees him in her section. Just another Wednesday.

Thursday he runs in the morning, stares at the still empty corner, thoughts percolating in his brain. Several desks could’ve fit - he was sure of it, as he always was - but he sits here today and watches the empty space, shadows inviting, dark, desirable. A whisper leaves his lips - a lie this one, a big fat empty lie - and he reaches for his night stand and opens a paperback, scanning the opening lines before work.

At work he clicks his stapler and stares at a server. He changes staple sleeves three times. His manager gives him a wide berth and he doesn’t blame her. He mops the breakroom to keep his hands busy and sticks to the light, bathing him in it so his lips can’t move. They do anyways, sometimes, but only forming the opening words of a description of a scene surrounded in metal bars and crushing thoughts. He doesn’t consciously think.

He just describes.

Friday comes, and he runs. He reads. He goes to work. They tell him that it’s the end of the week, and he knows it because yesterday, he had to do laundry, which means he has three clean shirts now to start his week, which means more time for reading tomorrow. Yesterday his parole officer wished him a happy October. He remembers getting out of jail in the winter. The thought makes him lift up a server box, just to see the shadow beneath it.

“I’m happy,” he doesn’t confess to it.

It took Gordon Channon four attempts to flick the lightswitch on, as he stumbled through the front door of his crowded, four-room apartment.

He wasn’t drunk. Like, he wasn’t drunk drunk, y’know? Sure, he’d headed straight down to the nearby dive bar after work, slammed back a couple shots of Southern Comfort, then a couple more, but he didn’t feel like hurling a glass against a wall just for looking at him funny, or kicking over his nightstand for getting in his way right now. So it didn’t count. He wasn’t drunk.

The lights finally went on, and Gordon screwed his eyes shut, blinking as the living room came into view, everything tinged a dim orange. He needed to wipe the lights clear of dust. He’d needed to do so for the past three months. Things just kept cropping up, y’know? Other things kept takin’ over in terms of importance. He had big plans, big goals, big dreams he needed to achieve. He didn’t have time for dusting lampshades when he was working on getting out of this place.

He wandered over to the sofa, dropping his bag onto the floor, before collapsing into the middle of the ugly olive-green monstrosity, ignoring how it creaked ominously. He grabbed the remote from the cushion next to him - he was gonna fix that patch of stuffing that poked out any time soon, he promised - and flicked the TV on. He took note of the baseball game that popped onto the screen for one, two, maybe even three seconds. He coulda been one of those guys. One of those multi-million dollar earning sonsabitches, paid out the nose for running back and forth and smacking a little ball of cowhide with a big fucking stick. He coulda, really! Give him another go at high school, give him another run at the baseball team tryouts - and of his own volition this time, not just cause Johnny told him he’d be a big loser if he didn’t try - and before you knew it, he’d have garnered up the talent and skills to put ol’ Babe Ruth to shame.

He knew he could. It was a bad hand that had caused him to wind up here. Nothing more.

The noise of the crowd and the drone from the commentators quickly filtered into the background, as Gordon fished his phone out of his pocket - a couple generations behind, now, but with no spiderweb cracks or sidewalk-inflicted dents, so that had to count for something, right? He stared at the background image of his lock screen for a while, a photo from a bachelor party five… no, seven years ago. Vegas. Spending far too much on very average cocktails, and even more on the craps table, back when he’d had enough disposable income to do so without worry. A good time, all in all. If he remembered the hazy, liquor scented night correctly, he’d actually walked away with a net gain, even.

There had been a couple of poker chips on the coffee table, and Gordon’s free hand had found itself turning them over as he stared, blank faced and glassy-eyed. He was a gambler, a risk taker, that was his thing, he was - well, no. To 50% of the world, Gordon was a pencil-pushing no-name, stuck in a company that provided produce for much bigger and more interesting companies. To the other 50%, he was a professional moron who had made more poor decisions than most people had eaten hot dinners. But gambling, man. That had always been his big love. His personal ‘thing’. His number one vice. He could blame his grampappy for getting him into it, but the old bastard had also said shit like ‘The Jews and the Blacks should know their place in this goshdern country!’ And Gordon sure as shit hadn’t carved that message into his soul like he had with blackjack and poker.

No, Gordon was firmly to blame himself for the betting bug that had taken hold of him. You know how a skydiver will assess all the risks, weigh up the options in front of him, and then throw himself into the void and, for a moment, let himself float in the void and let God decide what happened to him? It was that rush, that fleeting moment when the dice hung in the air or the final card remained facedown, that Gordon truly lived for. The thudding of his heart in his mouth, the desperate willing for an inanimate object to do his bidding - Lord, there wasn’t an experience like that in the universe.

And he couldn’t help himself, that was the beauty of it, and the ugly truth of it. Anything where the outcome wasn’t set in stone, he couldn’t prevent himself from barrelling headfirst towards it; the more outrageous the better. To an extent, obviously; he wasn’t the sorta fool to bet his house on the horse with its legs in the air and flies circling it. But he would bet on a soccer team to score eight goals in a single half - a task that not even the top scorers in the MLS were up to, and a failure that had been the final straw for his most recent girlfriend. And he would move out of his pretty-decent apartment into this pretty-crummy one, just to afford a cross-country plane ticket for an interview his good buddy Dan had said he ‘might have a shot at’ - and one that Gordon would bomb by knocking his glass of water across the table, and calling Peter from Accounting ‘Dennis’. He just couldn’t help himself. If there was a chance, he had a chance, It was like his brain hadn’t realised he wasn’t still playing blackjack at college in the corner of a frat house kitchen.

