Post by joeycrash on Mar 6, 2022 19:21:40 GMT -5
Somewhere, USA
At the end of the hall was a doorway with a beaded curtain and a soft glow emanating on the floor where they stopped. The rays of light escaped randomly through the beads and were quickly cut off by the darkness. There was nothing else but the doorway. Joey shuffled forwards with soft, wary footsteps. The incessant, irritating clicking of cicadas was intermittently cut-off by the sounds of bubbling and the soft click of metal on metal. The warm glow of the amber beads intensified as he drew closer. He breached the curtains slowly with his index finger but the gentle patter of swinging beads announced his entry, regardless of how quiet he tried to remain. There was a lantern above him which was the only source of light this side of the room, and he carefully took it off the hook protruding from the ceiling. He jerked his head at the sound of the metallic clicks which were much closer now.
“Who's there?” Joey asked with shaky breath. The crack in his voice undermined the authority he was fighting to preserve. He had no idea where he was. There was no response to his question, only the continuing metallic clicks and what sounded like the faintest hint of a hum. On the other side of the room was another doorway and a small, round table laid out with luxurious, velvet tablecloths and netting adorned with gold medallions and other trinkets. A pocket watch lay open on the table. There were chairs on either side of this table, which looked like it could fit three people at most. Frustration turned to fear.
“Hey! If anyone’s there you better show yourself!!” From past the open doorway on the other side of the room, creaky stairs groaned, growing louder with each step. Joey took half a step back and held the lantern just beneath his face so the light didn’t get in his eyes. He fought to control his breathing as a woman appeared in the doorway. She looked like someone who probably lived here - both she and the table looked equally splendid in luxurious cloth and gold. Joey stood up straight but still retained a defensive stance. She opened her hands out to the side, bangles and rings clicking as her fingers stretched and motioned in a general ‘come hither’ motion.
“Sorry I’m late… But you’re just in time. Please, take a seat and let’s talk.” She spoke almost in slow-motion, every syllable was carefully positioned and polished. She didn’t labour over her words but she dedicated an effortless pronunciation to every letter. Joey couldn’t be sure if English was her first language but the music in her voice had a soothing quality that he wasn’t sure was reassuring or disarming.
“Why should I sit down? Give me one good reason not to spark you out right now!” Joey threw a hook in the air with the lantern as if this would embellish his threat but she didn’t move a muscle at the threat. After a moment she took a seat gently on her side of the table, placing her hands on the table palms up. There was no emotion in her face. She was as cold and indifferent as a statue. He tried to stare her down to no avail. “Fuck this.” Joey turned on his haunches and began marching away.
“Have you ever noticed that every relationship you ever had… Was just someone slowly realising they didn’t like you as much as they hoped they would?” Joey stopped in his tracks and the lantern hand slowly dropped to extend his arm at full length. He turned around to face her again, whose face was now one of compassion. “I bet you’ve noticed recently… Joey… It’s not taken as long for the other person to figure that out?” Joey avoids eye contact. How does she know his name? What else does she know? Where the hell is he? He scrunches his face as he tries to process every question, which just leads to further questions. Eventually, he gives up.
“What do you want from me?”
“You wish to contact the dead… That is what has brought you to me.” She lifts her hands from the table, still with palms facing up and motions for Joey to approach him with each of her fingers. They moved like waves gently crashing onto the shore. He surrendered to her whims and found himself sitting in the chair directly opposite her. There was a soft perfume in the air and close-up, the table was soft and inviting. He placed the lantern on the side of the table and allowed himself to sink into the back of the chair as she placed her hands back on the table.
“It’s not possible. I never said I wanted to talk to ghosts. It’s impossible, whatever this is.”
“What I do and what you think is possible does not matter. I am a messenger. I can tell you what you need to know. This isn’t to say I can answer all your questions... Many people do not know what they need.” Joey lurched forward and placed his elbows on the table.
“And you think – you know that I need to speak to a dead guy? Do you even hear yourself right now?”
“Tell me I’m wrong then. Tell me there isn’t someone who's passed on that you could benefit from speaking to and you shall be free to leave.” Joey clutched the arms of his chair. The irritation of cicadas and swamp noises faded into the background, filling the room with a numbing silence that hung over them. She stared into his soul. “Tell me about this person.”
“His… Uhm. I’m only telling you, right, because you’ve asked. I still don’t believe any of this hoodoo shit you’ve got going on.” She lifted her hands and smiled for a moment in response, as if to beckon Joey to continue. “His name was Mick. Mick Smyth, if that matters. He was my manager for a number of years. I never did get a chance to get some last advice from him before he… Left. That’s... That's him.”
“I see…” she raised her hands high into the air as if calling for the universe to respond, “And tell me… What was your relationship like with this Mick?” She closed her eyes gently, as if she was trying to remember something from long ago. Her hands swayed back and forth, her fingers rolling across each other and making soft clicking noises from her extravagant, clunky jewellery. Joey thought back and could feel his throat tensing up, his lips stiffened as he fought against all his instincts to spill his tale to this stranger.
“We’d been on the road for a long time. I was a boxer first, that’s where he found me. He saved my life from some thugs when I was only like, seventeen-eighteen. I’d crossed the wrong people and it put us both in some… trouble. I was attacked and could have died but he managed to get me out. He got me out before too much damage was done but neither of us came out of it unscathed. He had his own shit going on, he barely spoke about it. We escaped to America and that was the beginning of my career as a wrestler. I suffered a broken jaw and the shit we got into back in London meant we would never get sanctioned by an official boxing organisation again - and I’d had my fill of illegal fights. With Mick by my side it felt like we could take on the fucking world. I did well, very well. I felt like I did better than I had any right to. But after a lot of time together, years and years… It felt like he resented me. At first it was little things. Late for training, forget to make bookings. But then he began actively pushing me away. And we basically drifted apart. He became an island and I wasn’t allowed to be a part of that. He never gave any rhyme or reason for it. Maybe because he’d started a family that he never told me about.”
“Family is important.”
“I was his fucking family!” Joey spat. “I was everything he had! And he… He was everything that I had! And he fucking blew it. He pushed everything away because… Because…” Joey scrunched his eyes with one hand and sighed deeply. “I’ve been trying to figure out the end to that sentence for a long time and I’ve got nothing… Nothing.”
