Dangerous Games IV

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Dan asked. He honestly speaks like that. The rest of us may act courtly sometimes but he even talks like it. It pains me to be the brother of such a nut case.

“I suppose you already heard about Al?” I asked, accepting the cup of lemonade that he handed me.

“I would have to be completely deaf to have not heard about Al. If you are only here to tell me about my unfortunate subordinate, I thank you for your trouble but you are bringing old news.”

“Why is it that I couldn’t have just come over for a social visit?” I demanded.

“No one in this family cares that much for each other; you don’t have to try to fool me. You either came to see if I was seeking revenge, which I am not, or you came to brag, which seems possible.”

“You aren’t upset that I cased your loser friend out of the house?” I asked.

“Pawn, only a pawn,” Dan told me calmly. “New pawns can be found. Better pawns.” I was surprised, I’m expected to act like that, the others aren’t. Then I looked in Dan’s eyes and knew he was just putting on a front. He was really mad with me and just trying not to show it. I looked in my lemonade, decided it might be dangerous to drink all things considered, and excused myself. Dan was hunting me, and I was determined not to make myself that easy of prey.

My next stop was Isabelle’s room. She didn’t even bother to welcome me in, she just opened the door and then went back to sitting at her desk, playing world take over games. They are her favorites, the bigger the armies she can build the better. I entered and sat down on the chair across the room from her, I don’t like being close to Isabelle. I never know when she’s going to turn and hit me and I like to make it hard for her.

“So you got ride of Al,” she said finally, not turning to look at me. She was far too busy marching her armies into Middle Earth.

“I was told that was already old news,” I told her. “Dan wasn’t happy with me.”

“Neither was Mother,” she reminded me. “I would like it if Mother got rid of you, it would save me the trouble. Are you here to offer me your services, now that you are strong enough to actually be useful, or are you here to declare yourself my enemy once and for all?”

“How about I don’t do either,” I suggested. Isabelle was frighteningly to the point and wasn’t putting me in a good place in this discussion.

“Not an option,” I noted an explosion on the screen where a computerized city had once been. It had been named after me, not very subtle.

“You’re enemy,” I said. “Talk to you later.”

Having taken care of the people who mattered in my house I decided to go next door and have a word with Ben. I could only hope that he would be more comforting to talk to then my bother and sister had been. I was starting to get a bit scared.

“Ah, cousin, you haven’t come and seen me for far too long,” Ben said smoothly, stepping aside to let me into his room. I had entered his house without knocking, living as close together as we do and being the only people around we don’t care about those things. They enter our house without ringing the bell; we do the same to them.

“Hello Ben,” I said in an equally friendly voice. I find it hard to be rude to someone who is being that polite to me, even when I know he’s only doing it so he can use me. I guess that’s my problem.

To be continued...

Spring Break

So I'm off for spring break and probably won't be updating every day again. I will be writing as always and will be sure to post what I have written when I come back from break.

Dangerous Games III

“So what did mother have to say?” Luke asked me. He had been sitting on my bed until I entered but now he stood, almost bowing to me as the mastermind of this plot. It of course helped his position that we had pulled off Al’s disgrace as well, but he knew it had been my idea and knew better then to take the credit. Not that the credit was all wonderful, not with Mother angry with me for the time being. At least for a while Luke would probably have to sneak food into me. Mother kinda holds a grudge for a while.

“Mother is annoyed with me of course,” I said in a massive understatement. “It will go away soon enough,” wishful thinking, Ben still wasn’t welcome in our house after what he had done to Mary. Mother like all of us to remember who exactly was in charge. Well it didn’t matter, it would be inconvenient but well worth the honors I would receive from my other relatives, the younger ones anyway.

“So what are we going to do now?” Luke asked. He never can think for himself I don’t think. It’s always questions, every time I talk to him it’s nothing but questions. Well I can’t complain, after all, I taught him to be like that.

