GAMBLING PROBLEMS

The M of the sign, ‘INTIMES’, was loose, the neon on light flickering as it blew back and forth. Rain was coming down supernaturally huge dollops, landing a foot in front of John, who was stood just in the shelter of the old theatre.
Up until a half hour ago he had been odds-on favourite, for what many had called the most straightforward of the predictions1.

Now he was wrestling with the harsh reality of his situation, which the cameras were focussing on to. A shot of his white knuckles around the gun was up on the big screen. John saw it, but didn’t at the same time. His mind was elsewhere.

John was carrying around the gun for self-defence. And he needed it for self defence because the woman called Nina, who he had had a bit of an unrequited thing for a week or so ago — before “shit got real”, as she put it — was out to kill him.

#

John knew Nina was out to kill him because he was the last one left alive. Since she had taken the very proactive approach to the whole ‘sentence’ thing, it followed that she would soon be coming to find him.

She had said as much to them a week ago: “If you think I’m going to take my chances with that damn machine, with this fucking ‘justice’… You can think again!” Which was all a bit of a shock to John, as she had seemed so quiet and nice. He probably wouldn’t have believed her if it wasn’t for the way she delivered the lines, which it gave it the sort of gravitas that really hammered the point home3.

#

The big screen that loomed over the square in the town centre was alternately displaying the revised odds of death. John was now favourite for ‘CAPITAL PUNISHMENT’ at 4/1; seemingly the pundits had picked him out as someone that might well ‘snap’ if he survived, going on some kind of capital punishment worthy rampage. Nina was 6/1 on for ‘TRIGONOMETRY; she had been a maths teacher before committing the crime4 that landed her on the show.

John knew he was the last one thanks, in part, to the big screen and, in another part, to the supermarket, which had just exploded.

The instant reply had been generous about the whole affair, displaying it over and over again, with a whole four different camera and one super-slow-motion unit — which caught, almost perfectly, Simon’s$2 surprise — for the past thirty two minutes.

John had been standing under the sign outside of what used to be a small cinema since about ten minutes after that. When he switched on the TV after hearing the blast he was greeted by a world of extremely personal advice.

It was when they brought on the previous ‘winner’6 who’s advice had been along the lines of, “She knows where you are! GET. FUCKING. MOVING!” that he decided he should maybe do something…

John chose to get proactive under the sign of INTIMES because he wanted to be able to see the big screen, and that meant he had to be on the square.
The storm was really coming in, although it wasn’t enough to put out the supermarket fully. The fires there continued unchecked, throwing up all kinds of acrid smoke into the air. Clouds of which hung over the square and seemed to actually attract lightning in a way that was both unsettling and tremendously atmospheric.
John would have idly wondered whether the producers and legal eagles behind Guess Who IIX had any control over the weather7 if he hadn’t been scared shitless. As he was all he could think about was how it was pretty much as solidly close to ‘you’re going to die’ weather as it gets.

#

As he stood there in the midst of all this flaming god-knows-what, clouds, rain and clichés, he lifted the gun to practice his aim. ‘Lift, aim, breathe, shoot’ was the mantra he imagined he probably had to follow. As he went through the motions and took a big breath he got a lung full of the acrid air, which sent him sputtering onto his knees.

Since the explosion John hadn’t been able to hear anything much except the sound of his tinnitus. So as he was there, coughing away on his knees, his eyes closed, his mind occupied with trying to find some air that wasn’t made out of burnt up household cleaning equipment, John didn’t think, hear, or see anything to do with ‘TRIGONOMETRY’ or ‘CAPITAL PUNISHMENT’.

#

Up on the screen that he wasn’t watching they were going through the punditry, trying to answer the question ‘WHERE IS NINA?’

It was a good question. It was the question that had been whitening John’s fingers. It was the question that had set his stomach to an odd tune that was nothing but uncomfortable. It was the question that millions of viewers at home or in bars or bookmakers all over the country were trying to find the answer to.

After this segued into a ‘Searchlight’ for a break. This was where half the screen was a cycle of the most likely areas Nina might be —according to security experts— shown over and over in that grainy, greeny night vision that was always all but useless; each camera panning a room or a street or the roof of a building8.

None of them found Nina though, because they were all looking to find her somewhere not where John was. This was wrong.

Nina stood where she had been stood since the explosion, which was actually about five feet away from John, in the dark of the small alley behind cinema. She had been stood there for thirty-four minutes, waiting patiently.
#
It was 00:34 when she stepped out from the alleyway and said, “Hi John”.

