It was in my darkest hour when Lady Luck came to me At the…
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It was in my darkest hour when Lady Luck came to me
At the time, I was sitting on the side of the road, on the outskirts of town, across the street from a dive bar that reeked of desperation and depression. And the only reason I wasn’t inside was because I had just been thrown out.
Let me back-up. I’m not gonna tell you my name, but if you live in or near Las Vegas, chances are you’ve heard of me. The king of the strip. The luckiest man in the luckiest city. The guy you want at your table. When I was a kid, it seemed like a harmless quirk; always hitting the ladders and missing the chutes, the perfect draws in Candyland, something for my parents to wow their dinner guests with when there was a lull in conversation. It was around middle school when I realized I could use my luck to my advantage. My school got bit hard by Magic the Gathering fever and while everyone else was doing their damnedest to craft the perfect deck, I was the one who was winning by drawing the perfect card at the perfect time. Made back my lunch money a few times over that year.
College wasn’t my thing, but neither was staying in town; at that point everyone knew to not play any games with me because I’d always end up winning. But I had bigger ambitions. I had gotten a taste for being the victor and now I was hungry for more. So when I turned 21 I hit the road, with a whole new world of unsuspecting people just waiting for me. Hustling isn’t exactly a difficult science; you pretend you don’t know what you’re doing, fold a few hands, then when they raise the stakes and propose a few big money games, you wipe the floor with them and move on to the next town. I lost a few teeth along the way to some sore losers, but with the money I was making it was never too hard to pay for dental work, ice packs, and aspirin.
But that wasn’t enough. I was ready to go big. And the glitzy lights and siren song of jackpots drew me to Las Vegas. Yeah, cliche place, but when you have my luck, the old adage “the house always wins” doesn’t mean jack. That’s when I started making real money, putting my luck to good use full-time. Every pull of a lever, push of a button, throw of the dice… it all came my way. Sure, I got a bad hand or a crap throw often enough, but by the end of the night I always left with more than I started. First few months I was there, I got dragged into back rooms to be interrogated by a bunch of stiffs in tight suits more times than I could count. They were convinced I was cheating. But they never found anything on me: no extra dice, no hidden cards, no cameras, nothing. I told them the truth; that I was just lucky. They didn’t like that answer, but with no proof, they would send me on my way, telling me not to come back for the day. I learned to pace myself: switch up where I was gambling each night, don’t win too much, stop when the dealer was starting to sweat.
Even with those restrictions, I was making more than enough to not just survive, but thrive. Got a nice little penthouse at the top of one of the hotels, spent my days gambling and my nights partying. Slowly, people started to learn my name, follow me around, and want to get close to me. They all were hoping to sap up a little bit of my luck. And the crazy thing? They did. When I was at their table, suddenly everyone’s hands were coming up in their favor. I watched grown men fight over the chance to sit at the slot machine next to mine. I wasn’t just a great gambler, I was the great gambler. The guy who got whispered about when I walked by. The Luckiest Man In Vegas. Hell of a title.
In the back of my mind I always thought one day my luck would peter out. I wasn’t expecting it to be so dramatic.
It started at the poker tables that morning. You know how unlikely it is to get four 2-7 offsuit draws in a row? But there they were, taunting me. The casino always gave me free drinks when I hit a cold streak, but the taste of defeat wouldn’t leave my mouth. Bad day for the tables, I figured, and moved onto the slot machines. Didn’t hit a single payout for an hour. I was starting to sweat; was this some kinda prank by the casino, rigging the games to take me down a peg? Even the lowliest gambler doesn’t have a day this bad. Insulted, I took my business down the strip.
But the next casino didn’t fare much better either. Snake eyes, 0s and 00s, couldn’t hit 21 to save my life. I began to hear the whispers; some of my regular hangers-on, worried that their cash cow was having a dry day. They started moving to other tables, hoping not to catch whatever dark cloud was hanging over my head. After I got two sevens and a lemon, I decided my day would be better spent in bed. It’d give my luck a chance to recharge.
When I swiped my card on the key reader and the light flashed red, I knew something had to be up. I stormed straight down to talk to whoever was working the front desk; I knew them all by name, so getting this sorted out shouldn’t have been a problem. So imagine my surprise to see some new girl behind the desk who didn’t believe me when I told her what was happening. She told me the system said I hadn’t paid my rent that month; I told her I had dropped the check off a week ago, like I always do. There was no record of it in the computer though, and she trusted it more than she trusted me.
