fiction | K D Grace

Good Morning my lovelies, and welcome to 2024! I decided to start the new year by sharing a Scribe story with you, so hang on to your hats. It’s time to visit a very exclusive Vegas casino that deals in very unusual bets. Michael is about to learn the hard way that the lines between winning and losing are not always as clear-cut as they seem. Enjoy!

The Bet

Part 1: Few People Come Here More than Once

Magda had arranged for Michael to arrive at Buried Pleasures Casino in a white stretch limo. Oh it certainly wasn’t done in an effort to impress him. In fact it would embarrass him, she figured. But a white limo for his last night seemed appropriate under the circumstances. She had known for a long time that he would come. Endlessly patient, she watched and waited, knowing that when the time was right and everything came together as it must, he would never truly be able to imagine the knock-on effects of the cataclysmic change he thought he so desperately wanted. But then his kind tended to be naïve, kept so sheltered as they were.

Jack Graves, the casino owner, usually furnished transport for those he had invited. But this time she asked him to allow her the honors. Buried Pleasures was by invitation only, but rules had been broken and lines had been crossed in order for Michael to be here.

She’d been careful to arrive just before he did, waiting in the shadows so she could see his response. She’d asked the driver to take the long route and make sure he gave Michael a tour of the Strip and the Downtown area before bringing him to Buried Pleasures. She wanted him impatient, even a little intimidated. She needed to see just how willing he was to do what was necessary. And she wanted him off-balance, at least a little. Though really, it was difficult for one not to be off-balanced by first impressions of Buried Pleasures. There was no glam, no glitz, only the gaping maw of a storm tunnel. Even the limos were allowed just a quick drop-off on a cracked concrete slab under the constant buzz and flutter of an aging sodium streetlight. There were very few pick-ups.

The storm tunnels beneath Las Vegas were a mind-boggling engineering feat began in the seventies to offer flood protection to a city built on bedrock and totally surrounded by mountains. The individual segments always reminded Magda of giant hollow Lego blocks made of concrete. Originally there was to be over a thousand miles of tunnels serving Vegas and the surrounding area. They were all designed to channel the waters of any flash flood that threatened the financial heart of the city into Lake Mead some thirty miles away. The project was never finished, but there were still an impressive two hundred miles of tunnels beneath the city. They now provided shelter for the homeless who didn’t mind playing the odds that their meager belongings wouldn’t get washed away in the next deluge. They also had provided a hiding place for murderers and thieves and who knew what else? Well actually, Magda knew what else. She was there when the tunnels were built. She was there long before. There were lots of reasons why Buried Pleasures was the most talked about secret hidden beneath Sin City.

The real attraction of Buried Pleasures was that everyone was dying to see what was inside, what was very literally buried under the storm tunnel façade. But only a select few were allowed in. And that exclusive clientele had nothing to do with wealth, power or fame. Beneath the dank passages crawling with scorpions and ripe with urban legends, oligarchs placed their bets next to waitresses. Beneath chandeliers the size of steamships, rock stars and famous athletes played black jack next to farmers and janitors.

Michael hadn’t waited for the driver to open the limo door. He’d unfolded himself from the back seat and stood for a moment, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of an ill-fitting sports jacket. With a quick glance he took in the complete lack of anything that would have given him a clue he was about to enter the most exclusive casino in the world. There was no shock, no doubt, no surprise on his face. Just chiseled determination.

As he straightened his jacket and stepped toward the entrance, she made her move. For a moment she simply stood there in front of him letting the impact of her presence wash over him, a presence that assured he’d never even notice her dark glasses. No one ever did until she removed them, and then it was too late. Sometimes beauty was not only untouchable but deadly, for a split second its subconscious impact a reminder that the sublime often exists only a hairs breadth from destruction. And once the initial moment of surging pulse and rising goose flesh had passed, she approached him casually. First impressions were lasting impressions, after all, and he would remember her for a very long time to come. “You’re first time here?” She asked as they walked into the tunnel, which would have been pitch black if not for the utility lights glowing in their protective metal cages.

He only offered a grunt of affirmation, and blushed furiously – something anyone else would have missed, but Magda saw way more than most.

“A silly question, I suppose.” She slid a hand into the crook of his elbow as though she were his date, and he tensed at her touch. “Very few people come here more than once.”

“I only need once.” He was softer spoken than she had expected, but then she doubted he’d had much experience interacting with people.

She smiled to herself. He was right. He only needed once. What he would do afterwards, though, that was what interested her.

They took one of the two service elevators down, both more suitable for forklifts and men with jackhammers descending to a construction sight than for the steady stream of people anxious to bet everything. Some were dressed to the nines in designer originals, some wore faded jeans and tee-shirts. There was no dress code, and no matter how much speculation the place generated, what went on in Buried Pleasures actually did stay in Buried Pleasures. Those select few who returned from a visit to the casino never talked about it, no matter how much they were offered for their exclusive exposé.

He chose poker – after she’d recommended it. He’d never played before. In fact, he’d never gambled before, but then a lot of people invited to Buried Pleasures hadn’t. It didn’t matter. Ultimately everyone played the odds. While most people who came here weren’t very skilled, Magda knew there was far more to gambling than cards or roulette. It was all a matter of just how far they were willing to go and if they were they willing to bet it all.

