What Do I have to Lose?

Sitting here, hiding in an old rundown house that stinks of wet wood and mold, I find that I have the urge to write. I haven’t any other way to stave off the thought of my inevitable demise but to retell how it came about. A rather strange irony as I record the details of my plights within the very thing that brought it about. This small black book, such a little thing to do all this... Though the book is hardly entirely to blame, I played a part in my own demise as well, almost certainly a larger part, but yet I despise the book far more than myself; though I am certainly more worthy of the disgust. Even now, at the end of all things, I simply cannot bring myself to hate myself. I know my fate is inevitable but I desire to live, so I write, and perhaps someone will read my wretched tale of insatiable desire and in some way, I shall live on. Though I hardly have the time to be exhaustive as the hour of my payment approaches, the collector is sure to arrive soon.

I, Alexander Gifre, recall with a great reluctance my most pitiful days. Yes, I was even more wretched in my past than I am now. It is hard to believe that I hated life more before but the thing was that back then I hadn’t even begun to live. I was nothing but a drunken, gambling fisherman. I had many things that some would envy, a wife for instance, but the layman’s life was never enough for me. My wife was a pretty little thing. She was also a wretched woman to come home to. Despite that, I at least loved her for a time, but that time soon passed. She did nothing but nag, driving me mad after a day’s work. She couldn’t give me a moment's peace, always something was out of place and she just couldn't ever leave it alone. Then there was the boy, he was but five at the time, a good lad, but with that wretched wife of mine draining every last ounce of my being, I had nothing but disdain to give to him. I snapped at him for any little thing he did: laughing, playing, and even when he wasn’t doing anything at all I yelled at him; the poor boy couldn’t win. My treatment of the boy, I do regret. My family was falling apart and yet I continued to go out on the sea every day to try and provide for them and I just ended up toiling and freezing my ass off. This pathetic existence would be enough to drive any man to some form of madness; it just drove me to drink and to gamble. I suppose that is some form of madness.

The thrill of gambling was the only thing that gave my life any excitement, I drank when I couldn’t gamble, to drain out the tiresome life I had at home. Of course, this drove my wife to hate me more and it continued to kill the marriage. I always managed to put food on the table, and even when I did struggle to do that, I was always the one who skipped the meal, she was never grateful for that. Even though I had my vices, I always made sure they were taken care of. But no, every day was the same. When I got home she either said nothing or when she had a hunch that I lost she would say the same phrase when I stepped through the door: “Alexander did you lose? Ah well, you couldn't have lost worse than I have with you.” The bitch was so blunt and cruel. I wasn’t a violent man though, and I just drank to escape her heartlessness. It was this that allowed a small evil seed to take root within me, all that seed needed to grow was a little water and that water soon came.

I recall that cursed night, a harvest moon greeted me when I came back to port. Like any typical night after fishing, I decided to head to my favorite pub to delay the journey home. The liquor was cheap and everyone there loved to gamble. I won at times and could get a good meal instead of the slop the wife would expect me to eat back home. This night was a tad different; a rather rich patron dropped by the pub, one would not expect folk of his kind to be caught in a place like this. He had been looking for someone to play a game of cards with, but none of the other patrons would play, they feared they couldn’t afford the buy-in. He pranced around in his gilded robe with his fine ginger hair flowing behind him and harassing the patrons to play. He laughed at all who didn’t accept his wager. I wondered why no one had beaten that man bloody and put him in his place, especially in a pub like this. The man finally came to me and let out an absolutely rancid gasp of air in my face, it smelled of pickled fish and eggs. He looked me in the eyes and said: “Care to make a little wager. Oh please play just a few rounds with me, none of the big shots will play with me anymore. I thought at least someone here would play with me…. I tell you what, I will even give you some money to play with for the first round. If you lose you won’t have to pay it back.”

