Just Shoot Me Now!: A Poker Boy Story Read online

  Just Shoot Me Now!

  Dean Wesley Smith

  Just Shoot Me Now!

  Copyright © 2013 by Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover Design copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Franciscah/Dreamstime

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  One

  The little jerk cherub just kept fluttering around near the ceiling of the poker room at Spirit Winds Casino. He acted like a bird trapped inside a small room with no windows. I know he was trying to get my attention, but the last thing I wanted to deal with tonight was a cherub.

  And actually he had a couple small birds with very long beaks with him and they seemed to be flying in a figure-eight pattern, just missing each other as they moved around and around over my head.

  The game was as good as a five-ten no limit gets. Three tourists who were drinking and wanting to have the action, two weak regulars, and two professionals. Plus me.

  I had died and gone to heaven, cherub and all, it seemed. I was already three hundred up and the night was still young. Nothing can get my blood going more than a high-action poker game with players I know I can beat.

  But nothing can put a player off his game than a circling cherub.

  I glanced up at the cherub and his two bird friends as I tossed a seven-four off-suit into the muck. No one else in the room could see the little idiot fluttering around the lights. He had golden hair and wore a white cloth wrapped around him that looked more like a diaper in places than anything else. The cloth started at one ankle and ended up over his shoulder.

  His white wings were fluttering constantly like a humming birds and he had on the traditional fake cherub halo that seemed to glow bright yellow. They could take those halos things off like a hat. He was about three feet tall at most and wore no shoes.

  I even knew this one’s name. Chadwick.

  Chadwick the Cherub.

  I had dealt with him once before on an assignment to help out a woman who thought she was dying and had started to give away her vast fortune. It turned out old Chadwick was just showing himself to her like a bad flasher, making her think she was seeing an angel with a very small penis.

  He was sent to cherub counseling after I stopped him from forcing the poor woman to end up broke and insane and permanently put off of sex.

  Now it seemed he was back. And was just as annoying. At least this time he was keeping his cloth diaper where it belonged.

  I tried to ignore him again for another hand, but ignoring a kid-sized mythical creature fluttering over your head is hard to do.

  Finally I couldn’t handle it anymore. I flipped into the muck a couple suited connectors and froze time.

  Actually I didn’t really freeze time. No one could do that. But I did have the power to step between moments in time. It felt like I had frozen time because all the sounds of the casino stopped, and everyone froze in that moment.

  Everyone but me and Chadwick.

  His two bird friends remained frozen as well up near the ceiling. And some bird poop was stopped in midair headed for a spot right in front of my chips. Great, just great.

  I stood and looked up at the cherub who had stopped flying around and was just hovering, looking down at me with a smile.

  “All right, let’s get to this,” I said.

  He came down and hovered in front of me, his white wings moving so fast that they looked like they were standing still. His smile was a cross between a worried grin and a smirk showing how happy he was I had come around.

  “Nice trick on this time thing,” he said, indicating the frozen people around us. “I thought only gods could do this.”

  “Just park it and take off that stupid halo,” I said.

  He stopped and stood on the nearest empty poker table. He folded his wings back behind him and stuffed the halo into his white cloth diaper strip where it wrapped up and over his shoulder like a sling.

  “First off,” I said, not even trying to hide how annoyed I was, “does Cherry know you are here?”

  Cherry was the head cherub and one of the nicer creatures I had ever had the pleasure to meet.

  Chadwick nodded. “She’s the one who sent me.”

  His voice was deep and rough, not at all like what his image would project. He sounded more like a cigar-smoking old man. Most cherubs were thousands of years old. My boss, Stan the God of Poker had told me that Cherry was far older than he was which meant she was thousands and thousands of years old at least.

  More than likely Chadwick was a few thousand years old as well.

  “And I can check that?” I asked, calling Chadwick’s bluff.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He wasn’t lying. I could tell a lie on a cherub’s face from across the room. It seemed the sweet look didn’t give them much chance to lie, especially to poker players. Cherry actually had suggested he come talk to me.

  Great. Just great. A perfect night just ruined. Could someone just shoot me now?

  Two

  “So what do you need from me?” I asked, almost afraid of the question’s answer.

  Good old Chadwick looked me direct in the eyes with those round, innocent-looking brown eyes of his and said, “I want to be part of your team.”

  I actually managed to not break out into complete gales of laughter.

  The team he was talking about consisted of three other superheroes and one god that helped me solve major cases. We often saved the world.

  Me and my girlfriend and sidekick, Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl led the team. Patty was a superhero working in the hospitality side of the world.

  The third member was Screamer, a man able to read minds and connect minds at times. Screamer was a superhero who worked in the law enforcement branch of the gods.

  The fourth member was The Smoke, a part dog, part human who was a superhero working for the gods of animals.

