Checkmate, Death

by Cobyboy

  "But I'll still be in custody," he said. "I'll go to prison."

  "Not my problem. And haven't you been in prison already, all your life? Imprisoned in your own mind. I'm sure you can find a way out, given enough time. Given endless time."

  He licked his lips. He was very much enticed, like a hungry man looking at a fully stocked buffet.

  "Where do we play?" he asked. "Here? But it's my dream. You don't have a chance of winning!"

  "Wrong. This isn't your dream, any more than it is my dream. It is merely a temporary arrangement of pre-existing materials. Your consciousness has briefly entered the constant flow of what we call Dreamland, and the forces of your subconscious mind have acted like magnets, attracting the stuff of dreams into various configurations. However, my mind is now part of the same realm and I can exert my own strength here, just not as easily as you. Still, we ought to meet on some sort of common ground. What we need is a mutual dream."

  "A mutual dream?" he asked.

  "Yes. One that we build together. Let's say I provide the setting, and you provide the chess set. Then we both have equal power, conscious and subconscious. In a way, this sort of environment is the purest and most detailed contest two minds can have with one another. A true measure of skill and forethought."

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded, as if everything made perfect sense to him. "How do we get there?"

  "Leave that to me," I said. "But before we can get underway, we first have to leave your mind. Which is a lot easier than it sounds. All you need to do is give us an exit."

  "Huh?"

  "An exit, Stefan. And I mean that very literally. Just think of an exit. A way out. Anything... It should work just fine, no matter what it is."

  He closed his eyes for a moment. Abruptly we were sitting on wet asphalt, amid piles of slush, with sleet falling in sharp curtains all around us. A gray sky boiled overhead. A forest of dead, skeletal trees filled the world. We were on a four-lane highway somewhere. And, just ahead, a sign reading EXIT 1 pointed down a little ramp.

  "Let's go," I said, getting to my feet.

  We walked down the road, past the exit sign. As soon as we went by it, the world started to darken around us, as though God himself were cupping a hand around the sun.

  "Now's our chance," I said. "I'll take us away. Remember; I just need a chess set. I'll provide the rest."

  Little did I know, he was going to provide a lot more than just a set. I was on the brink of disaster. And, though you might think I was ready for anything, I was too focused on my own skills in chess to foresee what was coming.

  14

  For a moment, Stefan and I were in darkness. And beyond that, we were immaterial. We couldn't feel anything, see anything, hear anything. We had only our thoughts, and even those were suppressed to a low hum.

  But then my subconscious kicked back in and we were sitting together at either side of a chess table. It wasn't one I recognized specifically, but it was a common enough sort at one point in time. It was a concrete construction, weatherproof, the kind you see at outdoor city parks. The kind that two old guys with big ears are always playing at, and throwing bread crumbs to the ducks when it isn't their turn.

  The setting we were playing in probably looked similar to many places on Earth. At least many places in Italy, Greece, Turkey, et cetera. It was a mirror image of the Celestial Café, built almost perfectly from my memory. Looking to the left through a window, I could even see the wall of the neighboring building and the darkness of the alleyway which ran between the two.

  "Where are we?" Stefan asked.

  "Some place that you will never be able to see," I replied. "I see you have made yourself black."

  "I'm confident," Stefan said, smiling and blowing air out of his nose.

  He sure looked confident. He had gone from a drugged out, drowning mess to a clean cut fellow in a suit, with perfectly groomed nails and well kept hair. There wasn't even a nose hair out of place. This must be what he actually looked like in reality, especially when playing in chess tournaments. That other vision of Stefan was simply the nightmare, the man he feared that he might become. Or the man that he had been once in the past.

  He was handsome. He had that charming but vapid quality of some celebrities. Those people who are friendly enough, who give you a warm handshake and pose for a photograph, but in reality there is nothing behind the doll-like glass of their eyes. Nothing but a shriveled soul.

  "Are we ready?" he asked.

  To answer, I reached out and made my first move.

  I moved the pawn in front of my king to e4. He gave me a little knowing smile and pushed his own pawn to e5, facing me down. I responded by sliding my knight to f3, and he obliged by moving his own knight to c6.

  Finally, I sliced my king-side bishop to b5. The game had really begun, now. We were already in the thick of it, the tricky opening moves negotiated by the finding of common ground between two veterans. The moves I just described are a very common set of openings often called the Spanish game. Sometimes, more specifically, they are called the Ruy Lopez, after a Spanish bishop who plucked the idea out of the celestial stream, after it trickled down through the eons from my own usage.

  Unsurprisingly, Stefan knew the Spanish game well. He had probably had it drilled into his head as a beginner and returned to it now and then. Provided both players go along with it, it can put both into a nice little position and give rise to an interesting game.

  What did I do next? I took his pawn with my knight. Knight to e5. He could have responded by recapturing with his knight, but I had already judged his character and determined that he was still little more than a scared child who constantly felt threatened by the prowess of others. He reached the conclusion that my knight move, which seemed rash on the surface, was part of some deep and unseen trick. Thus, he did not recapture. And I did not capture his knight with mine, because then one of his pawns would have taken it.

