The Last Bet
By Olivia Salter
His reflection glares back from a wall of mirrors across the room: hollow eyes, skin drawn tight over bones, a man turned ghost. A lifetime of losses etched into the slump of his shoulders, the nervous twitch in his jaw. His fingers, stained and shaking, hover over the table for one final moment. He knows there’s nothing left to give.
He releases the chip.
It clatters onto red, a hollow sound that vanishes into the surrounding noise. The dealer’s hand spins the wheel, and the room seems to hold its breath, each second stretching out. The ball tumbles along the edge—skipping, bouncing—until it finds its place.
For a beat, he watches, caught between hope and nothingness, as the mirrored ghost stares back.
The ball settles into its slot, a small, lifeless thud as it drops. Red. His chip is swallowed by the win, and the dealer nods, sliding back a short stack. Relief unfurls, cold and trembling, in his chest. But the weight of the room remains, pressing against his skin, squeezing the small triumph to ashes before he can feel it.
He stares at the new stack, hands frozen, as the dealer’s gaze flickers to him—curious, expectant. His fingers itch to reach for those chips, to let them fly across the table in one sweeping bet, just to feel that thrill of possibility for a moment longer. But the hollow figure in the mirror holds his eyes, a stranger bound to that reflection, and something hardens in him.
Slowly, he lifts the chips and slips them into his pocket. The weight anchors him, a lifeline as he turns his back on the blaring lights and the endless hum of the casino floor. His footsteps echo down the hall, slow, almost hesitant, each step pulling him further from the mirrored ghost he left behind.
He moves through the casino, past tables surrounded by desperate faces, past machines that blink and sing with promises that have never been kept. The noise grows softer with each step until it’s a muffled hum, fading like an old dream. Ahead, the exit glows under a flickering “Way Out” sign, a beacon amid the haze.
As he nears the doors, a rush of cool night air presses against the glass, rippling through his shirt, filling his lungs with something clean and sharp. He pauses there, feeling the weight of the chips in his pocket, a strange warmth seeping into his fingers as they trace their hard edges. He’d thought this win would feel like salvation, that it would somehow free him from the ache that had gnawed at his gut for years.
But freedom isn’t what he feels. Not yet.
Beyond the door, the city waits, neon lights sprawled across the horizon like stars pulled to earth. He steps out into it, the chill of the desert night prickling his skin. For a moment, he stands on the edge of the curb, staring at the glowing skyline, hearing the faint hum of traffic below and the muffled laughter drifting up from the streets.
One more step, he thinks, and he could vanish into that shimmering sprawl, let the lights swallow him whole, let the weight of all that came before fall away. He lets his hand rest on the chips one last time, feeling their cold, hard certainty.
Then, with a final, steady breath, he pulls them from his pocket and lets them scatter into the darkness behind him.
The chips tumble, clattering onto the pavement and rolling off into the shadows, their plastic edges catching stray glints of neon before disappearing. He watches them go, feels the small, hollow echoes of their landing settle into silence.
The city hums around him, indifferent and alive, and he feels the strange pull of it—the siren call of glittering lights, the promise of easy wins and quick escapes, the temptation to turn back, reach down, and reclaim those last remnants of a night spent chasing ghosts. But the weight in his chest has lifted, leaving him almost weightless as he stands there, alone on the empty curb.
His gaze drifts upward, past the lights, to the blank, endless sky above the city—a deep, stretching dark, untouched by the neon below. For the first time in what feels like years, he breathes it in, the coolness sinking all the way to his bones.
A taxi slows to a crawl beside him, the driver glancing over, but he raises a hand, signaling to move on. Instead, he steps forward, one slow, deliberate footfall after another, each step taking him farther from the pull of the casino, the noise, the empty promises.
His path is aimless, uncharted. He doesn’t know where it leads—doesn’t know what waits beyond the next corner, the next shadow. But for the first time, he’s not looking for an answer, or a gamble, or a game to win or lose.
As he walks, the city fades behind him, swallowed by the night, and he steps forward, leaving only the ghost of himself back in the glow of Las Vegas.
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