Dating : The Game

He swept the world like a storm, his words the anguished outcry they didn’t know they needed. But that day, just as quickly as he came, he vanished. They waited, but the storm had passed. No one knew where, no one knew why. All that was left behind was a monicker.

***

The flickering light bounced off the dusty wooden settee, groaning in protest as he lowered himself slowly onto it. His white knuckles regained colour as he let go of the tea table, steadying himself against the two seater. An old faded black and white board, surrounded by wooden pieces in a myriad of shapes lay before him, the wood speaking its years through the cracks on it. He took a deep breath, picked up and squinted at the pieces one by one, before placing them in their rightful spot.

“You are thinking again,” came the velvety voice of a youthful girl beside him on the settee. At first glance she looked like a regular sixteen year old girl, but on closer inspection, one could not miss the bruises on the side of her face, or the unusual way her chest seemed to rise and fall. But she didn’t seem to be in any pain, if the smile on her translucent face is anything to go by.

“Thinking…” the man wheezed. It took a moment, but he understood what she was hinting at. His eyes now looked past her marred visage and trained to his side. An open red splotched book lay beside him, the two drawls within it chaotic, as though the opposing forces fought over who got to tell the tale. The first seemed to be mature, the words sophisticated, the language articulate whereas the second was more childish in its expression. Yet in all that chaos, they seemed to complement each other.

The girl followed his gaze, stretching herself to catch a glimpse. “Whatcha workin’ on there?” From the looks of it, it was one of theirs but seemed to be incomplete. A thought struck her, “Is that?”

Is that, simple enough, yet it rattled around his brain. What do you mean? He was just about to try voicing those words when a woman in nurse’s outfit walked in, “Time for your medicine, Mr. Keegan.”

He was better now than most days, but now and then even comprehension seemed to evade him. It’s like the words didn’t make sense, or were strung the wrong way. Too fast, too soon, they lost their meaning. But it didn’t bother him anymore, they don’t matter, he’d tell himself. Instead, he trusted his other senses more, grasping for cues that could do the job better.

In the case of Ms. Johnson, his nurse, the bottles in her hand were his saviors. He whined in protest, shaking his hands. A master in this routine game of theirs, she sat down beside him, “Now now, you know it gets harder the more you put it off. Just a little bit.” He grumbled but knew she’d always win, so he downed the concoction she handed to him.

She looked towards the board, her eyes crinkling, “What’s this?”

The medicine always made him drowsy, so he mumbled the word, “Chess.”

She decided to humor him, “You play?”

“No,” he grunted, “thinking. No finish. Words.”

She chuckled, chalking his absurd impulses as off late as a sign of recovery, “Alright then. Just take care not to strain yourself okay?” He looked at her confused, so she corrected herself. “Too much, no words. Okay?”

He nodded, “Finish. Time out. Have to finish.”

She looked surprised, “Very good Mr. Keegan, your sentences are getting better.”

The surprise was not misplaced, for Richard Keegan has not uttered a phrase that could be considered remotely complete ever since that day.

She could remember it as though it was yesterday. They wheeled him in, a vision in red, lost cause from nowhere it seemed. They tried so hard to find the real him, but all there was were the small trinkets they found in his car. Misplaced pieces of an unfortunate man, to whom a child’s speech was the best conversation some days.

Aphasia. Or so the attending physicians believed. Brain damage from the crash, irreparable, another in their long list of lost causes. But she always thought different ever since the day she saw him wake up for the first time. The way he grappled the book that now lay beside him, stroking the red splotches. It was as though instinctually he knew, his eyes shining with the knowledge of what was lost. He had looked at her, a single tear streaking down his cheeks, and the heartbreaking sob he let out was the last she saw him cry.

So she sat with him every day, speaking normally, although occasionally simplifying things. At first, it was as though she was just rambling to a statue, for he always looked out the window, as though seeking something on the horizon. But one day he responded, though it didn’t seem as though it was to her words, but it was still a start.

He went about setting the pieces on the board. “Do you want me to play with?” He looked at her, eyes probing her as though looking for something then shook his head. She watched him as he started the game, but his moves seemed forced, as though he wasn’t playing by instinct. He kept mumbling as he moved around the board, wringing his fingers as though missing something that should’ve been in his grasp.

“Pen,” he uttered at long last. Ms. Johnson hid her astonishment at his request and handed him hers. He grabbed the notebook, fingers hovering over the fading page, his eyes strained in concentration, muscles long unused tensed in anticipation, veins popping. The tip touched the page and then slid off.

Clunk.

It fell to the floor. And just as it did, a single teardrop, like that day, fell on the page. “No finish,” he mumbled sorrowfully, “save Queen.” His hands shook.

Her heart broke at the sight. She could see it in his eyes, the words were there. It wasn’t that they didn’t come to him, she never did believe it. It was as though he was hiding from them, hiding from healing. Hiding in search of something. Hiding, in guilt.

