WARNING:  CONSUMING MY FICTION LEADS TO INCREASED SEXUAL VIRILITY, MAGNETIC WEALTH, and acute cases of death-face *cough*cough*

NEW FLASH FICTION!

Fellow writer & friend, Dom Q, truly has a flair for firing off the flash fiction fanatic foaming within me, so the first sentence was our prompt:

Orion's Tooth 

     When the game began, he was sure he would win. After all, he had both the Ankh of Orion, AND the Thousand Year Jaguar Tooth necklace hanging on his pearl fresh skin. And a five in six chance to win ... and more math, but he couldn't study fractions when cash piled high and teeth gleamed and the metal wasn't cold, it was palm warm, and no one coughed through the smoke.  Metal scrapes on wood as paper slaps the table, and he can only give a wink, fingering the tooth hanging about his neck and rubbing the Ankh on his thigh.

     Click.

   The first player was already passing the revolver before he noticed.  Some clicks. A spin. Some clicks.  A spin.  His turn. He picked it up. Felt the other men's sweat stuck to the grip. And so he smiled at the cash, smiled at the players,  smiled at his girlfriend's bitten lips, and pulled the trigger. 

     Click.

    Two hours later, cigar smoke huddled beneath the lamp, insects mating in the false light, and a spring mattress is screaming downstairs, while a white haired Laotian man chews and spits, scrubbing the game off the wall. 

      Bits of bone and brain fell into the white plastic water bucket like clumps of old snot. 

     Plunk.

    Something heavier, with hair trailing off .... no, it's string.  He fished it out, the water too brown, too thick.  The old man studies it while fluids creep down his arm.  Seems like a shark tooth. He puts it in his pocket and yells at a doorway cat.  

   The cat ran home, the old man dumped the bucket over the railing, walked downstairs, past the still screeching spring mattress and the pair of red  eyes pleading, but more eyes standing around her.  They closed the door and the old man kept left the building, past a man with an open shirt and hairy bare chest.

   He walked along the shore, under a beautiful star scratched sky.  Then smoked a cigarette while somebody pushed past, counting, counting, counting.  The waves crashed. A woman screamed behind him.  His back ached thinking about the shovel and didn't want to use it again.  The old man walked home.    

      Somebody else walked home rich. 

The End 

Note:  This version is edited from perviously published/viewed versions.  Please find the original on my FB Author Page.  Leave a comment about which one you liked better, if you liked either at all.  I would quite seriously cherish such a gesture.

BIG NEWS COMING SOON!  NEW NOVEL!  NEW WEBSITE!  EPISODE IV A NEW HOPE!