by Rune Skelley
The white army was even worse, having no pieces that were original to the board. The plastic king stood a good inch shorter than the pewter queen, there were two glass lumps Fin took to be bishops, three mismatched wooden knights, a plastic rook and a marble one, and nine pawns, none of which matched.
In addition to that mess and the Monopoly pieces, he had five checkers, a domino, three dice, a submarine from Battleship, and a dime.
To keep the chessboard aspect a surprise, Fin put the pieces inside and turned the top plain side up.
While debating the relative merits of buying a uniform set versus using the mongrel horde, perhaps even constructing a new game that included all the other detritus from the velvet bag, Fin put the cleaning supplies away, and began cooking dinner.
Having been taught to cook by hippies, many of the recipes he knew were vegetarian. Rook didn’t mind. His wife was fantastically resourceful and competent in many areas of life, the culinary arena just wasn’t one of them. She was happy with whatever Fin chose to make, as long as it involved no seafood, and Fin enjoyed cooking for her. It felt comfortingly domestic, a phrase he never expected to use in a nonironic way.
He’d been domesticated, and didn’t mind at all.
The new job was much more interesting than Sycamore. He got to stretch his artistic muscles at the same time he learned some programming skills. His coworkers didn’t suck, his schedule was moderately flexible, his pay astronomically better.
It felt strange not to have anything to complain about.
Rook was still shelving books at the library, a job she mostly enjoyed. She planned to look for a ‘real’ job once the baby came, since it would hamper her chances if she waddled hugely pregnant into an interview.
Not that she was hugely pregnant. She was six months along and sexy as ever. Maternity clothes vexed her. According to her, they sucked. It amused Fin to imagine her in a shirt festooned with teddy bears or storks, largely because he knew he’d never see it.
Apart from the sartorial suckiness, and occasional worries about her tattoos distorting, or losing her figure, Rook was happy. They had both been spending extra time with Zen. Turned out babies weren’t so bad after all. Except when they were awake all night kicking you.
With Rook on her feet all day the baby slept, which meant it spent all night flexing its muscles and pummeling its dad. Boy or girl, the kid was going to be a kung-fu master.
As Fin stirred a pinch more basil into the spaghetti sauce, he heard the car pull into the carport. Moments later Rook came in through the back door, her vinyl leopard-print raincoat hanging stiffly around her.
“Oh, Muffin, that smells good!” she said.
Fin smiled at the pet name, how it had mysteriously stopped sounding like an insult, and greeted her with a kiss and a hug that made her coat squeak in protest.
“It can be ready any time, Cookie,” he said. “I just need to boil the noodles.”
“Do that now, please. I’m starved.” She slipped her coat off and tossed it into the booth at the end of the kitchen. She wore a sleeveless minidress in an eye-bending acid green paisley. The top fit nicely, but the lower portion stretched taut across her belly.
Fin placed his hands on either side of the protrusion, which was a little bigger than half a basketball. “How you doing today, Thumper?”
The baby kicked his right hand. Fin smiled.
Rook laughed.
After filling the big pot and putting it on the stove, Fin said, “I found the world’s coolest thing today at Goodwill.”
“Another colander?”
Fin rolled his eyes and started toward the living room. “Even cooler.”
“That remains to be seen.”
*** *** ***
Rook experienced a long moment of both excitement and dread.
She knew that table.
Instead of passing, the feelings intensified and sent a shudder through her. Thumper shoved and wriggled.
Rook’s brows furrowed.
Fin’s grin quickly devolved into a frown of concern. “What’s wrong?” He put a steadying arm around her.
Shaking her head, Rook said, “Deja vu. I’m okay.”
“No you’re not. Come sit down.”
He led her to the retro-futuristic sofa, then hurried off to get a glass of water.
Rook closed her eyes as Thumper jabbed her ribcage from inside. In her mind she stood on the shore of a still, gray lake, regarding a table, twin to this one.
It couldn’t be the same table. The one she remembered only existed inside her head.
