(This is the rough beginning of "One Casino Night")
A perpetual haze hung like swamp fog over the small coffee shop and casino restaurant. Various noises beeped, whistled and chimed in response to the few late night gamblers with an occasional Christmas song mingling through. Amber lights meshed and clashed with holiday lights creating a dizzying sense of timelessness as it illuminated several historical artifacts displayed within the casino and restaurant. Within this array of sensory distraction, at one of the coffee shop tables sat a lone man, an aspirant writer of sorts. A half consumed bottle of beer and cup of the blackest coffee that the waitress could hunt down, sat on the table surrounded by crumple up pieces of started stories and fragmented ideas. Also, an ashtray of seemingly endless cigarette butts, no matter how many times the waitress dumped it, smoked from somewhere within the paper littered table. Another unsatisfactory idea led to another ripped paper followed by more crumpling sound. The lone man sat back and sighed out a cloud of smoke.
"Can't think of anything good tonight?" asked the waitress making her coffee rounds whose name tag read 'AMY'. The man put his hand over the coffee cup. "Oh don't worry hon, it's the oldest, blackest, nastiest coffee we have back there."
"Well, ok. Just to warm it up before I go out into the snow and no, ideas seem to be just out of my reach right now. It might have something to do with the copious amounts of beer, mixed with a feeble attempt at sobriety."
"That means a lot, right?"
"Yes Amy." He said with a chuckle.
"See I told you that having you here night after night would help my vocabulary." Amy said while sitting down for a moment. She busied herself with gathering the crumpled pieces of paper more to have an excuse to sit there for awhile then it was to get a jump on cleaning his table. Besides the only other patron other then he was Lee, the town drunkard, and he neared the point of passed out at the bar. "So are you trying to write something specific or are you just writing at random?"
"Neither, both, I'm not sure. Ideas are swimming around in my head like a school of fish being attacked by penguins." He gulped down the cup of coffee. "Maybe tomorrow I'll sic the killer whales on them." He handed her a $20 bill and got up from the table.
"David, this is too much of a tip for just coming in here and drinking coffee."
"Don't worry about it. Besides, you have to deal with my mess every night."
"Now come on, you know I don't mind cleaning up after you."
"Careful Amy, your in danger of stealing me from my fiance." He said while walking out and pulling on his black leather jacket.
"In my dreams." Amy said quietly to herself. She continued her nightly routine, when ever David came in, with gathering his discarded pieces of paper to put them with the rest that she has kept. 'One of these days he is going to realize how much he means to me' she thought to herself. 'One of these days'.
David lit another cigarette and pulled his coat tight as he exited into the cold winter night. Dime sized snow flakes flurried effortlessly down from the dark sky reflecting the light that streamed from the amber street lamps. David walked out into the fresh snow, the remnants of the alcohol that still warmed his insides made the chill of the night seem not so bad, almost pleasant. As he walked down the snow covered sidewalk he noticed a woman walking towards him. The closer she got he determined that there must be some sort of costume party going on somewhere. She wore a form fitting white dress covered in glittering sequins and had a white fur shawl draped over her shoulders. With a small round hat and high heels that matched her glittering outfit, she looked like she just stepped from the 1920s. She was very pretty with skin almost as pale as the snow she walked on, with hair as black as the inky night time shadows and she walked with a grace that made her look like she was floating. She seemed to stare past David blankly making her look very smug. When she passed David, she turned to look at him and he couldn't help looking into her dark cold eyes. A chill struck him to the bone that came from something other then the weather. However, he did not get too much of a chance to contemplate the origin of the chill due to the sound of a speeding car drawing his attention.
Speeding down the snowy street drove an antique looking car, like the ones David saw on the old gangster movies about the roaring 20s. A man hung out of the car window with what looked to be an old fashion Tommy gun, pointed it in David's general direction and let loose with a hail of bullets. David threw himself to the snowy ground so hard he knocked the wind from his lungs for a moment. When he looked over to where the woman had been, she was lying on the ground surrounded by blood soaked snow with her dark cold eyes staring straight at him. He no longer heard the car so he ripped his eyes off of her bloody cold beauty, took a chance and did a quick peek to see where they were. The car was no where to be seen. He got up with the intention of checking on the woman, however she too had vanished leaving only his foot prints in the snow. He spun quickly around towards the direction she came from. No foot prints in the snow.
