Huángsè Fire Clover

Felix was inside the abortion clinic because he worked there. Seven years ago, he was sent to Uganda to teach combat marksmanship tactics to Ugandan soldiers, so they could fight back against the LRA insurgency led by Joseph Kony. On an ill-advised morning run, Felix was captured by guerilla fighters and taken to an LRA compound. They tortured Felix for information, clubbing and burning him, but he never gave in. At one point, they choked him with a horseshoe from behind the chair he was tied to and nearly crushed his esophagus. By some stroke of luck, he escaped one morning. Unfortunately, on his way out of the compound where he’d been held captive, there was a boy guarding the gate. Next to the boy was a flower garden he’d dug, planted, and tended to all on his own. He couldn’t have been older than seven. Felix killed him. He strangled the boy until he could not breathe. For a time, when Felix would remember this, he too could not breathe. Felix needed to go to the military hospital since he was missing lots of blood.

Felix was inside the abortion clinic because it took a year’s worth of schooling to get the required nurse’s license to work there. That was easy for a veteran without a college degree to complete. When he was in the military hospital after the torturing, Felix had a nurse keeping him company. She told him he was lucky to be alive what with the blood loss. They were able to have a lot of conversations because, at the time, the ward was relatively empty. He had talked to a nurse, and now he was a nurse, the same exact thing. While Felix was in the hospital, the nurse made sure he was alive and well, though she could not stop him from throwing up his food in the beginning. Apparently he had also experienced cardiological trauma from the stress of the torture, but the nurse and the rest of the staff helped to rehabilitate him so that he was able to resume his morning run, this time strictly on hospital grounds. The nurse, Jackie, chose her profession because she came from a military family; Her brother was in the air force, her father was a quartermaster for the air force, and his father before him. Jackie told Felix this. Jackie also told Felix something about Uganda’s diamond exports that she’d read in a newspaper. One night, Felix laid awake, thinking his luck was finally changing.

Felix was still inside the abortion clinic, and this is at the same instant as before, because he hadn’t gotten off work yet. No one was in for an appointment at the moment, and his shift was about to end anyway, so he asked if he could leave. “Yes,” so Felix left. The clinic was along a main road that ran up a hill, and Felix had to walk up the sidewalk to the parking lot where he parked his car. The sun was out now, but there was a forecast for rain later. He was over halfway to the lot when he got a tap on his shoulder, and he turned. It was Jackie. She asked, “Felix?” Jackie was walking up the sidewalk by coincidence when she saw Felix leave the abortion clinic. The possibility of seeing one another again seemed so low that Jackie didn't believe it was him. Felix leaving from an abortion clinic made her more doubtful that it was him, *what a weird place to meet someone*, she thought, and she figured the odds were even lower, though, when she considered this as a meeting between her and Felix, she thought it was befitting.

“How long has it been, jeez?” Felix said after their initial greetings.

“Gosh, I don’t know. Years. I almost didn’t think it was you!” They shared a chuckle.

Then Felix, realizing what she had meant, said, “Oh! You mean- I work there! I’m a nurse! Just like you were a nurse, ha ha!” Felix didn’t see a diamond ring on her finger.

“Oh.” There was an awkward silence.

“Um, I’m walking to my car, but maybe we could exchange numbers and get dinner sometime? It’s really great to see you again,” Felix patted his pockets, “actually, I left my phone back there -what are the odds?- but I could give you my number.”

“Alright.” Felix gave her his number number-by-number and offered a hug as a goodbye, which Jackie reluctantly accepted. Things seemed to be going well, but Jackie was a Catholic because a man she happened to fall in love with was another one, so she converted and decided to keep it up after the end of the relationship. It’s interesting how people you meet and decide not to meet again can change what you do and think. For example, Jackie would never eat dinner with a baby-killer, and she thought Felix was a baby-killer. Felix agreed that he was a baby-killer. This thought had haunted him for years, and he also blew that chance encounter with Jackie. Felix could add that to the list of failures he’d had with women. Every time Felix had sex, things would be going well, and then some bad luck would hit, and his ability to perform would leave him. When he returned to the clinic’s lobby, Felix fainted.

