Demons in the Jungle

Chapter 1

I: Lion or Gazelle

"The choices you have made in your life...have brought you here."

- Vaas Montenegro, "The Far Cry Experience"

Chapter 1

I glanced down at my cards once more, briefly lifting them from the table. An ace and a three. I looked up again at the center of the table. Fifteen large in the pot, mostly my own, won back slowly through the night. Didn't care about that, though. Five cards sitting by the pot: ace, king, three, four. I had two pair. Hard to beat...but not impossible. I looked up at the other players, and immediately found Ariel glaring at me.

"Quit fucking around, Tommy!" She whined, her cards hiding the bitchy face she was making. "It's on you!"

I held up a defensive finger and looked at my cards again. "Poker is a subtle game, baby." I told her, drunken bravado in my voice. "You have to be careful."

Ariel rolled her eyes as the two local men glanced to each other and exchanged quick, hushed words in Portuguese. "They sound pissed." Jay slurred from his seat behind me. "What are they-" he hiccuped, "-saying?"

Ariel looked to me with a kind of knowing smirk, slanted slightly by alcohol intake. "They think they know your tells." She said cautiously.

"Ah." I said, looking from one of the men to the other and then back at Ariel. We'd been playing all night, Ariel providing translation while I'd let the men take some of my money so that they'd keep playing and the party would keep going. Now that I was trying, they didn't seem to be having as much fun. "Do they know my tells?" I asked casually.

"Yes." Ariel said simply, bringing her drink to her face.

I frowned slightly, looking at my cards again. I was a pretty good poker player. I knew my own tells, and had kept giving them false hope, even now. They thought I was bluffing, but as near as I could tell, I wasn't. Them on the other hand...one had an obvious tell, flicking his eyes down and to the right whenever he checked or called. The other man, a fisherman with more wrinkles on his face than normal skin, was completely fucking inscrutable. I had no idea what that tiny, wiry Latino man was thinking.

"All right, call." I said, and laid my cards face up.

I looked around as the cards were shown. The first man, as I expected, had nothing, throwing his cards down with an annoyed "hmph" and pushing out his chair. The other, the inscrutable one, had even less. Ariel had a pair of kings, but I had still beat them all into complete submission.

"Thank you all very much, you're too kind." I said proudly, raking in the pot as the other players groaned loudly. One of the men got up and left, but the other, the inscrutable one, let out a hearty laugh and pointed at me, saying something enthusiastically. I looked to Ariel curiously.

"He said he knew you were up to something." She said, crossing her arms and regarding the man with raised eyebrows. "He figured out that you were faking your tells. He says he's impressed."

"Hey, not as impressive as you, my friend." I said, sliding a small handful of bills his way to pay for his drinks. Ariel translated shakily, looking annoyed at having to do so. "As far as I can tell, you don't even have a goddamn tell!"

The man laughed and then accepted the cash graciously. He stood, saying something short and friendly to Ariel before leaving. "Is he done for the night, too?" Jay asked from behind me. "Tired of losing his money?"

"I guess so." Ariel said with a shrug.

"Well, I'm not done." I said, gesturing to the waitress behind the bar. "Let's get some more goddamn drinks!"