“I see now. You’ve come to me with an open wound that needs closing. I can see–”
“No, wait. There’s something else.” She looked surprised but paused and lowered her hands back towards the table and bowed her head to allow him to continue. Joey leaned forwards in his chair as to try and keep their conversation away from wandering ears, “I’m on the verge of the greatest opportunity I have yet faced. I am to face the Final Boss Champion, Bert McAlroy at The Last of Us Part II. I’ve beat him once and I know I can beat him again but… This is bigger than anything I’ve yet climbed. I need to understand what I have to do to win the big one.” She sat back and placed her hands flat in her lap.
"Glory is a tempting mistress. It has sought to enact the becoming and destruction of many, many men before you. This is something you need to take care with.”
“I’ll take your warnings with a pinch of salt, love. Hope you don’t mind but I doubt you have any idea of the gravitas of what I’m fucking dealing with here.”
“Maybe not,” she conceded, “But tell me one more thing. What happened the last time you saw Mick? What was said? Do you suspect there to be any reason why Mick wouldn’t want to speak with you?” This was a new thought. So far she had promised a chat with a ghost, with seemingly no strings attached. Joey thought it’d be more like a prison phone. What else are you going to do when you have a visitor? But now it sounds like there’s a chance Mick won’t even want to speak to him. That would be just like him, he thought.
“Our last conversation was… One-sided. Mick was in a hospital and he was practically comatose. He was able to open his eyes but he didn’t speak. If he was happy to see me, I didn’t even give him the chance to say so. I went into that room with a real chip on my shoulder and I took all my frustrations of the last eight years out on him. We didn’t fall out or break up before… It just, sorta ended. I’d had the better part of ten years to build a lot of anger and I took it out on him.”
“What did you say?”
“I said that I would do everything he thought I couldn’t, and that I would achieve it in spite of him. I wanted to tell him that the training wheels were off and that - no thanks to him - the best version of myself was about to return and that I would be more successful than anyone thought I could ever be. And I threatened to run him over in case he was strong enough to follow me out of the hospital.” Joey shakily reached into his pocket to pull out a menthol cigarette and a box of matches, it took four attempts to strike the match and light up.
“And then what happened?” Joey exhaled deeply, watching the smoke twist and dance in the soft lantern glow. He smiled through a grimace.
“What happened next was I lost my fucking return match. And then he died.” He dragged deeply on the cigarette and almost coughed on the inhale.
“So you need to apologise and make sure that any bad blood between you is cleared, yes? You have laboured over the lost chances to reconcile and now, you need to clear the air?”
“What? Have you been listening to me? I need his advice on how to win the big one - that’s it!”
“It is obvious, Joey. Even a child could understand the nuance of your relationship with Mick and understand what needs to be done, for your own good and his.”
“I don’t give a shit what’s good for that bastard. You hear me?” Joey pointed at the woman with his cigarette hand, the smoke stretching in the air and billowing across to her. “He ruined his chances to have a relationship worth keeping and salvaging with me long before he eventually died! All I need is what is owed to me - some fucking guidance. After that, I can forgive him and he can carry on being fucking dead.” The woman reached her lands across the table, palms down and made sure she was within touching distance should Joey lean forward again.
“I need to warn you. You are wandering into territory that not many have traversed and told the tale! You are not seeing this from the right place. Please reconsider otherwise the alternative is… treacherous.” Joey considered her genuine concern for a moment but disregarded it immediately.
“Sadly, nothing I do is easy, or a walk in the park. So do your hocus pocus mumbo jumbo and let me speak with him. Otherwise, this has been a big fat waste of time and I’ll be on my way.” She sat back in her chair, the first sign of exasperation in her otherwise polished and practised facade.
“What you are seeking from the dead based on your relationship with this character, cannot be gleaned from a conversation. The dead are a tricky bunch, Joey. If something is worth their time then they are very cooperative. But from what you have told me about how your relationship ended and what you want from him, I do not believe that Mick will be cooperative.”
“Well there’s a fucking surprise. So what does this mean? This has all been a waste of time?”
“No.” She responded sternly. “It means you will have to challenge him to a game.” At this statement, Joey began laughing and fell back into his seat clutching his abdomen as if it hurt. He leaned forward again, still laughing and put his cigarette out on the luxurious tablecloth.
“A game? You want me to break out a Monopoly board or something? If you’re thinking that I have the time or patience to listen to a miserable Northern Irishman speak to me through a ouija board then you are sadly mistaken.”
“The game is called Death’s Gambit.” She placed a neatly cut deck of cards on the table. They looked just like any classic deck of playing cards with a red decorative pattern on the backs.
“I’m supposed to use playing cards to speak to a ghost?”
“With this game, you can get what you want from Mick regardless of whether or not he wants to give it to you. It is a simple game but it can have dire consequences." Joey sat still, waiting for her to say she was joking. It never happened. He stared back at her, blankly.
“Okay so let’s say I did believe any of this. How is a ghost going to play cards with me?”
“You will need a deck of playing cards, a chair for each player and something to keep score. Shuffle the cards and repeat, ‘I leave my fate to the gambit’ until your opponent arrives. The rules are simple. You will flip two cards from the deck, one for you and one for the other player. Whichever card is higher, gets a point. Once the deck is gone, whoever has the most points wins. But you need to be careful, the dead have nothing to lose and have a nasty habit of cheating. Should you win, you get the good fortune you’re seeking. But if you lose… You’ll suffer a fate worse than death. This game can’t be taken lightly!” Joey rests his elbows on his knees and sighs as if he’s listening to a child at a party talking about running around, claiming to be a choo choo train.
“Fine. Let’s say I want to play this game with Mick. What do I do first?”
“You must go to his resting place.”
There it was. Finally, the go-ahead Joey needed to visit Plymouth, Michigan.
Plymouth, Michigan
The journey to Michigan always felt like a long journey but this time it was especially so. The instructions from the lady in the swamp house kept circling his mind on the planes, cab rides and long walks en route to Mick’s burial site. It had been almost six months since he’d passed. Joey had missed the funeral and the wake and not been invited to any other celebrations of his life. So the events that may unfold seemed only fitting for someone who’d not yet had the opportunity to join in the festivities.
