The Silver Wheel Game 2: The Wolf's Gambit

Prologue

"...holy fuck, you'd think a guy that was 90% hot air would weigh less. What'd you have for breakfast, a bowling ball?"

Of course, that wasn't why Charlie's corpse was so heavy. In truth, his body weighed the same as it always had (sans a few kilos from the missing chunks of flesh, bone, and blood) but living bodies had a tenseness to them that allowed them to carry their weight better: a dead body, slack and inert, had no way to redistribute gravity's pull on it, so it merely felt heavier. It also didn't help that Ture had never, in his long life as a bartender, had to pick up anything heavier than the thick glass bottles of alcohol he served the guests of the Silver Wheel. And extremely muscular adult men tended to weigh more than that.

Charlie was halfway through the door into the bar. Ture was leaning against it, resting, and staring at the body as if he was expecting it to actually answer. Ture sneered, grabbing a bottle of Jack from behind the wooden countertop and giving it a swig.

"Hotel California", sung properly by The Eagles, started playing on the radio.

"Alright. Here we go." He sighed, and resumed his chore.

More grunts of exhaustion and immense irritation filled the Silver Wheel, drowning out the soft rock melody from the radio. A stool was knocked down as Ture accidentally pulled Charlie into it. Ever-larger bloodstains smeared across the floor as he bled freely into the carpet, making Ture wonder just how much fluid one body could actually hold. And of course, by the time Ture had managed to drag him into the middle of the bar, some of those red stains were starting to look a little bit... brown.

"Oh- oh you're shitting me."

Ture repressed a hurl -- that would only make things worse -- and redoubled his efforts. He pushed down the front door, revealing the void, and kicked Charlie in the legs until his corpse limply tumbled off the side.

Ture watched him fall, growing smaller and smaller, until he simply... vanished.

"And good riddance. Asshole."

Ture spat out the door, the glob of saliva spiraling into the darkness after Charlie. Ture watched it until it vanished.

"Whew. Fuck, that smell. Juan, you-"

He turned around. There was nobody there.

He was alone.

...when was the last time he was alone?

...he couldn't remember.

He walked back to the bar to take another few swallows of Jack. Bobbing his head to the music on the radio. He glanced around. He was still alone. Neither Juan nor Teresa were anywhere to be seen. It was kind of fucked up, he thought, that being alone was somehow the most surreal thing he could imagine right now. No bodies to share this space with. Just him, a fully-stocked bar, and a guitar in the capable hands of Don Felder.

"...on a dark desert highway... cool wind in my hair..."

He mumbled to himself before finishing off his drink in two more long swallows.

"...Up ahead in the distance," he continued, off-key but earnest, "...I saw a shimmering light..."

The door to the void was still open. He hurled the bottle into the darkness.

"My head grew heavy, my sight grew dim... had t' stop for the night."

He grabbed another bottle. He didn't know what was in it, and he didn't really care. He yanked it open with his teeth and suckled it like a starved baby pushed against a red swollen nipple. When it was empty, the neck still slick with his sticky saliva, he chucked it into the void as well.

"-could be heaven or could be hell..." he hiccuped, reaching around the corner for another bottle. He yanked it up, took one look at the lid, and cringed.

"Then she lit up a candle..." he threw it into the void, grabbing another bottle. "...and showed me the way..."

"There were voices in the cooridooor..." he yanked out another bottle, and threw it into the void without another look. "I thought I heard them ssaaaaaaayyy~"

He grabbed some drinking glasses, three in each hand, clasped between his fingers. He took a step forward, like a pitcher in the final inning, and threw them out the void. He missed with two of them, which shattered against the wall.

"Welcome to the Hotel Calllifornia!" He belted, "Such a looovely fac- fuck place! Such a lovely face!"

"Plenty a' room at the Ho-tel California!" He continued, knocking over the stools in front of the bar trying to reach new bottles and glasses, "Any time of year... you can find it heeeeerreeeee!"

He staggered over to the void, popping open the bottle of gin, allowing it to dribble onto the carpet before pouring the clear liquid into the darkness.

"How ya doin' out there Juan?!" He chortled as he leaned over the void. "Still smilin' big guy? Still makin' friends with everyone, eh?!"

He dropped the bottle.

"And all those voices are calling from faaar away- sing it with me Juan! Sing it!"

The void did not answer. There wasn't even an echo. He leaned further out.

"Wake you up in the middle of the night - take it away Juan!"

The void did not answer. The lyric was finished dutifully by Don Henley.

"Welcome to the Ho-tel Cal-i-for-niaaa!" Ture re-joined for the chorus, staggering backwards and picking up the stool he had dropped earlier. He started swinging it around.

"Livin' it up in the Hotel California!" He let go, and the stool went spinning into the darkness. "Any- What a nice surprise... for your alibis!"

He started to stumble as momentum swept him off his feet, but instead of correcting himself, he embraced the fall, and slammed into the ground with a weightless thud. He hiccuped, and laughed, and stretched out his limbs, vaguely aware he was laying in some bloody, shitty stain. He didn't care, though. For reasons he wasn't really sure he understood, nor especially cared to.

"And she said... we're all just prisoners here... of our own device..."

He closed his eyes.

"In the master's chambers... they gathered for the feast."

He clenched his hands into white balls.

"Stab 'em with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast!"

He sat up. His eyes were open now. He dragged himself, crawling like a child, towards the door. Dragging his body against the slick, blood-soaked carpet. Past the broken glasses and the spilled alcohol. Until he was back at the open door, and the empty wall of absolute darkness that it lead into. He reached into his pockets, and pulled out three solid-gold chips, which lay in his open palm, extended into the darkness.

"You can check out anytime you like," he said, eyes turned down, down onto the chips and past them, to where he had last seen Juan reaching up, plummeting into non-existence. His hand twitched.

"...but you can never..."

Ture paused.

He slowly pocketed the chips, leaned away from the void, and started to cry.

A loud, violent, ugly sobbing.

And he cried for a long, long time.