Michael spoke with the careful elocution of someone who had worked with a coach to perfect the accent in a language that wasn’t his own. That was to be expected under the circumstances. And even if Magda hadn’t known who he was, what he was, she’d have assumed this was his first trip to the big city. Not that Vegas was big, and it didn’t really qualify as a city, but Michael seemed a bit overwhelmed by it nonetheless. In all fairness she doubted if he got a lot of time for recreation in his vocation. It was a risk for him to be here at all. But then he wouldn’t be here if he weren’t willing to take the big risk.

See you next week for Part 2 of The Bet!

Dragon Ascending Part 2: Shelter

This place is but shifting sand. One can never return to the same spot even from day to day. Therefore in her condition, I feared the woman would not find me and that she would have no shelter. It was no hardship for me to open a breach in the de-mole fence, to make it even larger to accommodate her injured condition. This time she bore no pack and her clothing was torn and bloody. How brave and determined she was to have sought me out. But beneath the shifting of the sands, I feared she would not be able to find my shelter, and I could not bear for her have come so far in vane. This time her needs demanded frantic searching through the fog that ever obscured my memories if I were to assure her safety. She would need an entrance, a door into a space that had not been breached since my loss. And in my rising consciousness I found I could give that to her. However putting it where she could easily access it in her weakened condition was a thing I could not recall how to do.

Len managed to stay upright to the perimeter of the salvage yard, but the crawl through the opening in the de-mole defence shield wouldn’t do her broken ribs any good. She hadn’t bothered to bind them, racing time to reach shelter before nightfall. Pain is a good thing, her uncle had always said. It meant you were still alive. Her uncle was full of shit. Or would have been if he was still alive. No one believed he was, but her mother had never given up hope, so neither would she. Still, she thought he was full of shit about pain. Pain, she’d had more than enough of, and she’d not liked any of it one little bit.

She was surprised to even find the de-mole breach again. Not that she much cared. A quick death by being disintegrated at the molecular level might be preferable to what was likely to be her fate. But while she wasn’t afraid to die, she wasn’t ready to bring it on any quicker. The breach was bigger than she remembered. She could actually crawl through this time. She dropped to her knees in a wave of nausea, the threat of unconsciousness accompanied the grating of her ribs with each breath. Still, she struggled forward on hands and knees. Her uncle, she supposed, would be pleased. She and managed not to vomit from the pain until she was through the breach. She hoped nothing would scent her blood and follow her. That was the downside of the breach expansion. She doubted the shield had been serviced in maybe twenty galactic years, and yet whatever was hidden in the salvage yard here in the worst part of the Taklamakan had been valuable enough to put up a de-mole defense shield, expensive and illegal for use other than military. And not even the military wanted anything to do with this place.

No one ever came to Taklamakan Major, and it was only bad luck that she and her mother had ended up on Taklamakan Minor. Or maybe not so bad, since the Authority left them alone, and both she and her mother would have been taken into indentured servitude had her mother not booked passage on the first transport to anywhere. It never mattered with the Authority how young a child was, or even if it had been born yet. The debt of the family was visited on the children, and her family’s debt was colossal. Though this desert was a shit hole at least as bad as Taklamakan Minor, it beat the hell out of being shackled as an indentured.

Taklamakan Major was one continuous salvage yard with a few outposts where no one came but criminals and fugitives, and only then in desperation. Even those trying to escape the shackle avoided the Taklamakan System, if you could even call it a system. But her mother had said she would have happily endured worse than to be shackled to some conglomerate pig. Her daughter would grow up in the free world. Len only knew the stories she’d heard of the Authority and of the conglomerates that ran the system, stories that her mother had told while they shivered in the science station on Tak Minor. In the Taklamakan System, you had two choices, freeze your lungs out or fry your brain, and yet the place was still better than a shackle in Authority space. Anyone who lived there would tell you that. She had turned six on the yearly long-haul supply ship that delivered them to the science station on Tak Minor, the only inhabitants of the tiny planetoid. And now it seemed she would die here in the dust and swelter of Tak Major without ever seeing the stars her uncle told her tales about. If this was her life flashing before her eyes at the instant of her death, well she reckoned she didn’t have long at all, because it was full of mostly nothing interesting.

Len shoved her way into the salvage yard and then forced her way up to her feet. She swallowed back bile in a wave of pain that her uncle would have found reassuring. The farther she got from the breach in the perimeter, the safer she would be, but in her condition that couldn’t be far. The place went on for kilometers, but she would be forced to find something close and find it soon. Inside the perimeter at least she wouldn’t have to spend her last hours being eaten alive by an infestation. She’d rather throw herself on the de-mole.

But the night was coming on. Once the winds got up, she’d have no hope of finding shelter if she didn’t do it now, so she forced herself onward. The temperature was already dropping and she bit her tongue trying to keep her teeth from chattering. Any noise might expose her, even in the relative safety of the salvage yard. If she could get through the breach in the de-mole, so could other things seeking shelter for the night, things she would rather not spend time with.

She didn’t know if you could lose consciousness while you walked, but she was pretty sure she’d done just that. In the next lucid moment she was looking up at an open airlock some ten meters off the ground. The shifting sands had apparently lifted the hulk of a junked ship, the open maw of its airlock gaping black in the growing dusk. The remaining light reflected off the metallic skin of what was, at the very least, some kind of escape pod. If she could manage the climb up to the airlock, she was pretty sure she would be safe for the night.