Story #1; Chapter Six

Chapter Six; A Brush With Bad Luck
Casinos, the place of gamblers, the place of winners and losers, and place that leads to happiness for some, and despair for others. Clyde knew all this, and he hoped to be one of those that achieve happiness from the place. He also knew that he would be too young to fit in, but Clyde was blessed enough to look very much matured for a thirteen year old, and he knew this as his mother had always praised him about it. But still, he knew nothing about the way casinos operated and their differences in the city, and thus he consulted a beggar on the street, who decided to help him when he saw that they weren't very different from each other. The beggar told Clyde that there were three kinds of casinos in the city, first was for people like Clyde, people who were desperate, and needed fast money, so that kind of casino was known as the Fast. The second type, was known as Tower, because you need to be rich enough to hit the top, so it is these kind of casinos that people in the city usually go to. And finally, the third and final type, was the High Rollers, the kind of casino for those that wanted to be the richest of the rich. Clyde got a list of casinos from the beggar, and the beggar helped him seperate the list into the three sections, Fast, Tower, and Rollers. Clyde asked the beggar how he knew so much, and the beggar replied, that he was from casinos like Rollers, but he dropped to the pathetic state he was in, after a brush with bad luck. Clyde then understood how much damage this plan of his could affect him, but he had no other choice, and thus he was standing infront of one right now, the first on his list of Fast casinos. "Casino Blight" was its name, and Clyde entered it without anymore hesitation. The place was filled with people dressed in coats, but not dressed as extravagantly as those he had seen on the streets, and the place was filled with smoke. Clyde decided to play the roulette. There were three kinds of colours that he could get, Red, Black and Green. Black was a one in a million chance, Red and Green were of equal number, and there were different amounts indicated on each of them, meaning the amount of money the bet will win him. Clyde placed twenty pounds on Red. The roulette started to spin, faster, faster, then it began to slow down. Slower, slower, the roulette ball landed on...Green. Twenty pounds gone, Clyde's heart ached alittle, but he had to go on. Thirty pounds on Green, this left him with only a hundred and twenty pounds or so. The roulette began to spin again. The ball landed on Black. Most people at the table were rather displeased, but none more than Clyde, he had lost another thirty, and now he needed to put more to earn the fifty pounds he lost back. He placed fifty on Green. The roulette began it's routine again, and this time it landed on Red. Fifty gone. Clyde's heart had started to bleed, he was wasting Annabelle's money away, and nothing had been gained, except for losses. He had forty pounds left when he was done, and decided to leave. Forty, was all he had left. The skies started to turn grey again, and Clyde trudged heavily down the street back to his hotel. Out of nowhere, a figure smaller than himself zipped past him, nearly knocking him over. Clyde turned, and saw a boy, probably two years younger than himself running away, and upon a closer look, he saw the boy carrying a pouch similar to the one Annabelle had given him, and that's when he realized... "Stop! Thief!" Clyde gave chase, desperate to get back those forty pounds, for that was his final hope, and he needed it. Faster he ran, but he wasn't even close to catching the younger boy, who was more atheletic than anyone Clyde has ever seen. There it went, his final forty pounds, Clyde sank to despair. He sat down in the nearest alley, and began to sob over his loss. The skies turned from grey, to black. Night had fallen, and the streets began to bustle with gamblers. Clyde turned his head to watch the gamblers hustle through the crowds. Clyde saw a little girl wearing clothes as tattered as his own, pushed to the ground by a huge man, who was probably another gambler, and he got up to help her up, but instead, before he could even get to his feet, she got to hers first, and continued to walk on, not slouching like he did, but proudly, and full of radiance. Clyde was rather surprised when he saw this, but then he thought of himself, and compared. He laughed to himself, and realized that hope was still there for him, that he shouldn't give in to Fate. "I will get myself a job," he said to himself. And he started down the street, and he looked at the posters, and finally found one that said: "Hiring, boys around the age of thirteen, to carry sacks of rice into the canteens of casinos, three pounds a day." Clyde thought to himself, three pounds, that will take him at least a week before he can enter a Fast casino again with twenty-one pounds, not a bad idea. He ripped the poster from the shop's door, and got himself the job. He had his brush of bad luck, but Clyde wasn't going to give in, no, he was going to be like the little girl, standing up, to face reality, this time, he wasn't going to fail, or was he?