He walked up the hill with all the prescribed inventory: chairs, pen and paper and the all-important deck of cards. The sun was almost completely set by this point. He wanted to arrive earlier at the graveyard but it turns out Mick’s grave wasn’t widely publicised. Sure he had an obituary but it was tough enough to narrow him down to a graveyard, let alone a specific plot. But as he approached the grave at the top of the hill, he stopped and soaked in the moment he’d been anticipating for a long time. The grave itself, had nothing on it aside from the name:
It was fitting. Mick was only a man of details when it suited his end goals. In death, what else would need to be said? The tombstone was still much fresher and less eroded than most of the other stones surrounding it. The raised earth in front of the stone signalled where Mick was buried. Joey carefully placed the chairs either side of the gravestone, facing each other. With every step and motion dedicated to setting up Death’s Gambit, he felt more and more stupid. He wound up in the house of a woman he didn’t know, with no idea of where he was or how she knew anything about him - and now here he is, about to enact some game from an urban legend. All because his manager was in death, the same as he was in life: a piece of shit.
Joey took out a notepad with a pen and set-up two columns. One labelled J and another labelled M on either side of the page. He also unsheathed a brand new deck of cards and began to shuffle them immediately in his seat, discarding the box and plastic wrapping.
“I can’t fucking believe this,“ Joey muttered to himself. “Fine. I leave my fate to the gambit.” He looked around and continued shuffling but nothing happened. “I leave my death to the gambit.” Nothing again. He shuffled once more. “I will leave my fate to… The gambit.” He looked around once more, and nothing had changed. “I leave my fate to the fucking gambit, alright? Fucksake!” Joey slammed the deck of cards face-down on the top of the gravestone and reached for absentmindedly for a cigarette.
“Is ‘sat for me, is it boy?” Crash jolted out of his seat as he saw Mick on the opposite chair, laughing heartily and slapping his leg with frivolity. He looked the same as he did when Joey last saw him, deathly ill but without the medical tubes and other live-giving machines. He stood behind his chair and gripped the back of it from arm’s length as he slowly acclimatised to the sight before him.
“Mick? The fuck, it's you?”
“Don’t look so surprised! Yer th’one who feckin called me!” Mick laughed again and quickly admired his earthly body, as if he was feeling it for the first time in six months. “So… You want to play a game, is it?” Joey remained still. Despite everything he was told, despite everything he said he wanted to say to Mick if he ever got the chance, abject fear was all he knew.
“...Death’s Gambit.” Joey spoke to the spectre and maintained his distance, still not sure how to approach this apparition.
“Grand, I love this game!” Mick reached forward and flipped over two cards.
“Would you look at that? I win the first round, boyo!” Crash craned his neck from behind the chair but had to approach the stone to check the cards. Before he could get any closer, Mick appeared to switch the cards over.
“You didn’t win, you cheated!”
“Oooohh, what are you going to do? Tell God, the old man upstairs, huh? I bet he has better things to do than play umpire for a card game between a ghost and a… mediocre wrestler.” Mick began laughing under his breath. It seemed that a brief spell of death had done nothing to smooth his abrasive personality. Joey looked down at the pad and paper in his hand and begrudgingly, put a mark under Mick’s column.
“Look. The last time we spoke I–”
“The last time you saw me, you wished me dead! Well, I hope yer fuckin happy because wish granted. I wasn’t sure what to expect when you walked back into Plymouth after eight long years… Was I surprised? No. You’re a hardass, always have been. You’ve never known how to negotiate or collaborate. You go into fights swinging and don’t seem to give a shit if you win or lose. Some might say that’s admirable. But that’s not who I taught you to be.” Mick turned a card over and went to pick another but Joey placed his hand on the deck before Mick could pull both cards. After a moment, staring at Mick in his pale dead eyes, he flipped another card over.
“That’s mine!” Joey quickly etched the first mark on his column, making it one apiece. “You must know why I need to speak to you. I’m about to enter my first world championship match - the Final Boss championship - and I wanted your–”
“What the fuck happened with Salinas?” The interruption echoed around the yard. Anything Mick did was still shocking just by virtue of him being six months dead. Joey halted in his tracks at that name and tried his best not to show his anger and embarrassment.
“What of it?” He muttered robotically.
“You lost to this Salinas girl twice in the space of a month. And now you’re the one challenging for a top belt? You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind to think that you’re more deserving of a shot than she is. Never been pinned and she’s got two victories over the guy who's next in line?” Mick whistled in the way that says, ‘ouch’. This got under Joey’s skin.
“She got help or cheated both times!”
“IF YOU’RE NOT CHEATING, YOU’RE NOT TRYING!” Mick’s voice boomed like it never had before and it rushed straight through Joey’s chest. “Who did you beat to deserve a shot at that belt, huh? Maggie? Shepard? Covington? Ahmya? Buster Gloves? Where do you get off thinking you’re better than them?” Mick quickly turned two cards over but one of them was quickly brushed off the top of the stone. “Oops, let me pull another.”
“That wasn’t your card! Show me the other one, come on!”
“I’ll show you Joey, and you’ll find two new cards up here and I’ll be winning 3-1. That’s not a risk you want to take now, is it?” Joey took out his frustration in the scribbling of a second mark in Mick’s column in his pad and sighed heavily.
“Look, I pinned Bert when he was the TriForce Champion. I pinned him clean in the middle of the ring! Surely you can understand why I’m the Number One Contender?”
“YOU PINNED BERT AFTER HE HAD BEAT TWO OTHER CHAMPIONS, AFTER THE BIGGEST MATCH OF HIS CAREER. YOU SWOOPED IN LIKE A VULTURE AND PICKED THE BONES OFF HIS CARCASS… And I couldn’t have been more proud.” Mick pulled a ghostly pipe out of a pocket and began to light it. Joey mirrored his actions by sparking up a cigarette.
“So you’re saying… I should just cheat? As often as I can?”
“You’re not cut from the same cloth as these other athletes, Joey. Face it. You excel at being a bastard. You’ve been a bastard since the day you were born and you’ll continue to be a feckin bastard til the day you die. If yer as unlucky as I am, ye’ll continue to be a feckin bastard after death. You’ve always had trouble accepting this, but you must!” Joey dragged on the cigarette and blew the smoke towards Mick, who in turn blew smoke from his pipe towards Joey. It floated over like a mist but had no smell.
“That’s bullshit. You always thought I was second best! I’ve become better than you ever thought I could be. I’ve had to change who I am time and time again to make sure I could keep going. I can reinvent myself when I need to. I didn’t learn that from you. You’re just a stubborn arsehole.”
“You’re trying to fit a square peg into a round feckin hole. You’re not the wrestler I trained you to be.”
Plymouth, Michigan continued
Joey’s hand was still firmly placed on the deck of cards. Mick had drawn his card for the final round already, a Queen of Diamonds. It was the highest card that either man had drawn the whole game.
