roulette karasu the wheel spun and the ball dropped. the chips rested safely on the green felt. a little precognitive talent, short glimpses in the future just a few minutes here or there allowed him to fool the casinos. this time, for openersz he would bet on black to keep the game alive, to keep the security men in their hidden booths off his scent. he never played to break the bank as it wasn't his style, just enough to get by on. He remembered the stories his grandfather had told him about his great-grandfather and his strange run of luck on the riverboat casinos that ran up and down the mississippi. When he was a kid he hopped a bus to Coney Island and cleaned out a string of three_card_monty operators around the boardwalk, he almost got what would have been the only beating his mother doled out except he had taken in enough cash from the hustle to pay the overdue rent on their apartment so his mother let him off with a good stern talking-to warning him about the evils of gambling. She had gambled on his father and lost...For the man he remembered as a fearsome stranger who had mercifully left when he was still a small child. None of the jobs mother ever took seemed to pay enough to keep them out of trouble and she was too proud to ask reach back to her family, who had repeatedly offered their assistance. She chided her father for telling the boy the tales of her grandfather's "ill-gotten" fortune. he let the memory of the hard days of childhood slip past him as the ball came to a stop with a clattering bounce black just as he knew it would be. he took the extra $20 chips he got as well as the one he laid down he would make three more bets a corner bet on 32, 33, 35 and 36 at 8 to 1, he laid one of the $100 chips he had taken at the blackjack table down he sipped from the drink the pretty waitress in the skimpy costume had given him for making the last large bet at that table, a token loss to throw the boys behind the monitors off of his scent. click and roll and clatter and stop thirty-five he was ready one way or the other, he knew that "great-grandpa" was with him on trips like these and would be smiling if he could see it. he nearly blanched when he saw old woman at the slots fall stone dead. as the EMT's rushed to resuscitate her they noticed the stitches and wax on the wound in her chest. he felt miserable about doing it but this was the time to go for the payoff, with everyone so aghast at discovering such a thing as that poor woman, no one would ever think anything about some guy collecting a sizeable payoff from the wheel the one_shot bet, thirty five to one odds number 9, the stack of chips he kept in his coat pocket, in a pouch next to the dagger he knew he was getting close, as if the enemy had dropped that old lady here just to get his attention. in the monitor room, the lazy guard zoomed a camera in to the ample cleavage of a stripper from the club next door payoff, the guard thought, practically drooling in his chair as he manipulated the monitor. number 9 on the wheel time to collect and move on to the next hotel, he could tell that trouble was not far ahead... ...nor too far behind 020104 ... silentbob (She lives like Russian Roulette. Barrel up to the head. Where every sweet young move is Belonging to a sickness.) Now enter special things To detour all the pain, Like a brand-new, solid mess. But nothing seems to last...It strikes when you've thought you won. It's self-destruction. It strikes when you've thought you've won, And the delicate balance Won't survive the turbulence. Now, enter the escape From every thing you've made, Cause something wrong inside Won't let you live your life. It strikes when you've thought you won. It's self-destruction. It strikes when you've thought you won, And down you will go, With a tail of flames stretched out behind you. The cold wind will blind you, And in all the you can't see--The simplicity is beautiful. hot water music 020404 what's it to you? who go blather from