Fin sat beside her and rested a hand on her belly. Rook sipped her water and stared at the table.
“I think I’m just hungry,” she said. “Low blood sugar.”
“The pot’s not boiling yet,” Fin said. “Do you want a snack? I think we have some pretzels.”
Rook nodded. Fin got the bag of pretzels, then carried his new treasure over and placed it in front of her.
“I know it’s a little beat up,” he said, “but what do you think?”
“It’s, umm…” She didn’t want to say ‘creepy.’ Stalling for time, she popped a pretzel in her mouth.
“Archaic?” Vesuvius suggested.
“He doesn’t like it either, but let me show you the best part.” Fin lifted the top off and pulled out a velvet bag, black on one side, white on the other, and drawn with a black and white cord. Exactly like her destiny vision. This one bulged with something larger and lumpier than a single coin.
Fin flipped the top over and put it back in place. The table was now a crazy, warped chessboard, and a bit less menacing.
Rook smiled hesitantly.
“I hope you like it.” Fin pulled a series of ridiculously mismatched pieces out of the bag and lined them up along the curved rim of the board like the cast in an amateur production of Camelot taking their curtain call.
It was obvious why this bizarre relic appealed to Fin. Rook chuckled at his enthusiasm.
He added the last two pieces, a white pawn and a black rook. “Is that my pendant?” Rook asked.
“Hmm?” Fin fiddled with the pieces, making sure they all faced straight at her.
Rook reached across and picked up the miniature tower. Definitely her pendant.
“I guess it matches the board, but I’d rather keep it as a necklace,” she said.
“What?”
“Where’d you put the cord?”
“What are you talking about?” Fin asked, clearly playing dumb.
Rook held the pendant out.
“Oh, that’s cool. It does look like your necklace.”
“It is my necklace.”
“No.”
Rook sighed, and went into the bedroom. She located the shoebox where she kept her jewelry and brought it back out to the living room. She handed it to Fin.
“Prove it.”
He quirked his eyebrow at her and opened the box. After a few seconds he pulled her rook pendant out and dangled it by the black string.
Rook opened her hand and compared the rook to her pendant. They were identical, down to the block pattern and the placement of the tiny windows.
Fin whistled.
A fascinating mixture of dread and wonder seeped down Rook’s spine. Her left hand crept up and covered her gaping mouth. Her right closed into a fist around the rook.
Fin put her necklace back in the box and took her hands in his. “Hey, it’s okay, Cookie.”
“I dreamed about this table, Fin. The night we got married I had a vision — a destiny vision, dumb as that sounds. This table tried to make me choose, tried to make me Be the Completer.”
“You did choose.” He smiled and gave her hands a reassuring squeeze. “You married me. Completed me.”
Rook was grateful he accepted her wing-nut assertions, and wasn’t questioning her sanity. Ever since she told him about Brook and Bramble he’d been very attentive to her mental well-being. It would be frustrating if that caused friction now.
“Where did you get your necklace?” he asked.
“My grandma. I found it at her house and I liked it, so I stole it and made it into a necklace. It was just a little castle statue in a box of junk in the attic. She had lots of junk. Salt and pepper shakers, porcelain figurines, silverware, rhinestone jewelry. All family treasures you understand.”
Fin nodded. “I bet this was her table, too. You saw it at her house and that’s why it showed up in your dream.”
Rook shook her head. “First of all, she lived in DC before she moved out to Arizona to live with Uncle Phil, so why would it turn up in Webster? And second, I spent more time with my grandparents than with Mom when I was young. I would know it if this was their table.”
“Maybe it was in the attic?” Fin sounded doubtful.
“The attic was my domain. I was up there all the time to get away from Bay.”
“And Junebug?” Fin liked to collect information about her family, like she was a jigsaw puzzle he kept finding pieces for.
“The Bug wasn’t around as much. Unlike with Bay and me, Mom knew who her father was. Her other grandparents took her a lot.”
