Lucky

by Bill Hughes   
"Lucky"  is a flash piece that originally appeared on the AlienSkin Website back in June of 2006. 

            "This is your lucky day," I said, "first you win big, then you get to meet me."   It was a brash line, but I tried to deliver it with a laugh and a self-effacing smile. 
            She responded with a chuckle and a glance at the plastic cup brimming with slot machine winnings on the bar before her and said, "You don't know the half of it."
            She had a voice like twenty years of Marlboro reds, and it made me blink.  She couldn't have been more than twenty-three or –four, a pageboy blonde in a stunning white satin dress that displayed her neck and shoulders to full advantage.  She was tall, all bronzed limbs and long curves.   She would have stood out in a stadium.  And here she was all alone in the casino lounge at four a.m. with no one but me.  
            "Do tell," I said with a smile.
            She tucked part of her lower lip between her teeth and looked hard into my eyes for a moment, then two.  "How about you," she asked finally, "any luck?"
            I shrugged.  "Don't know yet."
            I got a real sizzler for that, a full-blown smile that lit up her whole face.  She had the brightest, bluest eyes I'd ever seen.  "I'm Cassandra," she said.
            "James."
            In greeting, she laid a hand on back of mine.  It was a touch like dry ice.  My skin burned from the contact after she withdrew her fingers.
            "Can I buy you a drink, Cassandra?"
            "No thanks," she said, pointing to the nearly-full martini glass before her. 
            I could see that they were ten dollar coins in her plastic cup.  She must have had five grand there.
"So, are you always so lucky?"
            "Certainly."
            "The casinos must hate to see you coming." 
            "Oh, I suppose.  Really, I don't come out very much anymore."
            I laughed.  "If I had your touch, they'd have to lock the doors to keep me out."
            "You make it sound so delightful."
            "Isn't it?  It's free money!"
            "Ah, dear boy," she said, giving me another glacial touch on the arm.  It made me want to crawl away.  "Nothing is free.  Some things are very costly."
            She took her hand back again, and  I tried to focus on the graceful line of her collarbone, her beautiful throat.  "I can't imagine anyone charging you full price."
            "Not everyone is as easily charmed as you," she said, and that was when she laughed.  Not the small chuckle I'd heard before, but a full, deep-down laugh.  It was a mean, lonely, half-mad laugh, and as it rolled out her face grew lean and sallow and old.  Her lips stretched tight over teeth that were large and yellow.  Her eyes bulged and rolled.  The laugh seemed to come from somewhere deeper and darker than her belly.  It was an ancient laugh, a laugh like a dirge.  
            When it had passed, she smiled at me and said, "Come on, James."  She picked up her martini and swallowed it in one long toss and stood, then picked up her cup of winnings.  "Let's go."
She was so beautiful that I wavered, her abominable laugh still in my ears, and I almost slid off my stool and followed.  But somehow, fool though I am, good sense—or maybe it was plain old fear—won out over lust.        
            She started away, then paused.  When I didn't rise, she went on without me.  There was a mirror behind the bar, and I cast my eye there for one last look at what I was losing out on.  What I saw there I can't quite say, even though the image is burnt indelibly in my memory.   Wrapped around that girl's neck like a stole and draped down her back like a cape was a black, malignant shadow, some sort of hideous presence that clung to her with what looked like arms, or maybe wings.  Gasping, I spun to look, but there was nothing there but the girl, the graceful tower of her neck and sweeping curve of her back.  I blinked once, twice, and then turned back to the mirror, but it was too late.  She had moved off to an angle where her reflection was not visible.   But I had seen enough.  I didn't turn again.  

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​Copyright © 2006 by Bill Hughes