Logs:Fun and Profit
| Fun and Profit | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2023-07-19 "I'unno about soon either, but someone better sue the crap outta this place." |
| Location | |
The sign on the door to this rec room hasn't been vandalized, but it is in fact far more frequently wrecked than the (w)rec(k) room on the other side of the wing. The layout is similar save for the lack of a television, though there is a bracket on the wall where one was presumably at some point mounted. The furniture is older, or perhaps just more heavily abused, strained and scarred and wobbly if not outright broken. The main recreational activity here consists of card games, mostly thought not exclusively poker. Unlike in the other rec room, there is extensive and not particularly discreet gambling here, which in turn lead to extensive and not particularly discreet fighting. It's rumored there's betting on the fights, as well, and that the guards have been bribed to look the other way, but it's probably best not to interrogate such rumors too closely. "Shoot." Roscoe drops his hand (three of a kind) onto the rickety card table, giving the pot in the center a woeful, miserable look. He has contributed heavily to this game; he is, with a sigh, about to contribute more, producing a small handful of cigarettes to replenish his little betting pool. Probably he thinks he can still turn this around. Certainly he is going to try -- he is already reaching for the deck of cards to reshuffle it. "I used to kill at poker," he says moodily, then bridges the deck, as though the sad thwipipipipip of the cards slotting into their stack is finishing the sentence for him. "Kill who, though, some old white ladies?" Nanami is not winning, for sure, but she's not (currently) losing to Roscoe, so here at least she is summoning up a touch of smug. Less smug when she eyes her own contribution to the pot, chit tallying how much in mail stamps she's already lost here before looking up at their third player. "This blind thing it's been a con this whole time maybe," she's wondering -- seriously? jokingly? It is hard to tell, "let your guard down then take allll the pot." Echo is frowning at her winnings in some evident amount of disbelief. "I thought I was going to learn, I dunno, precalc this summer, not how to mutant louder and win a round of poker for once in my life." She scrunches her face at Nanami as she swipes the cards she's been dealt up to six inches in front of her eyes, trying to put them in order. "What, do I have to see far when the game's two feet in front of me? Not like we're gonna admire the sky again anytime soon." Roscoe peeks at his cards, then sets them back face-down in front of him, wrinkling his nose. At his hand? No -- at the mention of precalculus. "Ugh, I used to be good at math too," he says. He rubs the heels of his hands over his eyes, then sighs heavily. "Your bet," he says, to Nanami. "Mebbe!" Nanami shrugs a shoulder, watching Echo peer up-close at her cards. "I wen try fo figuring out what all your squinting means for bets but," her sigh is exaggerated as she slumps back in her chair and reaches to add a few more stamps to her tally, "turns out just means you still can't see." She clicks her tongue dismissively, tipping her eyes up towards the ceiling as if she could see the sky past it. "No faith, huh. You hear all the guards talk? They got big worry. Looking for new jobs now, half of them. Sky's not so far away." Echo grunts, though the side of her mouth quirks up a little as she, too, raises her eyes...up to the shadow that has abruptly fallen over them. Preacher Price is staring down at the teenagers with his meaty hand outstretched, caught in a moment of indecision. "You -- no, wait you -- fuck, what kind of heathen name is Zee-in, anyway? No wonder you people end up as freaks, the Lord in his wisdom --" Echo stands up fast, not that this spares her either the lecture or the unpleasant yank on her wrist. Her teeth click together and her mouth moves silently through -- the syllables of her name? After a second, her posture wilts as she's dragged off from the table. "Guess you can add all mine back to the pot," she calls resignedly over her shoulder. The cigarettes are out of view as soon as Preacher Price looms over the table, pressed under Roscoe's palm. "Naw, we'll save it for you," he says, as Echo departs, but even before she's out of earshot he is going ahead and sliding her winnings back into the center of the table. While he's at it, he looks at her hand, and whistles under his breath -- "Girl was about to sweep this round, too." He returns most of the cigarettes to the pot (almost certainly he has stolen one back), but he doesn't move to restart the round. "You think you're getting out of here soon," he says; it's not, really, a question. "Who we blame for you people all