Skeleton Jed Barstow was looking for a tactical shotgun. Extra potent at close range, pump action, nice and manoeuvrable. He would’ve had it three days ago, if the hands he got dealt were even remotely fair. You’ve got a 30% chance of making a pair on the flop in Texas hold ’em. Ten hands, three fighting chances. Despite his love of odds and probability, in the game of life it seemed Skeleton Jed was a statistical anomaly, and got fucked every single time.
He should’ve known it’d end like this. Unknown representatives of the worst organisation in the city on their way, and him still empty-handed. These were wild dogs, diseased, hungry, and deranged. The type you never borrow money from. The type whose polished shoes you don’t want treading your carpet under any circumstances. He’d taken the cash anyway, just another in a string of bad decisions. It had to turn at some point though, didn’t it? Funny, how quitting poker didn’t make him any less of a gambler.
Skeleton Jed had sworn to himself he’d never lay another one of his long, white, bony fingers on a card. He was done with poker. He needed something with better odds. Inside his apartment, skeletal hands rested a few centimetres from a glowing gamer’s keyboard. Despite the tension in the room they remained still. A can of Red Bull sat within reach of the right hand, and next to it, an up-ended bottle of NoDoz with its pills spilling out. A 32-inch monitor rose above the assorted takeaway boxes cluttering the rest of the desk. Like a blue campfire, the screen cast its glare in a tight circle, hiding things in the darkness outside its range: a mattress with tangled sheets, a pack of playing cards in an aluminium trash can, a cavernous hall leading to the front door. There was a camera above the hall doorway and its red light blinked occasionally, like the eye of an evil bat … half asleep.
There was no poker on the display, just the pause menu of a Wild-West-themed video game showing digital loot boxes for sale, each painted with a black question mark. Rough words painted on a wooden signpost declared Win and Grin Partner: Weapon Lottery. There was a bleep from a set of speakers hidden under the takeaway detritus. A message flashed on the screen. Congratulations! Your Both Barrels Crate contained: Antique Silver Rapier. Click yes to accept.The long-fingered hands on the desk stayed where they were, pale blue under the light of the display. No cursor moved, yet the ‘yes’ button appeared to have been clicked. To all appearances there was a ghost in the machine. One who didn’t care about playing Both Barrels, just the in-game items.
Skeleton Jed didn’t have much in the way of looks, hence the name. Rakish and rangy, with luminous skin and sharp cheekbones, he didn’t do well in the bars along the famed Black Cat Alley. Fish in a barrel he’d been told, but again, the odds were mysteriously stacked against him. Words tumbled in his head and slipped out in the wrong order. There never seemed to be anywhere to put his hands. Those long fingers could code though. Probably too well, by his own admission.
He’d known for weeks of course, that some sort of script was the only way. Anyone manually using the mouse and keyboard to purchase the loot boxes legally didn’t stand a chance. It had only taken him half an hour to write some code that exploited a vulnerability on the data access layer of the platform’s e-commerce system, including a neat little sub-routine to ward off eager security bots. The last thing he wanted was to get banned from the Both Barrels servers. At the time he’d thought it was laughably easy. He’d even written the eBay ad, ‘Tactical Shotgun, serious buyers only.’
The loan shark had sent another email two days previous, seemingly from Hammond’s Master Printers. At first, he’d found it amusing, their desire to conform to every gangster movie stereotype. The ridiculous front company. Even the lowered Chrysler 300 in front of their sham office building made him shake his head. After their emails though, it stopped being funny. This most recent one had said they’d be visiting at midnight sharp in two days, to repossess anything of value and repair their reputation. It had been followed by a text. We’re going to shatter your skeleton, Skeleton. He recognized the number. Carl, calls himself Febs, Febbrano. They didn’t care if he knew who sent it.
The in-game clock on the screen read 11.21. The computer humming under the desk would be the first victim. Hawked at some pawn shop for half its real value. Skeleton Jed winced and squeezed his smartphone so hard it made a sound like popping candy. The speakers bleeped again, another item. A golden Glock. Useless. Only the Tactical Shotgun could deliver the cash he needed. Both Barrels fans had gone mad when it surfaced that there was an edge to be gained in competitive online play. Ethical debate raged. Meanwhile, game accounts with the shotgun attached were going on eBay for twenty grand. The ultimate digital status symbol.