Things went south quickly. I suppose I could have just waited for a shift change to talk to someone I actually knew, or given them a call to get this sorted out. But I was already having a bad day, and her attitude was pissing me off. So maybe reaching over the counter to grab her by the hair wasn’t the smartest idea, but the way those two guys the size of tanks grabbed me and threw me out of the building wasn’t called for if you ask me.
I was making a mental note to start looking into a new place to stay when my cell phone rang. It was my bank, telling me that there had been a lot of “suspicious activity” in my account, and that my cards were being frozen until they could sort it out. I definitely turned a few heads on the street with the string of obscenities I screamed into the phone, but I’m pretty sure they hung up on me halfway through; I would have checked, had I not thrown my phone to the ground and shattered it. I checked my wallet to see how much cash I had on me to make it through the day; I really shouldn’t have been surprised to see an empty space where the neat stack of 100’s usually sat.
The rest of the day was kinda a blur; attempts to contact anyone I knew were met with dial tones and busy signals, and in the mood I was in I got stopped from entering all my usual casinos because they said I “looked like I was there to cause problems.” Can’t say I blame them, but it wasn’t doing my demeanor any favors. Do you have any idea how pathetic it is to ask tourists for a little cash to spend at a gas station slot machine? They all thought I was some poor sap in way too deep, rather than the celebrity they should have been treating me like. By the time the sun went down, I had made my way out of town and plopped myself down at the aforementioned dive bar, and their one lowly, pathetic penny slot. I had found a penny in the gutter outside. This was it: the end of this horrible day, the clouds clearing, the path back to being on top of the world. I put the coin in and pulled the lever.
Watermelon. Bananas. Bell.
I stared at the machine. I swear, those stupid little symbols were laughing at me. I saw red, reared my hand back, and punched the machine as hard as I could; next thing I knew, a few of the regulars were hauling my ass out the door and across the street, throwing me into the ditch and telling me to stay out.
And so there I was. Luckiest man in Vegas, sitting on the side of a road. Everything I had in life, gone in the span of a day. No idea on how to get back to where I was… or even if it was possible anymore. My luck had finally run out, and it had run out hard.
That’s when I heard her voice.
“Whoof, you look like you’re having a rough day,” she said.
“Lady, you have no idea how much I don’t wanna talk right now,” I said back. I expected that to be it; people were quick to move on in this city when it was clear you were in no mood. Instead, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” she cooed. She had the tone of someone who wasn’t used to consoling people, but was trying her hardest.
I looked over at my visitor; she had on a sparkling red dress like she was headed for the fanciest club in town—odd given how far we were outside the city—and a matching red derby hat with a wide brim and feathers sticking out the side. You know those old ads you’d see for Vegas with some perfect-looking woman dressed to the nines inviting you to come throw your life away? She looked for all the world like she had just stepped right out of one of those, but with a sincere smile that somehow clashed with the rest of her look.
“What do you want?” I seethed, looking her up and down.
She sat down beside me.
“So, um,” she said, casually scratching the back of her head as she searched for the right words. “I don’t know how to tell you this—”
“Oh my god just say it and go away,” I snapped at her.
She nodded. “Alright. I’m… Lady Luck.”
Judging by her reaction, she noticed my eyes rolling. “Cute nickname. Tell me what you’re selling, so I can tell you no and to fuck off.”
“No seriously! I’m her.” She leaned forward a bit, staring me down intently.
This lady wasn’t gonna leave me alone, I figured. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll humor you a bit. Prove it.”
“Uh…” she mumbled, glancing around. “Kinda hard to prove luck… Oh!” She pointed at the bar across the street, where four people were exiting, three of whom looked like they were about to collapse and one who was clearly ready to end the night. “Okay, see the guy in the gray shirt?”
I nodded. “Designated driver, I’m guessing.”
“Good guess,” she said. “And he’s gonna get rewarded for that.”
Two of gray shirt’s friends had already been piled into the car by him, and he was struggling to get the third to follow suit. Like a cartoon, the friend fell straight down to the ground, leading to a world-weary groan from gray shirt. Just as he was leaning down to help his friend up, a truck passed by with its brights on. As the light hit his car, there was a momentary glint from around the driver’s seat. Abandoning his friend, gray shirt reached towards where the glint was; when he pulled his hand back, I could see the tears in his eyes as he held his clenched fist close to his chest.
“The hell…” I muttered.
