Luck and Other Things

By Rain Sullivan

Published in Elegant Literature Magazine, May 2023

Issue 18: Gamblers Grief, Page 79

To the Everliving this is but a game. And hope—simple, stupid, cheap hope—is all they’ll ever need to gather players like me. They know it, I know it, and yet we, me and the seven other hungry women in this cage, bet our lives against all odds that hope will bend in our favor. If never before, then today. Just today. Just this once. 

There is a 12.5 percent chance I will get everything I’ve ever wanted—the drug, Evergene, my ticket from poverty to privilege—but the dice I roll between my damp fingers feel too fragile, too insignificant, to seal my fate, and yet, they will. They are all this trailer park trash has and so, I cling to them, I trust in them, and I sink all my hope into their six faces like each is a patterned charm capable of granting my every wish. But they’re not charms and there is no trickery to this game, no deceit, no skill, just luck: one roll, one chance, and far more than seven others hoping I won’t win, hoping my wish rolls over and does not come true. 

The Everliving, beyond our table, held back by the metal cage, begin to salivate as the lights dim. They play by different rules. They watch, they wager, and they prepare their purses for purchase. There is an 87.5 percent chance I will get what I deserve today. An 87.5 percent chance I will be what I was born to be. A breeder. And in a world where the lives of the unborn are valued higher than those capable of carrying them, I am only as valuable as my womb. Roll wrong and I will be claimed and impregnated. Roll wrong and that will become my life, my entire existence, and will continue to be my entire existence until I have produced more than one body ever should, until I’ve given the infertile rich something to raise, rear, and replicate all their unlawful sins. 

These illegal underground pits are commonplace, full of smoke and grime. A voice crackles through the speakers overhead and spreads far and wide, a hush atop the maelstrom of excitement and dread suffocating the room. 

“Hello and welcome! Players, please take your seats.”

I lower into my seat and look beyond the gaunt face of the woman who sits opposite me, caressing her own set of plastic dice, to a face outside the cage. 

A female, tall, thin, brown-haired, and hidden behind a mask of make-up and pearls, stares headlong at me. She almost smiles at me but the twitch in her cheeks is not one of joy or grace or compassion, it’s of prospects. She’s chosen me; in her mind, I am her ideal match. Besides our neon-blue eyes, she and I are nothing alike.

“Ladies, ready your dice.”

The host leans into the hiss of the word ‘dice’ and the onlookers straighten their spines. The woman, who’s chosen me, straightens her spine. This is the moment she’s been waiting for, the moment they’ve all been waiting for. They look human, the Everliving, they are human. Modified, but human. Here and preying on the lives of others, but human. Technically. Genetically. But they’ve gone bad like overripe fruit preserved in resin.

I hate them. I hate all of them. And I hate her. We do not match. We never will.

The host says something about rules, something about cheating, fairness, and punishment, and I grip my dice like my momma’s momma used to grip her cross. I used to balk at her. That won’t save us. God won’t save us. Now, I pray I am wrong. God, please save me.

“Three, two, one.”

My dice tumble forward into an open-topped box, they rebound and clink, they cannot fall, roll off the table, and be a mystery, there will be no second chances, no do-overs. They spring, they teeter, they land, and I curse God and my foolishness for giving him yet another valuable second of my free life when the two dice show a three and a one. Thirty-one? Thirteen. I’ve always been an unlucky bitch.

#

I stole the dice. We were told to stand, so I stood. We were told to file out, so I filed out. But, in the commotion of the crowd and the removal of the winner (for her goddam safety), I stole the dice. I had no use for them while I stood on the podium, while Everlivings auctioned for my life, I had no use for them when the blue-eyed woman outbid the competition and claimed me as her prize, and I have no use for them now, while I ride in the back of a transport to “my new home.” Regardless, I tuck them into my bra, they are mine.

Blue Eyes doesn’t fuss with pleasantries. I’m yanked from the vehicle by a guard with cantaloupe-sized hands and large muscles, and pushed inside a big white house, one of many in a circle, a compound classic. Without a moment to observe or make eye contact, I’m led past a collection of staff members—two decaying maids, a falsely thirty-something gardener, likely hoping to pay off an impossible drug debt, and a silver-eyed cook in an old-school apron. At the end of a dark hallway, there’s a room. Sterile. White. Glowing. 

Blue Eyes, her guard, and the maids undress my bottom half with unnecessary force. I do not resist. They clean me and watch me pee into a cup. I’m ovulating. Fuck. Fuck my body, my cycle, my traitorous, unwanted ability. Blue Eyes beams at me. I am her hope, her victory. I bite my cheek to keep from spitting in her face.

Then she sends her guard away and he leaves the way we came. His footsteps recede down the hall. Now I bite my cheek to keep from smiling. Blue Eyes is a fool. But, then again, those who’ve only ever known entitlement, safety, and comfort usually are. 

