And you came out shrieking. The womb opened up and set you free, slick and hideous. Your face was scrunched. Your head was a malformed cone from being pushed through your mother’s chute. The doctor slapped you on the ass or stuck a tube up your nose for suction. You sputtered, snorted, and began to bawl. You wailed red-faced and beat your fists at the air.

Round one. Begin.

You learn to crawl. Learn to walk. Learn to defecate in the toilet instead of in your pants. Your bones ache down to the marrow with growing pains. Time shoves you on the rack and starts cranking the chains to make your limbs longer. You’re a gangly thing. Together with others like you, you find people who are less or more gangly and laugh at them. Camaraderie.

Round two. Get in the ring boy, you ain’t done.

Say goodbye to the nest. It falls out from under you and you don’t have wings. Walk along the ground pecking at the breadcrumbs tumbling from higher perches. Get shit on by the birds sitting on those higher perches. Wait until the fat cat comes along and eats one of them. Watch the feathers float down. Hop out of the way of the blood spatter. Climb up and take their place. Corporate ladder.

Round three. Broken? Boy, please. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Find the love of your live. Give her your love without reserve. Reach your fingers into your chest and rip your heart out. Fall to your knees before her and hold it up still beating. Keep smiling as she plunges her acrylic nails into the ventricles with quiet pops. Keep moving until you find someone with packing tape and a defibrillator. Settle down, but mostly settle.

Round four. Tired already? Oh, there’s no throwing in the towel now.

Hate your job. Work it anyway. Enter the data you don’t care about to get a result that is meaningless to you. Turn in that project. Start another one that looks exactly the same. Give yourself ulcers with coffee to keep yourself awake. Pay a doctor to remove the ulcers. Pay a therapist to tell you why you still never wake up. The alarm is shrieking. It’s Monday again.

Round five. Relax. Put some ice on it and the swelling will go down.

Retirement has come. You’re back in diapers and have a rash. Turn on the TV and watch wheel of fortune. Notice your wife is knitting and wonder when she learned to knit. Look in the mirror and think about offering to play the crypt keeper if they ever do a remake. It’s half past five. Swallow your pills dry.

Round six. Push it to the end, baby.

Look around you. You’re in a hospital bed. People are smiling. There’s the kid you shoved a bully off of. There’s the guy you gave a job. There’s your kids who were never wanting. There’s your loyal wife.

Ding ding. That’s a match.

Death dealt the cards Jack had shuffled. His hands weren’t bony or pale; they were large hands with hardened callouses. His fingers flew gracefully, everything about the motion casual and relaxed.

“I need more time.”

Death smiled. It was a genuinely kind expression. It made his eyes crinkle warmly. They were blue like the sky, and there was nothing hollow about them. His face was fully fleshed, albeit chiseled. He wore a simple plaid button-up shirt and blue jeans. He smelled of a subtle cologne.

“That is why we are here, is it not?” He replied. “So you may buy yourself more time?”

Jack trembled. He picked up his hand, eyes flying over the cards. He looked better equipped to the name of Death than the entity before him. He was shriveled in his white hospital gown, his bald head gleaming under the single light hanging from the ceiling. A diaper was wrapped around his waist because he could no longer control his bowels.

He was thirty four.

“If I win,” he whispered. His tongue flicked over his lips like a worm checking for birds. “If I win, I get more time?”

Death fanned out his cards. They were spaced perfectly, and his kind eyes moved over them without giving anything away. “That is correct,” he replied. “Five more years added onto your life.”

Jack began to tremble harder. He felt the fear down to his bones. He felt wetness seep into the godawful diaper, smelled the sharpness of urine. Death did not flinch. Their hands moved in unison, and he felt as though he had no control over the motion of his own arm.

He had three tens. A three of a kind.

Death had a flush.

The tears immediately began to run hot down his cheeks. “One more,” he rasped. “Please, please one more.”

Death’s blue eyes watched his face. He said nothing. The silence made him angry, and he stood, slamming his fists against the table so the cards shook and tumbled over the edge.

“It’s not fair! I…I’m not ready to die!”

Death continued to watch him. He reached out for a card and begin to spin it slowly, end over end, just fast enough that Jack couldn’t make out what it was. Still he said nothing.

But an ashtray appeared in the middle of the table.

Jack stared at it. The tears dammed up, and he felt a knot form in his throat. The ashes were full to the brim, nearly overflowing.

“How long would it take to fill that?” Death murmured.

Jack swiped his hands over his face. “A day,” he replied. “Maybe.”

The ashtray disappeared. In its place bloomed a bottle of rum, the amber liquid inside sloshing gently. It was half empty.

Death didn’t need to ask. Jack whispered, “One night.”

Sheets of paper unrolled across the table’s surface. He couldn’t bear to look at the doctor’s signatures, the warning signs, the omens from check-ups that he always ignored.

Silence reigned again until the bottle cracked. The glass fractured, and its contents spilled out, seeping into the paper like blood. Jack sat down again and raised his gaze back to the man across from him.

The spinning card came to a stop. The Jack of Diamonds stared out from it, boasting his own face.

“You shuffled this deck, Jack. You controlled the cards you were given. You were the master of your own fate.” For just a moment, a fleeting second, he thought he saw pain flash across the man’s kindly face. “Not everyone is so privileged.”

Death leaned forward. The card grew bigger, and the light faded as it encompassed his vision.

“The hand you were dealt was the one you made.”