The rage that man filled me with as he spoke so arrogantly towards me somehow enabled me to overcome a sharp and sudden feeling to flee. It was a strange sense of dread that I should have listened to. What a fool I was. I agreed with his terms and sat down with the gitty fellow. I wanted to teach him a lesson, not to flaunt his wealth around those who have none, and so we played. Yet something strange happened, the man was no challenge at all to beat; the first round I crushed him, and something even odder occurred when the man realized that he had lost his first hand: he went wide-eyed and let out a shriek, not unlike the shriek of a banshee, it was terrible and unnerving. I took a quick look around the pub but no one seemed disturbed as if he and I were playing in an isolated environment. I looked back at him, he had bitten through the ends of his fingertips and was babbling incoherently. At that point, I wanted to leave with my winnings, but as I tried to leave he grabbed my sleeve and begged me to give him a chance to win back what he had lost. That accursed feeling of wanting to punish this man once again overcame me and so I played on throughout the night winning every game.

At last, when the man had lost everything he had to gamble with, I once again got up to leave with my winnings which amounted to twenty thousand pounds. I was going to be set for life. But at that moment the man tugged at my sleeve, showing he wanted to play one last game for everything he had lost. I chuckled and told him that he had nothing left to gamble with. At that moment though a figure hooded, robed in a garment as black as night, came into our isolated sanctuary. He put down a sack of gemstones and a little black book, pushing them towards the center of the table with abnormally long and twisted fingers. With a sickly grin, he gestured that what he had put on the table would be the stake for the last game, between me and the now formerly rich man. I agreed, I had no doubt I would once again win the bet, which I did. I got up and left the devastated man to sit solemnly at the table, I saw no sign of that hooded figure as I left.

I went straight home, absolutely giddy, but when I got close the thought of my wife sickened me and so I hid my winnings. I went in and the wife nagged as usual but I ignored her more coldly than before, though I did not drink. I sat at a table in the corner of the house and opened the book. I was surprised to find some ancient Greek text spanning the first pages of the book. Unfortunately, I had not the skill in Greek to read it; a most regrettable thing as perhaps it would have saved me from my fate. I flipped past those pages to find there was a contract that promised that fate would begin to utterly favor me, but in exchange, a day would come where I would tempt fate and would fail, then a collector would come to collect everything. Still being on a high, I figured what harm could it do. I signed it.

That morning I pretended to go off to work, I had to see if what the book promised was true. I took the twenty thousand pounds I won from the previous night, bought some presentable clothes, and went to gamble in a far richer circle. Much to my surprise, I won every game, they even asked me to leave midway through, I did. On my way out I spotted the headline of the local paper; it detailed that a man eerily similar to the one I had gambled with the night before had been torn to shreds in the street by someone or something. I was taken aback but was still high on the sense of winning, I had more than doubled the twenty thousand and I had to have more. I moved from gambling den to gambling den and this began a 3 year period into a descent of decadence and debauchery. Women, liquor, jewelry, food, narcotics, and anything else under the sun one could spend money on I had. During that time I eventually stopped going home.

I, however, went one game too far. I was challenged to play some squeamish fat lord who called himself the “King of Dice.” That title angered me, for there could only be one king of any sort of gambling, and that was me. I hadn’t lost a game even once before in those three years and I loved taking from those people who looked down on me before. We even played at his specialty but from the very first cast of the die I lost and I continued to lose every game. I played till I had nothing left, I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t let fate leave me, if I could just win it all back once, surely, I would get my streak back, that’s what I told myself. But I lost everything. I just wanted one more game. I begged the fat man and he just laughed and wiped his sweaty brow. Suddenly though he fell silent, I looked up and saw that grinning hooded figure slide a little black book and a sack of gems towards the middle of the table. Fear grew inside of me, but I played that last game and lost again. When I lost I stood up and screamed and fled the grounds, now knowing my fate. This is why I now find myself here in this abandoned old house, waiting and recording my accursed fate. I ran as far away as my legs could carry me, but I know I shan’t escape my fate. I see the smiling man in the open door, but with no smile any longer, but a long and terrible maw.