The foot bone
connected to the leg bone...”
Dr. Frankenstein*
Today I wrote a story. But you probably saw that coming. Anyway onto
the flash fiction!
A Man And His Puzzles
Giant chess pieces surrounded me on a vast game board. Where a king
should be on the board for the white pieces I stood. Beyond the board
I could only see blackness, like the chessboard was an island in a
black sea of ink. I played a game with an invisible opponent. The
black pieces moved on their own and the white pieces moved of their
own will.
I wore the same black suit I wore during one of my national chess
championships. Second place. I was still tired from the jet lag to
the championship I'd say. They called me “Sir Knight” since I was
famous for making my checks with my knights. I like to think it fits
a man of my caliber.
Yet as the game dragged on my invisible opponent began to gain an
advantage. Impossible. I've loved puzzles since an early age and
solved them easily. Yet somehow I was losing. As the tension of match
continued I took more notice to the large crashes the gigantic chess
pieces made as they moved across the board. And also how the pieces
that were taken flew off into the darkness. As the opponent drew
their pieces closer to mine the sounds of their giant pieces landing
turned into quakes.
And when my invisible opponent got me in checkmate the queen flew up
and crushed me, a surge of pain went through my body.
I then awoke in a large glass walled room, thin like an ant farm,
that also floated in the black sea. It felt hot in such a confined
space and I ran my fingers through my brown hair. In the glass I
noticed I could see a color reflecting in the glass of something up
above. I looked up and falling from the top of the large thin room
were clusters of blocks of various shapes and sizes.
I had to run and jump as fast as I could to dodge the blocks as they
fell to the floor of the room. I looked at the roof of the room to
see a white fog that the block clusters emerged from. More and more
clusters came. And I kept dodging them to avoid being crushed as they
formed a new floor for the room. It became more difficult as I became
more tired. The blocks became faster and faster. And eventually they
crushed me as the chess pieces did, and it felt just as incredibly
painful.
I next found myself on a boat that was slowly sinking. Though the
first hole was impossible, if I patched up the second hole I think I
wouldn't sink. And it would be into the sea of ink again. At least
what I thought looked like ink. Whatever I was sinking into wasn't
quite ink, much thicker and more menacing. The darkness on what would
be a horizon if there were a Sun didn't look all that inviting. I
couldn't see stars or a moon, so I questioned how I could see
anything.
I looked around to see something to patch the hole. A convenient
pile of wood was there along with an convenient bottle of quick dry
glue. However a catch immediately became apparent when I looked
closer at the wood. The wood combined would probably be the exact
size needed to cover the hole and it was in the shape of a jigsaw
puzzle.
I worked to solve it as fast as a could. As the ship tilted the
pieces moved apart and I pounded the deck in frustration. I felt like
I became stupider. I couldn't solve it in time and the strange ink
substance came through the hole and the submerged the entire ship. I
drowned, painfully, my lungs filling with the stuff as a gasped for
air and screamed.
I awoke next standing on top of massive floating puzzle cube covered
in spikes and levers. I assumed I must move the levers to move the
cube and solve it or something might happen to me. Yet a false move
may also cause something. Those spikes look like they could easily
impale me.
Recent memory that was clouded by drugs came back to. Lethal drugs.
Execution drugs. Yes. I had been put to death. Was turning my love of
puzzles against me the karmic punishment the afterlife gave to me for
my murders?
No comments:
Post a Comment