Just trying VI.

Playing poker: it was a long time ago. I could remember those nights spent at that secret club in the northern part of the town, inside that old chemical factory which was deactivated due an accident in the seventy’s. Someone in white clothes had forgotten about cleaning his shoes when he left a very infected laboratory. A harmful element has been spread throughout the rooms. No one could escape. The disease caused by that element made everybody lay down at the same time the particles were inspired. Workers had spit on the floor solid blood. Walking through the aero glass tunnel whereby we get pass to the attic of the great building, we could see the dried blood spots on the ground down there. I was afraid at first, but then I get used to the scene. On the attic, a secret club of poker players consisting in rich old men, crime chiefs and young guys who were all trying to make easy cash. I was one of the younger.

I did not start playing poker on that secret community. I was introduced to the game by a movie of the ninety’s, called Maverick, who was played by Mel Gibson. He was young and his character was a cheater and the whole plot turns around everyone cheating everybody. The poker shows up in the near end, when a great championship was played inside a vessel, while it navigates.

I was already living alone when I watched the movie. So I searched the web to learn about everything of the game. A card game about bluffing and controlling your opponent: I was crazy about mind control and all this stuff those times. In the websites, I found out that it could be played on the computer, through a software who deals the cards and could do all the hard work. I started to play with people from every point of the world and, slowly, I learned the tricks and I became a good player.

Since I realized that, I started to play with real money. I had to make my first credit card and deposit some cash into the site. Weeks later, I was staying awake all night, earning money from the game.

I met some girls and was very social, but still was playing. I’ve earned lots of money and could live easy without having to work anymore. I was on top. Then, I met the woman who I really loved. Her name was Claudia and I met her at my favorite bar: the Rock and Roll Bar. I paid her some drinks and we talked a lot. I felt in love. I thought her did, too.

We dated for one year and a half. She knew about my job and didn’t like that. She said that it was like cheating, I should work like everyone, I should be honest like everyone. She was a old-minded girl who I started to think came from a remote farm or anywhere like that. She just could not understand. However, we started to live together, but only after I join the college, studying math. The problem was that I had been playing on the secret club in the factory already, looking for bigger pots. I went there about three nights per week, and was always winning. I just could not explain that, she refuses to understand that was my work. She became jealous and started to insinuate I was cheating her those nights. Finally, she left me. I cried a lot and stopped with poker – the game ruined my life.

She had never accepted me back. I never played poker again. Until there. The game that ruined my life was going to be the same that will decide my fate.

To be continued.

Just trying V.

With wine under my sneackers and cold under my clothes, I felt that point had no return. I pushed the door and the yellow light filled the wet floor and next racks. I’ve been too surprised watching the faces that were sitting around a round table on the centre of the room. The yellow light was coming from a lamp over that table, which was covered by a green carpet. Colored chips were piled. Five people were there, but I recognized only three. They were standing up, while I opened the door. They were my parents and Ms Korina, those only ones that I loved all my life. Astonished, I couldn’t make a sound when they came after me, but passed away with no words, but they all smiled at me like saying a “good luck”. When I recovered my sense, purposed to go towards them, but the white beard man said with a rough voice: “Don’t. They cannot hear you, nor talk to you. Come on, have a seat.”

- Who are you? - I replied.

- I am something you might call god. Or devil.

Then I really thought that was a dream, yet it was too real.

- No, it is not a dream. – white beard, or God, started again – You are going to die, it’s simple. Let me introduce you my brother. You might call him Devil. I would like to explain something to you. We are entities, superior beings, but we were never described well by the humans. We actually are not good or evil, we just are. There are other brothers of us, who are designed to other worlds out there. For sure, we are not like you are seeing right now. I’ll make it clear: right now, we are going to decide where your soul will stay forever. To make it fair, we’ll play poker. Do you know how to play, don’t you? Yes, for sure.

He started to shuffle a deck of cards, while I open my mouth to ask a lot of things. Before I’ve done, God said:

- You would like to know how does it work, but I won’t tell you. I’ll just tell you that it happens to everyone, days or hours before their scheduled date to die. It is not poker to everyone, although. We provide a lots of games, cards, board games, even video games. We know everything that could be done in your world. Well, we are superior. Ok. It will be Texas Hold’em; thousand in chips for each one. The game ends when one of us hold all three thousand chips. Your soul goes to the winner, if I or my brother wins, but, if you do, you will live more twenty years. It is ok to you? Sure it’s ok, these are rules you cannot change. No one can change. I am going to shut your mouth now. You cannot talk. Dismiss your doubts, you better concentrate in the game.

As he said, I could not open my mouth and even make a noise. Perturbed, confused, I walk to the chair that belonged to me. I sat and wait for my cards.

To be continued.

Just trying IV.

It was like I have been in front of that door already. I just could not remember exactly, but I felt the same way once in a similar situation. Then a flash of memory came to my mind. I got those scenes back from the graves in my brain. They were lying there for a long time, covered with all my will to forget them forever, but know they’ve returned, alive, clearly and stronger.

I was doing very well, even for a boy raised in an orphanage. I had my problems since my parents left me to get to the paradise – that beautiful place Ms Korina said the soul of the dead men went to. Ms korina was my best friend at the orphanage. She was a tiny woman, whose the goodness made everyone in that house feels that they have a mother. Her short and blond hair was just the same of a beautiful singer that we used to see in rare moments that we watched that old TV without remote control. Her hair shone like Madonna’s. Every evening, at about six pm, she called us to the main room to sit and listen to a story. She used to tell us various stories, about various themes, even exotics, even common. After the story she left us with another woman, which took care of us in the night. I never like the other woman, and neither remember her name. One day, at story hour, Ms Korina’s voice was very low, almost a whisper, to tell us a story about a woman who lost her husband by a gun. For more than once, she had to stop telling the narrative to dry the tears that came to her occasionally. I didn’t remember the entire tale, but I have exactly engraved in my cells the part that she told difficultly: “and then the woman, after shout her husband’s name once again and getting no response, walked up the stairs towards their room. The door was partly open, and a yellow light was coming from inside. She felt fear and thought about bad things, but call again for her husband. Again no replies. She entered the bedroom and all she saw was the dead body of her husband lying on the bed, with a pool of blood on the white sheet.”

Now I am sure that she was getting crazy, what a story to tell the kids! I was sad about the woman of the story, because her story was similar to mine. I had lost my parents suddenly, too, and I thought Ms Korina have had the same lost because of her tears. I just did not understand that time why she told us: “You go to bed and sleep. Tomorrow no one calls me Ms Korina again. You call me just Lia.”

It was hard to me to call her with that strange name, but I could, as she was always replying us more sadly and silent. One day, she said that she was going to live with us, and I became too happy with that. She smiled quietly when I told her about that and then I saw that she was becoming older, with some white hair growing around her ears.

She was living with us about a week when, one night, I decided to visit her in her bedroom to beg for a tale. Quietly, I walked from my bed in the first floor, to the door of her bedroom, which was upstairs. When I got in front of the door partly open with yellow light coming from inside, I remembered fast of the story that she told us. I was afraid to step inside, but I did. All I found was her dead body lying on the bed, with a pool of blood on the sheets, coming from her neck. Her left hand was still holding a long knife.

To be continued.