I’m not a good man.
Felted. That’s what they say when a professional poker player goes broke.
No more chips, just down to the felt of the table.
I was beyond felted.
Six months ago, I was betting and winning upwards of ten grand a hand. Twenty years I’d honed my skills, a predator always circling the fish.
I don’t know if I’d overshot the moon and started to take on players beyond my skill set or if what we call “variance” and you call “luck” just went against me.
Could be one, could be the other, could be both.
It didn’t matter. Same result.
The deck was firmly stacked against me, and all that was left to drink away the memories.
I was in deep with the worst kind of loan sharks.
The kind who don’t just break a few fingers. These guys really knew how to hurt. They’d rape your friend just to torture you over a few grand. And the vig was running, always running, at some obscene percent contrived from their gorilla math.
Sharks.
I remember when I was the shark.
Now I was leaking blood in the water.
So I signed up for Clinical Trial 87.
A trial that claimed countless lives and forever fundamentally changed who, what I was.
The trial I survived.
I write this now to reveal myself to the world. For those who might follow me.
For those who should.
The phone interview had been mind numbingly long and painfully invasive but for some reason, I was chosen.
I knew it was too good to be true. A vague ad in the paper. Some shell company paying far too much for a medical trial that didn’t even involve drugs?
If it smells like rotting meat, there’s probably a corpse in there.
But I needed the money.
And whatever horrifying physical torment these scientists could devise would pale compared to what awaited me on the outside.
So I signed up.
Four patients. Four days.
We surrendered everything we had when we arrived at a non-descript medical facility sneakily tucked inside what appeared to be an abandoned commercial district on the outskirts of the city.
Everything was white, shockingly white, the kind of white that insisted its way into your mind and gave you a headache. And the smell of chemical sanitizers made us choke and cough.
Nameless workers wearing scrubs and masks gave us the rundown. I figured they had to be doctors or academics of some sort. The unnecessarily large words, the slight air of scumbag entitlement.
We were to sleep in the community room. Each day, one of us would undergo the trial with “the team” and then return to sleep. On the fourth day, everyone could leave.
I wasn’t half as worried that they searched us three times as I was when I realized they never gave us any follow up instructions. The typical reporting requirements. “Every so often, we’ll have you come in to check…” Just that “we could leave.” Curt, abrasive.
It made me nervous.
The last two instructions were that we were allowed to discuss anything and everything (strange) and that we had to sign what looked like a truckload of waivers. Cursory glances over the legalese told me we were probably waiving everything under the Sun, our very lives freely given.
I didn’t care.
Any monster in here wasn’t half as scary as what was waiting for me out there.
That’s the gamble. You weight the options, assess the risk, and roll it with it.
The four of us settled into the community room.
Katarina was quiet, kind, and sharp, but couldn’t hide the track marks on her arms in the scrubs they gave us. Marc was a bald, angry middle-aged man who huffed and puffed and blew nothing down. Jasmine was energetic and full of life, a college student hellbent on becoming a leading anthropologist. And me, Tom, the wandering artist soaking up life.
My name isn’t Tom and I sure as Hell am no artist. I hustle for a living.
The team never mentioned anything about having to stick to the truth.
There are no friends at the poker table.
They took Marc back first.
Katarina, Jasmine, and I all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Marc was far older than the rest of us, and the insufferable know-it-all who knew nothing but forced his undesired presence on everyone.
At least we could chill for the day. We shot the breeze and told stories from our lives.
I wonder if theirs were true.
There was no clock or sense of time among the glaring white paint and ungodly gleam of the fluorescent lights in the community room, but we all agreed we were getting tired, so it had to be getting late. They’d fed us a decent meal a few hours before.
We were just getting bored and taking bets on when Marc would return when the door flew open and he waltzed right in.
The door slammed behind him.
Something was different about him. His eyes kept darting and his fingers wiggled like coral caught in an undercurrent.