“Great fortune or a fate worse than death… that’s not exactly your everyday gamble, is it?”
“It was a risk I had to take. I had to know that we were different. I had to know that whatever I did, I was going to give it fucking everything. It doesn’t matter that you’re dead. Maybe it doesn’t matter that we won’t see eye-to-eye before this is done. But it had to be done.”
“I suppose it has to be seen to be believed, eh? By that I mean, you’ve become such a lame duck. A true shell of your former self. What could you possibly achieve on your own now? Absolutely nothing. So flip that card. Even if you do… ‘win’ whatever that means. You’re still going to end up like me. Dead, penniless and alone.”
“That’s okay… That is okay.”
Joey flipped the final card over.
At the end of the hall was a doorway with a beaded curtain and a soft glow emanating on the floor where they stopped. The rays of light escaped randomly through the beads and were quickly cut off by the darkness. There was nothing else but the doorway. Joey shuffled forwards with soft, wary footsteps. The incessant, irritating clicking of cicadas was intermittently cut-off by the sounds of bubbling and the soft click of metal on metal. The warm glow of the amber beads intensified as he drew closer. He breached the curtains slowly with his index finger but the gentle patter of swinging beads announced his entry, regardless of how quiet he tried to remain. There was a lantern above him which was the only source of light this side of the room, and he carefully took it off the hook protruding from the ceiling. He jerked his head at the sound of the metallic clicks which were much closer now.
“Who's there?” Joey asked with shaky breath. The crack in his voice undermined the authority he was fighting to preserve. He had no idea where he was. There was no response to his question, only the continuing metallic clicks and what sounded like the faintest hint of a hum. On the other side of the room was another doorway and a small, round table laid out with luxurious, velvet tablecloths and netting adorned with gold medallions and other trinkets. A pocket watch lay open on the table. There were chairs on either side of this table, which looked like it could fit three people at most. Frustration turned to fear.
“Hey! If anyone’s there you better show yourself!!” From past the open doorway on the other side of the room, creaky stairs groaned, growing louder with each step. Joey took half a step back and held the lantern just beneath his face so the light didn’t get in his eyes. He fought to control his breathing as a woman appeared in the doorway. She looked like someone who probably lived here - both she and the table looked equally splendid in luxurious cloth and gold. Joey stood up straight but still retained a defensive stance. She opened her hands out to the side, bangles and rings clicking as her fingers stretched and motioned in a general ‘come hither’ motion.
“Sorry I’m late… But you’re just in time. Please, take a seat and let’s talk.” She spoke almost in slow-motion, every syllable was carefully positioned and polished. She didn’t labour over her words but she dedicated an effortless pronunciation to every letter. Joey couldn’t be sure if English was her first language but the music in her voice had a soothing quality that he wasn’t sure was reassuring or disarming.
“Why should I sit down? Give me one good reason not to spark you out right now!” Joey threw a hook in the air with the lantern as if this would embellish his threat but she didn’t move a muscle at the threat. After a moment she took a seat gently on her side of the table, placing her hands on the table palms up. There was no emotion in her face. She was as cold and indifferent as a statue. He tried to stare her down to no avail. “Fuck this.” Joey turned on his haunches and began marching away.
“Have you ever noticed that every relationship you ever had… Was just someone slowly realising they didn’t like you as much as they hoped they would?” Joey stopped in his tracks and the lantern hand slowly dropped to extend his arm at full length. He turned around to face her again, whose face was now one of compassion. “I bet you’ve noticed recently… Joey… It’s not taken as long for the other person to figure that out?” Joey avoids eye contact. How does she know his name? What else does she know? Where the hell is he? He scrunches his face as he tries to process every question, which just leads to further questions. Eventually, he gives up.
“What do you want from me?”
“You wish to contact the dead… That is what has brought you to me.” She lifts her hands from the table, still with palms facing up and motions for Joey to approach him with each of her fingers. They moved like waves gently crashing onto the shore. He surrendered to her whims and found himself sitting in the chair directly opposite her. There was a soft perfume in the air and close-up, the table was soft and inviting. He placed the lantern on the side of the table and allowed himself to sink into the back of the chair as she placed her hands back on the table.
“It’s not possible. I never said I wanted to talk to ghosts. It’s impossible, whatever this is.”
“What I do and what you think is possible does not matter. I am a messenger. I can tell you what you need to know. This isn’t to say I can answer all your questions... Many people do not know what they need.” Joey lurched forward and placed his elbows on the table.
“And you think – you know that I need to speak to a dead guy? Do you even hear yourself right now?”
“Tell me I’m wrong then. Tell me there isn’t someone who's passed on that you could benefit from speaking to and you shall be free to leave.” Joey clutched the arms of his chair. The irritation of cicadas and swamp noises faded into the background, filling the room with a numbing silence that hung over them. She stared into his soul. “Tell me about this person.”
“His… Uhm. I’m only telling you, right, because you’ve asked. I still don’t believe any of this hoodoo shit you’ve got going on.” She lifted her hands and smiled for a moment in response, as if to beckon Joey to continue. “His name was Mick. Mick Smyth, if that matters. He was my manager for a number of years. I never did get a chance to get some last advice from him before he… Left. That’s... That's him.”
“I see…” she raised her hands high into the air as if calling for the universe to respond, “And tell me… What was your relationship like with this Mick?” She closed her eyes gently, as if she was trying to remember something from long ago. Her hands swayed back and forth, her fingers rolling across each other and making soft clicking noises from her extravagant, clunky jewellery. Joey thought back and could feel his throat tensing up, his lips stiffened as he fought against all his instincts to spill his tale to this stranger.
“We’d been on the road for a long time. I was a boxer first, that’s where he found me. He saved my life from some thugs when I was only like, seventeen-eighteen. I’d crossed the wrong people and it put us both in some… trouble. I was attacked and could have died but he managed to get me out. He got me out before too much damage was done but neither of us came out of it unscathed. He had his own shit going on, he barely spoke about it. We escaped to America and that was the beginning of my career as a wrestler. I suffered a broken jaw and the shit we got into back in London meant we would never get sanctioned by an official boxing organisation again - and I’d had my fill of illegal fights. With Mick by my side it felt like we could take on the fucking world. I did well, very well. I felt like I did better than I had any right to. But after a lot of time together, years and years… It felt like he resented me. At first it was little things. Late for training, forget to make bookings. But then he began actively pushing me away. And we basically drifted apart. He became an island and I wasn’t allowed to be a part of that. He never gave any rhyme or reason for it. Maybe because he’d started a family that he never told me about.”
