kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"Ante.0"

words

Five old men sit around a card table. The dealer sits to the North, just as the dealer always does.

"Anyone have new coinage they'd like to present?"

Silence.

"Then we're all playing with old bills. I don't wanna hear any complaints. They've gotta have the watermarks and nary a scratchout; ante up."

They each toss a one dollar bill on the table. Everyone trusts that the antes are valid. It would be obvious if they weren't.

The dealer ratchets out twenty-five cards, five apiece. The spitting image of radial symmetry, they all inspect their cards, barely lifting them off the table.

They look down at the cards and up at their opponents -- each is operating more on the intuition cum skill of decades of playing than on any conscious strategem; the only facial twitches are bluffs.

The afternoon passes as The Players (as they refer to themselves in the rare moments that they ever refer to themselves) bet sometimes cautiously, sometimes rashly. Occasionally emotion shows through their careful facades but on the whole the afternoon is as staid as the paintings on their playing cards.

Finally, night draws on, the alotted hour chimes; the round ends and each of them carefully puts away their winnings.

On each bill an opinion is written; the more grounded the opinion, the higher the note it is written on. For the next two weeks, they will hold to their new opinions, arguing staunchly with whoever so chooses as to disagree with them, reacting in all situations as if that opinion was their own firmly held belief.

Then they will play the game again.