Past

As Noah slept, he was haunted by visions from his past, telling him that he was just like his own father, that he could never be there for whom he loved most and because of that had lost him, like Noah's dad had lost Noah through his own addictions.

His dad wasn't an especially strong man, he broad and tall but had no strength to speak of, he would very often ask Noah to move basic things like the kitchen table which could have been no bigger than 30cm in length and width, though he had never measured it.

His facial features were in no way similar to Noah's, Noah's hair had greyed and whitened itself long before his 30th birthday, his shock when it started to dull was hard to put into words.

However his dad's had remained a healthy brown up until the day his liver gave out in his 50s, while he died younger than he probably should have given his genetics, he had brought it upon himself, drinking several pints of beer every day and getting absolutely hammered before coming home.

Noah had hated seeing him like that, in that pathetic state where he couldn't even tell that his son was in front of him leaving him to trample Noah multiple times while swaying, unsteady on his own two feet.

To get away from his dad Noah had started to gamble with the money he could scrounge from around the house, quickly learning how to play several games, not how to win at them, just the basic rules and that had been enough.

In his first month of gambling he managed to make £20, which definitely wasn't a lot by his later standards, but at the time it made him feel like a mini millionaire, and not the food kind of millionaire, he had had several people ask him "Like the cheesecake?" when he told them how he felt.

This had annoyed him to no end as a kid, but now he just laughed about it when reminiscing about how much better things were.

By the time he had reached his teens, he was already an experienced local gambler who knew most of the tricks people would pull like using the mechanics grip, which was named as such because it could fix the game in anyone's favour if used correctly.

Even he had learnt how to use it to buckle the top card and peek at the corner, or to bottom deal keeping good cards for himself by false shuffling so whatever he wanted stayed at the bottom of the deck.

He had been caught several time, the worst of which had been some old gang men who had beaten him bloody, just the thought of it was enough to bring shivers to his sleeping body.

Those were the kind of people you had to deal with if you wanted to gamble money, they held all the casinos big or small in his childhood town, and they were not nice people, they used to drag people to the back practically every other week, no one knew what happened back there but you could guess.

He didn't really want to remember much more, he was content with living in the present that he found himself in, not living in maybes formed in his head that served only to make him regret every choice he made in service of getting to the point in life he was at.

However he found himself now running down dark alleys, familiar but completely foreign to him, he had no idea what he was running from, he couldn't glance behind him.

A voice called out, it was rough and hoarse with a distinctive cockney twang, It wasn't so rare to hear those around where he was from but with the raspy nature of it he was sure he knew who it was.

It was billy Gatts, Old Bill as they used to call him, the guy who had first taught him blackjack, so then why was he running? He didn't have a need to run away from the one man he could have called his father.

And yet his legs carried on, carried him through the night and out of that alley to where he found an old family home, upon close inspection it was his incredibly old home.

The one where he had a full family to share it with, one with a dad he could be proud of and a mum that helped him and seemingly knew everything, the same as his dad at that time, both were quite intelligent in their own rights.

But knowing that made him not want to enter, it was too hard for him to see what that happiness later devolved into, but against his wishes, he entered through the large front door that stood at above even his adult head level.

Inside was the typical home setup, there was a hallway directly in front of the door that led to the kitchen and the living room, but when he looked inside either there was nothing except the outlines of where the furniture should have been.

No one seemed to be living here anymore, there certainly weren't any facilities for human life anywhere to be found and yet a melody could be heard, he couldn't make out the words yet, but he recognised the voice.

`No, even if this is a dream don't make me go up there, I don't want to see her` he was somehow capable of free thought inside the dream, but no matter how much he wanted to stay away he still continued up.

Up the winding stairs that seemed to change in elevation with every step being its own unique distance above the other, the style that always tripped guests up and caused more than a few nosebleed from faceplants.

"Hush little baby don't say a word, momma's gonna buy you a hummingbird"

The lyrics of the melody were now audible, the soft voice repeating the same line over and over.