“Family is important.”
“I was his fucking family!” Joey spat. “I was everything he had! And he… He was everything that I had! And he fucking blew it. He pushed everything away because… Because…” Joey scrunched his eyes with one hand and sighed deeply. “I’ve been trying to figure out the end to that sentence for a long time and I’ve got nothing… Nothing.”
“I see now. You’ve come to me with an open wound that needs closing. I can see–”
“No, wait. There’s something else.” She looked surprised but paused and lowered her hands back towards the table and bowed her head to allow him to continue. Joey leaned forwards in his chair as to try and keep their conversation away from wandering ears, “I’m on the verge of the greatest opportunity I have yet faced. I am to face the Final Boss Champion, Bert McAlroy at The Last of Us Part II. I’ve beat him once and I know I can beat him again but… This is bigger than anything I’ve yet climbed. I need to understand what I have to do to win the big one.” She sat back and placed her hands flat in her lap.
"Glory is a tempting mistress. It has sought to enact the becoming and destruction of many, many men before you. This is something you need to take care with.”
“I’ll take your warnings with a pinch of salt, love. Hope you don’t mind but I doubt you have any idea of the gravitas of what I’m fucking dealing with here.”
“Maybe not,” she conceded, “But tell me one more thing. What happened the last time you saw Mick? What was said? Do you suspect there to be any reason why Mick wouldn’t want to speak with you?” This was a new thought. So far she had promised a chat with a ghost, with seemingly no strings attached. Joey thought it’d be more like a prison phone. What else are you going to do when you have a visitor? But now it sounds like there’s a chance Mick won’t even want to speak to him. That would be just like him, he thought.
“Our last conversation was… One-sided. Mick was in a hospital and he was practically comatose. He was able to open his eyes but he didn’t speak. If he was happy to see me, I didn’t even give him the chance to say so. I went into that room with a real chip on my shoulder and I took all my frustrations of the last eight years out on him. We didn’t fall out or break up before… It just, sorta ended. I’d had the better part of ten years to build a lot of anger and I took it out on him.”
“What did you say?”
“I said that I would do everything he thought I couldn’t, and that I would achieve it in spite of him. I wanted to tell him that the training wheels were off and that - no thanks to him - the best version of myself was about to return and that I would be more successful than anyone thought I could ever be. And I threatened to run him over in case he was strong enough to follow me out of the hospital.” Joey shakily reached into his pocket to pull out a menthol cigarette and a box of matches, it took four attempts to strike the match and light up.
“And then what happened?” Joey exhaled deeply, watching the smoke twist and dance in the soft lantern glow. He smiled through a grimace.
“What happened next was I lost my fucking return match. And then he died.” He dragged deeply on the cigarette and almost coughed on the inhale.
“So you need to apologise and make sure that any bad blood between you is cleared, yes? You have laboured over the lost chances to reconcile and now, you need to clear the air?”
“What? Have you been listening to me? I need his advice on how to win the big one - that’s it!”
“It is obvious, Joey. Even a child could understand the nuance of your relationship with Mick and understand what needs to be done, for your own good and his.”
“I don’t give a shit what’s good for that bastard. You hear me?” Joey pointed at the woman with his cigarette hand, the smoke stretching in the air and billowing across to her. “He ruined his chances to have a relationship worth keeping and salvaging with me long before he eventually died! All I need is what is owed to me - some fucking guidance. After that, I can forgive him and he can carry on being fucking dead.” The woman reached her lands across the table, palms down and made sure she was within touching distance should Joey lean forward again.
“I need to warn you. You are wandering into territory that not many have traversed and told the tale! You are not seeing this from the right place. Please reconsider otherwise the alternative is… treacherous.” Joey considered her genuine concern for a moment but disregarded it immediately.
“Sadly, nothing I do is easy, or a walk in the park. So do your hocus pocus mumbo jumbo and let me speak with him. Otherwise, this has been a big fat waste of time and I’ll be on my way.” She sat back in her chair, the first sign of exasperation in her otherwise polished and practised facade.
“What you are seeking from the dead based on your relationship with this character, cannot be gleaned from a conversation. The dead are a tricky bunch, Joey. If something is worth their time then they are very cooperative. But from what you have told me about how your relationship ended and what you want from him, I do not believe that Mick will be cooperative.”
“Well there’s a fucking surprise. So what does this mean? This has all been a waste of time?”
“No.” She responded sternly. “It means you will have to challenge him to a game.” At this statement, Joey began laughing and fell back into his seat clutching his abdomen as if it hurt. He leaned forward again, still laughing and put his cigarette out on the luxurious tablecloth.
“A game? You want me to break out a Monopoly board or something? If you’re thinking that I have the time or patience to listen to a miserable Northern Irishman speak to me through a ouija board then you are sadly mistaken.”
“The game is called Death’s Gambit.” She placed a neatly cut deck of cards on the table. They looked just like any classic deck of playing cards with a red decorative pattern on the backs.
“I’m supposed to use playing cards to speak to a ghost?”
“With this game, you can get what you want from Mick regardless of whether or not he wants to give it to you. It is a simple game but it can have dire consequences." Joey sat still, waiting for her to say she was joking. It never happened. He stared back at her, blankly.
“Okay so let’s say I did believe any of this. How is a ghost going to play cards with me?”
“You will need a deck of playing cards, a chair for each player and something to keep score. Shuffle the cards and repeat, ‘I leave my fate to the gambit’ until your opponent arrives. The rules are simple. You will flip two cards from the deck, one for you and one for the other player. Whichever card is higher, gets a point. Once the deck is gone, whoever has the most points wins. But you need to be careful, the dead have nothing to lose and have a nasty habit of cheating. Should you win, you get the good fortune you’re seeking. But if you lose… You’ll suffer a fate worse than death. This game can’t be taken lightly!” Joey rests his elbows on his knees and sighs as if he’s listening to a child at a party talking about running around, claiming to be a choo choo train.
“Fine. Let’s say I want to play this game with Mick. What do I do first?”
“You must go to his resting place.”
There it was. Finally, the go-ahead Joey needed to visit Plymouth, Michigan.
Plymouth, Michigan
The journey to Michigan always felt like a long journey but this time it was especially so. The instructions from the lady in the swamp house kept circling his mind on the planes, cab rides and long walks en route to Mick’s burial site. It had been almost six months since he’d passed. Joey had missed the funeral and the wake and not been invited to any other celebrations of his life. So the events that may unfold seemed only fitting for someone who’d not yet had the opportunity to join in the festivities.