"Screw this, what the hell is going on here?" He could feel his heart racing and he thought to himself that if it kept racing at this pace it would explode. He started across the street to the corner of the building trying to get home, to a place he felt comfortable. A place he knew. By the time he reached the corner he began trying to rationalize what just happened to him. Blaming it on the alcohol was sounding good to him right then.
"Move aside!" someone yelled in a commanding voice as David rounded the corner. With out thinking, he hastily pressed his back to the wall of the building. Two keystone cops went running past him towards the scene of the shooting. Before disappearing around the corner one of the cops glanced back at David with a suspicious look in his dark eyes. David slowly crept towards the corner and peeked around to find that the cops had also vanished without a trace. He felt his grasp on reality start to slip. How could he blame the alcohol? This had never happened to him before, even considering the times he mixed drinking with a little weed. David looked haphazardly around searching for a shred of reason, but instead found only that deep bone chill. His scanning gaze stopped on a figure standing on the edge of the curb across the street. For some reason he felt that this was the man that was hanging out of the car window and that he was in grave danger. The man took a step off of the curb towards David who in response tried to spin around and run at the same time. His feet failed to find any grip on the snow covered sidewalk causing him to slip sending his feet well over his shoulders. His head savagely stuck one of the bricks that protruded from the corner of the building. The cold black talons of unconsciousness instantly took hold of David's mind.
A bright light blared in David's left eye followed by the right. He slowly moved his head but a shock of pain shot through his brain. All he could do was moan.
"David? Can you hear me?"
"Yes." He moaned
"Good, I am Doctor Michaels. You were brought here last night after a patrol officer found you passed out on the ground. Apparently you slipped in the snow and struck your head leaving a nasty gash along with a minor concussion. Honestly speaking you should count yourself lucky it wasn't any worse then that considering the level of intoxication you were at. Just lie here and rest up for awhile, I'd like to keep you here one more night just to make sure everything is ticking correctly. Oh and you also have some visitors that would like to see you." All David wanted right then was for the talkative doctor to shut up but he managed a nod. "Ok, I'll go ahead and send them in"
The rest of the day was taken up by pain, his fiance asking if he was ok every 15 minutes, his soon to be mother-in-law talking gossip about who was doing what and who was doing who in town and more pain. Somewhere in the back of his traumatized mind, he still tried to grasp all that happened that night and got just as far as he had before. It must have been the alcohol is what he finally determined. One thing he could not forget though was the sight of that woman laying within crimson snow and how her eyes were locked on him in death. If it was just the alcohol, then his mind must be dealing with some truly deep rooted issues and he a good idea what that could have been.
They next day he was released with a head full of stitches and a bottle full of pain killers. The doctor also gave him an AA pamphlet which of course he threw away because he didn't have a drinking problem, as far as he was concerned.
After several days had passed and he was now a single man again, David walked through the door of the small police department. Past indiscretions his former fiance had committed must have been the issues he was trying to deal with. The incident concerning, what he started calling, his crimson snow angel, seemed more like a hazy dream.
"Hey Rob, are you about done here?" he said to the man that sat behind the bullet proof dispatcher's window.
"I'll be off shift here in about 15 minutes."
"Well hurry up, the bar is not going to be there forever."
"You in a hurry to bust your head open again?" Rob said laughing
"Yeah, something like that." David said walking away from the window. He didn't like reminders of how he hurt his head. He walked around the waiting area of the cop shop looking at the display cases that housed more historical memorabilia. Antique weapons and shackles were displayed along with old wanted posters and newspaper clippings. As he scanned over the newspaper clippings, a picture caused him to stop in his tracks that looked almost exactly like him. His blood ran cold with that chill that he had felt that night as he started reading the article that the picture was attached to. It described in detail the fate that befell a locally renowned performer as she was going to work at the hotel casino. Alisha Grace was her name and she was allegedly the mistress of one of the Mob bosses whom felt she became too bold for comfort. Apparently her killer was never found but was rumored to be Fell Shade, one of the few hit men whose identity was unknown, even to the bosses, the very people who hired him. The further he read the more he trembled on the inside. The article also told how the cops had reported that there was a possible suspect or eye witness who was dress as if he was from another country, hence the picture.
A movement reflected in the class of the display case. David's eyes darted to look at the reflection and saw the gangster hit man standing behind him pointing a gun at his back.