  We played on from there. I castled and he went on the offensive. But only halfway. I noticed a strange dichotomy in his temperament. His manner was alternately timid and bold. He seemed dreadfully terrified of making the wrong move one moment, he would hesitate and click his tongue and wait for a very long time, and suddenly he would boldly grab a piece and move it to some square without a second thought, his mind made up.

  I guess I thought that was a result of his mental illnesses. Maybe he had multiple personalities, I don't know. For all the fear he showed while determining his moves, he seemed to have no right to even make the moves he was making. They were sharp, well-considered, quite brilliant moves.

  And so we played.

  And so we got to a point where the board was an absolute mess. Pieces everywhere, in the weirdest places, the result of two players constantly chasing one another around but rarely getting into a position advantageous enough to make a capture.

  He was threatening my queen on e2 with his knight on f4. I moved the lady up to e4, out of immediate danger.

  His second knight was on c6, in line for my queen to capture it. And back in the corner, at a8, was his rook. If he moved his knight, the rook would be in danger. But he either didn't see this, or he didn't care, because he moved the knight to e5 and took my knight.

  Right away, I took his rook with my queen. It was a good move. It's almost impossible to resist an opportunity to take a rook.

  Another long moment of consideration. His face turned red as he held his breath. I noticed that he kept reaching up to stick a finger in his ear. A nervous tic. A lot of players have them. A lot of people, in general. Even I have a tic, where I rub the corners of my mouth.

  After appearing to nearly crap his pants with anxiety, Stefan made another characteristically clever move. He pushed his queen from d8 to d3. I had a strong concentration of pieces on my left side of the board, including both bishops, a knight, and rook, and I also had a few of my pawns there. With his queen now sitting at d3, I was pretty much blocked from doing anything useful with those pie
ces.

  I was starting to see how he ever could have stood against Lydia. He was good. He had a great sense of the game and how to not only attack, but how to close his opponent out from making a decent defense.

  But still... something was bothering me about the way he played. Something didn't seem right. My intuition was prickling at the back of my mind, but I was too focused on the game and the act of trying not to lose to let the suspicions come boiling to the front right away.

  I had to get those blocked pieces moving. I had to quickly get at least one of them into a position to defend my king. So I moved one of the trapped bishops to d1. This time, Stefan didn't wait quite as long to make his move. He seemed to have already made his mind up about something, or to have solidified a track to victory. He moved his own bishop, the one that stood between my queen and his second rook on his back rank, to h3.

  Considering my king was on g1, castled with the rook to its left, I found myself in peril.

  An amateur wouldn't have seen it right away, if it all. And it even took me thirty seconds or so to realize quite how much danger I was in.

  First of all, his rook could capture my queen on his next move. If I took the initiative and used my queen to capture his rook instead, I would them have him in check... but then his king would just capture my queen on the next move. A pointless check indeed.

  So, I had to get my queen out of there. But not so fast!

  He had his lovely little bishop sitting right in front of my king. It was threatening my rook, the one sitting to the king's left. But I couldn't simply use my king to take the bishop, because doing so would put me in check from his knight on f4.

  The rook was also threatened by his queen, which he had recently pushed up to d3. It didn't take a genius to see that I was about to be in a world of hurt. One wrong move - and I really mean one, no exaggeration - would mean a loss for me. That was untenable. It could not happen. But it was about to. What could I do?

  Stefan was too good for me.

  I was in shock. Fortunately we had not set a time limit on moves, because I was frozen in place. I couldn't move my hand. I could barely even think. I started to hyperventilate. Was it really happening again? I couldn't believe it.

  Satan had gotten it wrong. This was my true Hell.

  Satan...

  Thinking of the Devil made me think of the game we had played together. My mind was reaching in a million directions at once, searching for any piece of inspiration that I could use to get out of the mess I was in right now.

  Satan and his cheating. His glances upward, which I had taken to be innocent nervous tics.

  A nervous tic, much like the way Stefan kept sticking a finger in his ear.

  But, come to think of it, he hadn't done that for a few moves. He was taking far less time to make each move, as well, and not showing quite the same level of fear. It was probably just a sign of growing confidence. Or maybe it was a sign of something else.

  It's generally bad form to get up and leave the board in the middle of a game. But it's even worse form to cheat. Under the circumstances, I felt certain God and Heaven would forgive me. I pushed my chair back, got up, and ignored Stefan's angry shouts as I bee-lined for the door to the alleyway.

  Beyond it, I found the streets of Heaven as I knew them, but desolate and empty of any sign of life. However, to my left, I saw that someone was standing just outside the door, pressed against the wall between it and the window. They were holding a little mini chess computer in one hand, and a radio handset in the other. The type that might be used to whisper instructions through a tiny, invisible earpiece.

  "Give me that!" I snapped, ripping the computer out of the stranger's hands. I also took the radio handset away, then marched back inside and threw them both over the railing and down into the swirling depths of sky below.

  Stefan was silent. He was not ashamed or guilty, but merely disappointed that he had been caught. When I sat down, he let out a heavy sigh.

