Free Once Upon a Time in Hell by Guy Adams Page B

with."
    "That's the principle. Though, being a game of trickery and duplicity, there is no rule that dictates you must tell the truth."
    "So I have to tell you who I am but I can make it up?"
    "Of course, either way it enables us to get a reading on you. Can we guess whether it's true or not? What does it say about you either way? Poker is all about masks, we ask to see yours. Perhaps it would be better were the others to go first? Perhaps you would care to start Branches of Regret?"
    The thing that looked like a carved, wooden man nodded and began to speak. "I am Branches of Regret," he said. His voice was deep and yet with a constant high whine, the sound of a saw cutting into timber. "I was born when the Navajo came to my forest and wept into the soil. My trees have always fed on the truth of the world and so I was grown. I carry the sadness and anger of a people who have lost a place to put their roots."
    "Boo hoo," said the baby. "My name is Axionus and I am of the forty-first hellfire legion.
    Lucifer took his captured Cherubim and bred them with the darkest, most terrible creatures in his domain. I could kick your ass from here to the Almighty so don't let the cute looks fool you."
    "And I am Brisket," said the meat thing, "and I am the ghost of the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. I am the sharpened cleaver and the fork licked clean."
    Finally our hostess: "I am Agrat and I was a lover to the very first man. He could not satisfy me so I made my own way in life."
    "Lie," said the old man. It took me a moment to decide whether he meant she had been lying or that I should. I plumped for the latter.
    "My name's Elwyn Buckfast and I am the inventor of the self-cleaning prayer book."
    "A valuable invention I'm sure," said Brisket, bursting into a fit of coughing and spitting that I later understood to be laughter.
    "Formalities have been observed," said Agrat, "let's play."
    "Ante up, bitches," said Axionus, tossing a fifty cent chip into the centre of the table. We all followed suit and Agrat began to deal for five card stud.
    I imagine that my story so far has given you little doubt that I had little experience in the world of card games. Thankfully even I could master the rules of the simplest poker variant.
    Each player was first dealt two cards, one face-up. The weakest visible card takes the first bet. After that more cards are dealt, face-up, one for each round of betting until each player has five.
    The area of uncertainty lies in that single face-down card.
    I received a hidden eight of clubs and a visible four of diamonds. Not the most exciting hand in the world. Yes, there was the possibility of a straight but the odds were massively against it. It would all hinge, as five card stud always did, on that hidden eight. The rest of the table looked like this:
    AGRAT: 9♥
    AXIONUS: 6♣
    BRANCHES OF REGRET: 6♥
    BRISKET: 3♠
    It was down to Brisket to open the betting on the first round, which it did at fifty cents.
    Axionus, for all his swagger, folded immediately.
    Branches of Regret called on the bet, pushing his chip into the pot with a single, solid finger.
    "Raise the bet to a dollar," said the old man. Which had most certainly not been my intention but I did as I was told.
    "I'll call," said Agrat, adding her dollar.
    Brisket and Branches of Regret also called so Agrat dealt three more cards.
    AGRAT: 9♥ 5♥
    BRISKET: 3♠ 5♠
    BRANCHES OF REGRET: 6♥ Q♦
    ME: 4♦ 8♥ (8♣)
    If all else failed I had a pair of eights. "Brisket is holding a spade in the hole," said the old man, " aiming for a flush, you don't keep betting if all you've got is a pair of threes, not unless you're a fool and I don't think Brisket is."
    In a wig like that I begged to differ but kept my mouth shut.
    "Agrat can't build a straight flush without the wooden man's six but she's still on track for a straight. Branches must be holding something worth pairing up with the six for him to have called your bet. Branches is not a bluffer.