The Luck of the Irish

Samuel Gardner always believed himself to be the most unlucky man to ever exist. It wasn’t even an interesting or ironic case of unluckiness, like a man who survived cancer only to be brutally murdered by a serial killer, or a woman who won the lottery but lost the ticket down a storm drain. No, there was a banality to Samuel’s unluckiness, and it was unrelenting and quite simply depressing.

He started to suspect he was ill-fated as a child when he could never find the match to his socks. Now this may seem an inconvenience that plagues many children, but in Samuel’s case, even when he would open a brand new fresh package of socks there were no matches to be seen. He always seemed to have paper cuts when helping his mother make lemonade, and no matter where he stood, the person in front of him at the lunchline always got the last piece of chocolate cake.

As Samuel got older his curse continued. His skin would always and only break out in monstrous zits the night before picture day. Whenever he tried to take a girl to the movies, somehow the tickets were always sold out, even if it was the biggest box office flop of the year. His parents even separated and his mother remarried a woman. Now this in itself was not unlucky, Samuel liked to think himself progressive and he was happy that his mother found someone to love dearly, he just wished his mother hadn't fallen in love with the woman who birthed his despicable childhood bully. And so it was that on top of the unnatural misfortune that wreaked havoc on Samuel's high school years, he gained the luxury of super-wedgies in the comfort of his own home.

Even Samuel's luck was unlucky. Without doing much, he had somehow managed to survive the end of the world. Sometime in his young adult life, an apocalyptic disease broke out and ripped its way across the earth. It could kill a human within a few hours of being infected, and it certainly did. Samuel's body contained a hidden immunity that staved off the terrible illness, but it seemed that others like Samuel were all but non-existent, so although he was lucky to have lived, he was destined to walk the rest of his unfortunate days alone.

That is until one day, a few years after everyone was gone, he came across a girl.

In order to curb the loneliness, Samuel was always on the move. It was a particularly warm day, and he was somewhere in what used to be Las Vegas when he came across an old Seven-Eleven. He was extremely thirsty, and his food stash was getting a bit low, so he decided to raid the little ivy-covered store for non-perishables. As he lost himself in rummaging the forgotten shelves, thinking about how he now knew the sadness the last dinosaur must have felt, he heard the small bell at the front door chime.

The sound was like a ghost. He hadn't heard a humanly sound that was not made by himself for a long while. In a way it was terrifying, but it was also wonderful, so with great hope he looked toward the front of the store. There stood a girl, much younger than him, with a rusty colored ball cap and a tattered blue backpack. She looked sure and strong. Samuel figured it was probably because she'd spent her formative years learning to survive alone. He watched her, remaining very still as she carefully came toward him. She plopped herself on the ground a couple feet away and pulled a small black notebook that looked like it had been through hell out of her backpack. She also produced a pencil, and then nodded to Samuel as if to say, "as you were".

He was in complete disbelief, he hadn't seen a live human face for an eternity, but he didn't want to break the fragility of the moment so he continued to pull cans off of the shelf before him. He tried not to continuously glance over as the girl sketched away in her little book.

After a while, she finished, and then finally she spoke.

"There aren't many of us left. You're the second person I've seen." Her voice sounded gravelly from lack of use, but it was comforting to Samuel to hear someone speak.

"Did you draw me?" Was all he could think to say.

She nodded and showed him the sketch. The dirt stained page contained his exact likeness, from his dark eyes to his crooked nose. The gesture was so simple, having someone draw him, and she had done it quickly and informally on lined paper. Even so, Samuel was overwhelmed by the small moment of normalcy that she had afforded him. He felt tears gathering in his eyes.

She then flipped to a different page and showed him the portrait of a very old man with an unkempt beard and wild eyes, "There’s a crazy man on the strip. The Four Leaf Clover Casino. He's keeping the electricity on."

That's all she said before she packed her things back in her bag and strode out of the convenience store.

As Samuel watched her leave he wondered if he should yell after her to please stay so that they both wouldn't have to be so lonely anymore, but somehow he knew finding a friend in the only other person he'd seen in years would just be a bit too lucky for him, so he quietly watched her go.

This is how Samuel ended up in the heart of an abandoned Sin City. It wasn't hard to find the legendary strip, a few miles of grandiose casinos that rose like leviathans out of Nevada's otherwise flat landscape, but it was quite a walk to get there. Samuel figured it was summer, as the days offered nothing but blistering heat, and so the shade of the tall buildings was quite welcome.

