Chess Enthusiasts at the End of The World

He sacrificed too many pieces, and so she always won. They played outside, on the table covered in bird crap. They would spend half an hour trying to wipe it off, and then give up. She would curse the name of the bird god and sit down to play with a pout. Winning restored her mood. 

He buzzed his lips and tapped his fingers against the metal. He’d tease at least four moves before making up his mind. Sometimes he’d stare at her with puppy eyes and she’d just giggle. Perhaps it was because of the birds screeching, or the heat of the sun that made the game so flustering to him. 

“You okay?” she asked. 

“Of course,” he sat up straight, and flashed a cocky grin, waving his fingers over the board as he planned his move. She pursed her lips and hummed thinking, don’t move the knight. He moved the bishop. 

Now, she fiddles with the pawns in her pocket. It has been so long since they’d last played.

He says he doesn’t miss it, staring at the dimly lit road ahead. The truck limps over the cracked pavement at six miles per hour.  

“Then what do you miss?” she asks, blowing out to look at something other than frozen over fields. 

“The Sun.” 

She snickers. It hasn’t been long since the sun went out. Give him a bit more time, and he won’t miss anything. 

She looks in the rear-view mirror, “It almost looks like a sunset.” The flames clamber towards them like a horde of giants.  She thinks they have time, but the mirror warns, ‘OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.’ 

“How many miles do we have left?” she asks. 

The car stalls. He sighs, “Get the gas.”

She pulls her scarf over her nose and opens the door. Her legs wobble as walks to the trunk. She hauls the last tank of gas to the pump. She tries to pour the gas but... 

“Crap!” She says, “It’s frozen!” 

He got out of the car, looked at the sky, and then the fire charging towards them. “So we walk.” 

“Walk?” she smirks, “That’ll be fast enough to avoid the onslaught of hellfire.” 

“We could sit and wait for the fire to reach us.” 

She sighs, “Okay.” They shove what’s left of their food into their backpacks, grab a flashlight, and they walk. 

“What time do you think it is?” 

“Time is a social construct.” 

“That’s what you said when it took you forty minutes to make a move,” she smiles. 

The flashlight shines as if it were covered in spider webs. He blows out, his breath leaving him like a ghost. 

“You really don’t miss it?” she asks. 

He looks over his shoulder, “What’s the point?” 

There was one game that ended in a stalemate. Still, he didn’t lose; that was a victory worth celebrating. He went to the store and came back with sparkling grape juice, instead of champagne because she had acute alcohol intolerance and balloons. They didn’t have proper glasses so they drank out of dixie cups. Even though there was no alcohol, she still puked after drinking it. 

“Perhaps it’s actually an intolerance to grapes or bubbles,” he said, holding back her hair. 

She puked again, and then smiled at him, “Or stalemates.” 

The next morning they played from her bed, as she was still puking every other minute. Due to this inconvenience, she lost. And when she lost she stared at the board eyes the size of silver dollars. 

He laughed and said, “Well played.” She sputtered and then puked again. He packed up the game, and before he left her he kissed her forehead. She laid back wanting to fall asleep just then but finding she couldn’t, not because she’d just lost a game of chess, but because he’d kissed her, even if it was just on the forehead. 

That was the point. 

She doesn’t say that. Because it was cold, and she was tired and didn’t want to argue in the midst of the apocalypse. 

“Do you think we’re the only people left?” he asks. 

“I hope not.” 

“But do you think we are?” 

She glances around. “Yes.”

They walk and walk. They don’t speak. The flashlight goes out, and they keep walking. Their legs give out, and they stop walking. They curl up in the middle of the road because nothing can run them over, except for the encroaching hellfire. She doesn’t know if she cares anymore. It’s cold, and the only way she can get warm again is to pretend that she’s warm. This proves to be easier than she thought because this is the kind of cold that burns. She reaches through the dark and takes his gloved hand. He doesn’t take hers. He is asleep. 

