Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart

Author:Luke Rhinehart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Overlook
Published: 2014-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

40

How about that?

41

I was stunned. Disbelief. Numbness. Terror. I was like a doctor who has just learned he gave a patient the wrong drug and the patient is dead: I kept analyzing where I had made my mistake rather than dealing with the consequences.

Three: leave Lil and the children forever. “Forever”? What stupid whim had made me add the word “forever.” I had never before permitted the dice to dictate my life for more than half a year. “Forever” was illegal. I would demand a reflip.

Dread. Loneliness. A feeling that the whole seething sea of humanity was drifting away from me and I was being left alone on an iceberg. Where had I made my mistake? Didn’t I write something else for three? Had I shaken the dice sufficiently? Was it legal to include leaving Lil forever as an option? As I paced, all my thinking was devoted to undoing the decision of the dice. At last, I returned to the scene of the accident and slumped down in my easy chair. I couldn’t do it.

Depression. Heavy weight in the tummy. The failure to follow the command to leave Lil meant that dice-throwing was insignificant, that Luke was in control and that the Die didn’t exist. I was free. No more bowling, Miss Reingolds, Kama Sutra 36, bicycle accidents . . . I was free . . .

Depression, heavy tummy, a sneer: free to be solely Lucius Rhinehart, normal human clod: permanent Clark Kent to Dr. Felloni’s Lois Lane.

But you can still act eccentrically if you feel like it, you . . .

Normal human clod doing what he feels like doing. The possible death of the Dice Man lowered over me a shroud of gloom.

After a while, like a pendulum whose momentum has been lost I came to rest between the terror at leaving and the depression at not leaving, just sitting slumped and hollow-eyed feeling nothing. I must have remained thus, awake but emotionless, for close to thirty minutes. I thought of Larry’s drunken face in sleep, of Lil’s warm flesh in my hands, of the noise the electric dishwasher had made earlier in the evening. These were reality. What was this incredible world I was creating with dice? I leaned forward and looked down at the two neat, powerful statements: a two and a one.

“Well, gotta leave Lil,” I said for the sake of saying something. No feeling. “And what’ll I do next?” This question flowed a second time, more slowly, in capital letters. Curiosity, like a snake that had been curled up at the bottom of my mind during this whole turbulent experience, slowly unwound and raised his alert, beady-eyed head. “And what will I do next?”

The Die only knows.

Joy, like the sudden explosion of tiny birds off the ground, fluttered up through me. I arose from my chair and stood indecisively a moment, waiting for the joy that was flooding through me to evaporate or be displaced by dread, but nothing happened. The Die giveth, the Die taketh away; Blessed be the name of the Die.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.