The Game

Ron Koppelberger

The Game

Falsehoods and the wont of a gambol, told in a series of passing faces, they were anxious, waiting. Bobby Fame rolled the dice again while the others placed their bets.
A pair of sevens, four dice and a lucky roll, Whip Whitcomb flexed his hands, “Come on Bobby, you’ll win it all.” he joked. Manny Arken chuckled and said,
Roll em again Bobby, double or nothing!” Bobby picked up the dice and looked upward toward heaven. The brick walls of the ally stretched away to the sky and passing clouds.
“Please!” he whispered under his breath. The dice were heavy like bricks in his palms. He shook his cupped hands and blew into the opening between his palms. Once for luck, twice for the love of the game and three times for a wish.
The dice rolled against the concrete bouncing off the red brick wall. A whisper moved through the ally, a warm wind and the scent of dandelions, fresh cut in bouquets, Bobby could taste the dandelion greens and he prayed.
The ally led out to the dilapidated ruins of fallen constructions in brick and mortar. They were all tenants of the crumbling neighborhood. Bobby looked to the end of the ally. Cardboard houses and rusty forgotten trash bins filled the spaces there. A wish, number three was a wish.
The dice came to rest before them and the moment stretched out and over the desolation of the city. Sevens and the promise of a new dawn, he just wanted to be somewhere else and be someone else.
For better or for worse he got his wish as something old and unerring changed him, bringing him to another life, another love, another breed of existence.
Manny scooped up the dice as if Bobby had never existed.
Whip said, “Give me those dice Manny, this is my lucky day.”