This is #48 in my One-Shot Shorts series, a collection of short stories each based on a prompt from a homemade set of dice or cards.

Hosha leaned into the wind, wishing he had gloves, a hat, anything to keep the cold from whistling down his collar and chilling everything under his threadbare coat. A gust sent him careening sideways until he thudded against a heavy door. He craned his head back, reading the sign.

Mooncat.

No, no. He didn’t want to be here, not after what had happened last time.

Mooncat was a gambling den, infamous for both its unending hours and its unequaled proprietress. The stakes were always high, the winnings always worth the risk, and it wasn’t just for high rollers and the idle rich looking to kill some time. Anyone could gamble at Mooncat. They could cheat, too—that was in the rules—but only if they didn’t get caught.

Hosha had been sure he wouldn’t get caught, but he’d been wrong.

He could still feel the proprietress’s breath on his cheek making the tiny hairs on his ear dance when she’d found out, her voice a low purr that even now set his spine tingling and his hands a-tremble.

She’d thrown him out. The first time was free, she’d said. But the cost of getting caught cheating at Mooncat was twofold: first, you had to hand over everything you had on you, except for the clothes on your back. You were allowed to leave with your life, but if you ever came back, that would be forfeit too.

He’d avoided this door, this street, for so long. But he’d had to keep his head down in the wind. He hadn’t realized how close he was. His brain scrambled, knowing he needed to run, run now, but his hand reached for the doorknob. His feet took him inside.

They seized him immediately, one door guard on each arm, and brought him to the proprietress’s office.

“Well,” she said, looking down at him from the other end of a long cigarette holder, silvery smoke wafting in artful curls between them. He could barely see her face, but her strange eyes glinted, reflecting the firelight like burnished copper discs. “What brings you here, Hosha?”

He didn’t answer. Fear clamped his mouth shut, locked his knees together as he fell before her, uttering a string of wordless, pleading whimpers.

“Now now,” she said, her voice like honey and charcoal and screams. “You know the penalty for showing your face at Mooncat again.”

She unfolded herself from her chair with a boneless grace and came toward him, inch by agonizing inch. Something glinted in her hand that might have been a knife, or might have been something else.

It was the last thing Hosha ever saw.

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