***

Back in Freshman year, which felt like such a long time ago, she’d fallen asleep in the library, and spilled her coffee onto a book about the history of board games, and her shirt. He found her in the morning. It wasn’t a great first impression. He tapped her on the shoulder and helped her to stand when she eventually woke up. She zipped her coat and left without looking him in the eye. 

The next week she found him in the same position over a book about chess strategy. She woke him up, introduced herself, and invited him to join her chess club. That night, she beat him for the first time. 

As they walked out of the library she asked, “What interests you about chess?” 

“I just want to learn something new.” 

“Why chess?” 

“Because that was what you were reading about when I saw you in the library.” 

She laughed and hurried away with hot cheeks. 

***

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. That or they’ve literally been asleep for days. The hellfire has caught up with them, and it is coming faster. 

She kicks him, “Get up! Get up and run!” He’s still asleep. 

“Marc!” She pulls him by his arms, and kicks him again, “Dangit run!” 

He opens his eyes. She almost smiles as she drags him along. The surrounding trees have been dead for a long time. Now they are burning, and one of them has decided to collapse. She stands him up, and shoves him hard, just past the falling tree. 

He rubs his eyes, and then he shouts, “Chaya!”  

  She jumps over the tree. The fire catches her leg. It burns through her boot and begins to melt her skin. She screams. She gets up. She keeps running. 

Marc has stopped in the middle of the road. He’s banging at the air and shouting, “What the heck?” 

Chaya catches up to him, “What, what are you doing?” she coughs. Then, she sees the door. Marc opens it. There is a spiral staircase, carved into a tree. She collapses. He stares at her, and then the fire, and then at Chaya, rasping, as she tries to crawl to the door. 

“Chaya,” he whispers, “It’ll be okay.” He picks her up. Chaya wraps her arms around his neck. Marc was never very strong and living off of expired protein bars, flat soda, and uncooked ramen for months hasn’t helped. It took a very long time and several breaks, but he made it to the top.

“Where are we?” She whispers. 

“I have no idea,” His voice smiles, “Open your eyes, Chaya, there’s a light.” She opens one eye, just a crack. One step up, there’s another door. Just above it hangs an electric lightbulb that was probably made by Thomas Edison. Marc steps. His ankle snaps. He drops her. They grunt and then laugh. Chaya reaches for the knob, and on the third try, she gets it. They fall through the door, still laughing. 

The room is quaint. The wood is dry, and sawdust covers the floor. The wood has one hole, under which a half-crushed plastic water bottle collects water, drop by drop. And in the center of the circle is a chessboard, scratched in haphazard lines on a tree stump. 

Chaya sighs, and Marc nearly cries. She goes to set up the board, and he goes to take a sip. The pieces slightly melted. Some are very melted like the black knight that is now a blob. Chaya only determines it to be a black knight because it was the only piece missing. She assembles the board. 

“Do you want to play black or white?” 

“What?” 

She steps away and gestures to the board. 

“Is now really the best time?” 

“What else is there to do? Wait in silence for the tree to burn to the ground?” 

He sighs. “I’ll play black.” 

She smiles, “Thank you.” They sit. Chaya moves her first piece. Marc flicks a pawn forward with one finger. 

“You can’t move it that far.” 

“Ugh.” Marc moves it back one place. 

“That’s still too many places.” 

Marc slouches back his mouth hanging open like a toddler forced to eat broccoli. 

“Fine then,” Chaya knocks the pieces off the board, ‘We’ll just sit here and wait to die like the rest of the world.” 

Marc curls up by the water bottle. Chaya leans back in the chair and closes her eyes. And the earth begins to shake. 

***

It’s the serpent writhing in his final moments. The game is playing out exactly as predicted. Chaya and Marc can’t see this. They don’t know what their destiny is. For all, they know this tree will burn down like everything else. They will burn with it and they will die. The game is over. Chaya knows now, the game is over. 

***

Once upon a time Chaya and Marc got high and threw a set of glass chess pieces out of a window. They were a collectors set Chaya’s mother acquired for her 16th birthday. They were quite special and very expensive. 

