The aged liquors had been poured, and, together with tobacco smoke, the bottles seemed to drift across a floating sea of misty shreds that barely allowed the tapestry on the wall to be seen. The gathering had reached that point where the senses grow dull, and one forgets about money, about worries, about every damn thing. Only one thing mattered: keeping the precious party going — and what better way than by annoying old friends?
“Good grief, what nonsense you’re spouting now, Richi. Why don’t you just stick to playing, eh? It’s only a matter of time before I take those sad little alms from you,” scoffed Gor, and since he was the tallest, his voice boomed through the little room like a bell.
“Mock all you want, you drooling blob,” Richi shot back after asking for two cards. “Still, it’s something worth thinking about, isn’t it? Nobody really knows what those artifacts are. Come on, Yeyo, you tell me — what are they?”
Yeyo’s baggy eyes were closing after all the drinking. For no reason at all, he began stretching and massaging the folds of skin around his snout, and the others howled with laughter. More towers of chips collapsed, and the uproar of protest was deafening, as always happened when someone messed with the winnings.
“Stop the rubbish talking and play; this hand is mine,” muttered Sísifo through clenched teeth, never taking his jaws off the smoking pipe. His pointy ears and weird black eyes darted quickly from one player to another, missing nothing.
“Nothing like a good bluff and a bush to piss on, my dear Sísifo. This time you won’t be so lucky,” Gor mocked him, drumming claws on his cards. “And you, Richi, pray for a full house because I’m not buying you more Marrowbones packs.”
“Oh, come on, Gor! I quit smoking.” Richi looked around the table, trying to summon his most alluring voice. “What I’m telling you is super true. I’m not drunk or anything. Since we were pups, they’ve told us the gods brought canids to life, taught them science and language. Now I wonder… could it be possible that these gods were… hic… flesh and blood, but super intelligent? Huh?”
Zamis, who of course hadn’t touched the brandy all night, picked up a chicken wing and pointed it at Richi. Yeyo perked up a little at the sight of meat.
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those fools who believe in extraterrestrials.”
Silence fell. Zamis could get a little bit rabid around religious stuff. All of them learned to avoid such matters, but during poker nights, they somehow always ended up there, thanks to Richi.
“No, I’m not talking about dumb aliens, oh great Zamis! I mean terrestrials from right here. Those mighty gods could have lived on this planet, could have been the first inhabitants before us.”
“Oh no, not this nonsense again!” Sísifo set his pipe aside and tossed a couple of chips into the pot. “I raise ten, you litter of mice.”
“I see your ten, wretch. Watch me lose this hand because of the mutt who won’t stop barking nonsense,” grumbled Gor, eyeing Richi and losing his patience.
Richi tried to lunge at Gor, but Yeyo held him back without stopping his gnawing on the chicken wing he’d stolen from Zamis. Gor outweighed Richi by two heads and at least thirty pounds. Everyone enjoyed the little guy’s bravado.
“Let me go at it! You’re all blind — blind, I tell you! You live with a leash around your neck and don’t even notice. I don’t know how you keep swallowing those stories about us being born from the stars, from eggs in the sky by the grace of the gods.”
Zamis shot to his feet, and Yeyo had to plant a raised leg on Zamis’s belly and perform an acrobatic stretch to keep Richi also at bay. Gor and Sísifo couldn’t help at all; they were laughing too hard, clutching their ribs. They were having the time of their lives watching chubby Yeyo gobble chicken while wrestling like mad to keep the troublemakers apart.
“I pity your sad lack of faith, little Richi,” Zamis foamed, grinding teeth. “But what can I do if you won’t accept the truth right in front of your snout?”
“Keep your lying truth! I won’t fall for it. It’s not my fault that most people can’t smell what’s in front of them before they gulp it down. You’ve got to use your nose! One can’t go through life believing every lie. It’s time for the truth to smack you in the head!” And with a leap, he stood on his chair; bending a knee on the table’s edge, he stared down over his four stunned friends who had not foreseen such a turn of events.
“What in blazes is he on about now?” asked Gor, amused. It had been a while since he slipped into his ‘savior of the world’ role. “Must be the mix of peanut beer and sweet potato rum — I warned him!”
But Richi was entranced. Sísifo nodded, chuckling, reclined in his chair, abandoning all hope of claiming the fortress of chips piled in the center of the table.
“Hear the ‘miracles’ the churches want us to swallow just like that,” Richi went on, counting with the little claws of his paw. “First, the earth was a hellhole — no forests, polluted, no food — and then, just when the environment gets fixed, after thousands of years, we suddenly fall from the sky. Just like that. How perfect! How lovely it all sounds, huh?”