“Alonzo lost his wedding ring six months ago,” she said, happily leaning back on her hands and surveying the scene. “If his friends hadn’t decided to go out tonight, if he hadn’t been selected as the designated driver, if Marty hadn’t fallen out of the car at just that moment, if that truck hadn’t driven by at that moment, he might have never found it.” She gave me a sheepish grin. “I’m really proud of this one! Love it when luck can give someone a story to last a lifetime.”
Everything she was saying was absurd. But the way Alonzo was cradling his hand, carefully placing something onto his finger, a smile brighter than any of the lights in the city… I was in enough of a terrible mood to buy it.
“Alright, fine, whatever. You’re Lady Luck. So what?” I said. “You come here to gloat? Brag about ruining my life?”
“Nah, I don’t like bragging,” she said. “I wanna apologize. I’ve been watching, today’s been way worse on you than I expected it to be.”
“Expected?” I looked her dead in the eyes. “You knew this was gonna happen?”
“Well, yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s my whole job to know. But I figured I owed you an explanation.” She turned to fully face me, sitting cross-legged like she was a teacher in a kindergarten class. “How do I put this… everyone in the world has a set level of luck when they’re born. It determines how likely forces beyond your understanding will intervene to make something happen, for better or for worse. Follow me?”
“No.”
“Yeah, didn’t think you would.” She mulled something over in her mind, trying to find the right words. “Okay, so someone is born, and their luck is ‘zero.’ That means anything in their life that comes down to luck is just that: luck. Complete random chance. But if someone has, say… ‘one,’ maybe they’ll be a biiiiiiit more likely to end up with positive results. Or if it’s ‘negative one,’ a bit more likely to end up with negative results.”
“So our lives are determined by stupid video game stats?” I scoffed.
“Not everything in life; in fact it’s only luck. It’s kinda an intangible, a mystical thing, you know? There’s nothing you can do to increase or decrease luck, it just is.” She gave me that sheepish smile again. “Sorry, I’m really not used to explaining this to people.”
“I can tell.”
“So here’s where things get a bit more complex.” She held her hands out in front of her, trying to diagram something that wasn’t there. “There’s only a set amount of luck in the universe. New luck can’t just be conjured from nothing, it’s gotta be distributed amongst everyone and everything. When someone dies, their luck is spread out among the rest of the world; when someone is born, everyone gives them a bit of their luck. So in general, things stay pretty stable. Got it?”
“I think so?” My inflection reflected my confusion. “Lot to think about, but everyone just has their own luck. Got it.”
“Annnnnnd this is where you and I come in.” She continued to smile; it was starting to get to me. “I’ve been doing this job for a looooong time. I’m good at it, but think about how many living things have ever existed. Having to balance all that luck is tough! And, well… I was bound to make a mistake eventually.”
At the word ‘mistake,’ I felt my eye twitch. “What do you mean, mistake?”
She put her hand on my shoulder like a guidance counselor telling a student they’d never make it to college. “Look, I’ll be blunt: you were born with waaaaaay too much luck. You ended up with more than a city’s worth.”
Hearing her say it was like a gut punch and an eye opener all at once. “Sonofabitch,” I mumbled, looking up at the sky and taking it all in.
“What, are you surprised?” she asked.
“Nah, it just… hits different when you actually hear it from someone.” I didn’t say anything for a minute; I just gazed at the stars above me. She went quiet too, giving me the space I needed. Once I was ready, I had to ask the next obvious question. “So, why today? I’ve been lucky my whole life, and then you come by and take it all away from me in a snap? Just wander on in and treat me to the worst day of my life?”
Her smile faltered; she shifted uncomfortably, clearly not thrilled at the prospect of answering the question.
“Well?!” I shouted at her.
“That’s why I’m apologizing!” She shouted back. “I only noticed the error today, so I had to correct things. And the best way to do that is to rip the bandage off, metaphorically speaking. Take all that extra luck and distribute it among everyone else. But yeah, considering the day you had, that was probably a mistake on top of another mistake, so I owe you an apology. This one is on me.”
I wasn’t sure how to react, but I certainly wasn’t feeling positive about her apology.
“‘On me?’” I said through gritted teeth. “That’s all you got for me?”
“I know I’m not good at this, but I can count the number of people I have had to apologize to on one hand, so please cut me a little slack,” she said.
“Cut you some slack?!” She winced when I shouted. “You ruined my life, then expect me to forgive you? Give me my goddamn luck back!”