11.39. Another bleep. It appears you’re purchasing more than your usual amount of crates today, are you sure you want to continue? Yes. Just part of the game’s political window dressing, front-end stuff, not connected to anything important. Skeleton Jed had checked. Still, every transaction was costing him a few cents, draining the last drips of his bank account. Refunds or cancellation hacks hadn’t been an option, at this scale the admins would’ve been on him in a flash. His code exploited their lazy approach to incoming funds, and duped the system into thinking it was being paid more than it was. Nobody looks twice when they’re making money. Shit Jed, he thought, if you’re so smart, where’s the bloody shotgun then?
Skeleton Jed’s cheap and baggy suit had sleeves that came down to the first set of knuckles. A plastic ring with a fake emerald he’d got from a gumball machine adorned a bony ring finger. Jet black hair shining blue in the light of the screen hung down across the suit’s padded shoulders. Hollow eyes remained fixed on the screen. It was 11.45. Another bleep, another useless weapon. Maybe the Both Barrels programmers had injected a patch to remove the shotgun from the game. Unlikely but not impossible.
Skeleton Jed pushed the thought away. Twenty grand could fix it. This next loot box could be the one. Another bleep, still nothing. 11.55. They’d be here any second now. Hammond’s Master Printers were nothing if not punctual. Twenty grand could fix it though, twenty grand could fix—
Heavy thumps vibrated through the room.
“Payment is overdue Skeleton. Open up for your old pal Carl, we don’t ask twice.”
Hollow eyes continued to bore into the screen, a rictus grin completing the waxen visage. He might as well see it through to the bitter end. There was a long pause, interrupted only by the speakers bleeping. It appears you’re purchasing more than your usual amount of crates today, are you sure you want to continue? Yes…
Crash. The door splintered on its hinges and two men in suits came stumbling into the room, the first of them holding a baseball bat. He had thick wide lips, smile wrinkles, and wet hair slicked back. In the doorway behind him, a younger man with a broad chest and crew cut glanced nervously at the empty street. Their heads and shoulders held the fresh sheen of rain. There was a moment of quiet, just the rain falling and the traffic outside. The first of the men held his bat up behind his head, as if he were about to swing for a home run. They edged forward.
Heavy footsteps on the fluffy hall carpet. The bat swished through the air and struck the skull with a hollow crack. The entire plastic skeleton crumpled to the floor. The strike was so hard the wig fell into the computer chair.
“Fucking Skeleton,” the batter said.
“Over here, Febs,” the younger one said, nodding at the security camera above the hall doorway.
Febs turned and pointed his weapon. “You watching Skeleton boy? We’re going to— what the?”
There was a double bleep from the speakers and a short fanfare. A message popped up. Congratulations! Your Both Barrels Crate contained: Tactical Shotgun. Click yes to—
“What is this shit?” Febs said, tapping the keyboard with his bat. Lines of code began scrolling, and a message appeared in a black terminal window. Skeleton injection interrupted. Press (y) to continue, (x) to close script.
Febs shook his head. “You got time for video games, Skeleton?”
Fifty kilometres away, on a seedy hotel bed, Skeleton Jed sat up with his phone. He yelled at the video feed on screen. “No! Don’t!”
Febs was already crouching and reaching for the power cable. The screen on the desk went blank.
“Nooooo!!!”
Febs stood, swiped a hand through his glistening hair, and approached the security camera, his face suddenly huge and menacing on the phone’s screen. The lips were wide and white in the camera’s night vision, the teeth exposed. A smile on loan from The Joker.
“Be seeing you real soon,” Febs growled, and swung the bat. There was a pop on the phone’s video feed, then nothing but static.
#
Sean Melrose-Aukema is a fiction writer, copywriter, and former sports journalist from Australia. You can find more of his work in Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Shotgun Honey, and Bristol Noir. He lives in Norway with his family.
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