He walked up the hill with all the prescribed inventory: chairs, pen and paper and the all-important deck of cards. The sun was almost completely set by this point. He wanted to arrive earlier at the graveyard but it turns out Mick’s grave wasn’t widely publicised. Sure he had an obituary but it was tough enough to narrow him down to a graveyard, let alone a specific plot. But as he approached the grave at the top of the hill, he stopped and soaked in the moment he’d been anticipating for a long time. The grave itself, had nothing on it aside from the name:
M I C K S M Y T H
It was fitting. Mick was only a man of details when it suited his end goals. In death, what else would need to be said? The tombstone was still much fresher and less eroded than most of the other stones surrounding it. The raised earth in front of the stone signalled where Mick was buried. Joey carefully placed the chairs either side of the gravestone, facing each other. With every step and motion dedicated to setting up Death’s Gambit, he felt more and more stupid. He wound up in the house of a woman he didn’t know, with no idea of where he was or how she knew anything about him - and now here he is, about to enact some game from an urban legend. All because his manager was in death, the same as he was in life: a piece of shit.
Joey took out a notepad with a pen and set-up two columns. One labelled J and another labelled M on either side of the page. He also unsheathed a brand new deck of cards and began to shuffle them immediately in his seat, discarding the box and plastic wrapping.
“I can’t fucking believe this,“ Joey muttered to himself. “Fine. I leave my fate to the gambit.” He looked around and continued shuffling but nothing happened. “I leave my death to the gambit.” Nothing again. He shuffled once more. “I will leave my fate to… The gambit.” He looked around once more, and nothing had changed. “I leave my fate to the fucking gambit, alright? Fucksake!” Joey slammed the deck of cards face-down on the top of the gravestone and reached for absentmindedly for a cigarette.
“Is ‘sat for me, is it boy?” Crash jolted out of his seat as he saw Mick on the opposite chair, laughing heartily and slapping his leg with frivolity. He looked the same as he did when Joey last saw him, deathly ill but without the medical tubes and other live-giving machines. He stood behind his chair and gripped the back of it from arm’s length as he slowly acclimatised to the sight before him.
“Mick? The fuck, it's you?”
“Don’t look so surprised! Yer th’one who feckin called me!” Mick laughed again and quickly admired his earthly body, as if he was feeling it for the first time in six months. “So… You want to play a game, is it?” Joey remained still. Despite everything he was told, despite everything he said he wanted to say to Mick if he ever got the chance, abject fear was all he knew.
“...Death’s Gambit.” Joey spoke to the spectre and maintained his distance, still not sure how to approach this apparition.
“Grand, I love this game!” Mick reached forward and flipped over two cards.
Joey: 8 of Spades | Mick: 5 of Hearts
“Would you look at that? I win the first round, boyo!” Crash craned his neck from behind the chair but had to approach the stone to check the cards. Before he could get any closer, Mick appeared to switch the cards over.
“You didn’t win, you cheated!”
“Oooohh, what are you going to do? Tell God, the old man upstairs, huh? I bet he has better things to do than play umpire for a card game between a ghost and a… mediocre wrestler.” Mick began laughing under his breath. It seemed that a brief spell of death had done nothing to smooth his abrasive personality. Joey looked down at the pad and paper in his hand and begrudgingly, put a mark under Mick’s column.
“Look. The last time we spoke I–”
“The last time you saw me, you wished me dead! Well, I hope yer fuckin happy because wish granted. I wasn’t sure what to expect when you walked back into Plymouth after eight long years… Was I surprised? No. You’re a hardass, always have been. You’ve never known how to negotiate or collaborate. You go into fights swinging and don’t seem to give a shit if you win or lose. Some might say that’s admirable. But that’s not who I taught you to be.” Mick turned a card over and went to pick another but Joey placed his hand on the deck before Mick could pull both cards. After a moment, staring at Mick in his pale dead eyes, he flipped another card over.
Joey: 9 of Diamonds | Mick: 7 of Clubs
SCORE: 1-1
SCORE: 1-1
“That’s mine!” Joey quickly etched the first mark on his column, making it one apiece. “You must know why I need to speak to you. I’m about to enter my first world championship match - the Final Boss championship - and I wanted your–”
“What the fuck happened with Salinas?” The interruption echoed around the yard. Anything Mick did was still shocking just by virtue of him being six months dead. Joey halted in his tracks at that name and tried his best not to show his anger and embarrassment.
“What of it?” He muttered robotically.
“You lost to this Salinas girl twice in the space of a month. And now you’re the one challenging for a top belt? You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind to think that you’re more deserving of a shot than she is. Never been pinned and she’s got two victories over the guy who's next in line?” Mick whistled in the way that says, ‘ouch’. This got under Joey’s skin.
“She got help or cheated both times!”
“IF YOU’RE NOT CHEATING, YOU’RE NOT TRYING!” Mick’s voice boomed like it never had before and it rushed straight through Joey’s chest. “Who did you beat to deserve a shot at that belt, huh? Maggie? Shepard? Covington? Ahmya? Buster Gloves? Where do you get off thinking you’re better than them?” Mick quickly turned two cards over but one of them was quickly brushed off the top of the stone. “Oops, let me pull another.”
Joey: 7 of Hearts | Mick: Jack of Diamonds
SCORE: 1-2
SCORE: 1-2
“That wasn’t your card! Show me the other one, come on!”
“I’ll show you Joey, and you’ll find two new cards up here and I’ll be winning 3-1. That’s not a risk you want to take now, is it?” Joey took out his frustration in the scribbling of a second mark in Mick’s column in his pad and sighed heavily.
“Look, I pinned Bert when he was the TriForce Champion. I pinned him clean in the middle of the ring! Surely you can understand why I’m the Number One Contender?”
“YOU PINNED BERT AFTER HE HAD BEAT TWO OTHER CHAMPIONS, AFTER THE BIGGEST MATCH OF HIS CAREER. YOU SWOOPED IN LIKE A VULTURE AND PICKED THE BONES OFF HIS CARCASS… And I couldn’t have been more proud.” Mick pulled a ghostly pipe out of a pocket and began to light it. Joey mirrored his actions by sparking up a cigarette.
“So you’re saying… I should just cheat? As often as I can?”
