I work at a crooked casino. You don't gamble with money here.

Hi, everybody.  My name is Sid, and I’m an addict.   

It took me a long time to accept that.  But when you take a job in a casino just so that you can be there all the time and try to gain an edge, you’re an addict.  It’s obvious even to me.  More so to my family and friends, who I barely see anymore.      

It’s not pills or coke, booze or heroin that I’m hooked on.  I’m addicted to gambling.   

The casino that made me so obsessed is not an ordinary one, though.  It’s far from ordinary.   

You don’t play for money at Fantasy Casino.  You play for your dreams.   

I hear you laughing.   

But have you ever had a really, really great dream?  One that got so good you snapped awake the second it started to get really excellent?   

Well, imagine that times a thousand.  Times a million.   

A dream so real and so perfect that all of your fantasies become reality.  Time stretches out.  You feel like you are there forever.  A lifetime passes before your return.   

Infinite wealth, the ability to fly like superman, you’re surrounded by sex and beautiful people all day as you relax in a palace built to your mind’s most exacting specifications of perfection.   

But then you wake up, and in an instant it is gone.   

The power, the wealth, the endless sex and supernatural powers.   

Everything is suddenly NORMAL again. 

  And so you go back to the casino.   

I went back to the casino.   

But the problem with gambling is that you don’t always win.  And when you lose, suddenly the winnings are gone as well, vanished without a trace.  All I knew was that I had to have that feeling again.   

So I went inside the giant building and then followed the secret signs which led to a door that led to a staircase going downwards.   

I went down the stairs and knocked on the door marked “Private” and waited for an answer.   

“Password.”   

The voice on the other side of the black door waited for my response.   

“Seramth Gin.”  I said the unnatural words carefully and deliberately, still not knowing their meaning.   

A friend had told me the password, a fellow gambler who I would later find dead in his apartment.  His corpse white, bloated, and maggot-infested.

  His eyes were black and filled with blood which streamed from his eye sockets like tears.  He had bit his tongue clean off and his fingernails were found lodged in various surfaces throughout his apartment.  Like he had been trying to claw his way out of a steel box that only he could see.   

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  That was later.  At this point I was still hopeful for another wonderful dream.  Still thankful for his advice to seek out the place.  

The door opened and I walked inside.  It was the same as it had been the day before, only less busy at this time – still early afternoon.   

I approached the table I had been sitting at the night before.   

Poker – Texas Hold ‘em:  Ten dream limit – the sign read.  

The rules were simple.  You got a stack of chips.  If you doubled them, you received a dream.  If you lost them, you lost a dream.   

I wasn’t concerned about losing dreams yet, I still didn’t understand exactly what that meant. 

  When I lost my first stack of chips, I quickly bought in again.  And again.  And again.   

Pretty soon I realized I had lost eight dreams with no winnings whatsoever.  I was in a slump.  A losing streak.   

I decided to go home and count my losses.  Literally, since I had no idea what that even meant.   

As I got up to leave the table, the dealer looked at me.  His eyes were remorseless and cold.   

“See the cashier on your way out,” he said, handing me eight black chips.   

I gulped and walked over to the glass window where the cashier sat waiting.  Handing him the eight chips, he raised his eyebrows and clicked his tongue.   

“That’s a shame.  Hold out your hand please.”

  Two men in black suits came up behind me suddenly and stood on either side of me, intimidating in their stature and demeanour. 

  I did as he asked and held out my hand with the palm facing up.   

The cashier pulled out a strange-looking device from beneath the counter.  It had a vial of vermillion-coloured liquid at the top that was attached to the rest of it which resembled a gun with a hypodermic needle at the end.   

I screamed and tried to pull away, but the two men grabbed me and held my arm through the window.  Thrashing and elbowing them, I tried to get away but it was useless.   

The cashier injected the stuff into my veins quickly and it felt cold and slimy going through my system.  I could feel it suddenly in my heart, turning it cold and then up into my mind and my lungs and all extremities causing me to shake and violently seize.  I writhed on the floor, blood pouring from my ears and my eyes.   

Finally the feeling settled down into a numbness that prickled the insides of my blood vessels.  It wasn’t until later, once I realized what the casino really was, that I found out what they had done.   

I went home with the certainty that they had injected me with something.  If winning had resulted in the greatest dream I had ever had – essentially an almost never-ending fantasy – what would happen after a loss?  

Nightmares.  That was what it would be.  I was sure of it.   

I settled into bed that night and closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep quickly after such an emotionally exhausting afternoon.   

As soon as my eyes closed, they opened again and it was morning.   

It felt as if I had not slept at all.  My mind was fuzzy and it was difficult to focus.  My eyes wanted to close again but my alarm was telling me that it was time to get up for work, so I hit the “dismiss” button and hopped in the shower.   