“We keep our heads down for a while I think.” I was reluctant to show such weakness in front of Luke, whose respect I had to keep, but well, that was how things were going to have to be. “I am going to be trying to figure out who to go after next,” I assured him. If he got bored or thought I was a dud he might go goodness knows to which of my brothers and sisters and I didn’t like that idea.

Once Luke was gone I sat down with a sheet of paper and tried to plot out what was likely to happen with Al ousted. The family dynamic was going to change, that was for sure. I wrote Ben, Dan, Isabelle and I’s names at the top of the sheet and made a list of people who were likely to ally with each of us. Friendships are fluid in this family and shit according to power.

I was probably going to get a couple more followers out of this one, hangers on who would expect results. That was going to be a pain. I worried about Luke leaving and going over to someone else but he was dumb and easy to lie to so I usually didn’t have a hard time. If I got a few of my smarter siblings and cousins on my side then I would have to think of ways to keep them busy all of the time. That was going to be a real pain. Plans didn’t come out of nowhere like my more subordinate relatives seemed to think, they had to be inspired, and thought up on the spur of the moment since situations changed so quickly. Not one of the fools understood my difficulties.

Since I couldn’t think of anyway to plan for the future without knowing the future I gave up. I had thought I was going to stay in my room for a while until Mother forgot I existed anyway, but after only an hour I was bored. It was time to cement my position I decided. It was time to visit with the other important people in the family. Other then my Mother of course, my Mother had already made her ideas clear.

My first step was Dan’s room, he is younger then I am by at least five years, I can never bother to remember the ages of everyone. Dan’s age makes it easier for me to talk to him; he knows I could shove his head into the wall so he’s always very respectful to my face anyway. I take what I can when I visit his room, pencils, spare change, a picture of that girl he met while on vacation last year, just to show that I can take what ever I want from him, when ever I want. I picked up a deck of cards as he stepped back to let me enter his room, admired them loudly, and then pocketed them. That etiquette out of the way I sat down on his bed and he sat on his office chair and we stared at one another uncomfortably.

To be continued...

Dangerous Games II

My oldest sister is amazing; even I am forced to admit that. While most of us use at least a little cunning in our tactics, not so with Isabelle, who uses pure brute force and intimidation. If there is anyone who I am really scared about going up against it would be her. She offers threat of true bodily harm to anyone stupid enough to mess with her, which I’m not. I was talking before about pawns, well I guess I’m one of hers, but so are the rest so I don’t care. Okay, so I do care a little, I don’t like being used, but no one can figure out a way to beat her enough that she would stay down. You would think that with things as they are we would focus our energy to beating her I suppose, but we don’t. Instead we fight between ourselves and listen to her when she tells us to do something, pathetic right?

Then there’s my cousin, Ben, he’s more of the cunning sort, all cold calculation. I don’t like him much either, well I guess I don’t really like any of them. Ben is a little crueler then the rest of us are when it comes to manipulating people’s emotions though. He’s the sort who’d remind you of the fact that you’re family so that you’d start feeling bad for him, and then stab you in the back once you’d relaxed.

Then there’s my younger brother, he’s a lot younger then me so usually I have a hard time taking him seriously, but recently I have noticed he’s getting dangerous. He takes all of this way more seriously then anyone else, that Dan. There’s something mighty unsettling about the way he’s been looking at me recently, like he’s hunting me. I don’t like that at all.

That would be everyone of consequence out of my family, well other then Mother who I’ve already told you about. The rest of the older generation doesn’t interfere, we make them nervous and they can’t keep up with us. Mother does though; mother is a master at all of this. As I said before Mother was angry with me at the moment. That’s because I had forced Al out of the house and into the wilderness I should remind you. You don’t have to remember Al, Al isn’t important at all. It only had taken Luke and I a couple of days to make him into a mental wreck, Al had no business in this sort of house if that’s all it took.