“You’re not cut from the same cloth as these other athletes, Joey. Face it. You excel at being a bastard. You’ve been a bastard since the day you were born and you’ll continue to be a feckin bastard til the day you die. If yer as unlucky as I am, ye’ll continue to be a feckin bastard after death. You’ve always had trouble accepting this, but you must!” Joey dragged on the cigarette and blew the smoke towards Mick, who in turn blew smoke from his pipe towards Joey. It floated over like a mist but had no smell.
“That’s bullshit. You always thought I was second best! I’ve become better than you ever thought I could be. I’ve had to change who I am time and time again to make sure I could keep going. I can reinvent myself when I need to. I didn’t learn that from you. You’re just a stubborn arsehole.”
“You’re trying to fit a square peg into a round feckin hole. You’re not the wrestler I trained you to be.”
“You didn’t train me to be shit! I never accomplished anything significant while you were still kicking about. And I’ve changed. I moved up to Heavyweight. I even brushed up on my old boxing skills. I’ve learned more without you than you ever taught me!”
“Then why do you keep looking back? You’re talking with me right now aren’t you? You clearly haven’t brought me here to brag, because… Well, just look at ye.” Mick sat back in his chair, looking very pleased with his profound statement. Joey seethed with rage and quickly turned over two cards.
Joey: Ace of Clubs | Mick: Royal Flush, Published in Detroit, MI
SCORE: 2-2
“Wait, wait, wait! Aces are low! And you were meant to remove the junk cards before you started the game you feckin eejit! I bet you left the jokers in here too ya bastard!” Mick scrambled forward to grab both the cards but Joey knocked them both to the floor with a smirk.
“Well it looks to me like your card didn’t even have a value, boyo. So that’s two-two.” Mick was enraged and began to fidget in his chair, as if he wanted to leap over the stone and kill Joey but there was something holding him back.
“If this is how you want to play the game, fine. Suit yerself. But this next round is our last. So I hope you got what you came here for, Joey. Because I’ve just about had my fill of it.” Mick goes to grab another card from the top of the deck but Joey snaps his hand on top of Mick’s. It is freezing cold. Mick stares daggers at Joey who holds his hand down.
“One card. That’s all you’re taking.” Joey loosened his grip just enough that Mick could slide out from Joey’s grasp. He has a single card and he looks at it himself with a chuckle before placing it face up on the tombstone.
Mick: Queen of Diamonds
“I don’t know what God you’re paying to these days but you might want to get them on the line to have a hope in Hell’s chance of beating that!” Mick crossed his legs and put his hands behind his neck, reclining lazily in his chair. Mick took dramatically deep breaths while Joey kept his hand on the deck and composed himself to draw the final card.
[PROMO]
The camera opens to a long, drab hall with long cafeteria tables under old fluorescent lights. Old women congregated in packs, separate and together as they huddled closely over their individual bingo cards. An obnoxious old gentleman in a garish yellow suit and was stood on the stage next to the blower, announcing the numbers over the PA system. Everything in this room was designed to cater to the lack of sensation felt by their clientele, who despite the overwhelming brightness and volume were well equipped with thick glasses and hearing aids.
“AAAAND YOUR NEXT NUMBER IIIISS… HERE IT IS!! ITS ZEEEEEERRRROOOOOOOO!”
A smattering of “What did he say?” and “That’s not on my sheet, is it on yours?” coupled with the occasional, “Now, the war was a long time ago” spread across the room until the crowd was so disgruntled, the man in the yellow suit was double-checking the balls in the blower and hiding in case these old timers got angry. Then, as if in the nick of time, another younger man wearing a glittery gold sequin suit with black lapels… And a fisherman beanie.
‘Thaaaaat’s right, ladies and germs!” Joey shouted into the mic, walking with the exaggerated, incorporated dance of an 80’s gameshow host. “It’s a big fat goose egg! Fun fact about the number zero - when you convert that into a percentage you’ve got the exact chances of Bert McAlroy, the reigning and defending Final Boss Champion, successfully leaving The Last of Us Part II with the belt still around his waist! Now, did you have that on your bingo cards?” Joey shimmied about on his heels, relishing in the afternoon he had just ruined for a bunch of people who were too rude to just hurry up and die already.
“Uh, excuse me pardner, but what are you doin’?” The awful old man in the yellow suit had come up behind Joey and whispered in his ear. Joey jumped at his presence but regained composure, lowering his microphone so only they were privy to their chat amongst the chaos.
“Look, we both have better things to do. But this will only take ten minutes. So do me a favour and fuck off. Just temporarily. You can come back and finish your shitty little game as soon as I’m done okay? Look at their old, sad, wrinkly, disgusting, jowly faces. Nobody here will even remember that this happened.” He patted the old man on the shoulder in a friendly but dismissing manner and turned back to the crowd.
“But you ruined our game, zero isn’t even a number–”
“I SAID BEAT IT GRANDAD!” Joey screamed into the microphone, getting in the old man’s face, “Get your shaky-achy bones out of here before they turn to dust.”
The old man in the yellow suit left and Joey revelled in the occasional shocked gasps rippling through the crowd as a game of Chinese whispers sent his message rolling through the crowd. Joey then loses the smarmy grin and undoes the top button on his suit, flourishing his arms so the sleeves fit nicely down to his wrist. He then looks past the camera to address the crowd and the camera crew.
“Alright, I’m going to ignore all of you for the next ten minutes so just– Sshhhh! And yo, camera. I need a closeup. And can someone do something about these lights? I feel like I’m about to have a migraine.”
“You c-can’t just do this, young man!” Joey looked down to an old lady with a zimmer frame approaching the stage. She was dressed in a gown and slippers and her signature look was completed by a cardigan draped over her shoulders. Joey smiled and knelt down to meet her.
“Listen Margaret, or Doris or Gertrude or Betty or whatever the fuck your name is– I do what I like and it’s not my fault this venue is double booked. So do me favour and die, or you can make like a banana and fuck off for ten minutes until I’m done. You get to choose what happens because I like you. But you better tell your friends to pipe down or they’ll suffer whatever consequences I feel like. And I’m not in a good mood. I’m about as cheerful as a vet with a hangover– I’m going to put everything down!” The old lady zimmered away crying as fast as her legs would let her. Joey blew a kiss to another woman and she was disgusted. He then took a deep breath and opened his eyes once he heard the camera man complete his countdown.
