Dreams With Sharp Teeth: Week of 10/10/13

Analyze how your feelings change as you read this story and why.

Pages Read: 326-370 (Short stories: "Pretty Maggie Money-Eyes" & "Corpse")

"Pretty Maggie Money-Eyes" was a much longer story than "Corpse" (which was only 11 pages long), so I'll mostly talk about the money-eyes story.

This short story first introduces a man named Kostner, currently using the last of his money in Las Vegas. His divorce has left him depressed and quickly running out of money in the casinos in the city of taking chances on machines and cards. On a game of blackjack, he loses the last of his money and begins to wonder on what to do as he prepares to leave the casino. "Kostner now had his choice: he could bum his way into Los Angeles and try to find something that resembled a new life...or he could go blow his brains out through the back of his bead." So it's obvious that things weren't looking to good for him, and you kind of have to feel bad for the guy. He's divorced, money gone, and preparing to make a life changing decision.

But as he outs his hand in his pocket on the way out, he feels a single coin. A silver dollar coin. He decides that if he's going to end this, he might as well end with a bang and some chance taking. Kostner manages to find a machine that still accepts these coins--a machine called The Chief. The reward was two-thousand dollars, a pretty good deal. He inserts the coin and pulls the lever... During this period where Ellison describes the slot machine turning and turning, I felt anxious about what he was going to get. He might win the 2K, because that seems rather predictable in a book. Then again, he might not win the 2K. Ellison has written stories with pretty bad things happening to the main character, so why wouldn't he have Kostner lose that dollar coin?

Ellison also introduces Maggie, a prostitute. While reading her backstory and description, I was thinking she must actually be a nice lady. I was wrong. She turned out to be rather mean and so I disliked her. Her character was interesting and her connection with the slot machine was also pretty interesting. After getting paid one day, she takes her reward of 800 dollars and hits the same machine Kostner is using, but six weeks prior. She had a stroke while playing it and died then and there. I then felt pretty bad for her because she didn't lead a very bright life and she ended up dying while using a slot machine. Not a very nice ending for her. Although, she desired all the money the slot machine could offer. In a negative way, he wish was granted. When she died, her soul was trapped inside the slot machine as a sort of limbo. And now Kostner was playing the machine.

When the machine finishes spinning, the three bars read, "JACKPOT". Kostner could see they said the bars said "JACKPOT", but his eyes replaced the words with a blue eye in the center of each bar. Just a blue in the center, no words naming his victory. This was kind of strange and creepy because Maggie was described as having beautiful blue eyes. Maggie eventually begins to speak through Kostner through the machine, so the blue eyes are confirmed to be hers. Maggie turns out to be letting Kostner win. She was the machine, and she wanted out. She let him have a bunch of jackpots, too many for normal luck. He's checked by the casino staff to see if he's cheating, but he's clean. They check the machine itself multiple times, but that's working fine.

The staff is suspicious of him still, but they don't have to worry for long. After pulling the machine a third time, Kostner returns to hopefully win the jackpot yet again. He inserts his coin and pulls the lever. Maggie talks to Kostner about how much she loves him, how much she wants to be with him. And Kostner also agrees he'd like to be with her. So this time when he pulls the lever, he unknowingly takes her place. He dies, but not in a specified way. Ellison describes what he feels, and it's hard to say if he also had a stroke, but the main point is that he was now in the machine. This left me thinking about how good of a story this was, and just how descriptive and creative it was. It had a very interesting last line in my opinion. One of those lines that leaves you thinking, "Woah." It was: "Three brown eyes."  Although it was such a simple last line, combined with the rest of the story, it was pretty good.