Chapter 1
They say that gambling is a tax on the stupid, the desperate or the addicted. My name is Felix, and I am all three.
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Felix sat at the computer, watching the cursor blink at him rhythmically, his mind numbing until all he could hear was his inner voice thrumming in time with it. Dum. Dum. Dum. Dum. Dum. What else could he possibly say? What was he supposed to write in these circumstances? It wasn’t exactly something that he even wanted to do in the first place, but circumstances had backed him into a corner that he couldn’t get out of and he didn’t know what else to do. There was no other option left for him now.
He glanced furtively around him; the library was quiet. It was always quiet; it wasn’t exactly the place where people went on a Friday afternoon. Living in an area that was made up of mostly government owned high rise apartments filled with the people that the country wanted to forget existed, bred a community of the downtrodden, the apathetic and the tired. Needless to say, he had the IT section of the library to himself, the lights dimmed ever so slightly as the evening drew near.
Felix sighed, pulling his puffy coat tight around his frame, his left arm easily wrapping around to his right hip. He must have lost a bit more weight. No matter. Not any more.
He turned his attention back to the screen in front of him and began typing once more.
Some of you would immediately hit back at me, trying to be kind and telling me why I’m not all of those things but I’m here to tell you why I am.
First of all, I’m stupid. Of course I am. I made the most idiotic decisions in my entire life and I ended up losing everything. I lost my career; I was a musician, living my dream and I threw it all away. I lost my friends. I lost my family. All because I was stupid.
I’m desperate. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know where to turn, if there is anywhere I can go and I just have no idea how I can get out of this hole I’m in. I dug myself in here, left all the escape routes behind and now it’s raining and I’m slowly drowning in the consequences of my own actions.
I’m addicted. I’m an addict. Mainly I am addicted to gambling, but I’m almost ready to call myself an alcoholic and who knows, if I go on any longer I could hit the trifecta and start taking drugs too. Not going to lie, I’ve thought about it, just to take the pain away for a while. Just to maybe stop the constant voice in my head telling me to gamble. Just one more bet. One more time. That time I’ll be a winner. …. and we come full circle back to the stupidity.
I’m not going to make a big deal of this, but I have nowhere else to put this. No one to tell. No one to inform. I guess- I guess I just want it to be noted somewhere. Just want a small reminder to the world that I was here, once.
If you hadn’t guessed by now, this is my goodbye to the world. Like I said, I have nobody left, nothing to leave to anyone, and nowhere left to turn except to stand and look death in the face.
I suspect that I won’t be missed, but if anyone ever finds this and somehow my family sees it - I love you. My family, my friends, I’m sorry I ever hurt you with my actions. You didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t thinking straight but I should have had enough sense about me to know that I shouldn’t have done what I did. My fans from my musician days - I’m sorry I messed up, but I promise you I was not in my right mind at the time and I would never have done what I did if I were well.
I hope this last act of mine will help to at least bring some balance back to the world.
All my love always,
Felix x
Felix read over it, a sad smile on his face, eyes watery as he posted the message. It probably wasn’t the place for it, but if he wrote it on paper nobody would see it; he would go missing, only noticed when his landlord forced his way into the apartment to evict him, and then he would care so little about his things that the letter would be thrown out with everything else, Felix presumed to have skipped town leaving behind a meagre lot of possessions that nobody would be picking up.
He could have posted the letter to his family but he didn’t know where they lived now. He had tried to visit his parents once and found a family he didn’t know just moving into his childhood home. A trip to his brother’s house rendered the same outcome except the house was currently for sale, awaiting a loving couple to move in and make it their own.
His friends still lived where they did, but there was no way that he could contact them. They had all been very clear when they had all sat around the table with him; he was to quit or never speak to them again. Felix had stupidly doubled down on his denial of him having a problem and he watched each of his friends, ranging from recently met to those met in childhood, get up from the table and leave his house, disappointment, anger and sadness plastered on their tired faces. They had tried until they could try no more and they had failed.
Even if one of them were willing to have contact from Felix, he wouldn’t want to reach out to them. He had reflected on what had happened and he had realised just how much hurt and pain he had caused them and he didn’t want to be the one to bring more stress upon their doorstep.
He really didn’t have any other option. He wasn’t the most active on the website but he had been there long enough for a few regulars to recognise his name. It was a website for people who were struggling with addiction. He had been pointed towards it as a last ditch effort by a previous colleague who had noticed the signs of addiction within him (the colleague having previously been an alcoholic himself) and he had found comfort in the community whilst he was recovering.
Bored one night when he was waiting on more money to hit his bank account, he had decided to go to the library and take a look at the website. He had begun by reading through the usual garbage that people try to throw down your throats when it came to addiction. Information on gambling, alcohol, drugs and how you could make changes at home, along with countless points of contact to get professional help.
Felix had skimmed through it all and then had managed to find the chat function, seeing others online and actively chatting about various things. There were chats dedicated to the specific addiction that you were under, general chats, advice chats, fun chats, all mixed together.
He spent some time just reading, wondering whether he even wanted to talk with other people but then he had thought to himself; when was the last time he had had a conversation with someone? Apart from to ask for another drink or to hold on the next hand? He couldn’t remember.
He had begun to chat and quickly found some comfort within the confines of the chats. Dare he say, he had even found some solace as he began to share his experience with other people, most others often mirroring his own and telling him how they had managed to cope. He had by no means managed to stop gambling or drinking, but he found that during those few hours he was chatting with those online strugglers in arms, his mind was relaxed enough for his mood to buoy him long enough to live another day.