When Felix woke up, hours into the evening, he was in the hospital. The doctors told him he was a cancerous baby-killer, so Felix took them at their word and drove to the liquor store. His lung cancer was fine enough to leave, he said. Felix didn’t smoke. It was just some bad luck. At the liquor store, he bought liquor, then he drank some in his car, peeled out of the diamond parking lot, and drove drunk, drinking the rest of the liquor on his way to the casino where he believed he could change his luck. Now it was raining. Even with the rain, he didn’t hit anyone, so it was fine that he drove drunk. Already a good sign. At the casino, he got a hundred dollars in chips and hit the blackjack tables. A pit boss told the guy next to Felix that he had to get up because the pit boss thought he was counting cards. Felix thought it was more fun to just rely on his luck, which wasn’t very good seeing as he was a baby-killer who had stomach cancer. Felix won a lot more money than he sat at the table with. Chips came in spades, making Felix a better person. The excitement gave him trouble breathing, or maybe that was the cancer? The pit boss told Felix that he had to get up because the pit boss thought he was counting cards. Felix walked away, holding his chest where his heart was, and came to a roulette table where a guy put one hundred thousand dollars in chips on black seven. That same guy lost one hundred thousand dollars in one night at a casino. Felix tapped him on the shoulder.

“Why did you do that?” Felix asked politely. The man turned. Felix thought the man’s face oddly resembled that of a horse.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about it. I’m not even really thinking about it now. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t care. Why? Why do you care?” answered the man. His response created an awkward silence as Felix’s reply built up inside of him

“I don’t care either! I don’t care!” expending his energy, deflating his weak and ill body. The man was taken aback and there was another silence.

“Um, how do you play roulette? Any strategies?”

“No. I leave it all up to Mrs. Lady Luck.” Felix pointed to a neon sign hung left of the entrance to the bar. On the cornucopia below the figure of lady luck, it said “Luck out!” The lady’s face was covered in a veil except her mouth, which was half smiling and half frowning. The rest of her illustration was in poor taste, but Felix found something rich in the icon.

“Nothing to lose?”

“They discovered I have prostate cancer today.” Felix didn’t hear the question, but it didn’t matter. The man who lost ten-thousand dollars seemed pleased at what he perceived to be an answer to his question.

“I’ve been looking for someone like you to play a game with.” Benedict said that. He was the man who lost ten-thousand dollars. He wasn’t anymore in his heart of hearts.

“Sure.” Felix didn’t care. He was only looking for something to happen. It was Russian roulette that Benedict wanted to play. Felix drove with Benedict to Benedict’s home, leaving his own car at the casino. It was still raining. The car ride was loud with pink noise and voices trying to speak in spite of that. Benedict told Felix about himself, and Felix told Benedict about himself. Benedict was born with very rich parents. Jackie, the military nurse, was born with middle-class parents. Felix got poor parents. Benedict’s parents were Catholic, but he wasn’t. He used to be because he got Catholic parents. Neither Jackie nor Felix’s parents were religious. Benedict’s rich parents sent him to a nice school where he learned a lot about technology and went to college. Felix didn’t go to college; instead, he went to war. It was actually surprising that Felix hadn’t recognized Benedict, him being the big tech magnate that he was. Felix asked Benedict how he came up with his revolutionary ideas. Benedict said they just came to him. Revolutionary ideas didn’t just come to Felix nor did they just come to Jackie. Maybe it was because they didn’t get Catholic parents. Maybe it was just because they were Jackie and Felix.

During their car ride, Benedict neglected to mention his wife. Her last name was Spade, and she kept the name even after Benedict put a diamond ring around her finger. One week, she went on a work trip in Hartford, but she came home earlier than expected and didn’t tell Benedict in order to surprise him. Another woman Benedict neglected to mention, to his wife as well, was his mistress that he’d met clubbing. When Benedict’s wife came home early from her work trip in Hartford, she caught them sleeping together. This would have reminded Felix of the time he drove drunk to the casino and didn’t hit anyone, had he learned of it. It’s funny then that Benedict would’ve reprimanded Felix for driving drunk to the casino, considering his mother was killed by a drunk driver, but, of course, Felix didn’t kill anyone, and he didn’t get pulled over either, so this would’ve been entirely nonsensical.

At Benedict’s house, there were swathes of colorful, orderly, beautifully-arranged flowers and a twisting path through them that led to the front door. Benedict and Felix went inside. The front door opened to a staircase, which led to the second-floor bedrooms. Walking to the right side of the stairs led to a two-story, wide, and open space with chaotic, abstract expressionist paintings hung all over the walls and a living room on the floor. If you turned right from there and began to walk, you would end up in the kitchen. Above the living room entrance was a balcony. Benedict went to the kitchen without turning any lights on. Felix sat in the living room on an L-shaped couch. Benedict brought papers that would officiate their consent to the game and give the belongings of the loser to the winner.

“Does this work?” Felix asked. Of course, Benedict didn’t know. He said no one had ever tried it before to his knowledge.

“Oh, I forgot.” Benedict went back into the kitchen, then returned with a revolver that he was pointing at the ceiling. “Don’t want to let the luck pour out.” Now he really looked like a horse. Benedict sat on the L-shaped couch on the side that Felix wasn’t. With the revolver in his right hand still pointed at the ceiling, Benedict let out the cylinder and put one bullet in.

