NOVEL WEB Ch 5. A Game of You
A little girl sits by her lonesome, playing with her dolls. She makes them act out elaborate scenes of fantasy, flushed marriages and ashen funerals and all in between. They are not simply their plain features, but rather anything she wishes them to become. Personas, adopted and discarded at the whims of a child. Humans, beasts, monsters, everything can be anything under the influence of her boundless mind. She plays with them, as is her wont, until she tires.
And then, she puts the toys away, and closes the toy box.
Because beyond the games of identity, there is something more. There is a reality that imposes its harsh truths upon the narratives of playmaking, even if that truth is nothing more than the bias of a child towards her afternoon nap.
But there are some dolls which never get let out of the toy box, which stay at the bottom, the refuse and the junk. They are broken, shattered, unfit to play in her games. In one sense, they are worthless, completely incapable of joining in her revelry which is their life’s purpose. In another sense, they are never made subject to a tyrant, never forced to adopt identities beyond their own and act out events which never occurred.
But further, what prevents them from being played with? For if a plastic paragon of beauty can be imagined as both a blushing bride and a noble steed, without having the accoutrements (or sometimes physical form) of either, then surely a porcelain figure can be imagined with its arm reattached, a stuffed dollie with its eye sewn on again. Yet there they stubbornly remain, at the bottom of the box, never to feel her warm touch again.
They are tastes of reality too bitter for children, mementos mori that shock and scare an unaware audience. They are unseemly, those who form the underbelly of the toy box, those who are not included in the fantastical plays of imagination.
Yet I still wonder about those children who play with broken toys.
I did not find myself standing in front of the Rabbit Hole, but it certainly felt like it. There was a similar feeling of unease, of sheer nerves, a certain “what am I doing here” that straddled the border between imposter syndrome and legitimate question. And this time, it might have gone so far in straddling as to have a good claim for both.
I was not trans. I was not a girl. I was not… I am not Chloe.
And yet, I was back here, at the support group. A plastic sign, painted months ago and flaking away at the edges by now, posited the regular meeting date that a susurrus of voices from within confirmed. If I stared at it long enough, maybe I could convince myself that I hadn’t already memorized the date and time. If I could delay entry further, maybe I could rationalize my being here as…
Gloating. I was here to gloat. At Thalia.
Having resolved myself, I pushed open the door, retraced my steps from last time, and again entered the realm of the support group.
The chatter around me didn’t stop when I stepped into the room, but several members glanced up at me as I came in. Most of them gave a quick smile and went back to their conversations. Kyle in particular grew a massive grin that showed off his blindingly white teeth.
“So glad you’re back, Chloe!” he exclaimed in a raised voice, just enough to get over the clamor of the room. “Promise that today’s session is a lot lighter. And stay afterwards! If not for the company, at least for the snacks!”
Kyle laughed at his own joke, a deep-throated chuckle where his swarthy cheeks glinted in the rather poor lighting. I only briefly smiled back, feeling a little overwhelmed by the environment.
Grabbing a folding chair, I looked around the room and made for an open space. By complete, sheer coincidence, it happened to place me right next to Thalia.
“Hey, Chloe,” she said, a tentative smile lining her face as she fidgeted with the folds of her band t-shirt. “Saved you a spot in case you came.”
I stared up at her, a little enamored by her, uh, shirt. Yes, I was very interested in her shirt which advertised some German shamanic punk band. “Was there ever any doubt?” I replied, knowing full well that there was, but wanting to project confidence.
Thalia grimaced, rolling up the edges of her t-shirt in a further show of nervous energy. “Well, you did kinda run off. And I get that, totally. Actually, I wanted to apologize.”
I turned away, blushing. Her? Apologize to me? What was this—wait. I’d just blushed. I never blushed. I reached up to my face and touched my cheeks, finding them positively steaming.
“So uh, yeah,” Thalia continued from beside me, “I know the conversation got a little heavy, and I definitely contributed to that. At the very least, I think I shoulda checked in on how you were doing. I’ll be, uh, sure to do that from now on.”
I… what? I’d never had a mark feel sorry or apologize, and certainly not in a way that felt genuine rather than pitying. I wasn’t really the type to pull confidence tricks—too involved for my tastes. So what was this?
She opened her mouth, probably in a bid to further confuse me, but thankfully Kyle took that moment to clap his hands together and signal the start of the meeting.
