james223
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You see all kinds of things in this job. Nights in the city, it’s like watching a film with the sound off. People laughing, crying, arguing, falling in love in the back of your cab. But for me, it’s just the meter. The click-click-click of pounds and pence. That’s the soundtrack of my life. Fourteen years I’ve been doing this. The car smells like old takeaways and endless cups of coffee. My back aches. And you’re always just… waiting. Waiting for the next fare, waiting for the shift to end, waiting for your life to somehow change.
This one night, it was dead. Rainy, cold, a typical Tuesday where everyone decided to stay in. I was parked up near the station, scrolling through my phone just to keep my eyes open. A notification popped up. An ad. Bright, flashy. It was for this sky247 net app download. I’d seen the ads before. Always swiped past. But that night, the rain hammering on the roof, the meter showing a big, fat zero, I don’t know. I felt a spark of something. Not hope, exactly. More like curiosity. What did people even do on these things?
So I did it. I tapped the link, went through the sky247 net app download. It was quick. Five minutes later, it was there on my screen, this little icon full of promise. I put in twenty pounds. The cost of a bad fare. I told myself it was for research, to see what all the fuss was about.
The app opened up and it was a sensory overload. Lights, noises, games called things like “Mega Moolah” and “Flaming Froot.” It was too much. I felt old and out of touch. I was about to close it when I found the “Live Games” section. I clicked on a thing called “Lightning Roulette.” And suddenly, it wasn’t just cartoons anymore.
There was a real person there. A live dealer, a young guy with a headset, standing in front of a real roulette wheel. He was talking, smiling, calling out numbers. And on the screen, there were these numbers lighting up with multipliers. 50x, 100x, 500x. It was chaos. But it was a real chaos. There were other people playing too, their bets popping up on the screen. It felt… alive. Unlike my cab, which felt like a metal coffin.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I just started placing tiny bets. A pound on red. A pound on the second dozen. I’d watch the wheel spin, that little ball dancing like it had a mind of its own. I lost a few. Won a few. I was basically breaking even, but I wasn’t bored. For the first time in years, during a shift, I wasn’t clock-watching. I was immersed.
Then I got a fare. A guy from the station to a posh hotel. A tenner. I put my phone away, did the job, the whole automatic process. When I parked up again, I found myself opening the app straight away. It had its hooks in me, not for the money, but for the escape.
It became a ritual. On quiet nights, between fares, I’d have the app open. I’d place my little bets. I started recognising the dealers. There was a woman named Sofia who was always laughing. It was a weird kind of company. One night, I was down to my last five pounds of my “fun money.” The meter had been kind for a change, so I felt reckless. I put the whole fiver on a single number. 29. My daughter’s birthday.
The wheel spun. The “lightning” struck, randomly assigning multipliers to numbers. A 100x multiplier landed on… 29. My heart just stopped. I couldn’t breathe. The ball spun, and spun, and it felt like an hour. It clattered, bounced, and landed in the slot for 29.
The screen exploded. Sofia was cheering. The chat was going mad. My balance, which was £5 a second ago, was now £505. Five hundred and five pounds.
I actually yelled. A proper, loud shout in my empty cab. I had to roll down the window, I was so hot. I cashed out four hundred immediately, my hands shaking so much I could barely type my password. I left the hundred and five in. A profit.
That win didn’t change my life. I didn’t quit my job. But it changed something in my head. The next day, I went out and I bought a proper, comfortable new seat cushion for the cab. One of those memory foam ones I’d always looked at but thought was too expensive. It sounds stupid, but that cushion has made my life better. My back doesn’t ache as much.
I still drive the cab. The meter still clicks. But now, on those long, quiet nights, the silence feels different. It’s not empty anymore. It’s peaceful. Because I know I’ve got my little secret, my little game. A place where for a few minutes, I’m not just a driver waiting for a fare. I’m a player. I’m part of the action. And sometimes, just sometimes, lightning strikes on number 29.
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