Gambling Man - Part 1

After a week of voting, it looks like Gambling Man and Stoner Slob are tired, so I'm going to do both of them, starting with Gambling Man! I'm looking forward to these ones, so I hope you'll enjoy 'em :)

“Good evening sir, and welcome to the Change Room.”

The woman who greeted me at the door was pleasant enough, I thought. I nodded and headed past the wide double doors into the casino, checking my coat along the way. The Change Room was new in town and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I had some extra pocket change to spend, and a night on the town sounded like a good idea.

It was smaller than I expected, but The Change Room was bustling. People of all shapes and sizes enjoying games of chance while servers walked past with glasses of various alcoholic beverages. The sound of chiming bells, of flipping cards, the smell of desperation and exultation--it was all very familiar to me.

But then things got strange after I went to the cages to get some chips. “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re not that kind of establishment.”

I cocked an eyebrow, and the person behind the glass wall explained. “Here, we bet on non-currency aspects of ourselves. Sign here, and the dealer will explain the rules when you sit down.”

I was handed a piece of paper with a large “SIGN HERE” line printed at the bottom. I merely skimmed it, noting the “all bets are final” line that The Change room reserved the right to refuse any bet it wanted… all typical Casino stuff.

The man behind the glass looked at my signature, smiled and nodded, and I was turned away feeling awfully sheepish and confused. What did this casino use to bet if not chips?

I headed to the craps table just to see what the hell this place was all about. Two men were in what looked like a heated betting match. One said “four inches,” and the other merely grunted in ascent. The one man threw his dice, and then pumped a fist when the dice came up 12.

Then, something bizarre happened. He seemed to grow taller before my eyes, his shirt sleeves no longer covering his wrists and his pants now displaying a significant amount of ankle. Meanwhile, the man beside him shrunk down, his clothes now appearing loose and baggy. The two nodded at each other and continued to throw dice even as I turned away, shocked at what I’d just witnessed.

“Holy shit,” I thought as I wandered through the slot machines. One set of machines had icons of muscle-bound figures, although the people sitting at the slots all appeared to be thin--almost sickly. One slot machine went off with a row of three pumped biceps and the rail-thin figure jumped up in surprise and delight. Then, the man seemed to blow up to almost body-builder proportions, shredding his three-piece suit and leaving him in underwear so tight that he seemed to be wearing a speedo.

He ran from the casino nearly naked, his rippling muscles carrying him effortlessly out the door. The doorman smiled and waved as he left. Meanwhile, the rest of the slot players just kept pulling their levers, their bodies slowly wasting away with each pull.

This place was where true bets were made. This was where lives were built or destroyed, I thought, where the true thrill of gambling can be felt in all its dreadful glory.

Excited, I wandered to the poker tables and sat down in an empty seat. The men and women beside me seemed normal enough, although their clothing all seemed ill-fitting. One man at the end must have weighed over three-hundred pounds and seemed to be spilling out of his button shirt, his vast bulk pulling apart the seems to display slivers of billowy flesh.

“Dealer sets the terms, you can either call, fold, or raise,” the dealer said simply and dealt me a pair of cards. I noticed the dealer chip was on the fat guy at the end, so he was the one to announce the terms. “Fat,” he said before even looking at his cards.

The man beside him wasn’t particularly large, but he still offered “5 pounds.” The woman next to him called, and the man beside her folded. The man next to him called, and then the betting came to me.

“I call?” I said. It sounded more like a question, and I noticed more than one smirk respond to my bet.

“I call,” the fat man said, and then the dealer laid down the flop. I’d paired my sevens, but there were two over cards and when the fat man raised it to 15 pounds, I folded when it was my turn to bet.

The better continued to the turn, then the river, and finally it was the slightly chunky woman and the fat man revealing their cards. The fat man lost, and the chunky woman gave a slight “whoop” to celebrate her victory. Then, the fat man’s gut literally exploded out of his shirt, his buttons flying in every cardinal direction. The woman, meanwhile, lost her excess flab until she had the body of a near-anorexic model.

She smiled graciously at the table, patted the fat man’s belly--now sitting wide and heavy on his lap--and then walked away, leaving the now morbidly obese man to wallow in his corpulence.

But then I noticed a certain tension in my sleeves when I turned back for the next round of bets. I realized that while I hadn’t stayed in long, I’d still called the 5-pound bet, so I too had gained what the woman lost, just not as much as the fat guy.

Although, judging by the look of him now, “fat” didn’t really cut it. The man was well and truly obese now, with rolls, tits, and multiple chins. His front was a cascading wall of flab that sat over legs that were as wide as I was, with cellulose and dimples the only things breaking up the seemingly endless expanse of thighs.

It was clear he hated what had happened, but the only way to change was to keep playing. So he did, and so did I.

A few hands went by, the players trading inches or skin complexion or hair loss or yes, excess adipose. Whenever it came around to the obese guy’s turn as dealer he always made it about his excess pounds. Most of the time we all folded, leaving him stubbornly sumo sized, but finally, a hand came up that was too good to pass up.

“I call,” I said, somewhat more confidently than I’d been many hands ago. A pocket pair of fives meant I was likely ahead of everyone else before the flop, so I was surprised to see everyone call alongside me. Nobody had folded, and the fat guy had bet 20 pounds.

The flop came down: both black nines and the king of hearts. “Another 20 pounds,” the fat guy said. His was unreadable--likely because he was still trying to figure out how to move face muscles that were suddenly much heavier than they were an hour ago, but also because he partially hooded his features by slinking his head into his own bulk.

Strangely, everyone called again. I was still likely ahead with a pocket pair,  but I was less confident than when I’d started.

The round over came the turn card: another nine. That meant I had a full house, barring someone else with jack. My odds were good, and I was prepared to bet whatever chub I still had and leave this casino looking like a superstar.

“Ten pounds,” the fat guy said, his confidence evidently also wavering. I wasn’t about to back down, but even as I planned on raising the rest of the table called. No sense tipping them off to my hand, so I called as well.

Then things got weird. The river was the last nine in the deck, meaning the best hand was probably already on the table: four nines and a king. Everyone looked down in disappointment, and the fat guy merely tapped the table to indicate a zero bet. The guy next to him agreed, then the one next to him, and the guy after that. Finally, it got to me, and I figured it was a relatively sure thing to call and wind up exactly where I’d started, no fatter, no thinner.

“Alright gentlemen, reveal your hands.” I did as the dealer requested, and then I mentally stabbed myself in the gut.

They all had aces. The fat guy, and the other three. That meant they had a higher kicker than me and my pocket fives. I was the only loser at the table.

“Well wait, what does it mean if the pot would normally be split four ways?” I asked.

The fat guy grinned. “It all goes to the loser,” he replied. And then I felt my stomach lurch in the most literal sense of the word.