Cobwebs hung as low as the curtains, moving imperceptibly at the back of the stage in the old Fructose Theatre downtown. The seats were filled with used, worn mannequins and inflatable sex dolls posed in varying degrees of interest for an act that wouldn't happen for an hour, or had already happened. Always prepared, always riveted after the fact.

The darkened marquee out front proclaimed a performance every night at 8pm of A Midsummer Night's Dream by the Fructose Players, once the finest Shakespearean Troupe in the city, but disbanded a decade ago when society decided sensationalism was more important than content. Shakespeare would have been the modern master of pyrotechnics, or a writer for CSI.

The red carpet down the center aisle was faded to near brown by wear and the thick layer of dust caked into its fibers. Unopened boxes of Good & Plentys were discarded around the room. Rommel's shoes left faint imprints in the stiff and brittle carpet, leaving behind a recorded wave pattern of his leisurely descent. His arms spread wide, like a kid playing airplane, but without burbling his lips like a propeller. He slapped the head off one of the mannequins, and it rolled down the aisle ahead of him, stopping on a flat just short of the stage. The other mannequins leaned away in fright. The sex dolls were indifferent, locked in cartoonish expressions of ecstasy.

He stopped by the third row of seats as a spotlight flipped on, cutting through the dark slowly and deliberately. A column of smoke burst from the center of the light, and it dissipated to reveal a magician; top hat, wand, black cape with red satin lining.

He produced a bouquet of flowers from thin air, and tossed it into the seats, where it landed stems first into the eager mouth of a sex doll.

From his own mouth, he pulled twenty feet of brightly colored cloth. Pigeons appeared beneath handkerchiefs, and a rabbit hopped out of his overturned hat.

With a wave of his wand, various props around the set floated through the air, or disappeared in puffs of smoke, or transformed into entirely new objects. The rabbit sat patiently at the front of the stage, though the pigeons had long since flown to the safety of the balcony.

“Magician,” said Busker, “it's time to go.”

The magician froze with his wand mid-trick, and a look of disgust settled down his face. The light and playful smirk was replaced by a violent scowl. With a flick of his wrist, a deck of cards appeared spread between his thumb and fingers.

He yelled, “I am the Great Ganglion. Master of space and time, lord of the dark arts, available for birthdays and bar mitzvahs. Be gone!”

He hurled the cards in a great sweeping arc. Busker dived to his right, behind the second row of seats. It sounded like a machine gun had fired beside him. He looked back to see the cards stuck through the carpet, an inch deep into the concrete below, in a line reaching back to the entrance. A quick glance down the line located the jack of spades by row five. Rommel rolled out and back, and snatching the jack he tossed it back at Ganglion. The card stuck with a deep thud into the backdrop. The magician smiled for a moment, unscathed, until the upper half of his top hat tilted slowly back and fell to the scuffed hardwood of the stage floor, sheared clean off by the slicing motion of the jack of spades. He screamed.

Rommel stood and smiled, JL pointed at Ganglion's forehead.

With remarkable speed, the wand in Ganglion's hand swept forward, “Disappear!”

Busker Remained.

Another wave of the wand, “Change!”

JR slipped out of the holster, and hung idly by Busker's side, ready if needed.

The wand shook madly, “Vanish! Transmogrify! Levitate! Transform!”

JL shot the wand from Ganglion's hand. It clattered hollowly near the piece of hat. His hands, now empty, contorted into an unnatural shape, and his eyes, full of venom, devoid of reason, shot towards the rabbit. “Attack him!”

The rabbit jumped off the stage with a powerful leap, baring bucked teeth, eyes glazed over with a look of malice echoing that of the magician. It hopped both cutely and frighteningly towards Busker.

Rommel stepped into the aisle holstering JL, and crouched before the advancing rabbit. It leapt at his neck, ready to bite, but Rommel couldn't shoot a bunny. Nobody not evil could shoot a bunny.

