#19 - Entführung

“Ich zahle mit karte,” Leonie said, as she raised her bank card, and swiped it.

The man behind the night store’s counter gave her a forced smile and nodded, “Danke. Schönen abend noch.”

The young blue-eyed brunette with a ponytail stepped out of the small store with a plastic bag containing; sour cream chips, a big pot of cookie dough ice cream and multiple canned mojito drinks. It was a little past midnight in the small German city she had been born, raised and would likely die in.

It was another one of those nights, the lonely ones, the ones that bled over into days just as meaningless and empty. Leonie didn’t have a job, she didn’t have friends, and all the family she had left was a father she’d sworn she’d never speak to again. All she had was a small apartment, a hole to curl up in and disappear from a world that wouldn’t even notice if she up and disappeared one day.

With the ironic cruelty of this indifferent world, that was exactly what happened, as she turned the corner into a narrow street with no witnesses.

A sudden pain burned across the back of her right hand, causing her to drop the plastic bag she was carrying. As it hit the ground, one of the mojito cans burst open, sizzling as it sprayed the liquid inside.

Leonie looked at her hand, seeing a strange green mark of two crescent moons overlapping. In her shock the connection was quickly made; Das Vorzeichenlicht. But how could it be? She had seen no purple glow, and the mark looked nothing like the usual three moon symbol.

Purple smoke poured out from the yellow lining of the green mark. It didn’t float upwards, but enveloped her hand, her wrist, her lower arm, and crawled upwards. Leonie let out a short, unheard scream, cut off by the smoke rising to her face.

The world went dark for only a few seconds, before the smoke exploded outward, in a puff. Her body was cleared of the strange phenomenon, but displaced, her dropped bag no longer beside her feet, the ground beneath her a green carpet of thick fabric with frayed fibers which looked larger than they should be.

The shouting, screaming and gasping started, Leonie looked around the strange stadium full of people, and the six giants sitting around it, two giant decks of cards in the middle.

“What the hell?” A gruff man shouted.

A woman’s voice followed in a Scandinavian language, “Vad är det som händer?!”

“W-Where am I?” panicked a younger man.

She turned to see a giant woman with detached hazel eyes and blue-ish green hair looking down at her. There was a coldness to that look, no reassurance, no mocking.

“So, we’re gambling with tinies?” The woman’s voice boomed. “Keep the ones we managed to win by the end?”

“Exactly,” an electronic voice sounded, originating from a strange masked figure with a rabbit’s head, stepping around the stadium; the table.

Leonie’s breath caught, she didn’t join the shouting or screaming, her mind overclocked trying to process what was happening, her head on a swivel.

“It’s a game,” one guy shouted. “They’re real.”

Leonie watched a young man who looked to be Southeast Asian with a warm skin tone run across the carpet, away from the giantess. He made it only a short distance before his body slammed against the air in front of him, like someone running into a thick glass window, but there was no gleam nor any fracturing of the light; no sign of any glass.

Another giantess stepped up to the table in a strange costume, her wide top hat tilted atop her long grey hair. She pulled back the single empty chair at the table, and stood between the ocean-haired giantess, and an uneasy looking copper-haired one. She didn’t sit down, her hands pushed down on the carpet as leaned over the crowd of people, her chin raised with a wicked smile.

“Silence,” she said, with a low domineering tone, the word followed by the disembodied echo of a German translation, like something Leonie would often hear in a poorly dubbed television series, “Seid still.”

Leonie, understanding both languages, didn’t struggle to obey that command, her voice and body frozen.

“Until but a moment ago, you were people,” she said, the translation following. “Now you are but chips in a prize pool. The marks on your hands label you as one of the unseen, forgotten and ignored by all who do not bear a mark. You are a part of this world now, no longer able to function in the old one. Your only hope at survival rests within the hands of these six Reapers, your life reliant on the kindness of the cruel. Pray this poker game lands you in the claws of a merciful one. Do not scream. Do not beg. Your fates are no longer yours.”

Leonie’s hands reached for her face, her fingers crawling across her cheek and into her hair, her eyes so wide it made her vision shake. She wanted to scream, but like most of the other tinies around her, she was too afraid of the potential consequences of angering these strange gods.

On the other end of the table, Harm looked down, cursing the sight of ten tiny people turning to look at him in horror, as they realized they were in the hands of a world famous killer. Sixty tiny people would be at risk tonight, depending on whose hands they ended up in.

Harm turned to look at Cleo, “We have to save these people.”

Cleo looked at him with mask of horror, “I don’t know how to play poker.”

Harm’s heart sank. They were about to play a game where lives were at stake, where her life was at stake, and she didn’t even know the rules.

“It’s ok, I’ll explain,” Harm said, trying to keep his cool, trying to live up to the older brother role she had once put on him, while the game’s host seemed to allow him the time to do so. “At the start of each game, each player gets two cards. Two players are forced to put in a bet, one is called small blind, and the one left of that player has to bet twice that, a big blind.”

“Oh, and don’t forget,” Visor chimed in. “The person with the small blind has to keep one eye closed for the entire round, the big blind has to keep their eyes shut completely.”

