3. The Game Begins

He dealt each of them two pocket cards. As soon as he had finished dealing, they began to make their bets.  

Lenore seemed to have the upper hand for much of the game, though it alternated between her and Mr. Vanderbilt.    Every now and then there were words exchanged in hushed sentences referring to times of days.  Side bets revolving around hours, days, and weeks of the year.  They seemed like nonsense to Henry - but there was something about it all that seemed important.  Henry couldn’t tell why.

Suddenly, Henry jerked as a hand pressed itself against his inner thigh.  It inched upward and caressed his crotch.  Henry pushed the hand away and kicked himself to his feet, startling his game mates. Only Lenore seemed unaffected.  And the corner of her mouth quirked with the hint of a smile.

Henry looked under the table out of sheer instinct.  And he saw things that just couldn’t be.  

Above the table were nearly a dozen well dressed humans. Under the table, where there should have been feet, he saw limbs belonging to creatures of the dark.  

Under Agnes, the old woman with the willowy hair, writhed a knot of hairy spiders legs. Mr Brody's legs were meaty pig's feet.  Beside him, where Vanderbilt’s legs should have been, he saw a single blue coil of a snake’s tail.  There were wolf paws, sheep hooves, monkey feet, and other bug like appendages all around the table.

Henry gasped and let out a shout.  

“Is something the matter with him?” said Mr. Brody to Vanderbilt, not even bothering to look at Henry.  

Mr. Vanderbilt waved Mr. Brody away, then pressed two fingers on Henry’s arm.

Henry shook his head, feeling a dizzying pain in his temple.  He raked in his fallen towers of poker chips (he had knocked them over in his fright), and stacked them haphazardly.  

He could feel it, a sensation like surgeon's fingers digging at the numbed parts of his brain, pulling away memories. Something was trying to make him forget what he saw. Before he lost the sense of danger, or even finished stacking his chips, he muttered something unintelligible to his poker mates and left the table.  

They called after him to sit down.  But he ignored them. 

The restrooms were down the hall and to the right, past the granite statue of a man and a woman twisted into each other in an act of passion.

When Henry turned the corner, he saw her. Lenore, leaning carelessly on the wall in front of the men’s room, positioned such that he would need to push past her to enter.

Henry's first thought was to ask how she had made it there before him (hadn’t she just been at the table, he wondered).  Just as he opened his mouth to ask her, his nose caught her scent, and it hooked him. She wore an expensive perfume of herbs, berries and the something wild that was her.  Her, her, her!  

Fire burned in his neck, in his legs, ears, belly, his crotch.

Henry had a vision of Lenore without her clothes, sucking a cigarette in his bed. Sweat beading on her naked, beckoning flesh.  “Come to me,” she said.  “Come to me and f**k me.”

Henry shook his head, pushing away the vision.    “What the hell was that?”  Henry shouted.  “You did that, didn’t you?”

“You’re very funny,” she said.  “Follow me.  We need to talk.”

She turned and stepped into the men’s room. Henry considered his options.  There were none.  Then he followed her.

Reviews

[Alex Cook]

I loved when they looked under the table. Well put.