Chapter 3

I stop by Walmart on the way home grabbing some groceries for the week. Just the usual, chicken, rice, some fruit, stuff for pasta. I try not to buy frozen stuff too much, maybe frozen pizza or breadsticks for the pasta but that's about it. I’m a bit surprised to notice occasional looks from girls, I wonder if my perception is allowing me to notice them more or if my charisma has simply made me more appealing. I wonder if other people’s minds go off on tangents like this, grabbing food, noticing pretty girls, thinking about the cost of my food. Given my new found wealth I’ll probably splurge a bit. Instead of getting the precut fruit medley, I buy fresh strawberries, oranges, etc. I wonder what I’ll make tonight, Alfredo sounds good or maybe some teriyaki chicken and rice. Oh, those frozen chicken tender things would probably make for good orange chicken. I get some other stuff to make smoothies with the fruit. Ironically my lack of funds in the past led me to eat slightly healthier, cheaper to make my own dinner than to buy frozen stuff, usually at least.

On the way home I recognize the tangents my mind usually goes on, intermixing random thoughts with whatever I’m actually doing in the moment. Wondering again if other people do the same or if it is a symptom of too much time alone. I look at the radio to change the station as a song I don’t like comes on when I notice the time. It’s nearly midnight, I just woke up like 3 hours ago, that's another thing most people probably don’t do. Explains why I didn’t run into dad during my cleaning spree though, he’d likely left for work before I even got up.

“I’m too hungry to cook something when I get home,” I think out loud. I grab a slice of pizza from the gas station on the way home, it should hold me over for a couple of hours so I can clean up the kitchen and cook. So much for eating healthier…

I put the groceries away when I get home, having eaten the pizza on the way. The kitchen isn’t quite as dirty as the bathroom was but it is still a mess. I decide to run the dishwasher while I clean the place up a bit. The new lease on life I’ve been given seems to have put me in a state of mania, I just keep cleaning. I started sweeping and decided it would be easier to just vacuum, then I decided that I might as well do vacuum the rest of the house. An hour later I’ve vacuumed and mopped all of the hardwood flooring in the entire house before moving on to cleaning the counters and reorganizing the cabinets before putting the dishes away. As I’m putting the dishes away I recall how messy and full the freezer was. After I put the last dish away I move on to cleaning the fridge and freezer, I don’t remember the last time we actually cleaned it. I use the grocery bags to move the stuff from the kitchen fridge/freezer to the one in the garage out back. While emptying the freezer I find at least three grocery bags with meat that is at least 2 years old. I’m guessing my dad bought it and buried it under a bunch of other stuff forgetting it was even there. I move it with the other stuff for now. I even emptied the ice maker and unplugged the fridge so that any frozen shit would melt a bit making it easier to clean. The fridge in the garage is overstuffed, luckily it is just under 40 degrees out at the moment so I was able to leave some of the packaged stuff out on the table on the back porch. I start some water boiling while I clean the fridge. After the fridge is clean I cut some chicken up and throw the pasta in the boiling water for chicken alfredo. I watch an episode of Big Bang Theory while I eat, Mia jumped on the recliner and watched with me. After the show, I went to clean the pans and start putting all the food back in the fridge/freezer including the leftovers. Mia came in for some water, so I filled up her bowl and got her some food, I may have given her a couple of bites of chicken as well. I leave most of the old stuff in the garage freezer and reorganize the rest of the stuff so it fits better.

Done with all that I go to my room, get on Pandora to listen to some music and start researching how best to maximize profits at the casino. It turns out most casinos don’t register individual winnings under 1200$ with the IRS, which explains why I didn’t have to fill anything out when I cashed out. I suppose that means I should start keeping track of my winnings if I plan to make a living off this. I’ll likely have to report whatever I win as income if I want to avoid trouble with the IRS. If my success tonight is any indicator they may very well get suspicious when I start depositing thousands of dollars a night and don’t report it on my taxes next tax season. I should probably let them withhold taxes on any winnings that do meet their taxable standards as well, less work for me and less money I’ll have to make sure I have set aside for taxes. Thinking about taxes I go ahead and research that a bit, I suppose I will technically be a professional gambler might help to know how to report income as such. I quickly learn that it can be rather complicated, I’ll have to have a diary of my winnings and losses as well as what the ID number for the machine I’m playing on. It may not be truly necessary but I’d rather be safe than sorry. Apparently, I should also list the date and time of said situations.

I laugh as, in the middle of my research, the next song starts playing and I notice how my shuffle playlist is very eclectic. It started with Escape the Fate, then Yiruma started playing the piano, and now I’m listening to Spem In Alium.

