Champagne pops. You jump. It’s been too long since you’ve heard a gunshot.

The bubbly is served, but not for your pleasure. It’s a starting pistol for the ossified gamblers below. From your promontory, the First Floor is unchanged. It’s as it looked hours ago while scoping the joint.

Same as before that, for hundreds of years, night and day indistinguishable beneath the dusky lamps above.

The mare slacks at your side. She leans against the atrium’s pillar, lighting another cigarette, flicking another rosy lipstick-coated butt off the balcony and onto the floor below. It’s collected instantaneously by another auto-bartender. In her other hand is a hand-blown Collins glass, adorned with zig-zag lemon peel, jingling with ice that was previously floated by a ginger ale and whiskey concoction.

She’s spilled some on her outfit in another fit of alcoholism.

It’s a petticoat-corset venture. Ebony crêpe fabrics streak against sorrel coat, corset forcing out masculine shoulders, ones pockmarked with shrapnel scars, covered with glossy concealers. Her mane, a waterfall of curls, looks more putain than madone. She’s a time warp on the First Floor, your combined wardrobes already out of style, replaced by de-sexed monochromatic dresses on purposefully boyish bodies. Nearby, other women’s hair cut is short, dyed black, rejecting Ø’s forced S-shape figure.

“That’s alright,” Dutchie remarked, furred fingers pulling straps taught, dressing the mare between fits of smoking, “the Chore-ographer likes it when the girls look ingénue. That’s how you say it, right? You know what I mean, though. Broke.”

Dutchie’s worked for naught. The ruffles splaying at Ø’s hips only accentuate masculine shoulders, the mare’s breathing hampered with a forcibly bound chest. Makeup sticks like spackle on her face, as it can’t conceal the perpetual grimace.

She’s mannish, not boyish—an important distinction.

The railing upon which you lean pierces your forearms. It cuts through your suit jacket—then the puresilk, periwinkle shirt, your brass cufflinks of miniature playing cards. You want to press down further, severing artery, splaying the First Floor with blood like shaken bubbly.

You’ll do anything to get out of your task.

Previously, if you didn’t feel like taking a delivery job, you would simply decline. Even mid-shipment, were there an unexpected roadblock, a passing fancy for sloth, you would slouch. The jobs, after all, were unimportant. Cargo holds filled with semi-edible produce, crates of chalky raw materials, mass-produced ‘luxuries’ that would pass in and out of your view without regard to your effort.

Ø, too, remembers a time where she could run. But not run per se, because she’s never turned tail. Only selectively planned, her options for piracy whittled down at her command. Risks, rewards weighed at her discretion. Until now, she’s picked her targets as the predator watches schools of prey swim by; lying still, waiting for some opportune moment to pounce.

But the luxury of choice is gone. Today, she’s meant to be preyed upon. She’ll attempt to put on a docile face, to become enticing as prey should be, to refuse any resistance as she is mauled. After all, Dutchie’s right. She’s done worse.

However, her insecurities bubble over, like the smoke leaking from between her pursed lips, coated with Dieppe Rogue Matte in Léon (Shade 940).

“You can’t run,” she sing-songs.

“I know.”

“So why are you thinking about running?” the mare toys. “It’s funny. I can’t get a read on you. It’s like you locked up that memory of us scoping out the joint. Must be real tough, whatever you’ve gotta do. But, hey, you’re a tough guy, right? All action, tough guy.”

“I’m not the one thinking of running,” you hiss in return.

“If you weren’t, you’d be thinking of your job,” she tut-tuts, inebriated, equine teeth on display for threat’s sake, “like how I am.”

Petticoat ruffles against thigh. Fetlocks intertwine at ankle. Chest contracts in anticipation. Another vision spits from the mare’s spiteful mind. Normally its cannibalistic refaites, do-overs of traumatic experiences that force snorts of twisted enjoyment from her nostrils. Memories tossed at you like cards from the dealer, against your will, all bad hands.

But this one is sultry.

Or, a pastiche of sultry. It’s an eroticism borne of captivity. Misattributions of carrot and stick twisting risk and reward into a collage of commodified fiction and learned experiences. Dolled up, empty drink in hand, she’s already a combined simulacrum of girlies she’s robbed at gun-point, their Johns sat at their desks, legs open, sans culottes, spitting blood from entry wounds.