Nina looked good normally. She was a striking woman (in both senses of the word; Coleen’s$3 body could testify to Nina’s arm’s strength otherwise), even now, with her white dress sullied with what you would hope was mud, with her hair soaking wet and makeup smudge, even now as she was soaked to the skin, there was still something.

#
For the past half hour, as John stood there, waiting, thinking, shaking, he had been hoping he would do something. Say something. He didn’t. He just froze, still on his needs from all his gun practice.

She took a step toward him. And looked at the gun on the floor at his feet.
“Where you going to shoot me John?”
He didn’t answer, just pulled himself to his feet.
Nina took another step toward him, and John raised the gun, shaking.
“You can’t shoot me John”, she was full of a horrible calm confidence, and took another step.
She stopped when John pulled the trigger, for a second. For a second her smile was gone; there was a moment of panic9.
This was before the failure of the gun to fire – before the ‘CHK’ of a gun set to safety sunk in – before she stepped forward and, clean as anything, put a knife in John’s back.
“Safety first, John”.

He let out what could well have been a yelp, and slumped sharply forwards onto her. She lowered him down onto the floor slowly, he wasn’t much taller than her, but certainly had some more bulk.

As she lay him down, she whispered something to him, before standing up and staring across at the big screen.
#
The screen was full of shots of crowds going wild. All over the country placards with slogans like ‘NINA 4 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT’ were being waved frantically. She smiled to herself and turned to John, who was wheezing on the floor.
“If it’s any conciliation, I just made some serious money…”
John lifted his head and said in something little more than a whisper, “Fuck You”.
Nina tilted her head and smile at him, before turning and looking out across the square.
As she turned away John sat up as best he could, lifting the gun, carefully taking off the safety, to aim in the right direction…
“Nina”, he used all his breath, but it got her attention. She stopped and looked back at him. Tilting her head coldly again, staring at him curiously.

John took a deep breath and, trying to hold back a coughing fit, aimed toward her. Unfortunately for John and his ambitions of near-death vengeance, the air got the best of him again and sent him reeling.
Unfortunately for Nina, John dropped the gun, which now – safety off – fired almost straight up hit the sign10 and bounced around in a way that sealed both their fates11.

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Notes:

1: ‘HUNGER’

3: Nina had stood over Betsy$1, who was on the floor clutching her throat with a small smatter of blood on the floor, as she said this.

4: The crime was, ironically enough for a maths teacher, a mistake in her accounting, which it’s estimated netted her an extra $15 a year each year for the past six years.

5: The weight of punditry opinion had heavily favoured her for ‘GAMBLING PROBLEM’ and only gotten stronger as she took people out. At one point it looked almost certain that she would survive and so go on to be famous and later in life develop some kind of gambling habit, which might introduce to unsavoury characters and slowly be her undoing. This was until Joe’s death$4 .

6: Who had survived a most entertaining year; with several prescient betters being made millionaires the night of the final. The winning combination being incredibly unlikely (he had seemed somewhat slow at the start of the competition and the odds of him coming away with ‘SEX’, had been the lowest throughout. He was nothing to look at+).

7: They didn’t. That would be have been ludicrous +2.

8: There were even a number of automated cameras floating around the city, attached to bright pink balloons, the vast majority of which were running search patterns over the wet, ash covered square.

9: It was a shot that became famous afterwards; the one moment of emotion displayed by Nina in the whole competition – it became a cult sensation with many badges, T-Shirts and the more progressive of graffiti artists using it to great effect.

10: ‘INTI-ES’
11: The papers called it a ‘Massacre’. +5

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Predictions:

$1: Betsy was 85 when she died of ‘SALAD’ at 16/1.
$2: Simon was 32 and hungry for something other than protein bars when the frozen peas started a chain reaction that took his face and the whole freezer section with it. He died of ‘HUNGER’ at 2/1. It’s fair to say he was a chubby fellow.
$3: Colleen was 28 when she died of ‘A SHARP BLOW TO THE HEAD’ at 22/1. Nina had killed her with a surprisingly large LCD TV+3.
$4: Joe was one of the most popular of the inmates in the first week, creating much sexual tension and telling many a joke. He was considered the most marketable personality on there until he inadvertently took his own life in a ‘hold your breath in a bucket of water’ competition with Nina. John was fiercely competitive, and second favourite to Nina for ‘GAMBLING PROBLEMS’ before his death let him win that title.

Notes on Notes:
+1: Although since winning he had had a lot more luck with the ladies.
+2: Which is not to say that they weren’t investing serious cash in R&D to that end.
+3: So surprisingly large it wasn’t even considered an option worth putting on the table by most bookies.
+4: And a heavy smoker.
+5: The M was, of course, stylised like the large glowing M in ‘INTIMES’