A cluster of figures huddle around a blazing trash can for warmth. Old men, beaten down by the world, grained with dirt, old weather etched into their flesh.
They sit and trade tales to pass the dark hours, shoulders hunched, staring into the flames as one by one they dredge up old memories. All but one, who simply sits. Finally, as the others grow tired and sek their blankets, he speaks his first words of the night.
"Humans love to gamble. To risk it all on the throw of the dice. Always have. Sometimes you tell yourselves that you are different. That you have more control. But its a lie. A lie told to maintain the fragile fiction that your lives aren't ruled by chance. To shelter from the fact that chance, and chance alone, governs the universe. And that chance doesn't have feelings, emotions, a sense of mercy or even fairness.
You stake your last dollar on a lottery ticket, because hey, what do you have to lose? You step out into street, certain that the cars brakes will hold and that the driver has seen you. But what if they can't, and he doesn't?
Here's another truth about gambling.
The. House. Always. Wins.
Oh, sometimes the Fates may smile on you. Tyche may flash that dazzling smile, take you dancing for a night, but she is fickle. One morning you will wake to find her gone. No, my friends, in the end the house will always win. The wheel stops on green. The lottery ticket brings you nothing. The brakes will fail."
The audience are indistinct shapes huddled under their old and stained blankets. Still, and unmoving.
It is a younger man who looks up from the fire, who walks from that circle of flickering light, out past the sleepers in their shrouds.
Not one of them catches his final murmured words.
"The house always wins, my friends... unless you cheat".