That was until he had lost his job due to stupid decision number four thousand and sixty one. His mental health took a turn for the worse, his gambling became a bigger problem, as did his drinking and he began foregoing the library to spend more nights at the casino, which meant he didn’t have his regular chat with others which in turn made his mental health worse and therein, lied the cycle he found himself in with no way out of.
It was the only place logically someone would at least see the letter and he felt much better knowing that it was now out there. He switched the computer off, leaving his library card on the desk with a short note:
Thank you for keeping the place open. It helped me a lot.
Felix sighed quietly, looking around him one last time. He didn’t have a sentimental attachment to the place, and it wasn’t anything special to look at. If anything, the peeling paint on the walls, scuffed up carpet from years of feet trodding across it and the scratched up shelves and desks would give anyone the impression of it being somewhat run down, which it was. It was part and parcel of being part of the forgotten. Despite that, Felix had spent a lot of time there and he felt a cold melancholy sit heavy on his heart as he prepared to walk out of the door one last time.
“Leaving early tonight, Felix?”
Felix turned as he reached the desk to see the librarian sitting behind it, looking up at him softly with a benign smile on her face. She was a nice enough woman; her name was Lilia, greying on the top but sprightly on her feet and as sharp as a pin in her mind. She had moved to the UK some years ago from Portugal and had been homed within a few blocks of the library, found herself a job there and had been there ever since. She knew everybody who frequented the place, could tell you what book was where and who had taken it out when and she never forgot a face.
She was also someone who was incredibly kind, but knew when to step away when needed. She had had small conversations with Felix but had learned quickly that he was a nervous mite and she would have to wait for him to open up to her if he ever wanted to.
He never had, not because he didn’t want to, but she had her own problems. She was, after all, in the town where everyone that the government wanted to forget was. This made for quite an eclectic mish mash of languages and cultures and the small community had taken to speaking to one another in English, because it seemed to be more inclusive for everyone who had moved there. Lilia spoke English well, sometimes falling into Portugese just out of habit more than anything, and Felix had many a time almost began speaking with her about himself but had stopped himself in his tracks because he didn’t want to burden her already heavily laden shoulders.
Felix nodded to her, smiling sheepishly as he hugged his coat to himself for comfort, pulling the hood of his hoodie over his head. “Yes, I think I will go for a walk, maybe.”
Lilia nodded, her smile broadening slightly. “That sounds nice, make sure to keep wrapped up, it is cold out there, no?”
Felix nodded. “Yes yes, I’ll keep warm. Thank you, bye now.”
“Bye Felix, stay safe.”
Felix nodded, glancing one last time at her, Lilia turning back to her computer and carrying on with her work. Felix took a deep breath and opened the heavy door, the blast of ice cold air hitting him in the face like a brick to the head.
He stood at the top of the stairs a moment, trying to acclimatise to the sudden drop in temperature, shoving his hands into his pockets and bracing his shoulders up by his ears, scooching his face further down so his nose was covered by his coat.
Winter in the UK was always cold. It was never a shock to him when the wind turned brittle, the rain spat shards of ice at you and to be outside was to be in a constant state of rosy cheeked rawness. What didn’t help was never having the right clothes for the weather. His coat was okay but it failed to keep out the bitterness and he was always in various degrees of frozen by the time he got home or to his destination.
Much was the same at that moment. He sighed, his breath leaking through his coat and filling the air around him, white mist drifting into the darkness and disappearing as the icy air enveloped the warmth and smothered it in seconds.
He began walking, his boots crunching over trodden down snow and cracking icy patches of damp that had been exposed by footsteps gone before him. What little light the meagre streetlights provided illuminated the glittering danger in front of him; black ice had covered the pavement where the snow had disappeared from. He chose to trudge across the dirty snow, grey and dull now.
Felix turned the corner at the end of the street, finding yet more darkness from closed shops and broken street lamps. He sighed again, looking up at the sky; the night was cloudy and the stars were completely obscured, the moonlight blunted by a large grey cloud, swallowing it whole as it drifted across the sky.
A noise to his right caught his attention, a smash, blaring alarm and then merciless laughter, the group of teens coming in to view as they bolted down the street away from the vandalism that had just transpired. The street they were on had shops and abandoned buildings on it so Felix was convinced they had broken a window in one of the empty structures, as was the popular pastime around there.
He turned left, down what looked like a dead end street, one side lined with a few shops, light spilling across the ground from the one shop that was still open. Felix walked down the other side of the road, a high brick wall shrouding him from most of the wind.
He ambled along slowly, dragging his fingers gently across the graffiti laden wall, rough under his soft touch, scratching lightly at his fingertips. He kept his head down, not wanting to draw attention to himself from the group of men standing in the cover of shadows outside the closed down cinema, the only clue they were there being the glow of their joints bright orange in the inky black.
He knew there was no other way, only the one option left, but he felt a heavy rock of anxiety sitting weightily in the pit of his belly, nausea swirling around and souring his empty stomach. Despite knowing what was to come was inevitable, he still walked slowly, as if trying to escape the inescapable.
Lost in thought, Felix allowed his feet to wander, not really paying attention to where he was going but he stopped in his tracks when his black ensemble was draped in a plethora of different colours, moving and changing in a rhythmic formation that he would recognise even with his eyes closed.
He laughed bitterly as he looked up at the front of the casino, shaking his head in disdain.
“Of course,” he said quietly, a sad, resigned smile on his face. He stuck his hand into his pocket, fishing out the ensemble of paper and coins he had, counting up swiftly. He had twenty three pounds to his name, holding all his wealth in his palm. He sighed. He may as well spend it; it wasn’t like he could take it with him where he was going.
Felix walked inside, thinking he was about to play his last bet. He certainly wasn’t ready for what happened instead.
