I'm a gambler; I gamble like a man (standard:fantasy, 618 words)
Author: KShaw	Added: Mar 01 2005	Views/Reads: 3193/1	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
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I'm a gambler. I gamble like a man. 

The cloaked figure ahead of me holds high a lantern. In the yellowy
darkness shadows are thrown against the walls and the air is filled 
with an atmosphere of gauze. We pass through the dank corridor in 
single file, passing deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, to its 
deepest part where, I've been assured, ‘the action will take place'. 
Over my feet rats scamper like autumn leaves blown by the wind. 

I gamble like a man, and why not. Winning is everything. I cannot remain
neutral with the hand I've been dealt. 

To a flute accompaniment I arrive. The lantern keeper stands aside,
lowering his head and extinguishing the light. I could be here to watch 
a comic opera, seeing all the souls standing back under the sloped 
recesses, their heads crowned with thickets, and their eyes blazing. 
The archipelago ceiling reaches into eternity, showing all the seas 
I've known, all the nights, all the virtues, all the impossible 
melodies, and all the planets carried away. It is a cooling 
amphitheatre of destinies. On the stage, and at the heart of a slate 
table, at which two purple velvet chairs are placed, a cosmic 
whirlpool, pale and flat, where saints once sailed, showing the 
iridescences of sunset, and a child held in the arms of a mermaid. But 
I'm not here to observe a comic opera. I'm here to gamble. 

A thunder of bats signal his arrival. Murmurings rise and fall through
an atmosphere thick with forebodings. It will be the entrance of a 
legend; a conqueror of worlds, of spirits, of ponderous nights, but not 
of me. I am a gambler. I gamble like a man. 

The echo of hooves sounds cacophonously close. Then the snort of death.
The ‘sulphur' butterfly flutters in the pit of my stomach. I stand 
undaunted. I'm here to gamble, and gamble like a man. 

I cannot be neutral with the hand I've been dealt. 

The vast and ever running stench of hell has arrived. He drags himself,
the burning hygiene of all races, to the table. A dripping skeletal 
hand bellicosely beckons me forward. 

I take my seat. 

The game is mine to be won. I'm holding: Blue skies. The Bulk of a
Living Body. A Night Sky of Distant Planets and Stars. And my Ace 
card...yes, I have one. 

I wager the Devil, too, has a dark hand: The Mangled Dead of War.
Shadows and Dark Clouds. The Despair of no Hope. And his Ace. 

It's the Devil's call: Shadows and Dark Clouds descend to the table 

I lay down: Blue Skies. 

Slick of eye he peruses his cards... 

Thrown to the table: The Mangled Dead of War. 

I trump it with: The Bulk of a Living body 

A sly, maggot infested smile, creaks the dry bones of his skull. 

Slowly he lay face up: The Despair of No Hope 

I am a gambler, I gamble to win. 

I lay down my: Night sky of Distant Planets and Stars. 

Only to see him raise his spindly splintered skeletal fingers into the
air and flick across the table his ACE! 

It flys and flutters then comes to rest heavily on the table: EVIL! 

The room is filled with cavernous gasps. The Devil covers the table to
reach for my son. 

I lay my hand on his bones, smile into the sockets of his eyes, and
slowly turn up my ace card: Love and Faith. 

The storm gathers and blows...hell scatters as the the night stirs with
romantic souls. A child swims in the heavenly seas, escorted by God's 
mermaid. 

I am a gambler. I gamble for my son. I'll never lose. Not again.


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