Homemade Sin by V. Mark Covington

her head say, “Stealing isn’t right.”
    â€œWho said that?” Dee Dee scanned the room. “Where are you?”
    â€œDown here,” said Stinky. He smiled up at her, his green eyes glowing in the moonlight.
    â€œSo you can talk?” Dee Dee whispered.
    â€œYes, and I can tell Roland his new chef is a thief.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you talk to me before?”
    â€œBecause I didn’t have anything to blackmail you with … before.”
    Dee Dee could hear the tone of superiority in the voice. “I’m just borrowing it,” Dee Dee said. “When I win at the casino boat tonight I’ll put back what I borrowed and keep the winnings. I’m gonna win tonight, I can feel it. And, besides, I can tell him you’re stealing his voodoo stuff,” countered Dee Dee, nudging the glass vial with the toe of her shoe.
    â€œI’m just borrowing it,” Stinky mocked.
    Dee Dee and Stinky stared each other Mexican-standoffishly.
    â€œOK, crazy fish cutter,” said Stinky. “I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.”

    There is some subconscious instinct, some unwritten rule that says you must squander ill-gotten gains as quickly as possible. Some strange force compels people, who have been successful in stealing, winning, or conning the universe out of a wad of money, to piss it away on a whim … like lottery winners who somehow manage to squander millions in a matter of months and end up worse off than before their winning number came up.
    Or maybe it’s just stupidity.
    Whatever the motivation, later that night Cutter Andrews still sat at the poker table, twelve hours after he had first plopped down a stack of chips, visions of winning a fortune dancing in his head. The casino had queried Hussey’s bank account from the joint account ATM card and advanced Cutter thirty thousand dollars against the account balance. Cutter had parlayed the money into close to fifty thousand dollars in his first two hours at the gaming table. In the following two hours he had managed to lose his winnings as well as ten thousand dollars of Hussey’s money. He knew he should quit before he lost any more of it. A nagging little voice in his head told him to get up, walk over to the cashier and cash out. He stared at the twenty thousand dollars’ worth of chips left stacked in front of him. Ignoring the little voice, he anteed up for the next hand.
    â€œWhy do we do it?” said Dee Dee to no one in particular as she stared at her cards. “Why do we keep fixing a beat-up old car time after time when we could have bought a new one for less? Or stay in the same rotten relationship long after we know we should have moved on? Why do we sit at the poker table when we keep losing and losing? Maybe we all are all dumber than dirt.” Dee Dee had been on a horrible losing streak all evening. She had lost all of the money she had stolen from the till and maxed out her credit card with a twenty thousand dollar advance.
    Dee Dee, proudly displaying an IQ marginally above dirt, held on to her ace and dropped the other cards face down on the felt-covered table. Luckily she was breathtakingly beautiful and the universe looks out for drunks, idiots and beautiful women. And, lucky for Dee Dee, there was always someone even more stupid. Tonight the Buzzards of Destiny were shining on her. As fate would have it, that person happened to be sitting the same gaming table.
    Cutter Andrews, a man who would have to be graded on a curve to get better marks than dirt, sat across from Dee Dee frowning at a handful of cards. As the game progressed, Dee Dee kept stealing glances at Cutter. She noticed his muscled arms in his polo shirt, his tousled sandy hair and his dazzling crooked smile.
    Dee Dee fell in lust with this five-card stud.
    â€œAce hole! Gonna club you to death you stinking ace-hole,” Dee Dee snarled, staring at the lone card in her