Eddie swore the casino on Cranberry Lane didn’t exist in daylight. On Halloween, though, a neon jack-o’-lantern blinked OPEN like a heartbeat. He wandered in with twenty crisp dollars and the kind of hope that smells like cinnamon gum.
At the active table, the dealer wore a porcelain mask. “One seat,” the dealer said. The cards slid like cold whispers. Eddie sat.
Blackjack was Eddie’s comfort math: tens and faces, the clean ambition of twenty-one. He hit on twelve, stood on eighteen, joked about bad luck. The dealer never laughed. The pit boss was a shadow with keys that didn’t jingle.
A woman in vintage black took the empty chair without moving it. Frost braided her hair. “Double down,” she advised whenever Eddie hesitated. He followed, feeling brave, feeling seen.
But the chips he won looked like old coins dug from river mud, and the chips he lost felt strangely light, like lint or breath.
On the last hand, Eddie held an ace and a king. He grinned. The dealer peeled two cards: a six, then a five.
“Twenty-one,” the mask murmured. “House remembers.”
The lights inverted. Eddie reached for his wallet and found a photograph of himself, slowly fading.
ID:blusrat