Guns & Roses

Chapter 33

                                   [Sheriff]

"Go Fish!"
Deimos slammed the card down onto the discard pile, leaving everyone else rather confused.

"We're playing poker!"
Sanford was clearly at patience's end with them, as they'd interrupted the game multiple times before it had really even started.

"I don't know how to play poker!"
Deimos dropped his remaining cards, crossing their arms as they were clearly frustrated as well.

"We've told you three times!"
Sanford dropped their cards as well, on the verge of yelling.

"Well I don't get it!"
By this point, Sheriff was starting to feel nervous, as he didn't want a fight when they had so little resources left. So, he decided to intervene before things blew up much more.

"Fellas, it's fine! We can play something else."
He couldn't help but feel intimidated when both pairs of eyes landed on him, though he calmed himself knowing that it wasn't ill intended. A couple seconds of silence passed before Sanford sighed, visibly letting off some steam in the process.

"Fine. What else can we play?"
Their tone was still annoyed, though it was much more restrained. Sheriff mulled over the games he knew, gathering the cards off the ground as he did.

"We could play blackjack, hearts, war, bullshit..."
He stopped for a second, trying to recall some other ones as he idly shuffled the cards with the overhand method.

"Even something like snap or... crazy eights."
There was a temptation to offer go fish, but he wasn't sure if it would stir any more trouble.

"The hell is 'bullshit'?"
Deimos said it as if the word were foreign to him, as they seemed immediately distracted from their frustration.

"It's simple," Sheriff stopped, straightening out the deck before starting to pass out cards to everyone, "We have a pile in the middle and the goal is to get rid of all our cards."

Sanford looked at him, clearly confused.
"So why the name?"
Once he asked, he glanced at his hand.

"That's the fun part. You have to place your cards in pairs of the same ranks facedown, but you're allowed to lie."
Sheriff finished dividing the cards among all of them, taking a second to peek at his own cards, to which he realised he ended up with one extra and was playing at a slight disadvantage.

"If you get caught lying, you pick up all the cards that have been played. That's what I remember of the game anyway."
After the explanation, the other two seemed to come to an understanding, of which Deimos showed a great deal of interest in the game once he got it.

"So what do we say if we think someone's lying?"
Deimos was looking over their cards with a dumb grin, letting Sheriff know their poker face was probably terrible.

"Well, you call bullshit."
That seemed to get a quiet chuckle out of them, as they began moving the cards around in their hand, probably to match them up better. That was, until they looked up past Sanford, to which their face dropped into a frown.

"I don't think we'll have time for a game."
Deimos pointed to where they'd been looking, to which Sheriff shuffled to see what they were referring to, as Sanford turned at the same time as him for likely the same reason.

In the distance a camo pickup was barreling toward them, spraying clouds of dust behind it as it went. Sheriff felt a sense of panic once he noticed it had one of those mountable guns on top of it, though he kept his cool seeing as the others didn't seem that bothered by it.

Nervously, he glanced back between the other two. "Should we pack up?"

Sanford turned back to the circle they'd been sitting in, nodding slowly before replying.
"Yeah. Yeah, we need to get going soon."