“I never met my grandparents.” He smiled a wry smile. “Except for Shaw.”
Rook placed Fin’s large hands on her belly. “This poor kid is going to have the most sordid family tree in history.”
In the kitchen the pot lid started rattling. Fin leaned down and kissed Rook’s protruding navel, then went to add the pasta to the pot. Rook placed the rook on the chess table and followed him.
“Remember what Willow said about Webster being a nexus?”
“I was thinking about that.” Fin gave the pot a stir with a wooden spoon. “I guess this is another example. Weird and unusual things are drawn here. I suppose the Id likes synchronicity.”
“It is a good album,” Rook joked.
Fin groaned. “I’m almost afraid to ask if we can keep it,” he said. “The table I mean, not your sense of humor. But if that’s up for debate…”
Rook swatted him and walked back into the living room to look at the table. Fin put his arm around her and stood there bouncing on his heels. Clearly he adored his find.
Oh what the hell.
Rook fished her necklace out of the shoebox and untied the cord. She looked Fin in the eye and handed him the rook. “Promise me we can get rid of it if it creeps me out too much.”
“I promise,” said Fin, then he pulled her to him. As they kissed he set the rook on the table and Thumper started auditioning for Riverdance.
*** *** ***
While Fin and Rook ate spaghetti in the kitchen, Vesuvius regarded his new roommate.
Fin thought Vesuvius disliked the chess table, but that wasn’t the case. Vesuvius had many questions about it, and wasn’t sure it was safe to have around. With Fin too much in love with the table to give such considerations any attention, Vesuvius had to handle those details.
It did make him a little jealous, watching Fin fuss over this gaudy thing.
Where had the table come from, prior to Goodwill? An awkward familiarity about it made Vesuvius uncomfortable. Knowing the table’s past would probably tell him things about himself.
Did the table originate when it appeared in Rook’s mind? Or was it as old as it looked?
One sure thing was the table had no consciousness of its own. So, it had no agenda. That didn’t mean it didn’t have a purpose, perhaps even a destiny.
As Rook and Fin entered the room, she said, “Okay one game.”
Fin said, “You bring the chairs. I’ll set up the pieces.”
Rook put her hands on her hips and huffed. “In my delicate condition?”
“The chairs are light.”
“We’ll see if you even get one.”
Fin began arranging the two armies. Vesuvius watched with interest, noting that the bowed lines of the board seemed to acquire greater curvature as more pieces went into place. Rook came back with one of the bomb shelter chairs and sat with her arms folded. After several seconds, both she and Fin cracked up and she stood to go get another one.
The board was ready, and Fin turned the white army toward Rook’s seat. She returned with Fin’s chair, but didn’t give it to him. She stood pouting. Fin quirked his eyebrow at her with all his might, until she picked up her old pendant.
“I want to use black this time.”
Fin looked ready to debate, but came to his senses quickly. He moved to the other chair while Rook replaced her rook.
As he usually did, Fin first moved one of his knights.
Rook advanced a pawn, one of the minority of pieces original to the set.
As she made her move, Vesuvius experienced a form of double vision. On one level, he saw the event in an ordinary sense, but on another he saw the spaces of the board realigning. On that channel the board didn’t have ranks and files, but concentric rings. The ring with Rook’s pawn turned to keep pace with the motion of her hand.
This was too startling and fascinating for Vesuvius to respond to. He watched Fin counter by bringing out his other knight, expecting a repeat of the bizarre phenomenon, but it didn’t happen. Vesuvius wondered if he had let his mistrust of a new piece of furniture escalate into hallucinations.
Rook advanced a bishop, which convinced Vesuvius he wasn’t imagining things. He got another dose of the dual-reality view of the board, and again the movement of the piece caused corresponding rotation of the ring it rode. The bishop’s diagonal travel created added complexity. Two adjoining rings moved in unison, then the inner one carried on for an extra space. A sensation of vertigo accompanied Vesuvius’s augmented view of the game.