Fillies flutter through her subconscious as two-dimensional images, reflections of women at random, their perspectives splayed, rotated, jutting out at impossible angles and bursting in a lithographic white-on-sorrel. They dawn their cancan outfits, smelling like peppermint, gunpowder, or suan tsai, their sequined burlesque outfits shredded with serrated blades. Some scream or throw punches, others are held down, either grinning like perfectly-advertised holographic babes, stoic like the stone bodhisattvas aboard Chang Tsung-ch’ang, or sobbing like her past piracy victims.

It’s a simulacrum she believes will spite you, yet she only succeeds in making you sick, reminding you of her vicious past and stunted future.

“Oh,” she chides, “look at you. Tough guy’s getting jealous?” she misreads. “Big feelings from the guy who can’t get enough of that donkey-faced salope who keeps skulking around, always talking about our money, inviting you over to grandpa’s to fleece you. I wouldn’t spit on a girl like that, throwing herself at you, one who sells herself—”

“Who, Fervidora?”

“Yeah. You don’t think I’m in your head, along for the ride? That I can’t feel your sorry, stupid face trace that piss-ant’s bony hooves, her buck-teeth, and staring at her tail? She’s soft, yeah. Vulnerable, batting her eyelashes with that stupid smile all day. You know, once we’re done with this job, I have half a mind to crack her skull. And that old man of hers who keeps cheating at cards,” she hisses. “Maybe you can play pretend, that you can afford a broad like her, that you can be friends with Charlie and Dutchie, but I know better. I can see in there, in that loser head of yours, and you know what I see?” She smiles, confident in her job of demoralization, meant to make herself feel more secure. “Nothing worth stealing.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Ø’s eyes draw across the railing, trying to ascertain where you’re looking. Nowhere, you’d answer, your eyes glazed over with the haze of yet another of her transmitted traumatic experiences. Without a drink to cradle, a cigarette to nurse, your fingers caress the wrought-iron railing, tracing the inlaid vine motifs, ones bulbous beneath your digits.

“You know, you’ve dragged me down for months. Almost a year. And what do you do? Run back and forth? Live off my kills? Courier work,” she pouts, “imagine if I were stuck with a real man. Mind-spiked, connected, whatever this thing is. I’d settle for Charlie, that’s how useless you are. Hell, Dutchie, even.”

“Why? Because she’s one lousy hand from getting black-bagged?”

“Oh, like you’ve got cash.”

“They don’t have cash, either.”

“But they can get it.” she snarls, “like me.”

“And, what, I should be grateful for that?”

“Yeah, because you’d be dead without me.”

“Yeah, I know,” you growl, “I’d be dead, I don’t add value, I’m just along for the ride. I’m just the talker who apologizes on your behalf.” Visions of hook-handed conversationalists float around your head, their well-armed auxiliaries cradling handfuls of khat dumped from empty pistol holsters, their three-piece suits complemented with black-and-white hippotigrine stripe dress shirts. “But I don’t need to hear it every single day. I’m living it, as much as both of us wish I wasn’t.”

You’re yelling. Lips pulled back in mutual silence, teeth nearly turning outwards to match Ø’s. You’re incentivized—so long as you’re angry, she can’t get a word in.

“So, what’re you waiting for?” you spit. “Don’t you have a guy to charm?”

“Yeah, I do,” she brags, as if she could brag about it.

“You should start. Because it’ll take you hours,” you muse. “Cycles. Maybe a month or two.”

“Oh, you think I can’t do it?”

“No, I don’t. You’re a bloodthirsty, alcoholic murderer can’t sit through a single conversation without thinking about cannibalism. I’ve been stuck with you for months, and the positive thing about you, beyond being able to space random people, or shoot the wall out of a bar, which I need to apologize for,” you hiss, “is that sometimes you drink so much you pass out. So maybe you should have a few more drinks. Kill some more time. Put it off some more.”

“I’m not putting it off! You’re—”

“Sure you are. You’re sitting around, talking yourself in circles, laying into me, like every other time you need to blow off steam,” you chide, “and I can’t wait to hear what Dutchie will say for a job well done. Taking these orders from her, of all people,” you scoff.

“You’re the one that takes orders. You took the job in the first place,” her shove against your shoulder does little more than emphasize her point, attempting to drive it home past your thick skull.

“I took a risk, sure,” you agree. “A spiteful risk, a dumb risk, a whatever-you-want-to-call-it risk, but it was my call. My risk. And for once you were dragged into my hubris. All because I wanted to do the right thing by helping out a couple friends and listening to the orders of the guy, guys—whoever pays us.”

“So what, you’re the Old Man’s piss-ant, and you’re Charlie’s piss-ant, and that makes you better than me?”

