The Gambler

Hiro, the Gambler

"FUCK!" A man yells as he slams his fist on his desk. The man has short black hair with almost as much grey as black. The leans back into his chair with such force that he moves the chair back a little, created an eerie scratching sound as the wooden chair screeches on the wooden floor. The monitor on the desk shows a bright and vibrant message, 'Out of funds, deposit more?' With a big green button that says, 'Deposit'. Underneath the message.
"Fucking stupid. How the fuck do I go from up 1000x to down -1000x in a matter of minutes?! Fuck I have an addiction." The man says as he gets up and walks to the bed on the other side of the room. The floor, barely visible beneath layers of discarded wrappers, crumpled paper, and half-empty containers, squelched with each step, as if protesting the intrusion. Decomposing food lay scattered across the room, their once vibrant colors now dulled and sickly, emitting a foul miasma that permeated the air. The walls, barely visible beneath the towering stacks of refuse, were stained and discolored, a testament to years of neglect and indifference. Flies buzzed lazily in the dim light of the monitor, drawn to the festering heaps of waste like pilgrims to a foul shrine. The desk, if it could be called that, lay buried beneath mountains of debris, their surfaces obscured by layers of filth. What little remained visible was marred by stains and grime, a sad reminder of their former glory. Every corner of the room seemed to pulse with a palpable sense of decay, a living testament to the man's isolation and detachment from the world outside. It was a place forgotten by time, where the detritus of existence had gathered like a malignant tumor, choking the life out of the space and those within it. Hiro flops onto the bed, shrouded in shadows, sat amidst a clutter of discarded belongings, his unkempt figure a testament to their prolonged isolation. Greasy strands of black and grey hair clung to his scalp, matted and tangled, framing a face obscured by layers of grime. Hiro lays there, for upwards of an hour, without moving. If someone was in the room with him, they would think him to be dead. After a while, he sits up and sighs. He grabs his smartphone out of his pocket and goes into an app. $-.22 Shows in red at the top of it, with a chart that plummets straight down.
"Fuck." He mutters as he goes into the contacts app and clicks one, 'Ryan.'
The phone rings for a few seconds and a voice is heard, "Yo, this is Ryan." His voice is calm and deep.
"Hey, it's Hiro." Hiro's voice sounds defeated and empty.
"Oh. What do you want?" Ryan's voice now sounds disappointed.
"How much do I owe you?"
"Over 18 million yen." Hiro takes the phone away from his ear and sighs.
"Any chance-" Hiro starts, before being cut off.
"No. None. I want my money, Hiro. We've been friends for a long time, and that's the only reason I haven't come over and bashed your fucking legs." The phone clicks and no sound can be heard from Ryan's end. Hiro doesn't remove the phone from his ear though.
"I'm sorry." Hiro mutters. His voice shaking and tears streaming down his face. He sets the phone down and stares at it, expecting something to happen. After about 20 minutes of waiting, he stands and walks towards the door, once again the floor squelches with every step. When he opens the door, the sight is overwhelmingly different. Clean air and nothing rotting hits Hiro's nose and is intoxicatingly good. He walks down the long clean hallway that ends up into the living room. There, a man is sitting next to a woman, holding a gun.
"Ah, Hiro! Just who I wanted to see!" Hiro is in shock, his eyes are wide and his mouth is wide open. Hiro's legs begin to shake, and his heart racing.
"Hiro, Hiro." Another man says as he walks over to Hiro. Both men are big builds, probably around 220 pounds of muscles standing at a whopping six foot to Hiro's 92 pounds at five foot nine.
"Yuda. Listen, I can get your money!" Hiro's voice is frantic and brittle.
"I know, little Hiro, I know." The man says as he grabs Hiro by the shoulder and then wraps his right arm around his neck and puts his left arm against the back of Hiro's head. Hiro frantically grabs at the big arm of muscles that is wrapped around his neck.
"Shh, shh. Just watch. This is incentive to pay. Your mother put up with your shenanigans for far too long. We are helping her by doing this!" The man says as he forces Hiro's head to stare directly at the man holding a gun next to his mother. His mother is very calm, not looking at Hiro. Tears, slowly streaming down her face. The man next to his mother lifts his gun, and puts it against the back of her head. She glances at Hiro and says two final words, "Fuck you." Before a loud bang echoes around the house. Blood splatters the wall and the couch they were sitting on, as his mother flops to the floor, limp. Yuda releases Hiro, who collapses to the floor. Tears covering his face, as he begins to crawl towards his now dead mother. He puts his hands around her head crying. Blood running down his fingers and arms, he frantically tries to cover the wound, even though he knows she's already gone.
"MOM!" He yells through the tears, snot and spit running down his face and chin now. The men laugh, and someone kicks Hiro in the back of the head. 


Hiro begins to open his eyes to the once clean living room that is now stained red. He rubs his eyes and sees his blood stained hand. He panics and jumps up. His head hurts, and he is covered in blood. He feels around for wounds on himself and then he sees his mother and everything comes back. He just stares at her dead body, disgusted with himself. He looks around and notices they stole the tv, and some random things that Hiro knew were there before.
"What have I done?" He says, sitting on the blood splattered couch.
"I'm so sorry, Mom." He mutters as he leans back in the couch, staring at the ceiling.
"You failed her." A woman says as she sits next to Hiro. At this point Hiro is so distraught and detached that he doesn't even flinch at her appearance.
"I know." He says, his words empty and his voice monotone.
"She trusted you. Gave you a house, food, and gave you life again. Even after you abandoned her. You got filthy rich, then blew it all." The woman says, looking straight ahead.
"Who are you again? Do I owe you money too?" Hiro's monotone voice echoing through his own head.
"Pfft, of course not," The woman chuckles, "I don't deal in such concepts."
"Then why are you here?"
"Well, for you."
"What does that mean?"
"How much do you owe? 100million yen? More?"
"In total? Over 150 million."
"Goodness."
"Yeah."
"What if I told you, I could allow you an escape." She glances at him.
"What does it matter?" Hiro responds, never looking away from the ceiling he's been staring at.
"What do you mean?"
"They killed the one thing that kept me connected to this world."
"Funny choice of words."
"How so?"
"I'm offering you a chance to go to a different world."
"What does that even mean? You want me to kill myself?" Hiro finally looks at her, to notice she is not human, at least, not entirely human. From the waist up, she bore the look of a woman, her features soft and delicate, framed by cascading tendrils of midnight hair that danced in the gentle breeze by the ceiling fan above. Her eyes, pools of endless depth, held a haunting allure, drawing the gaze of those who dared to meet them. But as the eye traveled downward, the illusion shattered, revealing a form that was no longer bound by mortal constraints. Where legs should have been, there was instead a translucent mist, swirling and shifting like wisps of smoke caught in a breeze. Her lower half faded into nothingness, leaving behind a ghostly trail that seemed to shimmer.
"What the hell-" Hiro starts before she grabs him by the shirt and smiles, "Let's go!" She yells as they fall through the floor. Hiro's senses were overwhelmed by a kaleidoscope of hues swirling around them in a dizzying dance. Each shade seemed to sing its own song, a symphony of light and color that enveloped them completely. The sensation of falling was both exhilarating and terrifying, as if he was being pulled through the very fabric of reality itself. He tumbled headlong through the swirling vortex, weightless and disoriented, their surroundings a blur of motion and sensation. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the chaos subsided, and he found himself standing on solid ground once more. But this was no familiar landscape he had landed upon. Before him stretched a world unlike any he had ever seen, a realm of wonder and possibility.
"Welcome to Hertofyrd, Hiro." The woman smiles.