“Alright, y’all know how this goes. Last week we had a theme, this week we don’t. Doesn’t mean you can’t share serious business, just means it’s not the focus. And at the end, we’ll vote on next week’s theme.” And with that, he put his hands back down onto the lap of his jeans.
Dinadan’s hand shot into the air. There was a pause, and from the look on his face it was an intentionally dramatic one. “...I got my first binder today.”
Nods of appreciation came from all around. What was this? Even the terrible NGO schools, hell, even the zaibatsu-owned private schools provided schooling materials like binders. But there they were, positively cheering him on with their grins.
He lowered his hand, and pressed it against his chest, his flannel shirt flaring out from the displaced air. “IT’S FLAT!” he declared triumphantly, standing up as he was joined by cheers from the gathering. I joined in halfheartedly, feeling a little fooled by the absurdity.
“I really should’ve done this a long time ago,” Dinadan added after the noise died down. He sat back down.
Uaine improved their posture and gave a small cough, somehow managing to signal their intention to speak in the process. “I was granted more earthworms today, after the eggs hatched.”
A girl whose name I didn’t know spoke up. “Don’t worms multiply when you cut them in half? I thought that’s like, a superpower they have.”
Uaine gave a positively withering look. “No. What you see when you cut an earthworm in twain is merely the pained death wrigglings of a fatally wounded creature.”
The girl shrank back in her seat. “Ah. I, I see. Sorry.”
Uaine’s gaze softened. “No need. Not enough folks have read up on worms. But they bear interesting qualities. For one, they’re hermaphroditic, and—”
“Must be nice,” I grumbled.
Uaine replied, somehow managing to hear me from across the room. “Yes, well, I won’t deny that I keep them partially out of a sense of kinship. But they also work as adequate feed for birds, especially corvids.” Their dark eyes glinted as they finished speaking and settled back down into their honest-to-goodness cloak.
No one jumped at the opportunity to continue the discussion, so I raised my own hand. If I was here to gloat, then I might as well do that.
“I um, I got…” I began, my face already flushed. I could feel the heat on my cheeks, and for the first time in a long time I was not only nervous, but letting it show. I paused, took a breath, and reminded myself what I was to do: make an oblique reference about having managed to steal Thalia’s stuff. Except it sounded so much less cool when put that way.
“I got meds. It um, took a month to set everything up, but… I got them in the end,” I squeaked, my voice coming out far meeker than I had intended or hoped. “I took them last week,” I added helpfully.
A smattering of clapping came from around the room. Turning to my side, Thalia seemed almost… happy? She was positively beaming. What? Were those pills poisoned? Did she know I was planning to steal them and arranged to have them laced with cyanide. My hand found its way to my throat, where I idly scratched at my collarbone with not a small amount of worry. Nevertheless, I continued.
“Um, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get them next month, though. It’s difficult, and while I’ve been really liking how they make me feel it’s, you know...” I mumbled, voice fading away. Feeling more than a little embarrassed, I shifted in my chair. Thalia shot me a sympathetic look, of all things.
The discussion carried on for a while after that, meandering with alternatingly glacial and supersonic paces between topics ranging from someone’s visiting family to the new Council policies concerning the price of salt. Against all odds, I found myself strangely drawn to the conversation, chiming in with opinions, suggestions, and sympathies. It was a type of emotion, a sort of feeling that was at once wholly foreign and entirely natural. At one point, Grace told me that any time was a good time to update the group on my pronouns. I didn’t know what to make of such a strange offer, but it felt meaningful.
“Alright,” Kyle boomed, jotting something down on a pad of paper, “that decides it; next week’s topic is gender euphoria. Now with that out of the way, it’s time for board games! Reminder to the Gloomhaven group that miniatures are for tactical combat only, and…”
Thalia tugged on the sleeve of my hoodie, drawing me outside the room. So then, was it finally time for my reckoning? I followed almost instinctively, more drawn to the mystery than plotting further torment. The gears and joints of my body creaked as I stepped outside into the hallway, having remained in the same position now for upwards of an hour. I stared down at my mark as she took off her denim baseball cap, revealing her blonde pixie cut in its entirety.