“That’s not a rule, ignore him,” Harm said. “The person left of the person putting in the big blind can choose to either match the current bet in play by calling, raise the bet and force the other players to call that bet, or fold bailing out of the current game. The choice to do one of these three things passes to the person on the left each time, until everyone either folded or put in the same bet.

“If you fold you lose everything you’ve already put into the bet,” Lilith said. “So, you’re always weighing whether to go along if someone escalates the tension by raising the bet. Sometimes it’s better to put in a little more, as not to lose what you already put in, but sometimes it’s better to sacrifice some and fold.”

Harm turned to look at Lilith with a frown, surprised and suspicious as to why someone of her ilk would give genuine advice. He looked back to Cleo, who was staring at the human beings in front of her, people she might have to ‘sacrifice’ in a bet.

“After the first round of betting comes the flop,” Harm continued. “Three cards will be revealed to everyone, and another betting round starts, with the small blind player getting to make the first choice, without having to pay their blind again. You have to see if the two cards in your hand will combine with the community cards to make a good hand.”

“W-What’s a good hand?” Cleo said her index finger returning to Rafael, stroking her tiny boyfriend more for her own comfort, than for his.

Visor interrupted again, “Try and make sure you have a Blue-Eyes White Dragon.”

Harm shook his head, “Having a card with a high number alone is the weakest, a pair is better, the higher the numbers of the pair, the better. Having three of the same card value is better than a pair. A straight is already very good, that’s when you have five cards that follow up on each other; one, two, three, four, five. Above that is a flush, where you have five cards of the same suit; five heart cards, or five clubs, you get the idea. Above that, full house, three of a kind and a pair in one hand. If you somehow have four of the same card number, that’s even better than a full house. As straight flush is pretty much the highest, it’s when you have five cards in sequence like a flush, while they’re also the same suit. There is also an impossibly rare royal flush, that’s when those five cards are in sequence, same suit, and the highest cards in the deck.”

Cleo’s breath shuddered, “I can’t follow, it’s too much.”

Harm looked at the rabbit, “Is there any chance she can have a sheet to check hand values?”

Master Rabbit and Mrs. Hat looked at each other, before Hat answered, “In the name of fairness, I can’t see why not. Who else needs a check sheet?”

Despite being the most disruptive of Harm’s explanation, Visor raised his hand high, while Robin quietly raised a few fingers. Mrs. Hat snapped her fingers and three sheets ranking each poker hand with a visual explanation appeared out of thin air, flying over to each player in need of one.

Harm finished his explanation, “After that round a fourth card is added to the community cards, starting another betting round, after that a fifth, starting the last betting round. The game lasts until either that round ends, or all but one player has folded. Then the forced bets of the blinds move to the left, and a new game starts.”

Cleo nodded, unsure if she really had a grasp on it all, “Ok, ok.”

The tiny people across the table still squeaked and cried amongst themselves, but had started to quiet down. Theo, Oscar and Jade had tried to calm the six new tinies near Robin with the empty promise that they’d be safe, that their friend would save them.

Robin just stared down at them, not affirming those claims with the distressed empty look she gave them. Her friends were on the line, chips in a poker game. The six others were nothing to her but a thin human wall of security to stop her friends from ending up in the prize pool.

She had no intention of joining Harm and Cleo in their goal of saving these tinies, all she wanted to keep was the four of them, they were hers.

“Well then, let’s get started,” Eve said, leaning onto the table, and pinning a man beneath her index finger, causing him to squirm like an insect.

Mrs. Hat reached into her cleavage, taking out two large plastic chips which she let float towards the table, one of them landing in front of Lilith, the other in front of Robin.

The one in front of Lilith had a drawing on it, a man with sunglasses and a walking stick, which the man held out in front of him, poking the toe of a giant foot.

“Small blind,” Lilith snorted. “How cute.”

Robin looked at the one she received, the drawing on the big blind was that of a giant woman, her eyes wrapped with bandages like lady justice, sitting against a large destroyed building, amidst flattened cars and a panicked crowd.

Mrs. Hat used her powers to lift the deck with the Master Rabbit artwork on the back of the cards. She split the deck, and put the bottom half on the top, before letting cards fly off the top towards all players, letting them catch their hand until each of the Reapers held two cards.

“Wait, what are the blinds?” Lilith asked, looking at the drawing of the tiny blind man, wondering what bet she was supposed to make.

The modulated voice of Master Rabbit answered, “The big blind is one tiny.”

“Wait, but if that’s the big blind-” Harm said, unable to finish his sentence, as the realization kicked in across the table.

Eve’s eyes shot open, as she burst into gleeful sadistic laughter, watching the faces of Robin, Harm and Cleo. The hope that this would be a clean game melted off them into sickly despair.

“Half a tiny,” Rabbit said confirming their horror.

“Does that mean we don’t have to put in live ones?” Eve said. “I could just kill all of these bugs right now?”

“Correct,” Master Rabbit said.