I threw on my clothes and went out the door.  At work I noticed a few people looking at me strangely, but I didn’t realize until someone pointed it out to me that my shirt was on inside-out.  At this point I was still working in an office doing commodities trading and such lapses were frowned upon.   

If you couldn’t focus enough to put your shirt on properly in the morning, how could you focus enough to get the work done in such a demanding environment?  Millions of dollars changing hands with each transaction meant that such trivial things were put under a magnifying glass and coupled with other subsequent mistakes each following day after that, I found myself in the boss’s office by the end of the week being handed my walking papers.   

Desperate for rest after days of not feeling any benefit from sleep, I went back to the casino.   

They knew just by looking at me how to dig their claws in further.  After a couple hours I had managed to win myself a dream.   

They handed me the complimentary cocktail as they had the time before.  I hadn’t realized the significance of it and still didn’t, despite the unusual vermillion colour of the drink.  I swallowed it in one gulp and went out the door practically dancing and clicking my heels, ready to go home and feel rested again.   

My dream that night was wonderful.  Everything I had hoped for in many ways.   

But not as good as the first time.  I wanted that feeling back again.   

Knowing that it was a dream the whole time and realizing that it was going to end seemed to shorten the fantasy, made it seem hollow and manufactured.   

If I could win again maybe it would be like that first time, I thought.   

The casino drew me in again and again.  I found myself a zombie most days, exhausted, at my wit’s end.  Ready to call it quits for good and say goodbye.   

But then I would win again and it would all seem to be alright for a while.   

My debt kept growing and growing with nearly every trip.  The hypodermic needle would be plunged into my skin and every time they had to hold me down.  Every time I would feel a little more empty.  A little more hollow.   

Waking up every day began to feel the same.  Nothing had definition or purpose.   

“You’re here all the time,” one of the goons whispered to me as they shot the needle into my vein the time after that.  “Haven’t you figured it out yet?  You should just get a job here and then at least you’ll be in on the secret.”  

I applied the next day and got an interview with the boss.  I would find out later that if you got someone to apply there you got a one dream bonus.      

In his office, the well-dressed man was sitting behind a massive polished ebony desk.  The room was adorned with paintings, sculptures, and other high-priced artwork.  He had photos everywhere of himself shaking hands with world leaders, new and old, for hundreds of years.   

His face never changed.  Never aged.   

“So, you want to work with us?  Tired of dreamless nights without end?  You want to have some relief, is that it?”  

“Yes.  Please.  Anything.  I’ve been coming here for so long and it’s an endless cycle.  I want back what I’ve lost but I keep finding myself more and more in debt with each visit.”  

“Ah, so do you understand it now, then?  What the ‘injections’ are?”  

It finally dawned on me, sitting there.  Not injections at all.  They weren’t putting something in us.  They were taking something out.  The vermillion-coloured liquid in the vials – our dreams.   

“If I take a job with you, will the same rules apply?  Will they still take my sleep, my rest, every time I lose?”  

“Yes.  We can’t have the employees living by different rules than everyone else.  But we will give you an alternative injection, so that you feel well-rested when you come in for your shift.”  

“I’ll do it.  I need to rest.  I need to get some meaningful sleep.  My life has been miserable ever since coming here.”  

“Well, I can’t promise that this will help,” he said, getting up from his desk with a hypodermic gun in his hand.  The vial of fluid sitting atop this one was jet-black and looked evil and poisonous.  He rolled up his sleeves as he primed it and I watched a few beads of it drip oil-like out of the tip of the needle. 

  “What the hell is that!?  I don’t want that stuff in me!”  

“But you need to sleep, my dear worker.  I can’t have you passing out at the blackjack table like a narcoleptic!  You agreed to this, after all.  You wanted to rest, and the only way for that to happen is for you to have SOME sort of dream.  Not everyone is as lucky as you, you know.  To have that wonderful vermillion fluid in your veins.  Some people come to us begging to take it from them.  Some of our employees for example, the ones who do the recruitment for us, are full of this black stuff.”  

“What?” I had gotten up from the chair and was backing away from him towards the door.  But I found it was locked as he approached.   

“First you have to tell me the password, Sid.”  

“Seramth Gin.”  I said the words that I had said every time to gain access to the casino, only this time I pictured the letters and rearranged them in my mind.   

“Nightmares.”  

He smiled as he injected me with the vial of black hate, and it went into my veins feeling hot and unpleasant.  I began to sweat and the beads of it turned cold on my skin as I shivered.

  I’ll sleep tonight.  I might even wake up feeling rested.  But as long as I live and work at that casino, I’ll be afraid to dream again.  Because now my unconscious hours are occupied by the most terrifying experiences imaginable. Nightmares beyond imagining in their awfulness. That is my fate.  

Unless… Just maybe, I can win one more time.

    JG    

TCC