serial novel draft
“But where are you going, my little friend? My guests has arrived and you must hear from him. He may well have, I foresee, bearing on our business together.” Being called “little” about sixty times in sixteen hours, even by Gerbil James, poker host extraordinaire, has begun to grate. I am at least five-nine. “What…
“I will never, ever play on the Endboss stream again! Are you kidding me? Did you see this shit last night?” The host of the acclaimed poker show Only Exes is in a state, unscripted. Losing it. Admittedly, the game at the Endboss can be tough. Blatt, I think, might not understand the ins and…
The king of clubs on the central mural, examining something behind the queen of diamonds, never looked so familiar, so comforting. First, I want to just admit freely that I should not have quit earlier, despite running so bad. It was all kind of a mistake and not really entirely my fault, I see now.…
I’m out. Why do I run so bad? When I lost that final pot, I ripped the mic off my sweater where it had been pinching my left nipple; maybe that’s why I floated ace king before. I never float ace king there, or at least, when I do, I do it better. I was…
When you have ace king and a king flops there’s no way you’re not getting all the money in. So when I peeled up the first hand dealt to me right after Gerbil James, our walrus gourmand game host, had toasted to an amazing return of the Endboss stream game, I for sure thought it…
Gerbil James is really more of a sloth, or perhaps a hamster. An overfed one, a mass of a man with a merciless, foundational, sea-faring hulk of an ass. He shifts and writhes on his creaking, asphyxiated seat like a seal and lifts his glass of Chateau Neuf du Pape from the poker table to…
Friedrich yaps. He scrambles and barks and nips at my shoes, then hides under the unmade bed. I look around my bedroom, which is painted green with tomato vine wallpaper and stuffed with grandma’s unwanted furniture. Also still taped-up boxes from my condo move. There’s a problem for another time. My eye is instead drawn…
I am absolutely sure those are not my Grandmother’s purple panties. Yet as I continue to stare at them, laying themselves out on the bed so brazenly and so frivolously fringy, I can assure you that I am hoping against hope that they do, in fact, belong to Grandma. Because the other option is broiling…