“I can’t do that, it wouldn’t be fair to everyone!” She stood up; I quickly jumped up to meet her there. “But the worst of it is over now, you’re basically at zero from now on. I’m already having to break a rule to set things straight, do you know how much worse it would be if I—”
“Zero’s not good enough!” I grabbed her by the lapels of her dress. “You give all of it back right this fucking instant!”
“Let me go!” she yelled.
I saw red. Before I knew what I was doing, I drove my head forward; there was a sickening thud as our heads made contact, and she went down immediately. Blood started to trickle down from her forehead, the same color as her dress. I went into auto-pilot and dropped down.
“GIVE IT BACK!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I curled my hands into fists and drove them down into her face. “GIVE ME MY LUCK BACK!!”
Over and over and over, I brought my hands down on her. With each hammer, I felt something more give; another vicious crack, another splatter of blood, another tooth flying to the side. By the time a minute had passed and my senses were returning to me, the woman under me was unrecognizable; a red pulp of blood and bone that would make a medical examiner run from the room in horror. I breathed heavily, staring down at what I had just done, at the lifeless figure below me.
And then… she was fine.
She didn’t magically heal herself, her body didn’t reform and attach itself back together, there wasn’t even a spark or a sound. One moment she was a corpse, the next she looked as pristine as she was when she had come to me minutes ago. She stared back up at me, a mixture of annoyance and disappointment on her face.
“Seriously!?” She yelled.
My only reaction was to fall back, trying to process what I was seeing. She casually stood up and brushed dust off of her dress.
“I-I-I, I’m—” I stammered.
“I APOLOGIZED! I was genuinely sorry for what I put you through! I was trying to make good, and you ATTACK me?!” She put her hands on her hips like a disappointed parent. “See, this is why I don’t like talking with people; you’re all such assholes!”
“B…but…” was all I could get out. She reached down and took me by the shirt, pulling me up to my feet. The smile was gone; there was an intensity burning in her eyes.
“Fine. You want your luck back? You got it!” she said. “Boom. It’s yours again, congratulations. But you know what? You only get it for one more week. Then, it’s over. Got it?!”
I wasn’t about to argue with her. I nodded. “One more week, one more bad day, then all this luck stuff is over. Got it.”
She shook her head. “No. I gave you the chance to do it all in one day, and you decide to get all violent.” The smile returned; this time, combined with the look in her eyes, it terrified me. “You thought I ripped the bandage off badly by doing it in one day? Let’s see what happens when we do it in a minute.”
She shoved me away and turned to leave. I hit the ground, the dust kicking up around me.
“W-wait!” I said, scrambling back to my feet. “Can’t we—”
She was gone. There was no indication that anyone had been there besides me. I looked around frantically, but other than the bar across the way, I was alone.
I’m not sure how long I stood in silence, but eventually all I could do was turn back towards Vegas and start walking. No sooner had I done so then the street lit up and a truck pulled alongside me. The driver rolled the window down.
“Heyo, need a lift into town?” he asked. I nodded, and he pushed the door open and patted the seat.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I sat down.
The moment I closed the door the pitter-patter of rain echoed outside the car, turning into a near-torrential downpour in seconds.
“God damn, it’s really comin’ down!” the driver laughed as he turned his windshield wipers on high. “I usually don’t take this road ‘neither, but my usual route’s backed up. Lucky I came this way or you’d be soaked right now, huh?”
That word rang in my head and I nodded again. “Yeah. Lucky.”
When he dropped me off at my hotel, one of the usual workers was at the front counter. He offered me a sincere apology about the mix-up earlier, said that the new girl hadn’t been told about me yet, and that they found my check behind a desk in the back. They left me champagne and a free gourmet meal for the trouble, but I left it out and collapsed into bed. The next day I went to the bank, where I was greeted with another apology; a clerical error was to blame for my cards being frozen, but now everything had been restored. They even increased my credit limit as an apology.
Things returned to normal for me. The dice were hot, and the hands were hotter. My luck was back. I should have been ecstatic.
But I wasn’t. I was empty.
I’ve been in a haze since then. Because every time I hit a jackpot, every time I get a win, every time someone hands me a free drink, I can see her. Out of the corner of my eye, she’s standing there, watching me with that same smile. But when I turn to look at her, she’s gone.
That was seven days ago. I’m sitting in my penthouse right now writing this. Over the last hour, the lights outside my window have faded, leaving the strip looking an eerie black. There’s no noise either. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Vegas quiet.
A few moments ago, I heard a soft knock at my door and a woman’s laughter.