  And then there was Stan, the God of Poker, my boss. He was our connection to Laverne, Lady Luck herself.

  And now Chadwick the Flasher Cherub wanted to join the team.

  Somehow I kept most of my poker face locked on and smiled and asked him the next question.

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Oh, I personally don’t,” Chadwick said. “But Cherry thinks it would be a good idea for me to start doing something constructive with my time now that I am mostly done with my counseling sessions.”

  I sort of stared at the chubby little cherub for a moment, trying to understand what I had just heard.

  I must be dreaming. I had to be. I was at such a perfect table, a perfect poker game, the kind of game that just didn’t happen every night. And now I was dealing with a converted flasher who wanted to join my team, but who really didn’t want to join my team.

  And a bird was about to poop on my poker table.

  This had to be a nightmare, a really bad one.

  I had no idea what to do.

  I wanted to just laugh and send him back to Cherry, but my little voice was telling me that wouldn’t be a good idea. There had to be some politics involved with all this and for a superhero to get involved with politics among the different gods was never a good idea.

  I looked at Chadwick again.

  “What can it hurt?” he asked, shrugging.

 
I couldn’t begin to answer that, since most of the time that the team worked together on a problem, the entire world was at stake.

  I looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “Stan!”

  I needed help and I needed it fast. Before I said something I would regret and maybe cause a rift between different branches of gods, as if there weren’t enough of those already.

  Stan appeared beside me, inside the frozen time instant I had created. Stan wore his normal gray sweater, dark slacks, and blank expression. He was slightly shorter than I was and looked like any person you might see on the street. As the God of Poker, he could blend in anywhere and was impossible to read any emotion on his face unless he wanted you to, or didn’t care.

  “Hi, Stan,” Chadwick said, waving a chubby little hand at the God of Poker.

  “I was afraid of this,” Stan said.

  “That’s not making me feel any better,” I said. “Chadwick here wants to join my team.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Stan said.

  “But he really doesn’t,” I said. “Do you, Chadwick?”

  “Oh, hell no,” the cherub said. “It sounds like far too much work. It was just Cherry’s idea.”

  “You know what I told you about swearing,” a woman’s voice said from above us.

  I looked up as Cherry fluttered to a stop on the table next to a suddenly worried Chadwick.

  She looked almost identical to Chadwick, except her golden hair was longer and the diaper-like cloth also covered her chest. Her face was thinner as well and she had a beauty to her that took my breath away.

  “Sorry,” Chadwick said, looking down.

  “Nice seeing you again, Cherry,” Stan said.

  “I agree,” I said, bowing slightly to her. “You look more radiant than ever.”

  She smiled and I could feel the warmth filling the air around me. “There’s a real reason a lot of the gods like you, Poker Boy,” she said.

  “He’s a charmer all right,” Stan said, shaking his head. “So tell me why you think it would be a good idea for Chadwick here to join Poker Boy’s team?”

  “Keep Chadwick focused and out of trouble,” Cherry said. “He needs something to hold his attention.”

  “Besides human women,” Stan said before I could. Thankfully.

  “Yes,” Cherry said. “To be honest.”

  I knew now how to solve the problem. I just had to find good old Chadwick something to do. I had no idea what, but anything was better than him hanging around my team.

  “You know we seldom put the team together,” I said to Cherry. “In fact, it has been almost two months since the entire team has needed to be together for a problem.”

  “Oh,” Cherry said, the smile vanishing from her face. “That’s not going to work. I thought you met and worked every day together.”

  “Not even every month,” Stan said, backing up my play.

  Chadwick actually looked relieved. Cherry looked completely devastated for some reason.

  I needed to come up with an idea and come up with it quick.

  I sort of turned to Chadwick. “Besides human women, what do you like?”

  “I don’t even like them that much,” Chadwick said.

  Cherry turned slightly away and rolled her eyes, which made Stan grin.

  Then Cherry said, “His mother married a Putti, so there is a lot of the old Cupid blood in him.”

  “So, Chadwick,” I said. “What exactly are your powers that would help my team?”

  I figured that if I could learn what he could do, I might be able to come up with a way to get him busy with something else. Anything else.

  Chadwick looked annoyed, but Cherry looked at him and he took a deep breath and turned to face me directly.

  “I can fly. I can be invisible. I can pass through any wall. I am an expert spy and can remember everything to the word anyone says that I am listening to and report that back exactly. Because of my father, I am an expert with the magical bow and arrow, but am not allowed to carry one because of an incident a number of decades back with a movie star and a president.”

  With that he glared at Cherry who only shrugged. “You tried to interfere with human events. You will serve your sentence to the fullest.”

  Chadwick just shook his head and looked down.

  “How fast can you fly?” I asked.

