Parable.

“Is this your first visit to our casino?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah,” said the man.

“Okay,” I replied, “I just need to see a photo I.D., and I’ll have a new card printed out for you in a couple of minutes.”

Cliff Brooks from California…that name rang a bell. Was he the same guy I read about online? Yeah, that was him in the picture all right. Unbeknownst to him, we were both participating in a major writing effort as part of National Novel Writing Month, or as it was referred to by those of us in the loop, NaNoWriMo. Mr. Brooks was the last person I had in my line, so I hurried to finish printing his player’s card so I could head on to my break.

“Here you are,” I said as I handed the card to him. “Just sign the back and you’ll be good to go.”

“Thank you.”

“Uh-huh. Good luck!”

I was 28 years old, still working at the casino. It wasn’t what I wanted to be doing forever, hence my writing hobby, but it saved me from a long streak of unemployment and it paid the bills. As I sat in the break room sipping away at a Styrofoam cup full of ice water, I pondered over why I was still at the same job. “I have a degree in design,” I thought, “now why am I just letting that $30,000 in tuition costs just go to waste?” I didn’t have an answer. It was the same question I asked myself every single day, but asking it got me nowhere. So here I was, perpetually idle serving people determined to piss their money and lives down the drain.

Speaking of pissing money away, I ran into Cliff again inside the casino once I got done with my break. “Is everything still going all right?” I asked through a forced customer-service smile.

“Nah. I keep losing. It’s these damn machines,” he answered.

If I had a dime for every time someone blamed the machines for their loss… I quickly got my mind off of that thought long enough to ask him about NaNoWriMo.

“You’re doing that too?” Cliff asked, surprised.

“Sure am,” I replied. “I’m only around 20,000 words though.” Our mutual goal in this thing was 50,000. “How far along are you?” I continued.

“Me? Oh, I gave up.”

“Gave up?” I was astounded. “But why? You’ve done it before.”

Cliff kept playing while he answered me. “Well…it’s just – I lost interest I guess. I figured it was pointless to keep working at something that was getting me nowhere like that. You know what I mean?”

I was puzzled. This wasn’t the Cliff Brooks I thought he would be at all. He was profiled online once, and on there he came across as successful and determined. No, this man was one that had given up like so many in this world. His face was one of failure and regret. Looking at him, I realized I had felt that way about my writing as well. I could see shadows of me within him.

“Well, I hope you win,” I told him, but that got no response. He was too immersed in trying to lose himself in this other activity – too busy forgetting why he even started in the first place. I walked off, leaving him there in his consequence.

Eventually my shift was over, and I went to clock out. I didn’t think I was as tired or out of it as I might have been, but I could’ve sworn that as I passed by the door that led out to the parking lot, I saw a sunny nothingness awaiting me outside. That struck me as pretty odd considering it should be about 10:30 at night. I went back to check it out, and sure enough, my eyes didn’t deceive me. Outside the door was a sandy, rocky cliff. I couldn’t help venturing out to see even more of the bizarre landscape.

I walked almost to the edge of the drop-off and glanced downward. Way below me was a dense forest that met up with a long beach that extended to an ocean that stretched as far as my eyes could see. I remembered that beach. It was the one I wrote about in my story. I washed up on it before I was found by some Centaurs. However, this was real. I could really see it, smell the mountain air and taste the clean sky just beyond where I stood. It was remarkable, but surreal. The casino was still right there, but outside…nothing that I recall at all. There was no parking lot, so levee, no skyline of the city; just a cliff that dropped off to the sea. I wanted to freak out, but I was too petrified. “What the hell was happening?” I wondered to myself.

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