Flirting in Space

“I’m dead. Aren’t I?” the girl asked as a roulette machine dropped from the bar ceiling like a chandelier.

The barman looked up at her for the first time since she came in. He set the glass in his hand down and nodded toward a velvet chair suspended mid-air. “Sit.”

“I’m not jumping up.” The girl rubbed her eye, mentally measuring the distance from the ground.

“I see,” he replied.

The velvet barstool lowered itself until it aligned with the roulette table. The barman stepped aside and gestured again.

She trudged over, her right leg weighing her down. It felt heavier than it should have. Catching the faint lift of his brows, she quickened her pace out of spite. She lowered herself onto the chair. “This is the dumbest purgatory game.”

The barman took a napkin and wiped the dust from the wheel’s edge. “What makes you say it’s purgatory?”

“Easy.” She tapped her fingers against the table. “This is going to determine whether I go to heaven or hell.”

“Mm.” He picked up a small white ball and turned it between his fingers. “You’re religious, then?”

“No.”

His hand hovered over the wheel. “Red or black?”

“I don’t care.”

“You have to choose.”

His tone irritated her. She picked at a wet leaf stuck to her shirt and dropped it onto the table. She couldn’t remember where it had come from. It didn’t matter. “What if I don’t?”

“Then you stay until you do.”

He didn’t react to the dirt on the table. That irritated her more.

She spun the chair away from him. It creaked beneath her. She spun again, faster. With each turn, the seat dipped lower. She was light. It didn’t make sense. Eventually the jolts blurred together and left her dizzy.

“Fine,” she said, straightening. “Black. Eighteen.”

“Sorry. There are no numbers.”

She glanced down. Only sections of red and black.

“Black, then,” he said, readying the spin.

He bent forward. His black hair caught the dim red light. It looked dense, swallowing the red into a void. Something about it annoyed her.

“I changed my mind. Red.”

“Okay.” He shrugged, set the wheel in motion, and sent the ball in the opposite direction. “Red it is.”

The wheel began its steady clicking.

“How do I know you’re not cheating?”

“You don’t.”

She leaned forward. “I’ll watch it.”

“You care?”

“No,” she said quickly. “You just seem like you don’t like me.”

“I’m impartial to you.”

Her eyes stung. “Right.”

The ball circled, again and again. The rhythm didn’t shift. The longer it continued, the more her ankle began to itch. A dull soreness, growing sharper with each rotation.

It didn’t wobble. It didn’t slow. Each turn matched the last.

She adjusted her position. “I can’t remember.”

“What exactly?”

“How I died.”

She pulled her right leg up, but the chair gave way beneath her again, lowering slightly. She shifted, tried again. Nothing came. Not her name. Not anything. There were no mirrors. No glass, no reflection in the polished wood. Only strands of dark hair falling over her chest.

The clicking pressed against her temples.

“How long is this going to keep spinning?”

“Until it lands.”

She watched for it to falter. For some small drag in the movement. A break in the pattern.

“If you tell me how I died, will it stop sooner?”

“You have a lot of questions. Why start at the end? Why not ask who you were?”

“I’m dead,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“People usually ask.”

“Then I wouldn’t want your voice to get hoarse before the next person.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Your description is quite short.”

“So what?” Her voice thinned. “I wasn’t interesting enough?”

“Interesting?”

“Stop probing me,” She looked up at him. “It won’t work.”

“It already has.”

“I didn’t tell you anything.”

“You chose a colour.”

“You forced me.”

“I didn’t.”

“You said I had to choose.”

“And you did.”

“Screw this.”

She pushed back, trying to stand. Her legs failed her. She dropped, catching herself against the chair, her arms gripping the velvet.

She winced. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing.”

He hadn’t moved.

The wheel continued. Faster now, the colours beginning to blur, edges dissolving into one another.

“Stop this.”

“Do you not feel cold?”

Her clothes clung to her. When she shifted, the dampness shifted with her.

Her breath caught. “I drowned?”

“Your foot must hurt.”

The ache sharpened. She looked down.

A ball and chain wrapped her ankle.

Her throat tightened. She folded in on herself, coughing, her body curling at the base of the chair.

It came back in fragments.

Cold tiles against her cheek.
Walking without direction.
Music pressing against her skull.
Unread messages stacking.
Lives imagined, never reached.

“Please,” she coughed. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“But you were certain,” he said. “You bet on red.”

“I didn’t—I—”

“This is just roulette.”

“It has to land.”

She rolled onto her back. Something rose in her throat, thick, heavy, refusing to settle. She swallowed, but it didn’t go down.

Her breath hitched. “Just tell me what colour.”

“I never said it would land on a colour.”

She coughed. Water slipped past her lips, spilling onto the floor beneath her. She turned onto her side, choking, her body folding in on itself as if trying to hold it back in.

The wheel kept its rhythm.

She tried to inhale. It came in shallow, interrupted. Another cough. More water. It didn’t stop.

The sound did not change.