Looking up at the mural on the ceiling (depicting the Lincoln assassination in the style of a graphic novel), giving his neck for the biting, instead he felt the rabbit land harmlessly in his lap. It nuzzled. The rabbit was a rabbit again, the darkness dispelled. Busker set the rabbit on the floor, and stood to face Ganglion, JR having already claimed the magician's heart as a target.

“Who are you?” asked Ganglion.

“The closing act.”

“Will you saw someone in half?”

“Sure, but I don't put them back together.”

*****

It wasn't really a casino. Slot machines had just accumulated there. Then a blackjack table and a dealer, roulette wheel, craps and recently video poker. The Victorian mansion that housed it all was owned by the widow of an oil tycoon who had left his fortune to his 21-year-old mistress, a mistress who in a fit of guilt willed it to her billionaire lover's widow then killed herself, jumping off the back veranda into the rose garden. The fall didn't kill her, but after a few days the ants ate her. Her bones still lay exposed in the overgrown garden next to an oscillating sprinkler. Once a year, roses bloomed between ribs and through eyes sockets.

The old widow hadn't left her room in 5 years, likely dead, but no one seemed to notice her absence. The only person who'd ever cared about her was the dead girl in the garden, and that was only after she'd been fucking her husband.

A group of girl scouts sat at a row of slots, mechanically inserting quarters and pulling levers. One of them smoked a cigar, another sipped from a longneck. They were almost out of cash, and would soon have to resume selling cookies outside.

A man shot himself in the bathroom after losing his last dollar. He had planned to hock the gun for another round at the craps table, but realized if he'd lost that money, too, he would have been left without recourse. A janitor heard the gunshot and went to get a mop.

The back room was reserved for VIPs. Rommel was sipping Cutty 12, playing poker with Bungalow Bill and Rocky Raccoon. Eleanor Rigby had already cashed out and was mixing a drink at the wet bar in the corner.

“So the modern predator of humans is the system,” continued Bill. “In a world where you don't have to worry so much about lions and alligators and pumas it doesn't mean there's no predators.”

“I saw an alligator eat a guy once,” said Rommel.

“That's not the point. There's all these systems that ensnare you: economic, social, political. ‘I'm a poor homosexual Republican.' You see? It's not like they'll kill you, but they'll gobble up the part of you that's distinctive and shuffle you off into some goddamn category. There's a system for everything.”

“Never had that problem, myself,” said Rommel, looking at his hole cards as the dealer finished the dealing.

“I think I get you,” said Rocky. “As identity replaced survival as the key defining factor for the human animal, obviously something would arise to threaten it. I'll call.” He tossed two thousand-dollar chips into the pot.

“That's what I'm saying,” said Bill, “but I don't think it's a bad thing. Like predators keep an ecosystem balanced, the systems keep society from overflowing with identities. If we couldn't group people, we'd never be able to keep up.”

The flop came 2 of clubs, 5 of hearts, 7 of diamonds. Rommel bet twenty thousand dollars, enough to cover both men. After some deliberation, Bill called and Rocky quickly followed him in.

Eleanor had abandoned pretense, and was drinking straight from the bottle of Grey Goose. “What? He doesn't have enough of your money already?” she said, pointing to the tower of chips in front of Rommel.

“It's all a system, dear Eleanor,” said Rocky. “Some of us are winners and some of us are losers.”

Bill showed 2-3. Rocky 5-6. Rommel 7-Jack.

The Ace of spades fell next. On the final card Rommel paired his Jack, and slid the Jack of spades across the felt next to the of Jack hearts. A pair of sevens rendered irrelevant. The other men shook their heads with resignation.

Bill said, “I guess that's game.”

Rommel put on his Bootsy Collins sunglasses, and pushed his whole chip stack to the dealer. “There's your tip.”

He nodded to the other three in the room and walked out, through the casino proper, past showgirls and a juggler and the magician. The valet had his Delorean pulled around before he made it out the front door.

Back in the VIP, Eleanor leaned back, elbows rested on the bar, unfocused eyes directed towards the felt on the table.

“I guess nobody was a winner today,” she said.

-----

Next: quite like zombies