“Hey,” I began, licking my lips with unsuppressed nervous energy, “I wasn’t really planning on staying, you know. I’ll get out of your—”
“No, no,” she interjected, “I just wanted to check in on how you were doing. Also, I kinda learned this week just how tough actually getting meds can be, so, if you didn’t mind, I wanted to offer to share my HRT?”
She paused for a moment as I stared blankly at her. I’d caught up to speed on a great deal of terminology, but the three-letter acronym still eluded me.
“My supplier’s real nice, and I’m sure I could manage to get you in on it somehow, so when you mentioned maybe not being able to continue, I…” She ran her hand through her hair, fingers teasing the ends of blond locks. “The option’s always open, okay?”
I nodded tentatively, bobbing my head up and down with slow precision. “I’ll consider it.” Calm. Collected. Out of the atmosphere of the room, I could tell I was regaining a semblance of control.
“So, you wanna go play some board games?” Thalia looked up at me, staring directly into my eyes.
No. I did not want to rejoin her. I had felt uncomfortably different in that room, as though I was no longer myself. Even outside, she had a kind of effect on me, a dangerous sort of charisma that persuaded me to act differently than how I perhaps should act—
“Sure.”
She led me back inside, where most of the other members had already organized themselves into groups. Thalia paused at the entrance, noting the almost complete lack of open seats.
“Any preferences?” She looked up at me. I gulped.
“Maybe something with less people?”
Thalia nodded in confirmation, then made her way over to one section of the table where Uaine was setting up a game I didn’t recognize. Yet again, I followed. It almost felt like tailing a mark, except that she was consciously leading me. Where to, I had no clue.
Uaine looked up from the deck of cards they were shuffling as we approached. Their hands were leathery, tanned. “Welcome, and take a seat. Do you know how to play?”
I shook my head no, and Thalia merely nudged her head over in my general direction.
“It’s simple, really. You are investigating a mundane crime. Except, of course, it’s far deeper and more esoteric than you had initially imagined. You’ve got your hands of cards, those are actions. You can look at those. But these are fate cards, you select them from face-down piles. Take turns, gain resources, accept your fate. As I said, simple.”
I looked at my own hand of cards and found it printed in some sort of strange script, nearly unreadable to my eyes.
“There is one more thing,” Uaine said, holding up a finger for emphasis. “The fate cards are scuffed up. Marked, over decades of play. If you play the game often enough, you’ll begin to recognize the same cards over and over again, simply from how they look while face-down, ostensibly hidden.”
“So the game is broken, then,” I snorted.
Uaine shrugged. “Certainly nobody plays it for long.”
I looked over at Thalia, who also shrugged. “It’s a single-player game, mostly. Uaine likes to act as kind of a narrator and score-keeper, since they brought it in originally.” She looked over at the cloaked figure, who was calmly shuffling the decks of fate. “Honestly, I just kinda wanna watch someone else play it too. But we could totally find a multiplayer game if—”
I emphatically shook my head. “No, this seems cool.” I really did not want to have to deal with multiple other people right now. If nothing else, this would kill some time.
“Petrification,” Uaine spoke sadly, “a sad fate to befall you this early.”
“So I guess I’m dead then?” I frowned, staring at my hand.
“Not at all!” they crooned, “you’re merely made of stone now.”
“Metamorphosis!” Thalia gasped. “I got that one too!”
“Why, is that uncommon?” I asked, squinting so that I could read the script on the worn-down piece of cardboard.
“No,” Thalia said, glaring at Uaine, “but it does make me think someone’s more of a cardsharp than they let on. Someone with a taste for the ironically appropriate.”
Uaine scoffed. “I’m merely a narrator, dear. The process whereby similar events may transpire across multiple games is called luck.” They turned back towards me. “Now then, dear. Who are you, in the dark?”
We both stared down at the card. “An uncertain fate…?” I read aloud. “What’s that do?”
“It ends the game,” Uaine replied, all smiles.
I scrambled, looking through my hand and past fates. “What? Wait, how can that even be a proper conclusion? Wasn’t there a crime or something?”
Uaine’s smile grew larger. “Maybe to start with. But things get complicated.”
“That doesn’t explain anything!” I cried, scowling.
A sound came over from beside me, and I turned around to see Thalia giggling. “Oh, god. You remind me of myself, y’know?” I blinked, head wild with thoughts. “Back when I just joined, and played through the game. I had the same reaction.”
I grumbled, feeling disappointed for no reason at all.