As soon as he reached the door where the voice was coming from, it opened and the voice stopped, there was no one there, the house lay abandoned once more except for one crib, inside it held a single photo, but the photo held nothing at all, it just laid there lifeless.

A sudden jolt came over him and his eyes opened, looking around the room where he had fallen asleep not too long ago, he had forgotten to turn the light on yesterday so he had slept in complete darkness.

`That must be the reason for the weird dream` he tried to explain to himself about why he would see something like that, he had long forgotten about the kindness of his mother, more out of wanting to rather than it being an accident.

Remembering here kindness made him tear up at the thought that she was taken way too early and that his life would have possibly been so much better, but he couldn't change the past, unless he could.

A thought started bouncing around his head, `if what they say is true and you can buy anything with chips, what if I bought a changed past`.

He shook his head `No that wouldn't make me any happier, it would change everything so who knows what would happen, I may lose everything that I hold close, and there's nothing saying things will be better`.

The real reason he didn't want to was because he was scared, scared of change to the way things were, he always had been to a certain extent, the only thing that made him try new things was his youthful bravery, as soon as he started turning old he stopped doing new things and stuck to the old.

But that was neither here nor there, he had now woken up and would find it near impossible to get back to sleep, so his day started now.

The first thing he did was check the time using the Tv inside of his room which told him that it was currently 6.25am, so there was an hour and 35 minutes until he had to meet Julie.

He used this time to get himself cleaned up, he had wanted to change clothes as well but he hadn't brought a spare pair with him, and he most certainly wasn't wasting his chips on something that he didn't need to.

Luckily the casino was nice and gave you the essential toiletries like a razor, shaving cream and the like, but if you ran out of anything except toilet paper and towels, you had to pay.

Noah didn't want to pay for anything he deemed unnecessary for now, this included shampoo and shaving cream, so he used them in a very restricted manner.

After a 20 minute shower he grabbed the nearest towel to dry himself off, however he noticed that he still had a bit of a stench. He spent a good 10 minutes debating whether or not he should get back in the shower to try and rinse the smell away.

He decided against it since he needed to complete his oral hygiene routine before heading out, there was no debating to himself about that, he had only been to the dentists a few times and it had managed to traumatise him enough to make him always keep his mouth clean.

That managed to take up another 20 minutes of his time, leaving him with 45 minutes to himself with which he could do whatever he pleased.

Although he didn't actually have any idea about what he wanted to spend those 45 minutes on, he was going to spend it practicing his blackjack skills, but that wouldn't pay out as well as the other games would.

He needed the chips, since there was a price of 100 chips per day spent at the casino that he would have to pay later that night, this would slowly drain him of wealth if he didn't play.

Although he didn't know how much things in the marketplace were going to be, he could assume that the prices would be much higher than 5000 chips, because otherwise people would most likely cash out if they could get something satisfying without even playing.

Looking around the entire room he found that there were books hidden away in a drawer that was built into the bedside table, looking at the titles they seemed to be different guides.

`Guide to ---` the books title cut off and didn't seem to have any text after the first two words, it seemed interesting though, so he read through it.

It mainly described a game where all players were dealt 10 cards and a certain suite that they would have to get all the cards for, the game also used a special deck that was only composed of an A-10.

Needless to say the game only worked in multiples of 4 but it seemed that there was a lot of tells that the elves had when playing, the most common being that if you did something they didn't like, they would perk their ears up slightly.

Overall the book was an interesting read, and gave Noah an idea about what he would do when he got to the gambling floor, then he noticed the time.

It was 8.06, he was late by six minutes which may not seem like much, but to Noah this went against the universal rule he had set himself to be punctual and respectful.

So without even spending time to clean off his clothes he sped out of the door, only just remembering to bring his door card with him.

He then set off down the corridors as fast as he could, receiving many angry complaints as he thundered past people at what felt like the speed of sound to him.

He only slowed down when he saw Julie standing alone in the hallway, wearing a dress that was a light, rosey red with a single black ribbon tied on the front.

"Sorry I'm late, shall we get going" the embarrassment of being late evident on his face.

"Its fine, lets get going then" and so they both set off back to the gambling hall to test their luck once more.