Started on my newest short story today. Drawing Dead is a poker term.

Definition: When a player is drawing to a hand that has already been beaten — this final card is irrelevant because the player has already lost.

Joe Varley is a dead-beat. 37 years old, a bike courier for an internet disease-ordering company. When he inadvertantely gets added to an underworld game of poker, he has only one choice — cheat.

And what better way to cheat than to steal a deck of cards from the greatest cheat of them all: Apollo Limberopolous. The problem, of course, is that Apollo is dead — and his deck of cards has been buried with him.

All Joe Varley has to do is break into the cemetery, dig up the body, and steal the cards. What could possibly go wrong?