By the time they sobered up, Chaya was freaking out. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. It would remain the worst thing that had ever happened to her until the world literally ended. 

Following this event, Chaya started therapy and antidepressants. Marc never understood why this event could trigger such a crisis in her mental health until she told him the day after her mother gave her that chess set she died in a car accident. 

“Why didn’t you tell me, Chaya? Why don’t you tell me anything?” 

“I don’t have an answer to that.” 

***

Chaya sleeps and sees fire. The foot that was burned aches horribly. Her toes twitch as she tosses her head. The splintered wood digs into her scalp. 

“Chaya calm down,” Marc whispers. 

She can’t hear him. With her injured foot, she kicks the table. 

“Chaya?” 

The serpent writhes once more. The Thunder God walks one, two, three steps away. 

Chaya sees only the fire. It consumes her. The tree falls down and breaks like those glass chess pieces she never saw again. The plastic pieces she carried in her pocket for countless miles melt to nothing. She and Marc lay broken and burnt on what was left of the ground. 

Chaya startles awake. She seizes the handful of chess pieces she hadn’t knocked off the table and hurls them at the wall. She screams. She knocks over the table and falls from her chair, screaming. 

“Chaya,” Marc whispers sleepily, “Calm down.” She keeps screaming. “Chaya.” Marc lifts himself up and crawls to her. He wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her head to his chest. 

“I don’t want to die,” she sobs.

He lays his chin on her head and strokes her tangled hair. Gently, he pulls out wood splinters and fuzz from the car headrest that has been in her hair for weeks. She’s quieter. She buries her face in his neck. He’s tempted to kiss the top of her head. 

“I do Chaya,” he says, “I just don’t want to be alone.” 

“I love you,” she says. 

“I know. I love you too.” 

She laughs, “You never told me that.” 

“No, I haven’t” he stares at the table, “Let’s play chess.”

Reassembling the board takes more effort than anticipated. Both Chaya and Marc find themselves unable to stand. Twisted and burnt ankles it turns out to take more than a few hours, or however long it has been, to heal. But soon enough the table is up the humans in their chairs and the pieces properly arranged on the board. 

Chaya moves her first piece. Marc moves his. And the game has begun. 

Oh, how they have missed this. 

But, there is something strange. Move after move Chaya can’t take one of Marc’s pieces. He usually gives them up so freely. Whenever she’d taken one of his pieces before, he seemed calmer than he did at all other times. Sometimes plans fail, but never the plan to sacrifice his bishop. 

They carry on for what might be an entire day. Time is indeed, a social construct. Marc is taking forever to make his moves, but Chaya doesn’t care. Marc is surprising her, for the first time in a long, long while. Her king is in check. She just realized that in moving it out of the bishop’s path, she brought it into the deformed knight’s. There was another move she could’ve made, but she saw the choice between the two as a random one. 

He won’t pick up on it. He’s never been that perceptive. She slouches in her chair whispering in her head, Don’t move the knight. 

Marc smiles. He lays one finger on the flattened knight and makes his move. 

Chaya gapes. 

“Checkmate,” he says. 

And with that, the game is over. 

***

There’s nothing in the sagas about Lif and Lifthrasir having an affinity for chess. But as their game finished, Lif and Lifthrasir knew that the gods had known all along. The moment their game ends the battle is over. They go to sleep in each other’s arms and they wake up in the morning. Yes, the morning. 

The Sun’s daughter had inherited her crown, and the world was warm again. 

Lif and Lifthrasir pick themselves up and together they hobble down the stairs. Laughing, Lif opens the door and is nearly blinded by the new Sun. The world has already begun to repair itself. The frost is melting to reveal lush green grass. And above their heads, and a raven flies. Lif cries out for joy, and Lifthrasir stares at her, awestruck. 

“Are you happy?” 

She looks him right in the eye, “Are you?” 

“Yes,” he says. He kisses her gently on the lips, and for the first time in months, he smiles.