Lady Luck has come to collect.
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At the time, I was sitting on the side of the road, on the outskirts of town, across the street from a dive bar that reeked of desperation and depression. And the only reason I wasn’t inside was because I had just been thrown out.
Let me back-up. I’m not gonna tell you my name, but if you live in or near Las Vegas, chances are you’ve heard of me. The king of the strip. The luckiest man in the luckiest city. The guy you want at your table. When I was a kid, it seemed like a harmless quirk; always hitting the ladders and missing the chutes, the perfect draws in Candyland, something for my parents to wow their dinner guests with when there was a lull in conversation. It was around middle school when I realized I could use my luck to my advantage. My school got bit hard by Magic the Gathering fever and while everyone else was doing their damnedest to craft the perfect deck, I was the one who was winning by drawing the perfect card at the perfect time. Made back my lunch money a few times over that year.
College wasn’t my thing, but neither was staying in town; at that point everyone knew to not play any games with me because I’d always end up winning. But I had bigger ambitions. I had gotten a taste for being the victor and now I was hungry for more. So when I turned 21 I hit the road, with a whole new world of unsuspecting people just waiting for me. Hustling isn’t exactly a difficult science; you pretend you don’t know what you’re doing, fold a few hands, then when they raise the stakes and propose a few big money games, you wipe the floor with them and move on to the next town. I lost a few teeth along the way to some sore losers, but with the money I was making it was never too hard to pay for dental work, ice packs, and aspirin.
But that wasn’t enough. I was ready to go big. And the glitzy lights and siren song of jackpots drew me to Las Vegas. Yeah, cliche place, but when you have my luck, the old adage “the house always wins” doesn’t mean jack. That’s when I started making real money, putting my luck to good use full-time. Every pull of a lever, push of a button, throw of the dice… it all came my way. Sure, I got a bad hand or a crap throw often enough, but by the end of the night I always left with more than I started. First few months I was there, I got dragged into back rooms to be interrogated by a bunch of stiffs in tight suits more times than I could count. They were convinced I was cheating. But they never found anything on me: no extra dice, no hidden cards, no cameras, nothing. I told them the truth; that I was just lucky. They didn’t like that answer, but with no proof, they would send me on my way, telling me not to come back for the day. I learned to pace myself: switch up where I was gambling each night, don’t win too much, stop when the dealer was starting to sweat.
Even with those restrictions, I was making more than enough to not just survive, but thrive. Got a nice little penthouse at the top of one of the hotels, spent my days gambling and my nights partying. Slowly, people started to learn my name, follow me around, and want to get close to me. They all were hoping to sap up a little bit of my luck. And the crazy thing? They did. When I was at their table, suddenly everyone’s hands were coming up in their favor. I watched grown men fight over the chance to sit at the slot machine next to mine. I wasn’t just a great gambler, I was the great gambler. The guy who got whispered about when I walked by. The Luckiest Man In Vegas. Hell of a title.
In the back of my mind I always thought one day my luck would peter out. I wasn’t expecting it to be so dramatic.
It started at the poker tables that morning. You know how unlikely it is to get four 2-7 offsuit draws in a row? But there they were, taunting me. The casino always gave me free drinks when I hit a cold streak, but the taste of defeat wouldn’t leave my mouth. Bad day for the tables, I figured, and moved onto the slot machines. Didn’t hit a single payout for an hour. I was starting to sweat; was this some kinda prank by the casino, rigging the games to take me down a peg? Even the lowliest gambler doesn’t have a day this bad. Insulted, I took my business down the strip.
But the next casino didn’t fare much better either. Snake eyes, 0s and 00s, couldn’t hit 21 to save my life. I began to hear the whispers; some of my regular hangers-on, worried that their cash cow was having a dry day. They started moving to other tables, hoping not to catch whatever dark cloud was hanging over my head. After I got two sevens and a lemon, I decided my day would be better spent in bed. It’d give my luck a chance to recharge.
When I swiped my card on the key reader and the light flashed red, I knew something had to be up. I stormed straight down to talk to whoever was working the front desk; I knew them all by name, so getting this sorted out shouldn’t have been a problem. So imagine my surprise to see some new girl behind the desk who didn’t believe me when I told her what was happening. She told me the system said I hadn’t paid my rent that month; I told her I had dropped the check off a week ago, like I always do. There was no record of it in the computer though, and she trusted it more than she trusted me.