This was exactly the type of danger Fin’s infatuation blinded him to, and Vesuvius wondered if he should interrupt before anything weirder happened. Fin, uncharacteristically, made his move without stalling, so Vesuvius had no time to speak up. A pawn this time. Again, his move didn’t produce the effect. It seemed to be Rook.
Vesuvius braced as she reached for her next piece. Best to be sure, before saying something that might upset them. She moved one of her knights, and nothing unusual happened. Vesuvius felt warily relieved and decided to let them keep playing so he could observe the strange properties of the table.
The overlaid vision did not return for the next four moves, and Vesuvius wondered if it was gone for good. Then it happened again as Rook moved another of her pawns. He still didn’t feel he had enough data to say anything.
Over the next ten moves, the effect reappeared twice. Both times on Rook’s turn, but otherwise no pattern was obvious.
With a savage little chuckle Rook said, “This is what I’ve been waiting for,” and pushed out her pendant-turned-chess-piece. The board became a writhing nest, as multiple rings moved in different directions. At least one made a complete revolution. Somehow all of this only affected the position of the rook.
As the rings found their new configuration, the image that settled in Vesuvius’s mind was of a puzzle, or a combination lock. His earlier anxiety forgotten, he waited for Rook to make another move and spin the dial. He had some guesses about how the mechanism would behave and wanted to see if he was right. The flow of the actual game eluded him, as he spent the time between spins concentrating on solving the puzzle.
The gaps between spins seemed to be lengthening, or was it just his impatience?
When the wait became irritating, Vesuvius noticed Fin wasn’t in his chair anymore. He was kneeling in front of Rook, between her knees, and they were kissing. Chess was a reliable aphrodisiac, and this game had run its course for tonight. Vesuvius now wanted to persuade them to keep playing.
As Fin scooped her up, one of Rook’s boots bumped the table and toppled a few of the pieces, dissipating the energy Vesuvius felt building throughout the game. He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed.
*** *** ***
Sunlight bathed the sidewalk, scarcely hindered by boughs putting forth tiny green buds. Those limbs chopped th
e light into a crazed mosaic with their shadows. The air was clear and clean on Melissa’s face, and chilly on her bare legs.
She was two blocks from the House, practicing. These jaunts were supposed to help her gain independence from Severin. As the weather improved, perhaps she would make them more frequent, as they at least gave her a change of scene.
Melissa felt heavy certainty that her stamina for the outside world would never progress beyond the one-hour mark. Some traitorous part of her was not on board with the quest for independence, and invariably after 60 minutes the patterns would invade the edges of her perceptions.
Then it was time to go back, straight to the attic for a round with Severin.
Birds called to each other across the quiet street.
A few weeks ago Melissa had turned one of her strolls into an experiment. By the time her world began caving in, she had already seduced a stranger.
The most difficult part that day had been deciding where to look for her energy donor. Her first, obvious idea was any of the innumerable student bars, but she found it too nauseating to even contemplate the type of ‘man’ she’d find there. Plus, she’d be competing with all the trashy coeds. She’d sooner let madness claim her.
A hotel bar was perfect. Lonely business travelers, and private rooms upstairs. Someone from out of town would be an ideal test subject.
At the Best Western, she’d set her sights on a tall, slim man nearing 50, hunched at the bar. He reminded her of Brad, which might have bothered her, but she chose to focus on how the familiarity would simplify things when they got to his room. His name was Ron, and it took some nudging to get him to buy the second drink. Melissa allowed him to notice she wore nothing underneath the sweater dress. After that, it was only a matter of minutes until he suggested they head upstairs. Melissa agreed demurely, although by then she was impatient to fuck. The patterns muttered in the wings, triggering a Pavlovian response.
The room was smallish and dingy. Melissa sank to her knees as soon the door shut, undoing Ron’s fly. The bed was a few toddling steps away, and Ron soon sprawled across it on his back. Melissa quickly mounted him, watching his face as she undid her sweater buttons one at a time. By the time she opened them all, she’d begun draining his energy.