In the nature of family politics I had just made a very bold step, in that Al is important. Al was my Dan’s most loyal follower, which is why I had decided to get rid of him. If Dan is going to start looking at me as a stepping stone to gain power then I will do something about him. Including getting Al out of the picture, I don’t think Al will return. Mother will probably send him somewhere peaceful out in the real world with an allowance to live. That’s what she did with my cousin Mary, who was shoved out of her house by Ben when we were a little younger. No one talks about Mary much, but she is in our minds, about what happens when you are weak. Mary only wanted to be a big happy family, always wanted to think the best of us. In other words she was stupid and easy prey. Ben became a major player when he got rid of her, and I had just become a major player for getting rid of Al, that was a good feeling. I had just become the person to watch. It was a bad feeling to have Mother look at me like that though, so I made an excuse and went to my room.

Luke was waiting for me when I entered my room. It had once been one of my younger sister’s rooms but since it was larger then mine had been, I had made her switch with me. She wasn’t happy about it but there was nothing she could do about it either. At least she was still in the game, the subservient lackey to Isabelle, but still in the game.

To be continued...

Dangerous Games

“And so, soundly defeated on all sides, he fled into the wilderness to hide his shame,” I pronounced. The dastardly enemy of which I was speaking was my brother and the person I was telling this to was my mother. She didn’t seem to look amused.

I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that my brother had run into the wilderness, which would be our back yard. Our family is a little eccentric, we live in the middle of nowhere, just a few families, and all of us closely related. I hear we are actually rich, that would explain the big house, a mansion more like, that we live in. The other families that live near us live in houses that are just as big. It is the only lifestyle that I’ve ever known so I don’t mind it, but it drove father crazy and he finally left. That left mother all alone, just her, us twelve kids, my aunt, and uncles, and cousins, my nephews, and nieces, well you get the idea. I don’t think she’s ever really missed him.

The only way to get to civilization is by helicopter, so we don’t bother often. All of us kids were home schooled by mother. If you think of this as a kingdom, which us kids have always done for reasons that will be later explained, mother is the queen. She rules, even her brothers and sisters, no one ever challenges her authority, which is why the fact that she was mad at me so bad.

I might be misleading you by saying us kids, I no kid anymore, I’m in my early twenties already. I mean my bothers, sisters, and cousins when I say we by the way. Back when we were younger we played this game, we pretended that we were knights and ladies in a court, mother was naturally always portrayed as the queen. We had a lot of free time on our hands, living so far from other kids like we were. Mother took advantage of it, telling us that she favored knights who cleaned the dishes, or set the table and made ladies in waiting of ladies who did the laundry and cleaned their rooms.

We used to joust and play at sword battles as well of course. It goes naturally with that sort of game to have sword fights and we had a lot. That was all fine and well while it lasted but it didn’t. You would have thought we would stop this silly play as we got older, but we didn’t have anything better to do even as we did get older. The game continued as we got older, it just grew with us, and I guess it was bound to happen that we would slowly forget that it was a game at all. What I mean to say is that it’s become a game of court politics and even the adults are in it now, though I am one of them so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It isn’t a game anymore, it’s life, and my nephews and nieces have been raised with it from the cradle.

Let’s take a step back and describe us then, you should meet the family after all. I don’t mean all eleven of my brothers and sisters and all that, only the important ones. Most of them are lackeys, and not worth mentioning. Even if they are my siblings and close relatives it doesn’t mean I see why you should care one way or another about a pawn to be used. I will make an exception about my own pawn, I only have one. Since I bring him up I guess he should be the first one I tell you about.

Luke, his name is Luke. He’s one of the weaker of my brothers; if I am judged by my subordinates then I might as well give up now. Still he is painfully loyal to me and that’s worth a lot in this family, a very rare trait, for someone to be loyal to me. He’s tall and skinny, and wears nothing but black with the idea that it will make him look stronger and cooler, it doesn’t.

Years of Sundays III

“Is it?” the man in the top hat asked dubiously. “What makes you think that? I mean what do we do with our free time after all? We spend money, much more money then people in the past did, because we have the time to spend it. We grow lazy as well, if you think that everyone does productive things in this free time you’re wrong. That time isn’t generally spent improving ourselves, it’s spent in front of forms of electrical entertainment.”