Things went south quickly. I suppose I could have just waited for a shift change to talk to someone I actually knew, or given them a call to get this sorted out. But I was already having a bad day, and her attitude was pissing me off. So maybe reaching over the counter to grab her by the hair wasn’t the smartest idea, but the way those two guys the size of tanks grabbed me and threw me out of the building wasn’t called for if you ask me.
I was making a mental note to start looking into a new place to stay when my cell phone rang. It was my bank, telling me that there had been a lot of “suspicious activity” in my account, and that my cards were being frozen until they could sort it out. I definitely turned a few heads on the street with the string of obscenities I screamed into the phone, but I’m pretty sure they hung up on me halfway through; I would have checked, had I not thrown my phone to the ground and shattered it. I checked my wallet to see how much cash I had on me to make it through the day; I really shouldn’t have been surprised to see an empty space where the neat stack of 100’s usually sat.
The rest of the day was kinda a blur; attempts to contact anyone I knew were met with dial tones and busy signals, and in the mood I was in I got stopped from entering all my usual casinos because they said I “looked like I was there to cause problems.” Can’t say I blame them, but it wasn’t doing my demeanor any favors. Do you have any idea how pathetic it is to ask tourists for a little cash to spend at a gas station slot machine? They all thought I was some poor sap in way too deep, rather than the celebrity they should have been treating me like. By the time the sun went down, I had made my way out of town and plopped myself down at the aforementioned dive bar, and their one lowly, pathetic penny slot. I had found a penny in the gutter outside. This was it: the end of this horrible day, the clouds clearing, the path back to being on top of the world. I put the coin in and pulled the lever.
Watermelon. Bananas. Bell.
I stared at the machine. I swear, those stupid little symbols were laughing at me. I saw red, reared my hand back, and punched the machine as hard as I could; next thing I knew, a few of the regulars were hauling my ass out the door and across the street, throwing me into the ditch and telling me to stay out.
And so there I was. Luckiest man in Vegas, sitting on the side of a road. Everything I had in life, gone in the span of a day. No idea on how to get back to where I was… or even if it was possible anymore. My luck had finally run out, and it had run out hard.
That’s when I heard her voice.
“Whoof, you look like you’re having a rough day,” she said.
“Lady, you have no idea how much I don’t wanna talk right now,” I said back. I expected that to be it; people were quick to move on in this city when it was clear you were in no mood. Instead, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” she cooed. She had the tone of someone who wasn’t used to consoling people, but was trying her hardest.
I looked over at my visitor; she had on a sparkling red dress like she was headed for the fanciest club in town—odd given how far we were outside the city—and a matching red derby hat with a wide brim and feathers sticking out the side. You know those old ads you’d see for Vegas with some perfect-looking woman dressed to the nines inviting you to come throw your life away? She looked for all the world like she had just stepped right out of one of those, but with a sincere smile that somehow clashed with the rest of her look.
“What do you want?” I seethed, looking her up and down.
She sat down beside me.
“So, um,” she said, casually scratching the back of her head as she searched for the right words. “I don’t know how to tell you this—”
“Oh my god just say it and go away,” I snapped at her.
She nodded. “Alright. I’m… Lady Luck.”
Judging by her reaction, she noticed my eyes rolling. “Cute nickname. Tell me what you’re selling, so I can tell you no and to fuck off.”
“No seriously! I’m her.” She leaned forward a bit, staring me down intently.
This lady wasn’t gonna leave me alone, I figured. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll humor you a bit. Prove it.”
“Uh…” she mumbled, glancing around. “Kinda hard to prove luck… Oh!” She pointed at the bar across the street, where four people were exiting, three of whom looked like they were about to collapse and one who was clearly ready to end the night. “Okay, see the guy in the gray shirt?”
I nodded. “Designated driver, I’m guessing.”
“Good guess,” she said. “And he’s gonna get rewarded for that.”
Two of gray shirt’s friends had already been piled into the car by him, and he was struggling to get the third to follow suit. Like a cartoon, the friend fell straight down to the ground, leading to a world-weary groan from gray shirt. Just as he was leaning down to help his friend up, a truck passed by with its brights on. As the light hit his car, there was a momentary glint from around the driver’s seat. Abandoning his friend, gray shirt reached towards where the glint was; when he pulled his hand back, I could see the tears in his eyes as he held his clenched fist close to his chest.
“The hell…” I muttered.
