More Than What I Appear To Be

January Prompt: 004. Vegas

Vegas?

The city of Sin and of all things wrong and corrupted otherwise known as home.

I came to the bright lights of Vegas after leaving New York. I needed somewhere loud and I needed somewhere that had all its truths written on its streets inside of hidden behind its doors.

Not that Vegas isn’t without its secrets but most of the time you can guess them by taking one look at the guy next to you. People might be good at hiding stuff but I can take one look at their eyes and know all there is to know about that person.

In Vegas, you can get anything you want and have anyone you want. It’s a city of a thousand and one opportunities if you know where to look and what you should be looking for.

It’s important to have the right contacts or you’re only ever going to enjoy Vegas the tourist way which is by hitting every casino from here until the desert and then watching some show because you read its great reviews.

I mean that’s fine for people just passing through because Vegas is an escape, a dream, something a person can experience just once in their life time and never forget. But for people living here every day? You have to know how to live in Vegas and enjoy every second of it or you’ll start taking it for granted and that’s when something kicks you in the ass.

Lady Luck can be the best friend you ever had or your very worst enemy, it always depends on the throw of the dice or the luck of the draw. Most of the time I come out a winner but I know how quick the tide can change so I very rarely run before I can walk.

Vegas is a fantasy for most other people but for me it’s a reality, day in and day out. I live and I breathe Vegas, it’s the only way I know how to be. You get as good as you give and I always give my all to everything I do.

My father was the same but unlike my dad? I know when to call it quits and move on but for now, Vegas is home and it will be home until I feel a change in the wind.

Viva Las Vegas.

Muse: Joseph Tropiano
Fandom: Original Character
Word Count: 395

November Prompt: 001. 'Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.' David T. Wolf

When I was child, I believed the world was as black and white as my mother always made it out to be.

Every child knows stories, remembers the monster under their bed and if they’re lucky has the knowledge that they were safe and nothing could touch them. That’s the faith you have in your parents and in the world they’ve created for you.

When you’re young, you believe that evil is evil and good is good. The big scary dragon and the knight in shining armour. Everything works out the way it should and was meant to.

It’s only as you get older that you realise that the world doesn’t work that way. There is no such thing as black and white, everything blurs from one to the other until all you have left is a murky grey area that will swallow you whole if you’re not careful.

If you kill someone, you think you’re damned but then there are the questions: Was there any other way? If it was out of self defense does it still count as murder? Would he kill me if given the chance? The answers are simple: Probably, it might, and he would.

Life is not straight forward, it has twists and turns, sending you on a rollercoaster ride until you’re so dizzy that your head is spinning and you feel like you might lose your lunch.

Every action has a reaction, a consequence, a repercussion and there’s nothing you can do to escape them. All you can do is accept that this is the way it is, the way that the world works and you’re living in it so no point in fooling yourself to think otherwise.

Innocence vanishes and is replaced by knowledge and there are days when I wish I could recover what I had when I was younger but I know now that blind idealism is worse than having your eyes wide open.

There are some things in this world that cannot be ignored, cannot be denied, and you’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

Muse: Joseph Tropiano
Fandom: Original Character
Word Count: 345

October Prompt: 005. What was the most difficult decision you’ve ever had to make?

Leaving New York and leaving everything I’d ever known behind for an uncertain future in Vegas. You’d think it would be the easiest decision to make, especially after the funeral but it wasn’t, it was never easy.

It’s just that my entire life had been wrapped up in that world, in that web of lies and deceit, guns and blood. My father had been in it, his father before him, it just seemed to be the obvious choice – the next logical step.

It seemed real easy, all black and white. My father was dead, shot in the back of the head; killed because of what he did and which side of the line he was standing on.

You’d think I’d be bailing out of there like there was no tomorrow; only I didn’t, I just waited around and waited for something - something to push me that one step further.

It came at my father’s funeral, it came from seeing him dead and lifeless when I’d been so used to seeing him alive, vibrant and practically thrumming with life. He’d always been larger than life and he taught me how to live that way, to never be afraid and to always reach for the stars.

Life was supposed to work out, I’d just assured my father a retirement place, a way out of the life he’d been living but something I did had impacted on his life and it had been taken from him. It’s just the way that world works, one act calls for another; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

The beginning is easy because it always is, you never know what you’re getting into and everything seems possible because you’re young and you’re stupid, and somehow you think you won’t make the mistakes that everyone else has made.

It’s always harder getting away from something than it is getting into it, that’s the trap and the hardest damn thing I’ve ever done is getting out of it and choosing to make a life for myself outside of it.

Hardest decision I ever made was to change my life, who I was, and what I wanted to be.

Muse: Joseph Tropiano
Fandom: Original Character
Word Count: 365