“Are you ready?” Felix nodded. Benedict spun the cylinder and jerked it back into the revolver. He reached into his pocket with his other hand and pulled out a quarter.

“You call it,” Benedict told Felix, handing him the coin. Felix called tails, and it landed on heads, so Benedict could decide who he wanted to go first. He pressed down on the hammer, put the revolver under his head, and pulled the trigger. It did not fire a bullet. He looked down at the revolver and saw that the bullet was next. He pressed down the hammer and pulled the trigger. Neigh! The stallion screeched to a halt, sunken into the couch cushions. Some of his blood spattered on one of the expressionist paintings. 

Felix knew what had happened in the game and wondered if he had won it by luck, by his luck. It was by luck that the bullet was next so that Benedict would do what he did; however, if Benedict looked down in the game they played, he probably would've rigged it regardless of different bullet placement in any other game, so was it lucky? Felix didn’t think so.

“You’ve robbed me,” Felix was a millionaire, “I hope you’re getting a laugh out of wasting my time,” he said to Benedict’s vacant corpse. Because Benedict had rigged the game, Felix would remember him a certain way: as a suicidal coward acting in bad faith upon his invitation to Felix. His memory would be forever tainted. Felix stood up from the couch, grabbed the empty revolver from Benedict’s limp hand, and walked into the kitchen. Outside the window, the rain stopped in an instant. “What are the odds?” On the countertop, next to a card with a crayon-drawn heart on the front, there was a gallon-sized Ziploc bag of psilocybin mushrooms as if Benedict was planning on using them. This was cause for reevaluation. Perhaps Benedict only chose to force his loss suddenly, but he actually had a different plan: Benedict thought he’d win and then get high on mushrooms, but things changed inside of a moment, in an instant, like some beam of inspiration struck him when the bullet pierced his vision and then his skull in the next moment. It’s possible he wasn’t even thinking when he did it; that it was a pure and perhaps paradoxically self-causing action, meaning there was no process to assign responsibility to, but instead some abstract and intangible concept. Luck perhaps? Would it be Felix’s luck then? Could he claim responsibility? Regardless, Felix wasn’t sure if he was always going to win anymore. Benedict’s memory wouldn’t be forever tainted. The whole thing reminded Felix of his not Catholic parents or if it was just him that produced his lack of revolutionary ideas.

Felix sat back on the L-shaped couch and laid awake, thinking that perhaps he had finally changed his luck on his own this time. Felix took the mushrooms. He threw up the first ones that he ate but managed to get the rest down. Waiting for the shrooms to kick in, Felix looked at the paintings on the wall. The painting with Benedict’s blood, now completely dried, triggered an involuntary memory in Felix. There he was, a child picking Huángsè Fire Clovers in a park with his poor, irreligious father. They grew in a patch of grass between two stakes for playing horseshoes. Young Felix only picked the ones with four leaves, an especially rare phenomenon. In an old tradition of Chinese mysticism, these four-leaved clovers were thought to be imbued with fate-changing properties. The shrooms hit like standing behind a bucking horse. After extending his arm, Felix tried to brush through the patch of clovers to find a four-leaved one, but he was totally immobile. The memory became more radiant and vibrant. The clovers began to bubble up. The colors exploded and slowly melted into one another along with the forms they represented. Felix’s blood was pulled out through his skin and splashed into the mixture. The mixing sped up exponentially until everything was black. In the void, some karasu koi fish were swimming around, and Felix’s father became a four-leaved Huángsè Fire Clover, declaring in a booming voice that “what” was his choice. Upon hearing this, Felix screamed in agony at the pain of his regret, but no sound came out because his mouth was gone and so was he.

Felix pondered the likelihood that the universe came into existence as it did. What were the odds? What were the odds that a solar flare or a meteor would destroy the Earth and end civilization in the next moment, or the one following? A roving black hole could swallow us, but that has yet to occur. What probability is preventing that? He couldn’t affect any of it regardless. He couldn’t even change his own luck. What odds had Felix beaten to be alive in this moment just to die here in this bed alone in the military hospital? No. Return to the illusion. The single illusion occurring out of a seemingly infinite number of possible illusions. What were the odds he’d see Jackie again? What were the odds that, if he saw Jackie again, this time he’d make a better impression? Jaclyn Spade, half-frowning, walked in not three minutes after Felix ate the mushrooms. She was in the middle of a grueling divorce, and now she had to deal with this: a cancerous baby-killer high on mushrooms in her living room, a horse with no brains who cheated on her and maybe in Russian roulette, and a child, a boy, who had initially been woken up by the sound of a revolver shot but only now came downstairs to see why his mother was screaming her head off. The scream was strange: Beeeeeeep.