Cleo looked at her with begging eyes, “Wr8, don’t…”

Eve didn’t need to hear the confirmation of the game’s host twice. She grabbed a man in his early thirties out of her pool of tinies, holding him under her thumb, his back pinned against her middle and index finger, as she tilted her thumb forward, pushing the nail of her thumb into his throat.

“Wr8 stop!” Harm shouted, his masculine voice collapsing into a higher pitch, fearing for the man’s life.

Eve’s eyes locked with Robin’s, who was staring at her in dead silence. The slow breath of a guilty observer escaped the tomboy’s lungs, as she watched her former online friend choke the life out of a man with a simple push of her thumb. Robin’s lower lip quivered, almost curling under her teeth, before she got a hold of herself, and looked away.

Annoyed by her friend breaking eye contact, Eve shoved her nail forward into the tiny man’s throat, destroying the entire structure inside, all the way to the top of his spine, leaving him gurgling blood from the torn windpipe.

She let the body fall down amongst a group of nine screaming playthings, who tried to scatter and claw up against the invisible barrier that held them in front of her.

Eve began a massacre, slamming her giant middle finger into a beefy looking man’s chest with a flick, causing it to burst open. Leaving him to bleed out of the collapsed ribs sticking out of his skin. She dropped a woman inside her cava glass, but not before crushing her leg, forcing her to swim inside her drink with a broken limb, while blood flowed out, mixing into the alcoholic drink which burned the tiny’s wound.

Visor looked at the woman, as she splashed around inside Eve’s drink, before sinking, her last bubbles of air barely recognizable amongst the fizzy bubbles of the drink itself.

“She’s gonna need to call an Uber after that amount,” he said, dryly.

He looked down at his own pool of tinies, before suddenly flexing his gloved fingers wide, “Boo!”

A few of them fell over, cowering and screaming, as he chuckled without following up on his scare.

“D-Don’t you wanna play with them later?” Elias shouted, trying to have his voice carry louder than the panicked screams of the other tinies on the table. “You could get so much more creative at home!”

Eve glared at him, this tiny pet of Rot seemed to understand her better than anyone else at the table, but he was using that understanding to try and control her. The audacity.

“Sure, I could. But it’s so much fun showing off just how twisted I am to an audience,” Eve said, turning to look at Cleo. “I’m sure you understand, little snuff streamer~”

The tinies in front of the indigo-haired e-girl looked at her. The aura of being the safest giant at that table, which she had given off by treating Rafael so softly disappeared. The tiny boyfriend attempting to repair the damage of Eve’s words.

“It’s not snuff,” Rafael explained as the other tinies backed away from Cleo. “It’s fake, just ketchup and jam. She’d never hurt anyone!”

The disheveled black-haired hag continued her indiscriminate mass murder, as she popped the head of another woman beneath her finger like a grape, the tiny woman screaming, as her skull collapsed into gore.

Eve made a gross noise with her throat and nose, as she worked up some mucus into her mouth, before spitting down onto the table, much to the frowning disgust of Mrs. Hat. She grabbed a man by his leg, and dragged him into the quickly cooling puddle of saliva and slime, before forcing his head down into it. She kept him pinned under her finger, as his little limbs flailed about, until he stopped moving, drowning in the most disgusting way imaginable.

Lilith raised her brow and smiled, as she looked down at her own ‘stack’ of ‘chips’, “Well, I reckon them’s the rules, so…”

She raised her own glass of Cava, and poured it all into her gullet in one go, before turning the glass upside down and lowering it onto the tiny man, who Leonie had watched run into the invisible barrier. The tiny man screamed, throwing his arms up in a desperate defensive plea, as the rim of the glass, the part smudged with the imprint of the alt girl’s lips, came down on his stomach, crushing him in half, his last muffled wail echoing inside the glass.

Leonie’s stomach didn’t take kindly to the scream she tried to swallow, she retched, barely holding the urge to puke, to collapse in the chaos and horror of it. She couldn’t let herself make a noise, or react in any noticeable way. She was small, defenseless, and all she could do was make herself smaller. If she could prevent herself from standing out, she could escape the attention of the giant trans woman who loomed over her, and escape being the next on the chopping block.

Lilith grabbed the tiny man’s legs and threw his lower body out on the table in front of her, before turning to look at Robin and giving her a single nod, “Your turn.”

Robin looked down at her three friends, who were looking back in questioning despair, as if she was supposed to say something that would help them keep their cool. While Elias watched Eve kill the last of her tinies, with an empty abyssal stare. The first round of bets had only just begun, and eleven of the fifty-five people who’d been stolen from their lives were already dead.

Robin reached out, grabbing a woman who cried out in fear. She could feel the tiny stranger squirm between her fingertips, so much justified anxiety, such a pathetic fight she put up. The feeling was intoxicating to Robin, but the weight of the game she was about to play dampened her enjoyment of it.

She gently lowered the woman onto the table in front of her, leaving her exposed, alone. What once had been a person, was now Robin’s forced bet, her big blind. A part of the disposable currency had to keep her friends from ending up in the game.

Robin looked over at the small blind chip, the one that would be hers next game, the thing that would force her to cross her line; force her to split someone in half.