“Sometimes, you’ve got a feeling. And right now… In this moment? It’s pretty good. I said this before our first match in a venue not too dissimilar to this. Maybe a little more glamorous. But the good feeling is still there, Bertie Boy! Look at us. You’re the Final Boss champion. Congratulations again. Who’da thunk it? The skinny, annoying stoner kid finally made it to the top. Truly, a role model for the kids to look up to. You backed up the talk at Final Fantasy and you came out on top. Except… It’s not all sunshine and daisies, is it? The view from the top isn’t as beautiful as you thought it was going to be. Walk with me.” Joey takes a small jump onto a nearby table and begins walking towards the camera, taking delight in kicking over all the bingo cards, pens, drinks, false teeth and whatever shit they have left lying around, much to the despair of the senior citizens who have mostly huddled on either side of the hall.
“But we can’t talk too much about the Final Boss championship without first paying our respects to the former champ, our Lady Maggie. Oh how little we knew ye! It was attempt number two for our hero in the quest for old gold. He’d come up short once but could he pull it out of the bag on the biggest show of the year? Well, we all know how it turned out. There was champagne, confetti, balloons and everyone celebrated the David conquering Goliath. The match itself was epic. Or so people told me, I was too busy to watch that night. But Maggie put up one hell of a fight. But from what I hear there was something else on her mind. A little seed, a suggestion, an idea– maybe a accusation that kept her from performing at her best. And that’s all you wanted. If you could somehow distract our good friend Maggie so she could only perform at 99% you knew you could win. Lo and behold, a new champion is crowned! And Maggie… disappeared. Vanished, like dust in the breeze. No talk of a rematch, no talk of her ever returning.” Joey stopped for a moment and pulled an exaggerated look of concentration, like a detective in CSI Miami. “...What did you have on Maggie?”
“When we check the tapes we know that it wasn’t really the championship you wanted. You were simply obsessed with defeating Maggie and driving her out of the company! The championships were just accessories to getting what you wanted. I’ve seen your real face and it’s not the happy-go-lucky stoner who succeeded against the odds. It’s a corporate fucking sellout who politicked his way to the top and forced Maggie out in one fell swoop. I mean, I didn’t know it was a loser leaves town match! Neither did Maggie, til she lost.” Joey laughed and jumped off the table. The camera begun to spin around him and Joey kept facing the camera so the hall appeared to revolve around him.
“You can’t do that shit with me, Bert! I lay my cards on the table and do my business out in the open. Not like you, who weasels and connives your way in and out of the spotlight. But you’re getting sloppy. When you cost me the match against Salinas, I knew you were cracking. For as much shit as the GameChangers put you through, you want to gift them a victory? I was this fucking close to putting a dent in their armour - something you’ve failed to do so far, I could add - and you couldn’t stand to see the better man clean up. So you came in acting like you wanted some payback and screwed me over. Well… Where has that got you? What’s changed? Level Up is mine, Bert! It’s mine! When I said I was going to inherit the world I meant just that - everything will belong to me when all is said and done!”
“Looks to me like someone, hint, that’s you Bertie boy– wasn’t ready for the responsibility of being the top dog. Maggie took this in stride. The belt didn’t make her, she made the belt! And now you’re holding onto her property, wondering why people don’t treat you the same as Maggie when she was the champion. Did you even think ahead this far? What were you going to do when you won the belt? You can’t trade it for weed. Having the belt is a full-time job. It’s PR and media appearances, hospital visits, interviews and having a target on your back twenty-four-seven. You were so focused on destroying Maggie that you forgot you’d have to live with yourself afterwards. Can you really, honestly live with yourself after what you did?”
“I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching myself, Bert. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve needed time to reflect. Since we last faced off, I’ve had to come to terms with a few hard truths. Let’s go through them one by one. Firstly, I said that I respected you. It was true then but any respect you had disappeared after Final Fantasy - and I dare anybody else on the roster to tell me they feel any different. Secondly, I said that we were two sides of the same coin. Your recent actions have shown me that if anything… We’re the same damn side. Who could have seen this coming? You pulled off the coup of the century and now you’re just as rotten as me. Imagine being the bad guy… in this match? That’s you, Bertie Boy! How does it feel to have lived life on the wild side? You got a taste when you dealt with Maggie and now you can’t turn back. But like an addict, it’s going to ruin you from the inside. Like it or not, you won’t be able to keep me down unless you make me disappear too. I’m the voice of reason here Bert. You need to put down the gun and walk away.” Joey begins walked out of the bingo hall into the carpark where the sun is setting and reflects little shimmers off his gold sequins. The camera is ahead of Joey once again with the sunset behind him.
“But this match isn’t going to be a repeat of our last. I wanted to put you out of commission for Final Fantasy last time and thinking back, it’s a real shame that I let you off with a backslide. Maybe if I did, things would be different. But you’re not facing any old Joey Crash. You’re not going out there to face the Joey Crash who triumphed over HIS MONSTER. You’re not facing the Joey Crash whose lost to Victoria Salinas… Fucking twice in a month. The Joey Crash you’re facing, is the bastard whose been living in your head rent-free ever since you accepted my challenge for a one-on-one rematch. In one fell swoop I bypassed the entire roster and you… You’ve just been hanging around like a bad smell. Stinking up the place. Ruining matches and getting the shit kicked out of you every week. You think it matters that Salinas beat me? I’m not fighting her. I’m fighting a pathetic little stooge whose just holding the title for me.” Joey turns to look at the sunset which has almost disappeared on the horizon.
“Come prepared or don’t come at all. If you show up, I want to make you suffer for everything that’s owed to every man, woman and child who cannot forgive you for what you’ve done. But maybe you should do everyone a kindness, including yourself and just… Disappear. It’s your funeral.”
Plymouth, Michigan continued
Joey’s hand was still firmly placed on the deck of cards. Mick had drawn his card for the final round already, a Queen of Diamonds. It was the highest card that either man had drawn the whole game.
“Great fortune or a fate worse than death… that’s not exactly your everyday gamble, is it?”
“It was a risk I had to take. I had to know that we were different. I had to know that whatever I did, I was going to give it fucking everything. It doesn’t matter that you’re dead. Maybe it doesn’t matter that we won’t see eye-to-eye before this is done. But it had to be done.”
“I suppose it has to be seen to be believed, eh? By that I mean, you’ve become such a lame duck. A true shell of your former self. What could you possibly achieve on your own now? Absolutely nothing. So flip that card. Even if you do… ‘win’ whatever that means. You’re still going to end up like me. Dead, penniless and alone.”
“That’s okay… That is okay.”
Joey flipped the final card over.
