I rested my whole weight on the sink, counting the droplets dripping down my nose. I tried to remember everything before waking up. I walked backwards through time. Tracing back my steps, thoughts, and actions until it reached the earliest memory I could remember. The last thing I recalled was a sound. It was the sound of glasses clinking; there was laughter, and a distant noise… the spinning of a coin. But beyond that, there was nothing.
Blank.
I closed my eyes. Reconciling with uncertainty, I sighed. I reached for my handkerchief to dry my face, but as I pulled it out, something fell from my pocket. I bent down and reached for it. I lifted it up towards the dim light of the bathroom and saw a twenty sided die. I had no memory of having this little item before. I chucked it at the side of the sink, and continued to tend to my face. But, the sound of rolling dice resonated deep within my soul—like the sound of a spinning coin. It was strikingly familiar, like I have heard it a hundred times over. A growing interest came over me as I stared at it spinning on the corner. I gave a moment’s notice and then… It gradually came back to me as pictures of an almost forgotten life: the old man, the Crab City, the persimmon tree by the lake, the lottery, and my last roll at my aunt’s kitchen. My soul jumped. All I could think about was my past.
‘I did lose my chance at the lottery, but did I win this life through gambling in casinos? And if so, did I guess the last roll correctly, then?’ ‘Was all of this true to begin with?’ questions continued to unravel as the die danced from number to number. The water droplets of the sink echoed in the bathroom. In each drop my vision narrowed to the die. The die seemed to go faster and faster, never slowing down. My heart raced with the ticking of the clock. The clock’s ‘ticks’ pierced my ears. In every ‘tock’ the speed picked up. Even faster this time, the die became a blur. I looked closely at the die. My eyes remained glued to the die since the first droplet, never blinking. My eyes were strained, completely bloodshot. I would never miss even a millisecond. My world revolved around this rotating die. But then, at the moment that I noticed the die slow down, I blin—
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—my dream was unfortunately disturbed by one particularly loud crash of a wave. It was 4:14 PM, and I realized it was almost my shift. I ran back to the Crab City, Milwin Resort’s finest dining restaurant, to work. To most, it must be a privilege to be an employee of the snazziest establishment in the country, much less they hired the only African-American in town, but I still scrub dirty toilets and clean after the rich’s behinds every night. A privilege that I’d willingly give, but then, I wouldn’t. They paid me good money, but not enough to be kicked around like a rock. I should have been paid extra. But then again, good money was still money, and honestly, I didn’t care. I grew numb to their lack of decency, and I had never hated so much of what was real, and loved so deeply of what was fictional.
I sighed, “Not much of a billionaire now, am I?”
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