Dice Life

1

If your only option is hope, you grab it and hold on.

I ran across the rooftop, but it wasn't giving me much room to maneuver. As I neared the edge, I crossed my fingers and jumped, landing safely on the next roof. Footfalls sounded close behind. I scrambled down a fire escape, taking the steps two at a time. Stumbling on the last step, I righted myself only to find a wall. Dead end. I turned quickly as a dark form crossed the moonlight, a figure that seemed to float as much as fall as he jumped from the roof above me, his form vague, woven of shifting shadows. He looked at me, a black fedora hiding his eyes, his grin flashing white. I say him because I heard his voice, soft and mocking. "Do you believe...in Luck?"

I woke in a cold sweat, his mocking grin fading from my eyes as my room came into focus, a comforting darkness. Did I believe in Luck? I did then, after the first time I'd had a dream like this 6 months ago. After that, things had gotten, well, let's say interesting.

Let me take a step back. My name is Faust, I'm 16 years old, and was raised alone by my mother, Amalia. She always went by Mia, never let people call her anything else. I never knew my dad, so I won't say I missed him. Life with my mom was pretty good. She had this...crazy concept of serving everyone, that you should put everyone else first. We'd go out on weekends and serve in Soup Kitchens or give blankets to the poor. She told me everyone deserves a chance to have something better, that we were all here so we could learn to give others the chance to improve their live's situation. Then, everything went wrong. One weekend, my mom was working at a homeless shelter. There was a fire, flames coming out the windows. The firemen arrived on site, and managed to douse the inferno. There were survivors, carried out by the firemen and immediately rushed to the ER. Their skin was horribly burned and blackened, their faces disfigured past recognition, but they were breathing. I could only hope my mother was among them, instead of the ones who didn't make it out.

I had no warning of the tumult ahead. My mom often stayed late at where ever she was working at the time, so I was in shock when the story was covered in the local news that evening, the terrible images flickering across the screen. The fire was attributed to a gas leak. They hadn't identified the victims or survivors. I turned on the recorder to catch any updates to the report, then grabbed my jacket and shoes and bolted out the door.

The chain of my 10-speed whirred as I bolted across town. I sped past homeless tents and hanging laundry, brick walls flashing by bordering the headlights filling the busy street. Traffic was thick at this time, luckily there weren't many people using the bike path. Ahead there was an unexpected opening among the buildings, a square of blackened rubble and ash, cordoned off by yellow caution tape. I left my bike at the edge and darted into the ruins, desperately searching for any evidence, any sign she could have survived, that she'd escaped the inferno. Pushing through twisted bed frames and melted soup pots, I was rewarded with a small paper card, singed at the edges. Carefully wiping off the soot, I stared at the frustratingly cheerful message of the visitor's badge: "Hello, My Name is Mia!" I tucked the card in my inside jacket pocket, then biked home and cried myself to sleep in front of the TV.