Moving on from the tax information I get more specific with my research, looking up information on slot machines and the best way to make money while playing them. One of the first things I learn is that my ability negates a lot of this advice. I also learn that the higher denomination machines generally have better odds, as much as 10% better. My ability does seem to negate this to an extent because I already get an idea which machine will payout, that being said larger bets mean larger payouts as well so I would likely make money faster and therefore more of it over time. It is also good to know that I should do max bets every time, the amount I bet doesn’t change the odds so betting more maximizes how much I gain on each win. Plus, my ability increases my chances of winning games involving random number generators which is exactly what a slot machine is, I wonder if that will increase the total payout on that machine or if the machine I play will just lose a lot more after I’m done. The way I understand it the machines are essentially set to pay out a certain amount of the money put in them so I doubt my ability will alter that programming just make me the one more likely to win.

That being said I wonder if I should cash out in thousand dollar intervals so as to limit how much of the winnings are linked directly to me. I look up how casinos react to people consistently winning large amounts of money. I’m surprised to find that most casinos offer perks to people who win a lot, free rooms/upgrades and free buffet tickets. Actually, I think I read something about this when going over the tax information, I’m supposed to include complimentary stuff as winnings on my taxes. It seems to be a strategy to keep you there gambling, giving them a chance to win their money back. That’s probably why they have the “players club” cards it helps them keep track of who is winning and how much they’ve won, they even go so far as to have constant raffles for those who have their card in a machine so as to make sure you put it in. Basically what I learned is I don’t seem to need to worry about winning to much money and getting kicked out unless I’m cheating or whoever runs the place is “stupid.” At least that is what most of these websites are saying, granted they don’t know about my ability which is a kind of cheat. I think I’ll play it cautiously and cashout in thousand dollar intervals when I can.

That's the important stuff out of the way if I decide to try poker I can do some more research later. I don’t think I’d be comfortable playing poker against actual people though, I feel like I’d be taking advantage of them. It is one thing to win money from the casino it's another to win money from regular people. So if I do decide to get involved in stuff outside of slots I should stick to games where I am against the casino and not against other gamblers.

The gambling research done I move on to researching some exercises and stretches that don’t require a bunch of equipment. It might be nice to get a gym membership and maybe a trainer but I’m worried they might notice how quickly I improve. I only spend a few minutes on this before deciding to just stick with the basics and seeing how my body reacts given my new abilities or well I guess it's technically a subspecies. With that in mind, I notice that I don’t really feel sore or tired despite my earlier exercises. Maybe I should try multiple workouts a day, try to do different forms of exercise two or three times a day. I could go workout with the punching bag in the garage.

I’m about to get up and do that when Mia starts barking, I watch her run out of my room as I hear the garage door start to open. Looking down at the taskbar on my computer I see it is already nearing 6 am, it seems I was cleaning and cooking even longer than I thought. I’m not sure what I wanna tell him, or if I want to tell him anything. Due to our similar sleeping schedules and him working third shift we don’t see each other a whole lot despite living together, I suppose my abrupt change in appearance wouldn’t be that obvious if you didn’t see me every single day. It has been about a week since we last sat in the same room and saw each other in more than passing.

“MIA! You come to see daddy? Have you been a good girl, do you need to go outside, hmm you need to go outside?” I hear him talking baby talk to Mia as she runs and dances around him. “Alright there you go,” he says as he lets her out. I can hear him moving around the kitchen before putting his keys, wallet, and whatever else is in his pockets on the little table before the front door.

“I cooked some chicken alfredo if you want some, it’s in the fridge,” I yell out to him.

“Alright,” he goes and opens the fridge, “did you clean the fridge out?”

“Yea, I went and got some groceries and there wasn’t enough room in the freezer so I cleaned it and decided to do the fridge as well,” I yell back out to him, “There was some meat in the freezer that had been there for a couple of years, not sure if you still wanted it or even knew it was in there so I left it in the garage freezer.”

“Okay, any idea what it was?”

“I don’t know, pork shoulder or pork butt whatever its called I think, it looked like that pork you usually smoke or cook in the crockpot for tacos. I didn’t even really look at the packaging except to see how old they were, they were buried under a bunch of other shit and still wrapped in the grocery bags.”

“Okay, thanks.”

And that is sort of the limit of our communication. I grab my headset and decide to play some video games while I wait for him to go to bed, he’ll probably eat and watch tv till about 8 before going downstairs, doing a short workout and going to bed. He is actually in pretty good shape for his age, better shape than me, or at least before now anyway. We’ve both got a bit of a belly on us, me a bit more so than him until now, but his is more from drinking and indulging in candy bars whereas mine is eating too much and a lack of exercise. Speaking of, he has a bike in the garage, I could probably use that for one of my exercises, maybe ride for a couple of miles a day.

