Diamond Dragons

The Diamond Dragons

I work at a Casino. One of the new ones, with a seer. Obviously, we still have "games" if you want to call them that. You can still lose this month's rent to blackjack if you'd really like. But the new seer bets are what has driven profits through the roof these days. The Diamond Dragon's Casino is big. 200 stories big. It's busy all day, all night, every day of the week. Red carpets with gold embroidered dragons line the playing floor. The employees wear red suits, with a golden tie. Each tie with a different dragon on it, each dragon signifying what station they work. Low jazz plays from the speakers, and beyond the occasional mental breakdown of a customer who just lost their house, the Casino has a calm ambiance. The new addition of the seer room has been the craze today. You have to wait in line to get in, kind of like a club. Only the richest get in. The entrance to the seer room has golden arches, with two large diamond dragons on each respective arch, meeting at the nose in the very middle. There are wide golden steps right inside the entrance of the arches that lead straight up. I have the luxurious job of working the new seer bets. I mean, I don't run the game, but I get to open the gates for the gamblers who come to bet enough money to purchase a private army on tomorrow's top cereal sales.

When I saw the lady in the red dress, I knew that she must be a seer gambler. All the high rollers are. It could have been a multitude of nouns and adjectives that gave it away to me. Perhaps the thin diamonds that danced in the lights hanging elegantly from her neck. Maybe it was the 6-inch heels that she seemed to effortlessly glide across the red casino carpet in. Or maybe it was because Mr. Han (my boss and owner of the casino) told me we'd have an important guest today wearing red. Either way, it was obvious which game she was headed to. She walked towards the golden arches where I stood with a bouncer, my friend Lorenzo or Loren for short. Loren is big, maybe 6'3 and 230 pounds of lean muscle, he was built for this job. Anyways, Loren must have noticed her too because he began to shout at the mob of people begging to be let through the gates to make their bets with the seer. "Move it, everyone to the left!"

Loren turned to me and nodded his head upwards as if to say "call him". So I did. One of the pegs that held the golden ropes that held off the stairs behind the arches has a compartment with a button to contact Mr. Han. I pressed the small golden button with a diamond "H" on it. It clicked and the small radio hissed.

"What?" Said the annoying voice on the other side.

"Your guest is here, sir," I replied professionally.

There was a pause, a click, and then the radio stopped hissing as Mr. Han disconnected the call.

The mob hadn't moved as Loren said but, they had moved. The sea of poor and destitute beggars begging for an opportunity to bet their life savings, or their house, or their firstborn child to the seer for a chance to make millions had quelled their shouts, to make way for the Red Lady. A metaphorical parting of the red sea. She walked to the very front of the mob, to the golden gates and my golden rope. The crowd watched silently.

"Miss Ma'am," said a loving voice behind Loren and me. It was Mr. Han slowly walking down the golden steps with his golden cane. Mr. Han seemed to accentuate his Chinese accent to seem a little more "authentic" when he was around the people he respected. Loren snorted at the name "Miss Ma'am" to which Mr. Han calmly and swiftly pecked Loren in the back of the leg with his cane.

"My darling Mr. Han," she said in an exaggerated European accent. She held her skinny hand out revealing a diamond ring on each finger.

Mr. Han took her hand softly, lifted it to his thin, wrinkly, 70-year-old lips, and placed a kiss on the top of it.

"Shall we?" Asked Mr. Han happily. He knew he was about to make a lot of money, so why wouldn't he be excited.

Mr. Han nodded to Loren and me, so we both unhooked the giant golden rope and made way for Miss Ma'am to walk through. Together, holding hands, Mr. Han slowly led the way up the golden and wide steps to the seer's room to make Miss Ma'am's bets.

"Imagine winning one of the seer's bets," I said to Loren with a mouth full of General Tso's chicken. "We'd be rich, never have to clock into work again."

"I guess" shrugged Loren. "They don't let half of the betters in. And the ones who do get in? Lose. I'm barely making it by as is, I can't risk it all, Tilda would break up with me in a heartbeat". Tilda was Loren's girlfriend.

"But imagine you won. Tilda might be upset you made the bet, but you'll be rich. She can't be mad at rich".

Loren shrugged again, he didn't like to take risks, but who could blame him? He was right, almost no one won. The few who did though, hit it big.

If you're rich, affluent, famous, or perhaps all of the above, seer bets are right up your alley. A "seer" is someone who can confirm or deny information. Kind of like an oracle of sorts. They cant see the future, but on the day of, they can confirm or deny just about anything. A few years ago, people with these odd "powers" began to pop up all around. Some strong, some incredibly tall, some who could float, you get the idea. The seers were the rarest. Maybe one in every two million newborns were seers and even more, to get one to work at a casino was a dirty business. Usually, they had some birth defect that could be taken advantage of. Some were blind, some had one eye, missing a leg, having an extra leg, 7 fingers, you get the gist. You either had to find a morally ambiguous seer to work for you or be taking advantage of one. Typically it's the latter.

With a seer bet, you could bet on just about anything. The top cereal sales, a mine in Uganda striking gold, seer births, I mean anything. But the real money is in how accurate you are. It can't just be "frosted flakes sell the most cereal tomorrow". You needed to be perfect, down to the very last number. You can imagine, there's a lot of risk in that. But if you win the bet, the casino guarantees to double whatever you bet.

Bet 200 million, win the bet? Walk away with 400 million. Simple enough. Right? The casino wins about 98% of the time, but every so often, someone will hit it big.