Card Games

“I think we’re waiting for someone.”

“It’s only you and I.”

I nod to the third seat at the table. “Then who’s that for?”

“My apologies, I should clarify.” He starts dealing the cards. “It’s only you and I this evening, but on other nights I do host more guests.”

“How many?”

“Sometimes two or three, sometimes ten or more, and occasionally even dozens.”

“Well, you’ll certainly need more than just three chairs for those nights.”

He chuckles, a chest-deep rumbling. “Certainly.”

The last of the cards are dealt without comment, the soft shushing as they slide across the table and the gentle rain at the window the only sounds. Seven cards lay face down in front of me, seven more in front of him, with a still thick deck centered between us.

“More often than not,” he says while flipping the top card, “I only host one guest at a time.” He places it face up beside the deck.

“Why’s that?”

He shrugs, a surprisingly nonchalant gesture, though I can’t exactly pinpoint why it is so surprising to me. “Better for conversation, I suppose.”

“Conversation?”

“Or connection, if you’d prefer.”

I feel a small warmth bloom across my cheeks. “Let’s just start with conversation.”

“If you’d prefer.” He’s smiling. Or at least I think he is. I think he might be handsome, too. It’s hard to tell with only the candlelight in the room. Maybe he can’t see the blush either.

He sweeps his cards from the table and starts to organize his hand, slipping cards back and forth until it’s an order he seems pleased with. I gather my cards to do the same.

The cards are soft and lightweight, clearly very well-used but still in good repair. Some images are more faded than others. On one of my cards there’s a rabbit, or maybe a hare. I always get the two confused. Another is so faded there’s only the barest silhouette of a cloaked figure on a hill. The card on the table is a simple drawing of a simple log cabin. The single window glows with warm light, a bright spot in the late evening scene.

The images are strange and nonsensical. Disconnected and inconsistently detailed. Animals, people, objects. Some I can only seem to glance at before the hairs on the back on my neck raise and I can feel my stomach clench. I rearrange a few with no particular goal, only to make it look like I know what I’m doing for my host.

My host. My host?

I glance at him over my cards. He’s looking thoughtfully at his own. I wait, unsure if I’m meant to go first. I’m about to speak when he lays a card down, a sliver of a yellow moon, and pulls another from the deck. He places it amongst his cards carefully, and then he looks to me.

My hands are clammy. I worry about damaging the cards. I skim the images, looking for a direction, instruction, meaning. They reveal nothing. I glance back at my host and he’s still smiling. Placidly, patiently. I pick one at random, a smiling woman preening herself in a hand mirror, and land it askew on his moon. I hesitate, watch his face but his expression is unchanged. I pull a new card.

He nods, seemingly satisfied with this play, looks at his hand again, and places another card. A bed, one side with rumpled and folded over blankets, the other with the vague shape of a person. He pulls a card from the deck and all too soon it’s my turn again.

A candle flickers, inverting the shades and images on my cards. I pick one quickly, one of the ones that was too difficult to look at, and finish my turn by replenishing my hand.

We continue to play. I’m still picking and placing cards at random, but he somehow hasn’t seemed to notice. It’s quiet, the rain still falls and the candles still burn. I chew my lip, waiting for him to call me out but the accusation never comes. Neither of us speak at all, actually.

So much for conversation.

The game goes on. No two cards are the same. I pull cards that make me queasy, with images so disorienting I discard them immediately. There are others that are almost beautiful yet lack any real imagery. Just swirling colours of dusky blue and soft pinks and misty oranges. Those I place reluctantly but with hope they might end whatever game this is sooner. They never do.

Once the discard pile and our drawing pile our about of equal height I decide I can’t keep going blind.

“I’m so sorry, but I don’t think I know the rules.”

“Of course you do,” he says, laying down another card.

“No, really. I don’t. If you could just explain them to me so I can actually understand what’s going on, it would make things much fairer.”

There’s that chest-deep chuckle again. “Who said anything about fair?”

I tinge with blush again, only it's from an embarrassment now. “It’s very unfair! You clearly know the rules and I don’t. How can you call that fair?”

“Why do you assume I know any more than you do?”

“Well, you’re the one who brought me here. You laid out the cards, started this whole game. Seems an unkind way to treat a guest.”

He rests his fingertips on the drawing pile. “I didn’t bring you here.”

A cold fear coats my lungs, slides down my spine, chokes my voice to a whisper. “What?”

“I didn’t bring you here,” he repeats, finally taking his card. “I am your host, and you are my guest, but I was not the one who brought you here.”

“Then who did?”

He shrugs that out-of-place shrug.

I rest my wrists against the edge of the table, the raw edge scraping my skin. “I don’t think I want to play anymore.”

He smiles that shadowed smile again, and the cold creeps up my throat, closes over my jaw. “That’s not how this works and you know it.”

I swallow. My eyes drop so I don’t have to look into his. They seem to drink the candlelight down. How hadn’t I noticed that before? I stare intently at my cards. I still have the rabbit I started with but with this pivoted focus it appears different. I notice the long legs and veiny ears and red eyes. Definitely a hare. Has it been the whole time? I can’t remember now. Those eyes, those bloodred, crazed, desperate eyes.

I lay down the hare.

He’s still smiling at me as he pulls a card from his hand without looking, still smiling as he places it on the discard pile, still smiling as the card smiles too, the drooling, fanged smile of a fur-faced creature with glowing yellow eyes. This face consumes all the space on the card. There’s no room to breath, no room to move.

He draws a new card for himself.

I breathe. I listen to the rain. I feel the cold settle deep into my bones. He’s still smiling, and it’s nearly that patient one from earlier this evening, though not quite. Not quite, not quite.

I place a card. I draw a new one. He places one, draws one. And so on and so on, until the deck is a quarter of what it used to be.

I still don’t know the rules, but I know I’m running out of time. But what can I do? He’s my host, and I am his guest, and this is our game.

I wonder how many time’s he played before, what it must’ve been like to play with two or three others, ten or more, even dozens. Did anyone leave before the game began, faced the rainy night as opposed to this stranger in the dark? Has anyone drawn the wolf before him? Has he ever lost a game?

The discard pile grows while the candles shrink all the while I play this game I never asked to play at this table I never remember seating myself at with a man I'd swear I’ve never met before.

And yet and yet and yet. I play and play and play because there is nothing else I can do, only play the game with the cards you’re dealt. The rain will continue to pour and those eyes continue to drink and a candle snuffs itself out and I'm eyeing the door and he’s still smiling and smiling and smiling. Those teeth, those teeth.

My heart's beating as fast that rabbit's, that hare's, that rabbit's, and I’m pulling the final card and he's not smiling anymore and it was a rabbit I swear it was a rabbit and I'm eyeing the door and it's really not that far and I think I can make it, I think I could, maybe those other people thought so too, but the game is almost over and I'm running out of time and if I'm running I better start now and and and

Who's faster? A rabbit or a hare? Who's hungrier? A hare or a wolf?