A Walk into the Darkness

The man stood gingerly on the pavement, as if he were waiting for a call from a long lost love. He looked down at his scuffed jeans and stained trainers, feet dampened by the weight of melted snow inside his socks. The journey was arduous and unforgiving, yet somehow it was the only road to walk down at this time of night. After everything that had happened, his determination remained strong. Losing was no longer something he could fathom and looking up at the entrance only confirmed his vision to win. To walk back now would show only weakness, and everyone would know it. In emptying his pockets to reveal nothing but a weathered drivers license with an image of someone that people no longer knew, it would all be over; this was just the beginning.

As he walked in, he remembered the bright flashing lights, their familiarity made him feel like he was home. The casino’s distant jingles pierced his chest and exasperated his eagerness to get inside. The foyer was wide and vast, its high ceiling made him seem minuscule. Attracting attention was not his style, but his arrival seemed to gather interest from a few people behind a desk, he could have sworn he heard the exact moment their conversation stopped. He passed over his identity card to a young woman. As she examined it he could only imagine how she was involved in all of this, somehow conspiring to bring him here tonight. But how could she know of what went on in the rooms beyond her computer screen? He quickly dismissed her and peered around the room, swinging his legs with a bizarre nonchalance. There was something striking about the dullness of the foyer. Incongruous to the world it stood in front of, this room was sterile and cold, so much so he could hardly bear to stand in it for a second longer, and he almost didn’t. He all but snatched his license from the receptionist as it was handed back to him, then he pushed through the double doors into the main room.

The man was now at the mercy of the grand architecture of the room; a feast for his senses. His eyes flickered in the way only the eyes of a man calculating would. His pulse rocketed as the drug raced through his blood stream, hitting his soul with a wrath of warmth he hadn’t felt before. Looking at the games around the room filled his cheeks with excitement, eradicating the bags under his eyes. It felt as if the life had come back into his body, his feet now light, fluffy and dry; if he had been stood there for a second or an hour he would not have known the difference, and he certainly would not have cared. Once, he had chosen which game would be his first, but now he let his heart and his body decide. In the gravitation of his body towards the game, it was fate that would decide his future; he lived his life by the rules of fate, and it seemed that luck was merely his messenger.

Something was stirring inside him, an unfamiliar feeling. Whether it was the urge to play or to simply watch in voyeuristic manner, he did not know. He liked to observe other people gamble, it made him relax; he imagined the dealer was an old friend telling him a familiar story. He would laugh and wince at the same time, nodding his head at the player’s inevitable downward swings of fortune. An inner battle raged and in that moment the room began to dismantle before the man’s eyes. The pristine playing tables and everyone sat around them collapsed and crumbled down to speckles of dust. The bright lights of the machines flickered briefly before they were devoured by darkness. The humming, buzzing orchestra of jingles crackled and stopped abruptly to leave a silence so eerie it chilled the room for just a moment; nothingness had swallowed up all life and hope that once lay in front of it, but the man still stood. His eyes searched the dark for something, maybe he expected to see but mostly he wanted to feel. There was neither freezing cold nor excruciating heat; loneliness or the presence of familiarity; nor happiness, shame, regret. Had he not before seen the walls around it, he would not have known this was once a casino, or in fact anything at all. The man squeezed his eyelids together, not knowing what would greet him when he opened them again.

When he unpeeled his eyes he felt a chill and a dampness again in his toes. He thought he was falling but he grabbed hold of the door in front of him and steadied himself. Confused and disoriented, he looked through the glass and saw a young woman talking with someone behind a desk. He thought he had seen them before but was now not too sure of anything at all. He took a step back and looked up at the entrance, all of a sudden he remembered. After everything that had happened, his determination remained strong, losing was no longer something he could fathom. Soon it would all be over; this was just the beginning.

- Thank you for reading, this was something a bit different to what I’d usually write. I wanted to add a creative element to a story a lot of gamblers are familiar with. The constant loop of relapsing was exhausting on my mind and body, so I thought I’d channel that into the short story. What remains at the end is a feeling of despair but also a lingering hope that things will not stay this way forever.