“Yeah. Today, at least. Just this cycle, sure,” you whisper, “because this cycle, only one of us is letting themselves be pimped out,” you smile, “and it’s not me.”

Ø pauses. Her visage contorts with cigarette. It’s kept in place by saliva, pooling from your silent argument. You see her neck buck before it connects. Before her left shoulder can twitch, or her earrings can jangle with the force of her twisting torso. You’re not fast enough to react, anyway.

Her slap connects.

It’s a powerful left-handed thwack, nearly tossing you over the railing and into the roulette tables below. Her two rings, one at her middle finger, inlaid with orientalist poppy imagery, the other at her ring finger, silver with sun and moon motifs, snap against your jaw. They cut skin, bruising on impact, her nails clawing into your lower eyelid.

You taste copper as you look up to her snarling face twitching, screeching in silence, fists gripping your collar.

“—And if I’m a whore, what are you? No money, no respect, taking orders all your life, every good thing falling into your lap, all because of me, because I’m stronger, better, than you’ll ever be, you worthless—”

You pause. Your cheek swells. It’ll be black at your cheek, a rectangle of shadowy purple that draws to your eye. For now, you’re rosy, tasting your own blood as it oozes across your molars, the taste driving Ø further, her litanies reaching new heights.

“—So as long as you’re stuck with me, contributing nothing, getting in my way, your life will be miserable, and I’m going to make sure it is, even if—”

It’s why she can’t track your right hand.

Your smack connects, too.

It’s weaker than Ø’s, landing across her sloped right cheek, kicking up a pop of tawny foundation between your fingers. The cigarette at her lips, its menthol taste carrying hints of juniper, goes over the railing below. Two-thirds of the stick splatters onto marble tiling, lost in the commotion of jostling suits, unnoticed.

Her tirade ceases.

She looks to her hooves. Her drink has been collected. Were it not, the glass would be in your throat, cutting into your jugular, severing head from torso, delivering an impromptu guillotine.

So, she spits. It tastes of whiskey and smoke, like always. Landing on your cheek, it’s viscous, dripping onto your suit. Staining, probably, with her lipstick’s trace pigments.

She huffs at you, nostrils flaring. You feel her tense. First at the knees, ready to stomp your loafers, breaking toe, severing nerves into a permanent mangle. Then at her elbow, ready to wind up punches for your gut, not stopping until your vomit, first alcohol, eventually blood. Or her fingers, willing to delve closer, to strangle, inching towards your throat.

But she feels you tense, too. And unlike before, passively dodging thrown bottles, frowning as her manicured fingernails contort at your trachea, passively accepting a light beating, you’re ready to put up a fight.

So the predator pauses. Not because of the chittering of passerby, their jeweled hands cupping open mouths, whispering to one another about the unfolding scuffle. Nor fear of over-exertion, as if you’ll get the better of her. But instead it’s the forgotten feeling, the one embedded within the mare’s subconscious, feeling like a corrective flick between nostrils, yanked reins see-sawing against her molars, bridle pulled too-tight. And, stunned by the crack of the dressage whip, you don’t seem worth the fight.

So, with a nicker, she dallies no longer. She wordlessly scoffs, turning tail, hiking dress with each stomp away. Clip-clopping into the crowds and disappearing.

Ø’s vengeful phantom gains distance. Her litany doesn’t resume. She’s grinding her teeth, overtaken by the pain on both sides of her snout. On one side, from your smack’s eventual bruising. The other, from the empathetic connection you both share. The one neither of you can escape.

The mare is alone at the Great Hall’s double doors, in their regal splendor, closed for now, to be re-opened for the late evening’s daily performance. You’re separated, like at Charlie’s suggestion, the confidence trickster’s saccharine advice repeating back to you. And as Ø stands before the door, fist reluctantly raised, about to knock for the Choreographer, to debase herself for the fall-guy’s fingerprints, you realize it’s at Dutchie’s insistence.

So you’re left alone. Hanging on the railing. Once more metal digs into your forearms. Only now, the taste of blood drips from your gums, sloshed around with your tongue. Were you to lean forward, mouth open, it would drip onto the perfect evergreen tables below, drop by drop.

Adrenaline fresh in your veins, your introspection bounces. Between red and black. Even to odd. Up the polychrome columns of the Casino, splitting through the crowds, into the basket of chance. It’s the same introspection occurring below you, where some nervously tap cards, play with chips between fingers, bite their lips and betray their stoic faces.

It’s an introspection as to whether you’ve made the right bet.