“You don’t have to say it with such scorn, I’m sure even you watch TV occasionally,” I pointed out.

“No, I don’t have a television or a computer and I am happy like that,” the man said proudly. I will admit that at this point, more then any other part of the conversation, I wondered if I wasn’t sitting next to some sort of space alien.

“So what you want to do is turn the rest of us into people like you, people who define your lives by your work rather then what you do for fun?” I asked. The man in the top hat laughed.

“Not at all, that would be boring, wouldn’t it? It’s more fun if I’m different. I was simply playing devils advocate and pointing out to you that society isn’t necessarily improving, nor is it getting worse. It’s just changing after all. You were so set on the idea things were getting better that I couldn’t help but point out the flaws of your arguments.” With that the man in the top hat stood up and walked off, leaving me sitting like an idiot on the bench.

I am not trying to claim that my life changed because of that meeting, because it didn’t. I did gain; I suppose you could say, a new hobby however. I have taken an interest in those people whose hobby is living the in past. They take a lot of time to find anything out about, because most of them don’t chose to communicate through computers or television. Instead I find myself reading more recently then I think I have in a very, very, long time.

I am not about to become on of those people who wears a top hat and speaks to strangers about the nature of society, I still don’t even know that guy’s name, but I will take an interest in those people who do. I guess researching modern people is a weird hobby to have, but I figure a lot of people have it, I’m just being more honest then they are and admitting it.

Years of Sundays II

“Really,” I said skeptically. I was pretty sure that I would notice if other people were wandering around in top hats.

“Oh yes, I do take it a little further then most of them do though,” he said, noticing my look. “I have the advantage of being my own boss so I can dress however I want. Most people don’t have that advantage.”

“So what do you do?” I asked, trying to imagine a job that would fit his clothing.

“I own a convenience store,” the man told me. I was finally lost for words completely. The image of a man in an old fashioned waistcoat stocking shelves was one that was beyond all expression.

“Don’t your customers stare?” I finally said weakly.

“Sure they do, doesn’t matter to me,” the man in the top hat said shrugging. “The only way anyone can be happy, I believe, is for them to live however they want. I am fascinated by the past, the present and future bore me, I try to pretend they don’t exist.”

“Isn’t that a slightly irresponsible attitude?” I asked. I usually don’t speak so rudely to strangers, I mean I didn’t even know his name, but I was already getting the idea that nothing I said could offend this man. I was right, he just laughed.

“I am happy in my irresponsibility,” the man in the top hat told me cheerfully. “I am not as irresponsible as you seem to think though. Take my business as an example; most stores are only open from nine until five every day, if that. My business is open from seven in the morning until ten o’clock at night. That’s how I hear things used to be done.”

“So you’re old fashioned even in your business?” I asked.

“I like it better like that. It makes it more like a game and less like work. Don’t you ever wonder why we live like we do?” The man in the top hat turned suddenly turned to look at me with intensity that belayed the way he spoke.

“What do you mean?” I asked, taken aback.

“I mean why things have changed. Do you think there are reasons for it, or is it just irrational. I don’t believe you could say we have made progress after all, we’ve only changed, and for what purpose?” Again I really didn’t know what to say in response, this man said things that I had never thought of before, and with seriousness.

“I mean what do you do with your life?” The man in the top hat asked me when I didn’t answer him. “How do you define yourself?”

“Well I like to ride horses, and I’m an alright artist?” I stuttered out.

“And what do you do for your job?” he demanded. It was as if he had totally changed personalities.

“I work at a bank as a teller.”

“Exactly, you prove my point. I ask you what you do with your life and your first thoughts are you hobbies. In the past you would have thought of your job first. Strange isn’t it?” the man in the top hat asked, slipping back into his previous, easy tone of voice like nothing had happened. “Now the question is has that change made any difference, has it improved our quality of life at all?”

“Isn’t it good that we are able to relax more?” I asked.

To be continued...