Given my background, I tend to pay close attention to detail, and I would have bet at least a grand he had green eyes.
These eyes darting, never resting, assessing every inch of our little box, were an impossibly light blue.
We asked him about the trial. After all, they were insistent we could talk about \*anything.\*
I was expecting some sort of long winded, pompous speech, but it was like he was a new person. Concise. Friendly. Down to Earth. Like all the mundane insecurities underlying his asshole personality had been stripped away.
He said it was easy-breezy with a warm smile. “Actually, kind of fun.”
Apparently, all you did was sit alone in a room with a table in a comfy chair and listen to a strange word being played on repeat for hours on end. He said the word was being played on a loop by an AI voice that sounded like it was straight out of bad 1980’s Sci-Fi.
Marc gave me a friendly clap on the back, looking relaxed and years younger, spry, and said you got to do whatever you wanted while it played. He’d asked for crossword puzzles, a fishing magazine, and a few tuna sandwiches, and voila, they delivered.
“What was the word?”
I had to ask. I thought it was natural.
Marc’s countenance became cloudy, sharp and angry. “I can’t tell you that. There’s…a lot I can’t tell you. They make you sign more papers saying you won’t tell. AND I WON’T.”
It didn’t sound like Marc was angry at the prospect of not being paid. He sounded…possessive. Like the word belonged to him and I’d crossed the line.
“Sorry, Marc, I didn’t realize. That’s my mistake.”
His features softened once more, and he laughed it off with gusto.
We all hit the hay soon after. Sleep came easily.
Until the screaming started.
I don’t know how long we’d been asleep, but we all leapt out bed.
Marc was in the middle of the room.
Blood was gushing from his eyes. His black eyes, darker than obsidian.
He was painting symbols in the floor with his own blood, wailing and rocking and screaming a completely unintelligible word.
We tried to calm him but he was entranced.
I decided screw calm, time to get rough.
That was a mistake.
His head snapped at me, and fire spewed from his eyes.
A life of dipping and dodging had taught me well, but not well enough. All I felt, all I saw, was white hot pain. The bottom of my right ear lobe, throat, and shoulder were burnt to a crisp.
I screamed and writhed in agony. Smelled my own burning flesh. Tom Flambe’.
Marc began some absurd dance, bobbing up and down, moving in a circle, screaming the same word over and over and over and over and over.
Fire sprayed from his eyes, jettisoned from his mouth, soared from his fingertips. There was nothing in the room but some chairs, a small table, and the beds.
All caught in the maelstrom.
All caught in the raging inferno.
Everything burns.
I could hardly see or breathe. Somehow I saw Jasmine slamming on the door, her back badly charred, heard the distant echoes of her pleading.
Katarina was in the fetal position in a corner, nursing her left hand, sobbing.
Our world was an oven, and we were the meat.
Would we suffocate in the smoke first or become Roast Desperation, the hot new dish on the menu? Smart money said suffocate. I figured 2:1.
And the last damn word we were ever going to hear was whatever babble Marc was screaming.
I accepted my fate.
Fatalism is a necessary element of poker, to gambling, and you simply must embrace it when you have no outs.
That was, until Marc became perfectly still and silent.
He fell to his knees.
Sprinklers jumped forward from previously unseen positions in the ceiling. Water and some foamy chemical suppressant sprayed everywhere, stealing the life from the fire.
The door opened in doctors rushed in. They put oxygen masks on all of us, began treating our burns. None of them touched or looked at Marc.
None of them said a word to any of us, no matter how much we screamed or quietly pleaded.
Morphine, sweet hospital heroin, started dripping into me, from a syringe jabbed into my arm.
The last thing I remember passing out into a deep sleep was Marc looking at me. His eyes gone, now hollowed out sockets rimmed with seared flesh. I heard him say with perfect clarity what sounded like:
“YMMIRAZAFIVTKEN”
As the warm arms of slumber took me, I saw him fall over dead.