I’m surprised to find that I am playing better than usual, it shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise, my dexterity and perception are both 25%, or more, higher than they were before. I switch between four or so first-person shooters at the moment. Right now I am playing Apex Legends, I would say that I am average at the game I get a handful of wins every week and I usually get at least one kill a game. Right now, however, I just landed at one of the most popular landing zones called Skull Town with four other teams and we are leaving with a combined eight kills, I have six of them. The first gun I found was a Prowler which had a Select Fire sitting right next to it allowing me to make it full auto. The next room I found an Epic heavy extended mag which allows me to have 35 rounds per magazine as opposed to 20 rounds. One guy ran up behind me as soon as I started to reload the gun, unfortunately, I forgot to switch to full auto as soon as I picked up the Select Fire so I started shooting at him in 5 round bursts. I panicked for a second but my aiming felt far smoother than I was used to and I managed to put all of the first 5 rounds in his chest and head knocking him instantly, I may have fired twice more in panic. I switched it to full auto and continued looting in the next three buildings I found an Epic body shield which doubled my health, a G-7 Scout sniper rifle, a few more blue attachments for both guns and that first guy's two teammates. I almost immediately knocked one and took a few hits before my teammate came out of nowhere and last hit the second guy. I, graciously, thanked him for stealing my kill before we moved on to kill the rest of the people in our area. We left Skull Town with almost all Epic level gear, attachments and a shit ton of ammo. The rest of the game proceeded in much the same fashion. My aiming felt better than it ever had, and we ended up winning the game with a combined 18 kills. I had 12, which was about 7 more than I think I had ever gotten in the past. The next several games were the same, I got a badge for winning the game as the champion and the kill leader in my second game. There were a couple of games where I ran into a pro-player or got third partied and died but there wasn’t a single game where I had less than 3 kills. I won more games today than I think I have in the last week and I definitely got more kills than I have in the last month.

I ended up playing a bit longer than intended, it’s almost 9 now. I’m feeling a bit hungry again, I should have something to eat before I go workout. A smoothie would probably be a good pre-workout meal. One bad thing about getting fresh fruit over the precut stuff is that it takes more prep time, the flavor should be quite a bit better though. The only thing that I bought precut was the pineapple, I have no idea how to cut up a pineapple. So I grab the strawberries, the pineapple, a banana, some ground flaxseed for added fiber, almond milk and unsweetened greek yogurt it makes the smoothie creamy and adds its own health benefits. I cut up the strawberries and banana add them to the blender with a half cup of almond milk and yogurt each. I make enough for two smoothies, I put one in the fridge and drink the other on my way to the garage out back.

I spend about half an hour punching on the punching bag, I doubt my form is all that great but my punches feel smoother and more natural now than they have in the past. My arms, shoulders, and upper back are nice and sore, even my legs and hips have a bit of soreness. My knuckles are red and have some friction burns on them, I wrapped my hands and wrists but I don’t like wearing the gloves. I’m honestly not 100% sure I even wrapped them correctly, to begin with, just seems like it’s better to be safe. As I am removing the wrap I notice the redness slowly fading and the slight pain gradually disappearing. I was already surprised that it hadn’t been worse I don’t usually spend more than a few minutes on the punching bag and the friction burns are usually just about as bad as they just were even then, but now they just healed before my eyes in a matter of seconds. I guess I knew that my natural regeneration would be quite a bit faster but actually seeing it happen makes it more real.

Now that I’ve seen it I’m realizing I should be really sore from my earlier workout. I would have never wanted to do a second workout after working out as hard as I did earlier today not to mention all the cleaning I did, I would normally be exhausted. Part of me really wants to test this new found regeneration. Another part of me thinks that intentionally hurting myself in order to test new ideas is incredibly stupid. I suppose hurting myself doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be incredibly painful, maybe just a slight scratch or bruise that would take a day or two to heal. I look over at dad's table where he keeps all his tools, it is a mess and my new found OCD is making me want to clean it. I ignore the subtle compulsion and look for something that's slightly sharp. I find a relatively new flat-head screwdriver, sharp enough to scratch but not so sharp as to really cut me. I take it and press the tip into my arm and drag it a couple of centimeters, it is just enough to slightly break the skin but doesn’t even really bleed just gets really red at the surface. The skin where I dragged it raises slightly and about 30 seconds later the skin is back to normal. That… was kind of underwhelming, I go inside and grab one of my knives. Taking it I make a quick shallow cut on the back of my hand about half an inch long. This time it actually bleeds but not that much, it is barely worse than a paper cut… hmm, I should have just done that, although that may have actually been more painful. The slight bleeding stops after a few seconds and after a minute there is no evidence that the skin was ever cut. That is… intriguing, I’m not sure what exactly I can do with that but it will be nice to not have long-lasting injuries.

It’s already about 10:30, I don’t really have anything else to do today but I’m not really tired yet. I take another quick shower, the third of the day and get back on the computer. I figure I’ll just play Apex for a couple of hours and head to bed.