open | prompt six | DEMONS

[wrens]

prompt six | D E M O N S be careful in casting out your devil ‘lest you cast out the best thing about you. ( friedrich nietzsche )

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[hustled]

[ Sometimes Lady wonders what Daddy used to be like when he was her age — if he'd simply been born as terrible as he is or if he'd been made that way by circumstance. She wonders if he'd ever been a nice little boy, just like Lady used to be a sweet girl before she came to Vegas. Maybe he knew a girl who broke his heart the way Daddy broke hers; maybe everybody he ever cared about died; maybe he made a terrible mistake in coming here. (Maybe, maybe, maybe.)

Her cheeks pucker thoughtfully for a moment before Lady straightens and tips her chin haughtily, the way Daddy taught her to do whenever he brings the high rollers around for dinner and drinks. ] Bet I can make you sorry.

[hustling]

[ Ask the right questions to the right people and you'll get something like a story. They all start different ways (he was born on the Strip, he came here when he was a boy, he's the devil in flesh) and they end different ways, too, but there is one detail that'll never change. There was a girl with red hair, goes the line. Some say he loved her, some say she loved him, but she always leaves, one way or another. Sometimes she dumps him, sometimes he kills her, but gone is the order of the day and it always means he likes the redheads, now. Ask any further, though, and you'll get a roadblock. This is Daddy's town, people say. He wouldn't like people shooting their mouths off about it.

Besides, it feels like it had been lifetimes ago. (For some, it has been.)

His lips purse, pressing together in a suppressed smile. ]

What are the stakes?

[hustled]

[ Lady's heard every story there is to hear about Daddy — both the good and the bad, the unbelievable and undeniable — and part of her thinks she can pick through the bullshit pretty well in order to find what she's been looking for, underneath that mask. (Early in the mornings, when everything begins to tint that particular shade of pale blue-black, Lady sometimes fails to recognize the man pressed to her side — his soft breathing and his inclined face and kisses that almost seem to shape I love you.

That man isn't Daddy, he's someone else entirely, and maybe the truth of him is gone and buried in the desert or maybe it's here somewhere in this town. Hiding in plain sight.)

She huffs audibly at Daddy's smile. ] The car. [ The driver only drives where Daddy tells them they can drive. It's one of the myriad ways he keeps Lady under his thumb. ] For a week.

[hustling]

[ Daddy likes certainty, but at the end of the day, there's a part of him that's like everyone else on the Strip: he likes a gamble, likes to think that, if anyone, he's going to be the one to beat the odds. (And what odds they are. He knows that, if he loses, this doesn't mean work-arounds like just getting another car. It's paying, fair and square.) ]

Okay.

[ Still, his smile persists. ]

And what are you proposing to give up if you lose?

[ (He's not going to play to gain nothing, after all.) ]