"Dead money!" a dealer proclaimed.

The players were literally dead. Death did not care, he was going to relate this part to Famine.

Famine was gone, of course.

And the fate of Death, a tarot reading for Death: it was incomplete as the thing fled in tears, seeing deeper into the oracle's crystal. Death knew a true seer when he saw one, even with mortal eyes.

"Hey! You're the actual Grim Reaper Death!" a used car salesman was about to leave the predawn casino unlikely.

Death turned around trying to evade the guy. He knew he would just go right back in. The Tower.

It was the other fates, Hanged Man and The Lovers.

Death knew those were not possible. Saw into that crystal with what little power he had left. Any inconsistencies that remained were the fault of the Witch Bride.

Death saw his past too. Remembered how she managed to conjure him, giving birth to him, in a way. It was all clear for a moment as the crystal caught the light.

"Dead money..." the dealer told Death. The players were dead. It wasn't funny.

Death bought a tequila. It was a mescal with mescal in it. A bad pun and a great drink in the wastelands of the Sonora. Death thought back to that part of the journey. The fact that Scared Babes's Foodtruck was here on the outskirts of the Everliving City amazed Death.

As the horrors set in Death's eyes gave him away to some crazy screaming drunk used car salesman with a revolver. The man followed him through the streets threatening to kill Death.

"Dead Money!" the dealer looked like a dog with a green plastic visor. Some trick of the light or a mescal tequila with too much mescal. The other kind of mescal. Too bad it wasn't agave azula. The last bottle of that is sacred, of course.

Those that abuse alcohol without the blessing of pas are doomed to drink themselves to death. Death had always found that hilarious. Now he un-got it. The joke was gone from the humor, somehow. Pity.

"What did you just say?" the used car salesman from Texas responded.

"You sir, this is dead money." the dealer grimaced.

"My name is Roy. I brought a gun and I am looking for someone to kill so that...well you will see...it is so trippy." the used car salesman, Roy, said to the dealer. He had himself a few mescals earlier when Scared Babe rolled up to the casino unlikely.

The Fire Star actually did do some business. Not the good kind, though.

"Dead money, dead money and dead money." the dealer was shuffling. His teeth were like bleached bone under the green of the visor, grinning at the cards. They were tarot cards, some series mistigris going on in this awful place. "kings, coins..."

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"Let me guess: Dead Money. Well yeehaw. I am thinking about shooting you in your face, how about that number?" Roy waved the gun around suddenly.

"Dead money." the dealer promised morbidly.

"Yeah, say that shit one more time, asshole." Roy cocked the hammer and aimed the gun at the skull-faced dealer in the green visor.

The dealer wore a suit over his mummy bandages. From the suit's pocket he took out a cigar, lit it, blew the smoke at the used car salesman.

"Dead money" the dealer said. He said it again: "Dead money."

Roy said: "Fuck it" and with the thirty eight saturday night special he shot the dealer in each eye at point blank range. Some of the mercury in the man's skull leaked out and dripped onto the table, sliding around of its own volition.

"De..." the dealer tried to say it again, but fell over dead after the sound of the gunshots silenced the early morning predawn casino. The light from the door of the casino, sunlight, shone on him.

He was just some young dealer dude bleeding from his gunshot wound eye sockets onto ordinary Fire Star cards. The smoking gun was in Roy's hand.

"Damn. Gonna need some coffee soon." Roy walked over to the buffet to get some coffee.

The place stood in the sands, the sweeping sands of a desolate edge facing the desert. If someone got lost somewhere in downtown Vegas then they ended up back on the strip. It was impossible to arrive at the Fire Star casino because no amount of wrong turns led to it and it was an irrelevant casino. The fountain wasn't turned on at this early morning hour.

Roy looked around again for the specter. It would come, and this time he was ready. This time he had a gun, a loaded gun.

Death hid in the crowd of spectators that witnessed the early predawn killing. A few took pictures or smoked.

Death went back to drinking the mescal he had bought. Time to forget the very awful things he had come to realize:

Was Lillith controlling him (for he knew her actual name) somehow? Why exactly had he followed her after she fled the wedding? What about Satan? Wasn't he close behind?

And Death forgot the Love he had known.

Except for how much he Loved Famine. Death still loved Famine.

He recalled that moment, that silent moment. Death's boney fingers picked up the locket in the western town. A place celebrated like Vegas. A boom town. The red district.

Death had found Famine's locket. Their Best-Friends-Forever locket. Death clasped the two pieces together. As he did this, both of his hands were not near the two guns made of the Grim Reaper's Scythe.

That is when the other two got him War and Conquest. Conquest laughed destructively, humiliatingly and devastatingly. War just shot Death to smithereens with a chain of gatling guns rotating on a steampunk locomotive's turret. The whole thing had come crashing out of the sheriff's office which was important to note as War said his one liner:

"The law is cometh! War is Law!" War pronounced.

Death now stared back out over the desert as the sun began to rise. His drink became dust in his hand and the tumbleweeds and lizards and rolling tires on fire all left with the bats and cockroaches and ghosts of musicians, still tuning or jamming all walking together out of the Fire Star as the sun rose.

Strange to think they were the used car salesmen, burned out caricatures of Hillary, freak side show characters from a Mel Brook's escapade and other more dead-on-the floor type casino customers. They were those crowded sounds and smells and willful simulcrums losing money before the sun came up.

Now they were no such thing at all, just tumbleweeds and crickets. And that stupid Raven. The bird menaced Death with the abandon of an entire murder of crows.

The revelations of this morning were a clarifying madness for Death as he entered the ruins of Vegas. He staggered, constantly scooping handfuls of dust to find fear in, as he poured it between fingers.

Scared Babes had left again for other places to sell their evil puns from a food truck. Those jerks.

A vulture was being eaten by some coyotes and Death sat at a park bench watching the coyotes bickering like a family at the dinner table. He was deep in thought, considering how much he missed his old west trench coat and cowboy hat and his two six guns. He'd had a pale horse too, of course. He'd been a real pale rider.

While the punsters were gone, their evils continued.

Death found the ruins of Vegas to be a pleasant diversion. After the coyotes finished eating, Death continued his journey.