‘So what do you think comes next?’ I ask, ‘After all this?’

I pretend not to hear the nervousness in my own voice. My words jittery and spoken too fast, the pitch too high. Admitting I’m nervous would only make me more nervous. 

No, no I was only cold – and it really was cold. But there’s nothing to do about that but wait and play with the child. I move my little pawn across the checkered board. The game will distract me from the cold. And the child’s quiet stare.

‘Your turn.’ I say, just so he’s clear – and not for any other reason.

I look away while he contemplates his turn, but still I feel his eyes bore holes into me. 

The game wasn’t chess – I dont know how to play chess – or checkers, or anything I’ve played before. Yet somehow I knew how to play it, and so did he. Not to say I was any good at it, mind you. We must have played a thousand times already and I’d won no more than a handful. But what else is there to do in this plane of existence?

The boy moves his red butcher piece and immediately I realise my mistake. A glaring hole I’d created between my coal and vizier leaves my emperor piece in jeopardy. The result is a foregone conclusion and playing through only a matter of formality, but one the boy always insists on. Not in words of course, but it’s clear as day in his eyes. He never speaks. Cant speak? Has yet to. 

What if we stop playing? A cold chill runs down my back. ‘Another game?’ I say instead. Maybe I am nervous after all. Not of the boy, mind you – not that that was unreasonable – but of this inescapable place. This cold, un-remembering dark space, sat on this stone seat at this stone table, playing this game that my fingers know better than I know my own name or face.

One by one the boy picks all his reds up off the board and likewise I set all my ebony pieces aside.

I only recall returning to this table whichever way I run. I dont recall anything before these thousand games of ours. No memory of a life or loved ones. Only logic and feelings tell me there had been anything prior – that I hadnt just spawned in this darkness, born on my feet, cognisant.

‘Between every game, the pieces go back in the box’. The boy says, and at once I understand.