As the girl had promised, the bulbs of The Four Leaf Clover sign were on and flashing in hues of emerald and lime green. It was a lonely beacon on the once blinding strip. Samuel cautiously walked into the lobby, which somehow still held the faint stale smell of cigarettes, and instantly began to search for some sort of small store or kitchen that might hold water. As he searched around the abandoned casino, he became increasingly uneasy. The colorful slot machines were all lit and flashing, but their volume was unnaturally low. Samuel wondered if the man who resided there had made them quieter on purpose, because he could barely hear the usually loud and animated sounds that the slots tended to elicit. It was like the machines were whispering.

He then spotted a lonely slot machine in the corner of the main floor. It was sitting in its own little pool of light, and it looked quaint and old fashioned. It was the kind that had a lever and three rolling wheels that matched up pictures of clovers and leprechauns and pots of gold. Samuel felt drawn to the little machine, which brandished the name "Luck of the Irish" in greens and golds across the top. He started towards it, momentarily forgetting his thirst. He'd never gone to Vegas before the apocalypse on account of his terrible luck, but the prospect of pulling the lever seemed abnormally inviting.

Before he could reach the machine, however, Samuel heard a faint voice coming from somewhere on the floor.

"Hello?" It called out weakly, "Hello, someone there?"

Samuel followed the voice as best he could, until he came upon an old office with the door cracked open. As he stepped inside, he found the old man from the girl's notebook lying on an old mattress on the floor. The man's graying hair and beard looked like overgrown weeds, and his wild eyes were glazed over as if they were losing their light. Slowly the man's milky gaze slid to Samuel, and it made his spine tingle.

"I'm dyin I think." The man's hoarse voice spoke.

Samuel felt as uneasy as before, but now it was tinged with sadness.

"What can I do for you, sir? Would you like me to help you move to one of the rooms upstairs?"

"No! Not upstairs, never go up there, you hear me?" His wild eyes widened, "There's a creature lives up there… an old evil bastard that eats people,” his voice dropped, haunted, “and there ain’t no people left, so he's hungry."

The man's chest began to rise and fall rapidly, and his body was quaking. Samuel's sadness grew as he suspected this man was suffering from some sort of unbridled dementia. He slowly sat down next to the man and grabbed his hand trying to calm him.

"Sir, if there's a creature upstairs who is hungry, why hasn't he eaten you?" Perhaps this wasn't the best question to ask, but Samuel was out of practice in conversing, and he couldn't catch the words as they tumbled out of his mouth.

The man’s quaking body stilled, "I been keepin’ them lights on.”

“The creature likes the lights?”

“He don’t like em, but they sure brought you in, didn’t they?” He began to shake again.

Samuel shivered, but he tried not to feel too unnerved. He wanted to give this man some comfort at the end of his life.

"Don't worry, I won't go upstairs, sir." He said quietly.

The man continued to quake for a while, and then closed his eyes. His breathing became shallow, until it was almost imperceptible. Samuel decided perhaps he could find some water or medicine to help ease the old man's final moments, so he carefully removed his hand from the other's grasp, and ventured back out onto the floor.

As Samuel walked out of the office, he was once again taken by the beautiful little slot machine in the corner, and so he decided to give it one good pull before searching the grounds. He sat in the small leathery chair before The Luck of the Irish, and was dazzled by it's lights. It showed that the current jackpot was one million dollars, and though he didn't suspect anything to come of it, Samuel grasped the lever and pulled, sending the wheels into a frenzy. Then one by one they stopped.

A pot of Gold.

A pot of Gold.

A pot of Gold.

Samuels eyes lit up, and so did the machine. It seemed to be the only one that had full volume, and it blared as it shot little gold coins out of it's old shute. An Irish Jig played merrily as green and yellow lights blinked, seeming to praise their winner. Samuel was ecstatic as he was showered in his spoils. He knew that it didn't mean much, a million dollars to spend in a world where everything was free, but he was ecstatic nonetheless.

For the first time in his life, Samuel Gardner felt lucky.

And then, amid the tinkling of the coins, he heard a croak from the office. His stomach dropped with guilt for being delighted over something so trivial as the old man was suffering in the other room. He took one last look at the lovely machine that made him a millionaire, and then hurried into the office, closing the door so that the loud sounds of Irish music were muffled.

The dying man's ghostly gaze fell on Samuel once more, and he motioned to come close to him. As Samuel knelt next to the decaying mattress, the man grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him down with surprising strength. His uneven breath invaded Samuel's ear. His voice, quiet and wheezing, offered three last words.

"He heard ya."

And then the door behind Samuel creaked open.