  "Who was that?" I asked. "Your accomplice."

  "His name's Garth," said Stefan. "I give him ten percent of my winnings."

  "Ten percent? You're a real cheap bastard. And this game is a sham."

  Stefan shrugged. I could tell he was trying very hard to seem like he didn't care. But he really did. He couldn't quite keep the sense of disappointment and pain out of his eyes. It seemed he knew his chance for immortality had gone by. And from that, I knew that he knew I was the better player.

  "We have to finish," I told him. "It's a policy."

  He folded his arms and stared off to the side.

  "I'll tell you what," I said. "This is a rare favor, and I'll only offer it once. We'll keep going with this game. We'll play it as the pieces lie. If you can still win, without your little helper, then you can have your immortality."

  That brought him back. Which was a relief. Because I really wanted to beat him.

  "Okay," he said. "Your move."

  I already knew what I had to do. I had to save my king by throwing my queen into the heat of battle. I moved her to g2, capturing the bishop which threatened my rook.

  He had a choice, now. One he would have to make for himself. And now the fear was returning, the indecision. I guess not all of his moves had been a sham, just the few more important ones toward the end. Beneath the careful application of cheating he was still a good player, and I wasn't guaranteed the victory just yet.

  What to do? My queen move wasn't quite a trap. She was going to get captured by his rook anyway, if I didn't move her. I had just made her final move worth something, was all. He could now capture her with his knight at f4. But if he did that, my king would be able to take it.

  There was another move available to him. I had already seen it a long time ago. He could move his other knight from e5 to f3. It would be check. But it would also be stupid, because I could take his knight with my bishop at d1. And then I would be well underway with my task of eroding his offense and turning the game back in my favor.

  Really, he had no clear, good moves he could make. None that his temperament would allow. He could back off, regroup, extend the length of the game a bit and maybe even still scrape a victory out of it.

  But I think he already knew he was toast. He knew he couldn't beat me. I had him dead to rights. And at that moment he switched gears from trying to win to trying to just do as much damage to me as possible, under the vague hope that I might make a mistake.

  So he did the original move, and took my queen with his knight. But there was a bit more tension in him as he did it than there ought to be. He apparently thought he saw a way to win, and was trying not to act too confident and reveal it to me. I had no idea what he was thinking, not until I took his knight my with king and he made his next move.

  He moved his queen to f3 with a triumphant grin. My king was just down to the right of it, in danger. I couldn't retreat to h1, because that was still in his queen's line of fire. I couldn't go to g3 or h3 for the same reason. As far as flight squares went, the only option was to go right back to g1 where I had been a moment ago. I could do that, and let him start closing back in around me for a quick strangulation.

  Or... I could just take his queen with my bishop on d3, which was what I elected to do in the end. The grin dropped off his face so fast I swear I heard it hit the floor. He hadn't seen the bishop. He'd missed it! An amateur mistake, but even the greatest players make such mistakes every now and then. It's inevitable.

  Luckily, I am not like any other player. I don't make mistakes. And I guess Stefan would have been better off knowing that before he agreed to play against me.

  It took a short while to win after that. Mostly because all my useful pieces were stuck behind pawns and I had to do some shuffling around to get them mobilized. But, once they were out, it was a matter of routine playing and I reached checkmate in a few short, decisive moves.

  Stefan watched all this unfold with the terrified but powerless expression of a man watching the guillotine blade
in its descent.

  And then it was over. Stefan sunk out of his seat like he was made of liquid, flattening against the floor. He fell into silence but I could see the back of his neck getting redder and redder. A full-on sociopathic tantrum was incoming.

  Time for me to go.

  I shut my eyes, cleared my mind, and waited to feel the pressure of the hotel bed against my back. When the sensation came, I opened my eyes and got to my feet.

  In the bed, Stefan was peaceful as a sleeping child. His chest rose and fell with his machine-assisted breathing. He was alive... but not for too long.

  It was just a matter of writing his name in the book and walking away. Stefan would float off peacefully in his comatose state. It was perhaps not the death he deserved... but at least he was not immortal, wandering the world forever and spreading his evil and corruption to every corner.

  Goodbye, Stefan. Have fun in Hell! They don't take kindly to cheaters down there.

  ***

  I need a vacation.

  It's been a long existence. And it's not over. Not nearly.

  Just a short break. A year or two. That's all I'm asking. Is it too much, to demand the march of time and the marching bands of good and evil to just take a pause for a bit and let an old bag of bones catch his breath?

  Yes. It is too much. No one commands that kind of power, not even God. The only thing time can do is leave behind those too weak to keep up with it. So I have no choice but to grind on. I have no choice but to drag myself through the ages, never aging but feeling old anyway. Feeling like a man who has overstayed his welcome.

  Do I sound depressed? Sorry. I'm not depressed, by any means. Just a little tired. It's the kind of tiredness you get at the end of a long, productive day. When you have finally taken care of a lot of jobs and errands you've been putting off. You sit down, let out a sigh, crack open a beer or maybe a bag of chips, and kick back to enjoy a movie or an episode of your favorite show...