Chapter 5 - Viva Las Vegas

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For the night I was looking for an apartment nearby. The first thing I did was take a little bandage from the mirror cabinet in the bathroom and wrap it around my wound as best I could. It burns, but it prevents inflammation, at least I think so. With a sponge I try to get the blood from my clothes, but it doesn't really want to work. Honestly, I can't even see what my blood is and what belongs to the others.

I search the apartment and put in the living room everything useful that I can find at first glance: two water bottles, a small can of pickled peaches and two batteries for the flashlight.

I open the canned peaches and start eating a little while I look at the pictures on the living room shelf. At some point I slowly get tired and take off my football jacket again and spread out on the sofa. I'm still playing with the idea of really going to a new game tomorrow. But the thought of playing in four days worries me more than putting myself in the morning. The time between my first game and that was terrible. I couldn't relax and was nervous most of the time. Four days is simply not enough and the nightmares haunt me every night. The worst thing about them is that when I wake up, no one is there. Then I always turn on the flashlight and take almost an hour to calm down.

And that silence. Every night during the games I hear an explosion, collapsing buildings and things like that. Even when I sleep I am awakened by the light of the advertisements or when the lasers come from the sky and probably kill the people whose visa has expired. With these thoughts, I slowly fall into my sleep and back into my nightmares.

I wake up around noon and try to get involved somehow so as not to be too nervous tonight. I still eat a little of the peaches and read a little in one of the books here. When I find a rubber ball under the coffee table, I keep throwing it to the ceiling and catching it. It's the only thing that can really calm me down a little bit.

As it starts to get dark I get ready for the game. I take one of the knives and put it behind my back as a precaution and throw my sports bag over my shoulder. I decide to take the little rubber ball with me to stay calm. I pay attention to my surroundings and a little further away I see a shining advertisement. I'm almost strolling in the direction because I feel like there's still some time left. I follow the light markers to the nearest hotspot and see a lot of people. It has to be about twenty players and I'm trying to get some overview. There are not many women, maybe five, the rest are men of different ages. I can discover some suit wearers, but for the first time my impression is enough. I walk through the light barrier and already hate this silence. Nobody even speaks a word and waits for the start of the game.

Suddenly I see a familiar face looking up from his phone and starting to laugh warmly. Several people look at him in amazement and then to me as they follow his gaze.

'I don't think that's the wise head that saved my butt last time. Maybe I'll survive now"

"Satoru," I say greeting the man with the elegant hat and grab me the last mobile phone on the table in the middle. The facial recognition is running and I lean against the wall next to Satoru. I put my bag next to me and continue playing with my flummi.

"Am I wrong or is there a lot more blood on your clothes?" he asks amusedly, and I just nod. He keeps talking about the time he's done since then and what his last game was like, I'm using the time and looking at some of the other players even more closely. One of them is wearing military pants and a handgun. He appears to have spotted the knife on my back and nods slightly thoughtfully before turning back to his friend. There is a girl my age who has a fresh scar across her face. Then there's the boys opposite me. He wears a white vest and under his hood I can see his white-blond hair. He seems to listen to music, but I don't know exactly how, because no phones should work. 

Time is up, the game starts

I stop playing with the rubber ball and look attentively at my phone to remember the instructions.

Game name: Viva Las Vegas. Attendance: 21. Difficulty Check 6. Rules of the game: Each is assigned a table where the games roulette, poker and blackjack are offered. The exact rules at each table are explained to the players again. You can only win if you win the game. If someone tries to kill a fellow player, he dies trying. Good luck.

The doors to the casino open and we all walk into a huge hall. I walk next to Satoru pretty much at the end through the whole slot machines to the designated gaming tables. Three casino employees stand at the gaming tables and above them the numbers one to three light up. All phones give a ringtone and on all of them one of the three numbers appears, which assigns us to a game of games. The man next to me is looking at my phone and pointing his.

'Then I don't think we'll play together. I don't know yet if that's good or bad. Good luck little," he says, going to roulette.

"Good luck to you"

But I sit down at the poker table with six other people. One of the employees comes to our table: he wears a blue jacket that matches his blue, wild hair and crosses his arms behind his back.

"The game is called poker. Are everyone aware of the rules of the game?"

Everyone nods and I do it after them. Before I landed here, I took part in a small poker round with friends four times a year. But we never really played for money, and this is about life or death.

"This game will continue until a player owns all the chips. This is the winner. If someone loses all his chips, he dies"

That means only one of us can survive. We all look at each other one after the other and then the blue-haired man hands out the cards. 

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