ending up monsters, then?" is muttered, lower under Nanami's breath as Echo is pulled away. The sympathetic glance she flashes the other girl is very brief, soon dropped back into a scowl down at her cards. The scowl is mitigated -- just a little -- by the larger-amassing pot in the center of the table. "You hear the buzz, yeah? You think they keep their torture-children contract after alla dis? I think we all --" Well, here she hesitates, glancing across the rec room to a different table -- all older than them, most rumored to be in here for more violent crimes. "-- tink we mostly get out. Soon, I no know. What you think?" "I've been saying," Roscoe says emphatically. "Naomi's been talking like you're all gonna get disappeared in the night -- the whole country knows you're here. You prob'ly got like fifty thousand people on change dot org crying about you and telling people on Insta to call their senators." He slouches back in his folding chair, casts his own dubious glance around at their fellow inmates. "I'unno about soon either, but someone better sue the crap outta this place." "Tink we wen blow that one when we attack this place," Nanami says with a quick bark of a laugh, "but you, though, maybe you go sue. People they get big squicked by eye things, yeah? Tell Oprah some shitfuck he try fo steal your eyes." Her mouth twists to the side as she considers Roscoe. "Just don't actually lose 'em, yeah? End up like Spence's dad. You get one eyepatch, you'd have to change your whole look..." But here she's trailing off, looking down at her own scrubs -- over at Roscoe's identical ones. "Hard to picture you in normal clothes." She's set her cards down now, both her hands lifting with thumbs and forefingers framing Roscoe's face in a slightly-askew rectangle. "For all I know, outside here you some total cover boy. Fashion influencer." Roscoe grins -- "Some shitfuck did want my eyes," he says; this verges somehow on a boast. He crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue for Nanami's finger-Polaroid, just for a moment, before his expression lapses into a vaguely faraway frown. "Prob'ly none of my normal clothes even fit me anymore," he says. "Gonna have to buy a whole new wardrobe. I feel like nobody is gonna even recognize me, time I get out of here." "Hoshit, fo real?" Nanami's hands drop and she's looking at Roscoe closer, as if maybe one of his eyes might secretly be a fake. She sits back with an almost disappointed look when they turn out to both still be real. "-- missed a trick earlier, if we got anyone out, coulda used that reward money fo get some new wardrobe." The slump of her shoulders here is maybe disproportionate to the thought of Roscoe's Lost Clothing Budget. For a second her fingers drum against the back of her cards where they lie on the table, her eyes fixed on the too-big pot in the center. "I'm gonna be so pissed if some shitfuck's getting that." Surely Roscoe is used to people staring into his eyes, by now, but he still gives Nanami a squinty side-eye. It relaxes slightly when she speaks again. "Pssh. I'll just use my money from going on Oprah." His smile at this is nearly a grimace. "These shitfucks make bank here and we're out here gambling with stamps." "Yah, you good at math and all, when you get out, you gotta pay attention in school," Nanami is urging Roscoe very seriously, "go to college, get one whole degree, one day you, too, can rake in some fat stacks torturing minors for fun." A very small frown. "Fun and profit." "Shoot, they won't take me unless I have three degrees, minimum." Roscoe is picking up his cards again, flicking one of his cigarettes to roll it into the pot. "That'd make my mom happy, I guess." "Time you get out of here you'll get three easy, go one those hippie colleges lets you create your own major." Nanami is counting these potential degrees off on her fingers. "Eavesdropping, you a pro. Sucking up --" She eyes the table contemplatively, "-- not poker, uhh," she pokes her tongue into the side of her cheek before deciding, "you could write a whole dissertation for some kine criminal justice degree, I bet. -- what kine ting your mom want you to do? Tell her you have hard evidence med school makes you evil." "I'm very good at poker usually," Roscoe protests. "When my eyes work." He has, apparently, no defense for Nanami's other accusations. "My mom wanted me to go to Harvard. Be a supergenius. Make a ton of money. Maybe," he is warming to this idea, "I sue Lassiter for a million dollars and just skip the first two steps." "Got a solid plan then." Nanami's brows lift, an amused smile hooking up at her lips. "-- 'cept, all this suing, sounds like you'll be halfway to a lawyer already. Maybe accidentally do your mom proud anyway." "Pssh," says Roscoe again, very doubtfully, but he is not quite managing to stifle his own smile. | |