“Alonzo lost his wedding ring six months ago,” she said, happily leaning back on her hands and surveying the scene. “If his friends hadn’t decided to go out tonight, if he hadn’t been selected as the designated driver, if Marty hadn’t fallen out of the car at just that moment, if that truck hadn’t driven by at that moment, he might have never found it.” She gave me a sheepish grin. “I’m really proud of this one! Love it when luck can give someone a story to last a lifetime.”
Everything she was saying was absurd. But the way Alonzo was cradling his hand, carefully placing something onto his finger, a smile brighter than any of the lights in the city… I was in enough of a terrible mood to buy it.
“Alright, fine, whatever. You’re Lady Luck. So what?” I said. “You come here to gloat? Brag about ruining my life?”
“Nah, I don’t like bragging,” she said. “I wanna apologize. I’ve been watching, today’s been way worse on you than I expected it to be.”
“Expected?” I looked her dead in the eyes. “You knew this was gonna happen?”
“Well, yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s my whole job to know. But I figured I owed you an explanation.” She turned to fully face me, sitting cross-legged like she was a teacher in a kindergarten class. “How do I put this… everyone in the world has a set level of luck when they’re born. It determines how likely forces beyond your understanding will intervene to make something happen, for better or for worse. Follow me?”
“No.”
“Yeah, didn’t think you would.” She mulled something over in her mind, trying to find the right words. “Okay, so someone is born, and their luck is ‘zero.’ That means anything in their life that comes down to luck is just that: luck. Complete random chance. But if someone has, say… ‘one,’ maybe they’ll be a biiiiiiit more likely to end up with positive results. Or if it’s ‘negative one,’ a bit more likely to end up with negative results.”
“So our lives are determined by stupid video game stats?” I scoffed.
“Not everything in life; in fact it’s only luck. It’s kinda an intangible, a mystical thing, you know? There’s nothing you can do to increase or decrease luck, it just is.” She gave me that sheepish smile again. “Sorry, I’m really not used to explaining this to people.”
“I can tell.”
“So here’s where things get a bit more complex.” She held her hands out in front of her, trying to diagram something that wasn’t there. “There’s only a set amount of luck in the universe. New luck can’t just be conjured from nothing, it’s gotta be distributed amongst everyone and everything. When someone dies, their luck is spread out among the rest of the world; when someone is born, everyone gives them a bit of their luck. So in general, things stay pretty stable. Got it?”
“I think so?” My inflection reflected my confusion. “Lot to think about, but everyone just has their own luck. Got it.”
“Annnnnnd this is where you and I come in.” She continued to smile; it was starting to get to me. “I’ve been doing this job for a looooong time. I’m good at it, but think about how many living things have ever existed. Having to balance all that luck is tough! And, well… I was bound to make a mistake eventually.”
At the word ‘mistake,’ I felt my eye twitch. “What do you mean, mistake?”
She put her hand on my shoulder like a guidance counselor telling a student they’d never make it to college. “Look, I’ll be blunt: you were born with waaaaaay too much luck. You ended up with more than a city’s worth.”
Hearing her say it was like a gut punch and an eye opener all at once. “Sonofabitch,” I mumbled, looking up at the sky and taking it all in.
“What, are you surprised?” she asked.
“Nah, it just… hits different when you actually hear it from someone.” I didn’t say anything for a minute; I just gazed at the stars above me. She went quiet too, giving me the space I needed. Once I was ready, I had to ask the next obvious question. “So, why today? I’ve been lucky my whole life, and then you come by and take it all away from me in a snap? Just wander on in and treat me to the worst day of my life?”
Her smile faltered; she shifted uncomfortably, clearly not thrilled at the prospect of answering the question.
“Well?!” I shouted at her.
“That’s why I’m apologizing!” She shouted back. “I only noticed the error today, so I had to correct things. And the best way to do that is to rip the bandage off, metaphorically speaking. Take all that extra luck and distribute it among everyone else. But yeah, considering the day you had, that was probably a mistake on top of another mistake, so I owe you an apology. This one is on me.”
I wasn’t sure how to react, but I certainly wasn’t feeling positive about her apology.
“‘On me?’” I said through gritted teeth. “That’s all you got for me?”
“I know I’m not good at this, but I can count the number of people I have had to apologize to on one hand, so please cut me a little slack,” she said.
“Cut you some slack?!” She winced when I shouted. “You ruined my life, then expect me to forgive you? Give me my goddamn luck back!”