She grabbed the pen off the floor, grasped his fingers, pried them open and slid it into them. She then held his hand, clasping her fingers over his, “What do you want to write?”

He looked at her, waiting, wondering before uttering, “Queen”.

The strokes were easier now. They slid in familiar curves of a long gone practice. His breath stopped for a moment when she let go.

“Your turn.”

He struggled, fingers clasped in a death grip around it and started, but the pen fell again. She picked it up and handed it to him, “Start simple.”

His fingers stroked over Queen again, before retracing it on his own. He stumbled at first, his heart pounding, but he kept going. Before long he had written his first sentence.

Queen and king went on a journey.

Ms. Johnson couldn’t believe her eyes. Here he was, ruled out from recovery of any kind, deemed unable to express coherently in any form, but Richard Keegan had not only uttered, but had also written a comprehensible phrase in the span of a few minutes. It was the breakthrough she always knew to be coming. She had to call the hospital.

She patted his arm and stood up, “I’ll be right back.”

The girl watched the nurse leave from her spot beside him on the settee, before turning to him with a smile. “She takes good care of you.” He simply grunted in reply, placed down the pen and continued moving the chess pieces again. She sat back and watched him play. For as long as she remembered, it was just the two of them. Her with her adoring eyes and him with his crinkled smile that lit up every time they played the game.

They used to do this a lot before that day. She was always white and he black, and even though opposites she always sat beside him. “You are my muse”, he used to say. She was the protagonist, and he was the conflict. “It is Freitag’s pyramid”, he used to say.

“A game of chess is just like a story. You first probe to see what kind of characters you are up against: offensive or defensive, you have your goal, you plan to get there, out comes the conflict, key players go missing, and before you know it’s checkmate, resolution.

It may be happy, it may be sad, but we always finish the game.”

Her eyes flew past him to all the books that lined the shelves, catching the names of the authors, some classics, some contemporary, before her eyes settled on one, R. L. K. Shame, she thought to herself, for neither of them could read those anymore. Or so she thought. Her eyes widened in realization.

Finish the game.

It used to be their way, mapping each move and weaving a tale through it. The reason why no two plots were ever the same, for they both never played the same way. That is, until that day.

Her eyes turned back to the board, as the pieces moved around in a familiar way. Her throat got stuck, “This is from that day”. Her eyes flickered to the notebook and the pieces fell in place. “You are going to finish the game from that day.”

He kept mumbling, “Save queen, finish.” His hands were too quick now, his mind on overdrive. Memories kept crashing like waves over them.

They were laughing, despite everything. She had the board on her lap, her breath uneasy, yet the discomfort not shown on her face. They were on an adventure, running away to a place they didn’t know. But all adventures needed to be told, so they played the game. The story of their life, she was the queen and he the king, nothing else mattered. Their notebook was spread between them, her scrawling away until they made a stop when he’d take over. It went on, till something crashed into them from the passenger side, all she could remember was the pain. It seared through her weakened lungs. It was warm, then cold. Then it was quiet.

Nothing.

Until she woke up beside his bed.

His hands froze. The game has reached its crescendo. Only a few moves remained. She knew it too.

“Save queen,” he mumbled, “save queen but finish. How?” He grabbed his hair, tugging till it came off its roots.

She placed her hand on his arm, “It’s okay”.

He looked at her, tears welling in his eyes, “No…” He shrugged her off, standing and pacing, “No!”

“Richard,” she whispered, “it’s okay…” She kept repeating.

He walked towards her and knelt, “No…”

She stroked his hair, a whisper of wind passing through and said again, “It’s okay.” She grabbed his hand and guided him in moving the queen piece. It was a deadly move, for the queen had now left herself exposed, but it was the only way.

She turned to him and grinned, “You are safe now.”

He looked at her, “Don’t want to be.” His breath was ragged, “Lyanna, I’m sorry.”

Her eyes softened, happiness and sadness battling together, “Write this now. The queen was gone, but she wasn’t sad about it. It allowed the king to escape, and that made all the difference in the end.”

They sat in silence, a sort of finality hanging in the air. He clasped the pen and released it, tracing the red splotches on the sheets.

“It’s quiet now. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Breathing feels like it used to.” She braced herself, “The game is over now. I can’t stay.”

It was too fast, too soon, “Don’t go.”

She smiled, “Goodbye Richard.”

He picked up the pen off the floor, reading the last words they wrote together. He was exhausted. The medicine made him drowsy, it made him want to sleep. Just close his eyes. But he had one last thing he must do.

Ms. Johnson had come in to tell Richard about the hospital call, but found him on the floor, his eyes closed, chest still. He wasn’t moving. She rang for the ambulance, trying everything she could to revive him. In her frantic attempts she would fail to see the notebook was no longer on the settee, but lay beside him, new words scrawled where there were none before.

The Game

By

Richard Lyanna Keegan

R. L. K.

Even in the end, she was his muse.