  “I can be in Las Vegas faster than you can jump there with your teleporting superpower.”

  Both Stan and Cherry nodded at that.

  I was surprised. Now that I was actually thinking about it, there was no doubt Chadwick would be a good addition to the team on some problems. None of us had the abilities he had.

  I glanced at Stan who actually looked like he was thinking the same thing.

  “Chadwick,” I said, “honestly I think we can use you at times on our team. We don’t use every member every mission, but I think your powers would add to our team on certain missions.”

  Stan was nodding.

  Cherry was looking surprised, and Chadwick looked shocked.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Chadwick asked.

  “Not in the slightest,” I said. “But the problem is we don’t often have missions and you need something to keep you occupied.”

  “To help you keep that thing in your diapers,” Stan said.

  “It’s not a diaper,” Chadwick said in his gruff voice, glaring at Stan.

  “Poker Boy is right,” Cherry said, nodding to me with thanks. “If you want to be on Poker Boy’s team, which is a very high honor, you need to stay out of trouble and do something constructive.”

  “And just what would that be?” Chadwick asked, looking disgusted. “I’ve been bored for most of the last thousand years. Being a cherub just doesn’t have a lot of purpose these days. So I’m open to suggestions.”

  Because we were between a moment in time, the frozen poker room around us was deadly silent and now the four of us were as well. I just couldn’t think of a thing for Chadwick to do.

  Nothing.

  Three

  I glanced up and saw the two frozen birds that he had brought in with him. And the bird poop hanging in midair like a promise yet to be kept.

  “What’s with the birds?” I asked, trying to buy some time to think.

  “I like birds and they like me,” he said. “It’s fun flying with them.”

  I had a faint glimmering of an idea, but I wasn’t sure about it. I needed more information.

  “Can you talk to them?”

  “Not much,” Chadwick said. “They aren’t that smart.”

  I turned to Stan and Cherry. “Is there a God of birds? Or a God who looks over that area of the animal kingdom?”

  Both Stan and Cherry looked puzzled.

  “Not really,” Stan said. “The Smoke’s boss would be the most likely, but most Gods tend to have one bird or another that they favor, but no one that I know is over all the birds in general.”

  “So they have no god really looking out for them?” I asked, surprised. I thought every aspect of the world had a god over it.

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Cherry said looking very puzzled. “Odd, don’t you think?”

  I turned to Chadwick. “How about you make it your job to save birds and watch out over them?”

  He just looked puzzled.

  “You said you like them, right?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “And you can fly faster than any bird, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “So make it your job to save birds. If a bird is about to fly in front of a truck, save it. Save birds trapped in a cage in a burning house. Save birds from being shot by kids.”

  Both Cherry and Stan were smiling, so I knew I had them on board with the idea.

  And Chadwick was nodding slowly as he thought about it.

  “There is clearly no one else doing it,” I said. “And from the number of dead birds I’ve seen over the years, clearly it needs to be done.”

  Chadwick nodde
d. “I’ve saved a few birds along the way and it always felt good.”

  “Cherry,” I said, turning to Chadwick’s boss, “you want to check with the appropriate god in charge to make sure it would be all right if Chadwick took up this great mission?”

  “I think it will be,” she said, smiling at me and looking very relieved.

  I turned back to Chadwick. “And I’ll still need you on my team on some missions if that’s all right with you. Your special powers could really help at times.”

  Chadwick was nodding and smiling. “Sure, sure, and if I find something big that I need help on, I can get your help as well?”

  “Of course,” I said, smiling. “The entire team if need be.”

  “Great,” he said.

  He turned to Cherry. “I really like this idea. Much better than going around shooting people with stupid magic arrows like my dad does.”

  “I agree,” Cherry said. “It is a perfect mission for you. Perfect, and will do a ton of good.”

  “Thanks, Poker Boy,” Chadwick said.

  “Yes, thank you,” Cherry said.

  And then they were both gone along with the two birds, but the big drop of bird poop still hung there.

  “Looks like you have a new member of the team,” Stan said, shaking his head. “Hard to imagine.”

  I just laughed. “Patty is never going to believe that I invited Chadwick the Famous Flashing Cherub to join the team.”

  “If he can keep the little thing in his diaper,” Stan said, also laughing, “he just might be able to help at times.”

  “He might at that,” I said. “But if nothing else we saved a lot of birds tonight.”

  Stan vanished, but I could still hear him laughing.

  I grabbed a couple handfuls of napkins and went back to my chair at the poker table. I placed the napkin under the bird poop and then let myself slip back into the time stream.

  The noise of the casino crashed in around me as the bird poop hit the napkins and I swept them up before anyone noticed.

  I just hoped that cleaning up crap wasn’t a sign of the times ahead with Chadwick the Flashing Cherub.