There was one area, though, that not even Gordon had taken the plunge into and put his money down for. He’d heard about it in passing, in hushed whispers, unavoidable in the circles he ran in and yet still laced with the air of the taboo. If the white whale was something you chased forever with little chance of catching, was the black whale something that always chased you, something you always ran from that was constantly over your shoulder? Or, if it was the total opposite, would it have to be the opposite of a whale as well? What was the opposite of a whale? A dolphin? A tuna fish? A mouse?

He was distracting himself, intentionally so. Even with his mind rambling - was it rambling if you were getting lost on purpose? - he had still unlocked his phone, still opened the web browser. Clearly his body knew what he needed to do, what he’d been psyching himself up to do all fucking day as he’d stared at Excel spreadsheets and listened to the sound of nonstop ringing phones. It was just the tiny matter of his brain, and his heart, and his freakin’ conscience being vehemently against it.

He’d bet on other morally questionable stuff before, of course he had. He was one of a handful of guys in the office who played a game of ‘Who’s Going To Get Fired Next’. All super hush-hush, of course, he knew it was generally frowned on to celebrate Janice from Accounting getting kicked out. But if they were getting the axe, then, hey, clearly they had been doing something they shouldn’t’ve been doing, ya know? So he couldn’t feel too bad about it. And cockfighting! Not that he’d ever participated in that, but Gordon just couldn’t see the harm in it. Like, c’mon. They were just chickens. The winner would probably get served up in a KFC bucket anyway. Who gave a shit about a couple of feathered meat dispensers?

But this? This was betting on the outcome of a death trap. This was betting on the results of a terrorist plot. This was betting on the outcome of fucking child murder.

But that was the stage he was at, wasn’t it? His phone screen was now showing the login screen, his username - DoubleCheeseBurger43, because there was nothing like picking the first line-of-sight object for a username when making a throwaway account - and password already saved and filling up the white boxes that housed them. He thought he’d reached that point, that lowest-of-the-lows a couple of months back, when he’d first made an account on this thing. He’d done that, then after a moment’s hesitation, closed the tab and shut his phone off. It was a goddamn disgusting thing to bet money on, after all. Like getting rewarded for guessing where the next school shooting would occur. He just needed one big break, he had rationalised. Or hell, even a string of small ones.

Well. That big break had never come knocking on his door. And he was past the point, now, where he could use a small one as a springboard. He needed money. He needed a lot of money. He needed a victory. His thumb was a micrometre away from the ‘Enter’ button. His apartment, normally bone-chilling even in the height of summer, felt stuffy and stifling.

He was inches away from the bottom. But once he fell down there… well, there was nowhere to go but up, right?

His thumb jabbed at the screen before his mind could change again.

Gordon could feel the sweat pooling on his back, glueing his shirt to his skin, certain that at any moment, he’d hear the FBI hammering on his front door. He tried to take in as little information as possible as he searched for his goal, wanting to get in and get out as fast as possible - the old ‘hit it and quit it’ technique - but it was impossible not to absorb some of the text laid out on the screen, a mix of morbid curiosity and the necessity of needing to know where to go. Jesus, there was a lot of horrible shit you could put money down on. Or, could have, to be more accurate - the knowledge that this thing was in its final throes was a particularly uncomfortable realisation. But he could have bet on which gun ended up getting the most kills. Or who would be the first killer to end up dying. Or which kid would be the first to bite it on day six. Grotesque shit like that.

He was judging, and judging hard, for a man now gazing at the remaining dozen or so kids, choosing which of them would be the last one standing. He knew he was scummy for doing this, he got that. You didn’t have to remind him. But he wasn’t gonna keep on coming back here, a junkie getting his next fix, putting a hundred dollars down on whether stabbing would be more fucking popular than strangulation, for Christ’s sake. He just… He just needed to pick one kid. Just… select a kid from a lineup! That was all! A kid who, unknown to them, would have the last of his savings riding on them. A kid who really didn’t need any more invisible pressure dumped on top of them.

God, that one looked just like his niece.

He’d said he wasn’t drunk, right? Like, not properly drunk? Yeah, well, more fool him, he really wished he was on the verge of being goddamn blacked out right now. Woulda made tapping that girl’s photo, ripped from what looked like security cam footage, a hell of a lot easier. Woulda helped him from mentally replacing her face with his niece’s. Woulda really helped to prevent him from wondering what she would do if she was placed on that island, wondering what would happen to her.

It woulda made entering his credit card details a shit-ton harder, but hey, he was willing to take that compromise.

He wasn’t fool enough not to realise that, if his selected champion did end up victorious, his family and friends would enquire about his sudden windfall. He could lie, obviously. Or, y’know, just bend the truth, make it twisty enough that it threw them all of the scent. He could just tell them the baseline facts; he’d won big at gambling. That would be it. No need to say that it wasn’t poker or blackjack or greyhound racing or what have you.

But what if they did a little more digging? A little more probing? A little more jabbing into the pressure points that surrounded his guilty conscience? What if they could smell the self-hatred lingering on him, like a bottle of cheap and unfortunate aftershave?

Gordon put his phone to sleep. He looked into the inky darkness of the screen, as the baseball game carried on behind it, with its bright colours and floodlights and goddamn cheer and victory. Then he slipped off the couch and into the kitchen, and poured himself a very full glass of whiskey.