Gambling is risk-taking. It might be said the owner of a casino gambles, takes risks, but he has the odds in his favour, so that's intelligent gambling. If I wanted to gamble, I'd buy the casino.
John Paul Getty, Sr.
And they told me that the Devil is a gambling man.
The sun was low when he came for me. Whether it was dawn or dusk, I have no idea. Spending so long in the casino, the days had become stitched together messily, one ending after another had begun and one more was over halfway through.
At the crest of the Casino.
I have my feet up, lazing in my office with a bottle of Tequila at my side and half a cigarette resting on my lips, a foreign girl from the casino floor standing behind my chair and running her fingers through my hair. I gaze at her, upside down, glazed eyes scanning over her body, trying to make a guess at her age. I spy burns and needle-holes that she's hastily attempted to hide with thick make-up and suddenly any thoughts about her past leave my head. No use in depressing myself.
"Are you not cold in that?" I ask her, motioning with a nod of my head to the flimsy attire she had been given before being shown to my office. She pauses, eyebrow arches a little. She laughs mechanically, nodding enthusiastically, trying to convince me that she understands what I just said. I sigh, disappointed. The cigarette tumbles from my lips, landing silently in the bottle of tequila. I nod my head towards the door, motioning for the girl to leave. A universal sign. She understands it. Needing no further prompting, she's out of my office in an instant, leaving me with the familiar stillness of my sanctuary, weak red sunlight filtering through blinds and onto the floor, the walls.
I can feel my eyes rebel as I fix them on the light slipping through the blinds. Glares over the tops of slender black plastic. Striking eyeballs, flaring into my brain, making blood and juices bubble away. My mind wanders to the thin air beyond the glass. The clouds, the space, the almost infinite drop to the world below. I lick my lips, feeling the dry, cracked skin and smiling, making my usual wager. I reach into my breast pocket, fingertips plucking up the familiar form of that tiny, worn, ivory die.
I toss it onto the coffee table in front of me, eyes tracking each bounce and twirl until it clatters to a stop, five black, oily spots facing upwards at me. I glance back to the windows, resting my head back down and suck in breath through my teeth. Not today.
The whirring of motors in the walls pulls me out of a daze I hadn't even realised I'd fallen into. I fight to lift my head, neck muscles straining at suddenly being put to work. I watch the doors of the elevator, wondering which of my hordes of personal sycophants is going to be putting in an appearance now.
The doors wrench themselves open, a horrific screech of metal straining against itself. A fault in the elevator system that I'd been trying for years to get fixed, with no success. Empty space greets me on the other side, fluorescent lights in the floor and ceiling of the metal box illuminating nothing but mirrors endlessly reflecting one another.
Either someone downstairs is trying to get my attention, or there are a few more faults with this damn machine than I had realised.
"Otogi."
A voice like sin. Sweet and sinister, disarming and excruciating. It reaches down my back and takes a hold of my spine with dead, vibrant fingers.
I pull myself up out of the chair, spilling Tequila and ash to the carpet, turning slowly to face the source of the voice. An unimposing figure with a distinct aura of menace about it, slender arms spread across the back of my expensive desk chair, long, thin legs crossed with boots planted firmly on my desk, right in the middle of my accounts.
"Otogi." He repeats my name, turning his head to one side, a cascade of hair in blonde and purple and black falling across his face. Cruel eyes in deepest violet track every move I make, watching me as I turn, hold the back of my chair and step in front of my own desk.
"Who the hell are you?" It doesn't feel like the words are coming from my mouth. Everything seems numb. "What are you doing here?"
"Two days ago, you paid a visit to a Mr. Sugoroku Mutou," he tells me, spinning the chair and dropping his feet from the desk. "You played a game with him. Do you remember what that game was Mr. Otogi?"
I freeze up, remembering every detail of that damned dice game. Every roll, every clatter of ivory on the carved stone board. The crushing weight on my mind and soul with every bet. Watching the old man's face as his remaining years were eaten away, his skin collapsing, bones falling to dust within his rapidly rotting body. I nod. The Devil's Dice Game.
"We're going to have a little game of our own." He tells me, reaching underneath my desk and pulling out that same stone board, chiselled and gouged into twisting sections and towers. He chuckles as I start to back away, setting the board out on my desk. "You're familiar with the rules of this Shadow Game, so this should all be familiar ground to you."
"And for every year I bet-"
"Yes," he cuts me off, "You'll age a year for every one you place as a bet. But that's only if you lose. Of course, for a man so into his gaming, this shouldn't really be a problem. After all, what intention do you have of losing?"
"You're challenging the owner of a casino to a betting game… inside that same casino." I hope I'm layering on just how insane this… creature's plan is. Something in that gleeful, euphoric expression of his tells me that I'm not getting through to him.
"What's life without a few risks Otogi?" He grins up at me. "Have you never taken a risk yourself?"
"Everyone in my business takes risks. That's what gambling is." I start to feel dizzy. Sick. Displaced.
"But you're here, in your own private palace. Odds are in your favour."
"Intelligent gambling. Why else do you think I bought a casino?" I can feel the old patter returning, the blood pumping… The need to roll a dice building inside me.
The fiend at my desk extends a hand, opening it and revealing a pair of dice.
"Make your bet Otogi. Make your bet."
I look him in the eyes as I take up those dice. I see madness, cruelty, justice, order. I see all the rules of hell in those eyes. No doubt in my mind that I'm playing dice for my life with the devil himself.
And they told me that the Devil is a gambling man.