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"Would you like another one, Zach?" Marcus offered.
Zach nods and slurs out something that sounds like a "yes," so Marcus starts mixing another mojito for the wasted twink at the end of the bar. Marcus knows he probably shouldn't keep serving him, but business has been slow lately and his boss, Rosie, would skin him alive for putting people's health or safety over her profits.

Rosie is a trash queen whose days of drag should have been long past, but her narcissism would never let her see how gross and run down the bar had become, let alone how gross and rundown she had become. The bar, called Pucker, was the only LGBT+ establishment in a three county area, and queers from all over would drive down on weekends to dance the night away or get a quickie in the dingy bathroom.

However it's currently 3:45 pm on a Tuesday, so the whole place is empty except for Zach and Trevor. Zach is a skinny little twink home from college for the summer who gets drunk most afternoons at the bar and flirts with Marcus as a way of distracting himself from the terrors of living with his redneck parents. Trevor is Rosie's obese basset hound. The dulcet tones of Willie Nelson crooning over some lost love ring out over the rattle of the air conditioning unit.

So yeah, Rosie's Pucker is a pretty dim place to be at the moment.

Marcus slides the mojito across the bar, and Zach takes a sip before sighing loudly and whining, "Why on earth did I decide to come back to Bumfuck, Texas, for the summer?"

Marcus sighs too. Why on earth do I still live here in Bumfuck, Texas?

Today is his twenty-fifth birthday. He's in the prime of his life and he's spent the last three years tending bar in this shithole five nights a week and bagging groceries during the day down at Albert's General Store for what? Why torture himself like this?

Originally, it had been because his mom was sick. He was the only one willing to move back to this dump of a town and take care of her.

But she's been dead now for six months.

Marcus sighs again. Why on earth do I still live in Bumfuck, Texas?

He looks up at the clock on the wall. As soon as it strikes 4:00, Rosie enters with a slam of the door. "Get lost, Marcus! You're shift ends at four, and I ain't paying you for one extra second, sweetcheeks. It don't matter none how cute you look." She's wearing a too-tight sequin gown, and curls of gray hair hang out around the bangs of her ratty blonde wig.

"Sure thing, Rosie. I'm glad to go, you old bitch." Rosie is a cunty old hag, and Marcus really is glad to go.

* * * * *

The dirt road out to the house is really hard on Marcus's little Prius, so he's been driving his mom's old red pickup truck since he moved out here. It rattles and bounces as he follows the road past a cotton field and down a hill toward the house. As he pulls up by the mail box, he winds the handle to roll down the window. Inside the box he finds a few bills, some junk mail, and a shiny gold envelope with his first name neatly printed on the center. It has no postage, no return address--just his name.

"Weird," he mutters. Then Marcus rolls the window back up and drives toward the little blue house all by itself a little way up the hill. It's a nice house, and Marcus has been working to update it a bit so it might sell faster. That's the real reason he's still stuck in Bumfuck, Texas; he's waiting for his mom's house to sell so he can finally get back to his own life.

See, once upon a time, Marcus had successfully escaped the hellscape of rural Texas. He'd moved to Portland after high school, gotten a degree in computer science, and a landed a sweet job at a tech firm that paid well and came with amazing benefits. He had sacrificed all of that when his mom was diagnosed with cancer, and now, thanks to all the medical bills, he was left with little except for his mom's old house--a house so far out in the middle of nowhere that it was impossible to sell.

Marcus leaves the mail on the kitchen counter and strips off his clothes. The first thing he does after leaving his shift at Pucker is shower. Every time. That place is disgusting. Afterwards Marcus fixes some dinner and settles onto the couch. Reruns of some game show are all that's on TV, so he opts to read for a while instead.

He remembers the mail on the counter after a while and goes to have a look. The junk mail goes straight into the trash; Marcus doesn't need any more credit cards. Next are a couple of bills from the hospital. He pushes those away for another day. It's funny how medical debt never dies, even if the people who were sick do...

Marcus's eyes are drawn the gold envelope, and he picks it up. It is heavy, and it feels strangely warm in his hand. He's puzzled about how it could have even been delivered, the only thing on it is his name.

Inside, he finds a card. It is made of heavy black paper--strangely black, like it's sucking all the light into it. In his hands, the card feels... it's hard to describe. Real? Like, a whole new level of real--like, the kind of real that makes everything else seem a little bit unreal.

It is solid black. On the front, there is a single line of golden print:

Happy Birthday.

Inside, he finds a note.

You've been dealt a shitty hand, Marcus, but in the game of life you get to choose how to play.

Do you want to play?

Marcus shivers. The air seems cold. He feels like he's being watched. He feels like it matters, like the question is real, like he could answer it and it would make a difference...like this moment could change everything.

And then Marcus feels silly. What kind of stupid joke is this? He knows choices matter; he knows that he is the author of his own life story. He knows that it was his choice to come back here and take care of his mom, it is his choice to stay and try to sell the house, that he is responsible for the decisions that brought him to this moment. He is haunted every day by the thought that he might have chosen wrongly; he doesn't need some asshole to send him a weird birthday card to remind him of all that.

Marcus drops the card to the floor, completely waylaid by the storm of conflicting emotions it stirs up. It's everything from What the fuck kind of bullshit is this? Is someone trying to fuck with me? to Okay, maybe I've been coasting a little, maybe I should take life a little more seriously.

Finally Marcus settles on Fuck yeah, I'm going to play this fucking game...fuck yeah, I want to change my life.

He picks up the card and is amazed to see that the gold lettering inside has shifted:

Be careful. The risks are as great as the rewards in the game of life.

Are you sure you want to play?