At Least He's Not On Fire: A Tour of the Things That Escape My Head Read Free Page B

growing black talons erupting from the end of the Devil’s long fingertips. The olive skin was splitting apart around the nail bloodlessly, like clay cracking in the heat.
    “As you wish Wallace.” The Devil’s voice had changed. It had gotten deeper. Wally noticed the Devil’s canine teeth had grown, and his jaw seemed to be jutting out. The pinstripes on the suit had gotten wider as well, as if the suit was now being stretched apart by the wearer.
    The Devil looked back to the deck and in rapid succession the top card burned into ash, a second card came out, another burst into flames, and the final card came after. The entire hand had been revealed.  
    “Haha, look at that.” Wally laughed and pointed at the remaining cards on the table.
    The Devil grunted and turned his head downwards to the cards. Wally noticed his forehead seemed shiny, and the skin tight. He noticed two bumps growing near the temples, just above the brow and pressing their way up through the skin. It looked quite painful to Wally.
    The final two cards of the Devil’s poker game were the remaining seven in the deck, and the two of hearts. Once again Wally had defeated the Devil at his own game.
    “Take your pick, you can choose to lose to sevens full of deuces, or deuces full of sevens. Full house Devil, I win. I told you.”
    The skin stretched across the Devil’s forehead popped with a ripping sound as two black horns pierced the flesh like curved obsidian stalagmites. They grew to a foot’s length in the blink of an eye as the Devil bared a mouth filled with razor sharp yellowed teeth. His pearly whites were long gone.
    “I... do not understand. You should have lost.” The demonic face of the evolving, mutating Devil still had the capacity to show confusion. He looked left and right at the cards arrayed in front of him, trying to make sense of how he’d lost.
    Wally leaned forward, almost apologetic in his approach. “Look, you TOLD me I’d win every pot I played until I died if I won that first hand. I won the first hand, and this was the next hand. You told me I’d win. The Devil’s in the details man, of all people to remember that, I would’ve thought it would be you.”  
    The Devil’s body exploded in crimson light, forcing Wally to shield his eyes. His forearm was bright red from the heat when he pulled it away and looked. The Devil had returned to his pinstripe suit wearing, dashingly handsome prior form. Presently he had both hands on his stomach, and was letting loose a laugh that shook the chandeliers in the casino. Wally didn’t know what to make of the situation, so he joined in on the Devil’s self deprecating laughter.
    “So I did Wallace, so I did. You know, I must be getting rusty. This is the third one of these I’ve muffed this week. Man that’s frustrating. You people are getting clever. Too much cable television maybe.” The Devil smiled, and shook his head at his own folly.
    “Yeah well Nick, I guess you can’t win them all, right?” Wally shrugged, offering up some comfort to Lucifer.
    “Haha.. No Wally I guess not. Doesn't matter if I stack the deck sometimes or not. Good times Wallace. Oh hey, you know what’s funny about all this?” The Devil asked, half in a laugh.
    “What?” Wally asked through a smile.
    “I said you’d win every pot for the rest of your life, right? Hahahaha…” The Devil’s laughter was barely contained. Wally was reminded of when he was a young kid, and he came down with a case of the late night giggles. His mom used to call them “Wallygigglefits.”
    “Yeah, and I plan on using that prize to gain fame, and fortune. I'm going to pay for my kid's drug rehab too, and bank some child support payments to get that bitch off my back. You also said that if I won this second hand, I’d get into Heaven too, no questions asked.” Wally sighed in appreciation of this tremendous victory over the Devil, and over evil. His life had finally taken the turn for the better he