She pats the paper-covered examination chair and eyes the stirrups suggestively. “Hop up.”

And spread ‘em, I think, doing as she says. Blue Eyes saunters to an industrial-sized fridge, gathers a vial, and begins prepping the jizz shot. 

The maids in the corner look tired, one gently leans into the other. I’m thin, wiry. Underfed, but I’m not weak. When it comes down to it, they’ll be a piece of cake. Blue Eyes, on the other hand, has that fire, that drive, that desire. She won’t go down easy. The guard, somewhere beyond the door, will be the real issue. But these Everlivings, despite their near immortality, are usually packing.

Blue Eyes comes toward me with a syringe. Now or never. I pop my left leg free of the stirrup and swing my shin into her face. Bone meets bones and she doubles over, immediately reaching for a gun at her hip. Still half-naked, I roll off the examination table onto her and we hit the floor. By happenstance, I straddle her in a true mockery of lovemaking—my unwanted nudity, her rigid clothing, my reluctance to reproduce, her desire for it, my urge to kill, her urge to insert that sperm-filled syringe.

I grab hold, but fail to free, the gun she points at my face. In her other hand, she still clutches the syringe, she won’t let it go. She won’t shoot. I’m her well-paid-for prize, her one shot, her sliver of hope. The tables begin to turn. I slam her gun-bearing hand into the clean linoleum, again and again, until her fingers soften. 

But she doesn’t just let it go, she flicks it out of reach. Heat rises from my belly to my chest to my cheeks, then settles right behind my eyes. The maids run toward us. They grip my upper arms and heave but their determination is fickle.

“If you help me, I will spare you,” I say as the woman beneath me thrashes. Both maids loosen their grip but neither releases me. 

“Get her off me now!” Blue Eyes screams. “Remove this filthy breeder!” Her voice cracks and the word strikes me like a slap to the face. Breeder.

The maids stare at one another, it’s their turn to gamble. If they bet wrong, there will be hell to pay. They compromise. They pull at my arms but their grip is weak.

I fight them, easily, scratching and shoving them back. They huff and puff like their role demands and they reach for me again. Blue Eyes inhales to shout. I cup her mouth and she bites my fingers, so hard I bleed. With my free hand I grab a fist full of her lush brown hair, lift her head, and slam it down. She’s still biting, gnawing. I hold back screams and tears. 

Blue Eyes fights, clawing my thighs, swiveling her body, biting down. I don’t know why but with my free hand I gather the dice from my bra and slip them between the gap of my bleeding, nearly-severed fingers and the corner of her mouth. They drop past my knuckles and slide toward the top of her throat. Her eyes grow wide as my shaky, half-numb fingertips push the dice deeper into her gullet. She shouldn’t loosen her bite on me but instinctively she does. I push harder, my whole hand in her mouth, until the dice are so far down they lodge in place. 

Her searching eyes shift to her maids; they stare down with apathy. They’ve placed their wagers on me. I remove my hand from her mouth as the guard knocks on the door. 

“Everything okay in there?”

I roll off Blue Eyes, who begins to spasm with lack of oxygen, collect the gun, and point it at one of the maids. 

“We’re fine,” she calls out. I pull on my pants, my boots, and give the maid a nod of appreciation.

“I heard commotion,” the guard calls.

“We had to sedate the breeder,” the maid replies. “We’re starting the procedure now.”

“Alright,” the guard calls back. This time there are no footsteps, he doesn’t go down the hall.

Gun still in my good hand, I rifle through the cupboards. I dump an entire bottle of hydrogen peroxide on my bleeding hand and wrap it hastily. I can make it pretty once I get the fuck out of here. I pocket antiseptic, bandages, and eye the maids. They step away from me and look down at their toes. A deal is a deal.

My next moves are quick. I kill the other Everlivings, the guard and the gardener. The cook eyes me, steps back, and lets me slide by him into the kitchen. I shove everything I can into a bag. He stands in the corner, no doubt aware of what just happened, but the look on his face is one of—I look up—hope? 

“Her room,” I demand. 

“Upstairs, first door on the left.” I fly up the stairs and scour her bathroom for goods. Hair dye. Anyone who starts taking the Evergene drug with gray growth continues to have gray growth for eternity… or shorter if natural or unnatural disasters get in the way. I grin, I lather and rinse, and now, I’m a brunette, just like her. I put on her clothes, use her toothbrush, and take as much as I can carry on my back.

I’m out of her house, her compound, and on the road again in no time. For now, I’m set, I’m full, I’m clean, I’m surviving. But, in a week or two, when the food runs out, when my stringy yellow roots begin to show, I’ll do it all again. I’ll find a new commune offering the same shitty promise of hope. And I’ll take that promise, bet my life, as many times as I need to, until hope comes through and I earn my place amongst the Everliving. It’s not gambling if you know you’ll win… Eventually.

Thank you for reading. <3 Rain