“I can’t do that, it wouldn’t be fair to everyone!” She stood up; I quickly jumped up to meet her there. “But the worst of it is over now, you’re basically at zero from now on. I’m already having to break a rule to set things straight, do you know how much worse it would be if I—”
“Zero’s not good enough!” I grabbed her by the lapels of her dress. “You give all of it back right this fucking instant!”
“Let me go!” she yelled.
I saw red. Before I knew what I was doing, I drove my head forward; there was a sickening thud as our heads made contact, and she went down immediately. Blood started to trickle down from her forehead, the same color as her dress. I went into auto-pilot and dropped down.
“GIVE IT BACK!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I curled my hands into fists and drove them down into her face. “GIVE ME MY LUCK BACK!!”
Over and over and over, I brought my hands down on her. With each hammer, I felt something more give; another vicious crack, another splatter of blood, another tooth flying to the side. By the time a minute had passed and my senses were returning to me, the woman under me was unrecognizable; a red pulp of blood and bone that would make a medical examiner run from the room in horror. I breathed heavily, staring down at what I had just done, at the lifeless figure below me.
And then… she was fine.
She didn’t magically heal herself, her body didn’t reform and attach itself back together, there wasn’t even a spark or a sound. One moment she was a corpse, the next she looked as pristine as she was when she had come to me minutes ago. She stared back up at me, a mixture of annoyance and disappointment on her face.
“Seriously!?” She yelled.
My only reaction was to fall back, trying to process what I was seeing. She casually stood up and brushed dust off of her dress.
“I-I-I, I’m—” I stammered.
“I APOLOGIZED! I was genuinely sorry for what I put you through! I was trying to make good, and you ATTACK me?!” She put her hands on her hips like a disappointed parent. “See, this is why I don’t like talking with people; you’re all such assholes!”
“B…but…” was all I could get out. She reached down and took me by the shirt, pulling me up to my feet. The smile was gone; there was an intensity burning in her eyes.
“Fine. You want your luck back? You got it!” she said. “Boom. It’s yours again, congratulations. But you know what? You only get it for one more week. Then, it’s over. Got it?!”
I wasn’t about to argue with her. I nodded. “One more week, one more bad day, then all this luck stuff is over. Got it.”
She shook her head. “No. I gave you the chance to do it all in one day, and you decide to get all violent.” The smile returned; this time, combined with the look in her eyes, it terrified me. “You thought I ripped the bandage off badly by doing it in one day? Let’s see what happens when we do it in a minute.”
She shoved me away and turned to leave. I hit the ground, the dust kicking up around me.
“W-wait!” I said, scrambling back to my feet. “Can’t we—”
She was gone. There was no indication that anyone had been there besides me. I looked around frantically, but other than the bar across the way, I was alone.
I’m not sure how long I stood in silence, but eventually all I could do was turn back towards Vegas and start walking. No sooner had I done so then the street lit up and a truck pulled alongside me. The driver rolled the window down.
“Heyo, need a lift into town?” he asked. I nodded, and he pushed the door open and patted the seat.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I sat down.
The moment I closed the door the pitter-patter of rain echoed outside the car, turning into a near-torrential downpour in seconds.
“God damn, it’s really comin’ down!” the driver laughed as he turned his windshield wipers on high. “I usually don’t take this road ‘neither, but my usual route’s backed up. Lucky I came this way or you’d be soaked right now, huh?”
That word rang in my head and I nodded again. “Yeah. Lucky.”
When he dropped me off at my hotel, one of the usual workers was at the front counter. He offered me a sincere apology about the mix-up earlier, said that the new girl hadn’t been told about me yet, and that they found my check behind a desk in the back. They left me champagne and a free gourmet meal for the trouble, but I left it out and collapsed into bed. The next day I went to the bank, where I was greeted with another apology; a clerical error was to blame for my cards being frozen, but now everything had been restored. They even increased my credit limit as an apology.
Things returned to normal for me. The dice were hot, and the hands were hotter. My luck was back. I should have been ecstatic.
But I wasn’t. I was empty.
I’ve been in a haze since then. Because every time I hit a jackpot, every time I get a win, every time someone hands me a free drink, I can see her. Out of the corner of my eye, she’s standing there, watching me with that same smile. But when I turn to look at her, she’s gone.
That was seven days ago. I’m sitting in my penthouse right now writing this. Over the last hour, the lights outside my window have faded, leaving the strip looking an eerie black. There’s no noise either. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Vegas quiet.
A few moments ago, I heard a soft knock at my door and a woman’s laughter.
Lady Luck has come to collect.
#entertainment
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