The Joker Dealer, a monster made of living cards, cursed roulette wheels, and a past impossible to forget.
They say there is a table in an old casino, hidden in the closed basements of Las Vegas.
It does not appear on any maps. It has no human dealer. Only a name written in dried blood on the carpet:
“Table 0.”
You cannot access it with chips. There are no bets in dollars.
You can only enter if you are desperate.
And the dealer... is not human.
It was midnight when Vincent Caldrone, a professional gambler on the verge of suicide, was led into that room by a woman in a red dress who spoke as if she already knew how it would all end.
The place was filled with smoke, and the walls were made of cards fused together, as if screaming in silence.
In the center was he:
A tall being, made entirely of rotten playing cards, with a twisted crown of jokers and a skeletal face with half an Ace of Hearts stuck in his forehead.
The Joker Dealer.
“One hand only,” he said in a dry voice, like broken cards.
“If you win, your luck changes forever. If you lose... you become part of me.”
Vincent, addicted to risk, accepted without hesitation.
The Joker shuffled the cards without touching them. They flew on their own, spinning with a life of their own.
The roulette wheel spun on its own, without a ball.
Vincent received five cards. They looked good...
but when he touched them, he felt a strange heat.
A 10.
A J.
A Q.
A K...
And an Ace... with his own face drawn on it.
“Royal flush!” he shouted.
But the Joker laughed. Not with his mouth, but with all the cards in the deck: a metallic, hellish sound.
"That's not a royal flush...
It's your reflection."
In an instant, the cards floated toward Vincent and enveloped him like crows.
They covered his skin, squeezed him, rewrote him.
He screamed, but his voice came from the deck.
Since that night, the Joker Dealer has a new Ace on his body.
With sad eyes.
And if someone desperate sits down at Table 0 again,
maybe he'll deal them the same hand.
Or worse...
Username: SoyPubli
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