“Do you think your squirrel brain can grasp even the smallest of divine mysteries?” Zamis jumped onto his chair as well, facing him.
Yeyo was getting tired of sumo-dancing between them. And worse, his stash of anti-alcoholic snacks dwindled by the second. He half-climbed the table to get in the middle, and the whole thing threatened to tip over like a casino boat surfing the mother of all storms.
“That’s where you’re wrong, you… mental weakling,” spat Richi, “because we do have the capacity—or weren’t we endowed with the gods’ own wisdom? That’s what your sacred texts say, don’t they? Tell the truth here in front of these gentlemen, go on! Have the guts to admit it for once in your life.”
Zamis’s fangs were starting to show beneath his trembling whiskers. “What would you know, with that face? Shut up already. I don’t have to admit anything to anyone.”
“No need, I know it all. We’re not special, not the chosen ones — we’re an experiment, lab rats; listen, y’all. The governments have tried to hide it, but I myself saw the photos of bones of the true four-legged ancestors.” Richi clawed at his shirt to show his own chest. “We’ve evolved. You can see the changes. But who modified those primitive dogs? Who gave them intelligence and stuck them in a balloon in the sky to wait for the exact moment to fall like spring rain?”
Nobody dared to answer the disheveled little guy staring at them. Richi raised an evil claw, like holding Zamis’ beating heart in his palm, and Gor hugged Sísifo as if they were about to see the grand finale of an epic play.
“Our masters will return,” growled evil Richi. “And when they do, you’ll have to kneel before them, and I will be laughing at last while you beg for mercy.” He faced Zamis, who was already stepping back. “What a happy day, and I’ll tell them to name you Zamis, the big fool!”
Richi’s evil cackles sounded like someone sawing cats. The whole gang was hypnotized by the sudden outburst of drooling madness. Zamis couldn’t take it anymore, and the long-awaited brawl of the night finally erupted. The table flew sideways like a giant coin. Only a couple of glasses and the heavy ashtray were saved. Poor Yeyo fell into the fray, and the fighters rolled like a giant furry ball that slammed hard against the wall behind them. Even the tapestry trembled from the impact. There they stayed, dazed, perhaps seeing those gods they argued so much about. Gor and Sísifo took their time hauling the groggy pair back to the table. They didn’t seem fit for another scuffle, so Richi and Zamis were left there, stunned, while the others cleaned up the mess.
* * *
“Richi, wake up. Drink this, blockhead.” Minutes later, Gor set a cup of coffee in front of him. Richi refused, but Gor held him and forced it down.
“Leave me alone, you mangy brute!” Richi looked around, trying to focus his eyes, and suddenly began digging through the piles of chips on the table. “Every time something gets unearthed, more and more proof appears that we’re descended from a superior civilization millions of years old.”
His voice had changed. It was barely a whisper now. Everyone fell silent before the cross-eyed face snarling at them like a crouched predator. Zamis was unconscious. Yeyo could finally abandon his role of referee. Chewing pork crackling, he sat next to Richi and joined him in excavating beneath the mountains of chips.
“There are pictographs in the ruins of Coca Cola City,” Richi told him so quietly that Gor and Sísifo had to approach to spy on the confabulating pals. “Who were those animals with flat-faced silhouettes? We’re not alone in the universe, my dear.”
Richi grabbed Yeyo by the shoulders, and the silly bulldog nodded with a chip stuck in one eye like a monocle.
“You have never been alone,” said Yeyo with his deep narrator voice, holding Richi’s shoulders at the same time. “We have always been here, but you don’t love us anymore.”
The other two held back their laughter as best they could. Growls escaped them. Sísifo nearly choked on his pipe smoke, and the ice cubes in Gor’s drink clinked wildly. Luckily, Zamis was asleep with his face buried in the velvet table. Gor raised an eyebrow and opened his jaws with exaggerated drama.
“You, sir, are a fraud and a scoundrel, devious Richard!”
Yeyo and Richi hugged, startled, and Gor continued his intervention.
“Those pictographs were obviously drawn by primitive canids to represent their gods, as the illustrious Mr. Zamis — here collapsed — has explained. In prehistoric times, they believed in the myth of the tailless creator. But that doesn’t mean they were our masters. In fact, I regret to inform you all that the only master here is me,” Gor declared, showing his cards.
The others froze in place as they counted Gor’s five spades cards: ten, jack, queen, king, and ace. A royal flush right under their cold noses! The surprise was so great that if a painter had been sitting there in that little parlor with his easel and fine brushes, he would have had more than enough time to capture on canvas the bizarre scene of the old friends playing poker.
"Dogs Playing Poker" Series by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge
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