The Queen of Clubs

The Queen Of Clubs.

The night was bitter and as I crested the barchans, coming inland to the sea, I smiled as I had found what I had come looking for. The shack had a tin roof capped thick with a permanent sheet of ice and snow and Its wooden walls looked so thin with windswept age, that I thought I might have arrived too late. But I had not. The warm orange hue confirmed to me that there still might be something breathing inside. Breathing, beating and waiting for me to knock. 

I walked to the side of the shack where it met the frozen sea, and through the panes on this side, I could see the shadowed shapes of two figures, thin and worn like the cabin walls, hunched towards one another. So I crept closer. Peering through the frost, it was to my surprise that their hunched backs were because they were playing cards. Two men across a small and empty table in a room even more vacant. Squinting at their hands by the light of a candle that might otherwise have been lost to smoke anywhere else. Their faces were drawn and focused, and I saw in-between them, by the side of the deck of cards, a single tin that I presumed was filled with rations. 

Then I drew even nearer, as if to touch my bony cheek to the glass, and I heard one of the men speak.

“Your move” He said and chattered his teeth, and looked to the glass of the window closest to me. I did not move, for I knew he could not see me, and with my rigid hand rattled the glass as if I were the wind.

“It’ll hold Erik, but it won't be me who goes out there” said the other man, and drew an ace from his hand and laid it face up on the table. “I've been lucky, Erik. All runs must end, and yours is tonight.” And he drew from his pocket his knife and began to carve something into the table.

“I have 8 more out’s as my calculations go, Bjorn. Perhaps you’ve shown your position too soon.”

“You’ve used your luck Erik, we both know it. And an out now? As little as eight of them? It's worse than chance. Tonight it will be you.”

“But if you're wrong, Bjorn-” 

“I'm not,” Hissed Bjorn.

“But if you are, you will have to go. We’ve agreed to this, yes?” And Erik turned his gaze from his cards to Bjorn’s eyes. Eyes that were dark, sunken and deep-set into the man's thinning face. A face that, like the turning of night, was passing with an exceeding speed. So was Erik’s, I thought, and I pictured what he might think the rations would feel like inside his shriveled stomach.

“Yes, we’ve agreed. But I'm sure of it, Erik. Your lucky streak is over and I am hungry. Ive been hungry. We all were, and now it is your turn to face the night”

“There is no turn.” Said Erik. “We play for it, as we have since we arrived. Wasn’t it you and Larrsen who decided this, when the rations ran thin?”

“Yes,” Said Bjorn ``But you speak like we are in a fair fight now? I've already won Erik, can't you see? Or…” Bjorn looked to the deck, then to Eriks hand, then to Erik’s eyes. “Or are you hiding something, Erik?” And the room fell silent and all there was was the rattle of the wind on the window.

“No.” Said Erik with a blank and solemn stare. “ But perhaps you’ve been too brash with showing your Ace. I have seen you looking at the tin on the shelf like it is already yours, thinking you’ve won before the game is over.” Erik reached a stiff and darkening finger and tapped the tin that sat, still, full and frozen between them. “This belongs to no-one until the game is finished."

“Then play your move, and let it belong to me.” Said Bjorn and did a tap of his own, this time to the ace that lay face up on the table. “So now we both see it. I've played an Ace, a black one. I calculate your odds at four Erik, not eight.” And Bjorn grinned his black and gray teeth in the light of the candle lit room.

“Will you draw or will you pass?” Said Bjorn, and looked to Erik from far behind his sunken eyes. The deck of cards between them.

I too watched Erik, and wondered what the man might do? To pass or draw? To pass or draw? If I know this game, and I believe I know it well, If Erik draws, he will risk it all. He will risk taking the wrong card and losing his position. The Ace is laid, and that means to win he must trump it with either of the Black Queens. But the Jacks have not been played and if he draws one, it will be over. He will have to watch Bjorn through the frail glass, as he stands alone in the cold. Watching the bite that could have been his be consumed and forgotten; What he thinks is his last chance at life. But Erik knows, he must know as they all do, that no matter the card that's drawn, one day he’ll face it. The little breath of cold wind on his face and the tingle that sweeps him away into the night. A cold and bleak and unforgiving eternity of ice and snow and darkness… But, on the other hand, if Erik passes, he will force Bjorn to lay card and draw again, and this could equally give him a chance at the Queen. And there is his second half of outs. The game will be in Bjorn’s hand. If he holds the queen and plays it, he loses, but if he should draw instead, and choose any other card but the 7 of spades, the game is his. So now it is up to Erik, and what will he do? To pass or to draw, to pass or to-

“Draw,” said Erik. And he reached his blacked hand forward. Inching to the top of the deck, his finger freezing against the card and his stomach turning over in its place. All was still. Bjorn’s eyes blazed  black and sunken, and Erik, taken to drawing his lids shut, slid the card from the top of the deck and dragged it along the table. Slowly, with lids still drawn, Erik lifted the card to join his hand and let his eyes flutter open. Could it be? And before he could look to Bjorn, Erik confirmed it with a smile. There, in front of his pale thinning face, sat the Queen of Clubs. A true joy for a man who would surely die.

“Well?” Said Bjorn, who had not seen the smile on Erik’s face come and go. “Shall we call it a game? Shake hands? You part your way and I mine? You to the ice, me to the tin and a bed full all of the blankets?” Bjorn tried to lick his lips in anticipation of what he might soon feel, but his tongue could not move across them and he pulled it back into his mouth and conjured a bleak laugh. “Or have you summoned your last bit of luck and magically beaten me? Wouldn’t that be something.”

“You’ve placed the ace, Bjorn. Have you not?” Erik said in a clam voice.

“I have, we’ve gone over-”

“And what Bjorn, would I need to beat your black Ace?” Asked Erik again. His voice so steady that Bjorn’s joyful grimace ceased and his eyes shriveled by three days.

“What would I need Bjorn?” Asked Erik again.

“The queen?” Said Bjorn and placed his own hand to the table in disbelief. “The queen! You're a cheat! A cheat!” He screamed and stood, and with all the strength he could muster flung the table from between them and stretched his blackened hands towards Erik’s neck.

“A cheat! A cheat! A cheat!” Bjorn chanted and dove towards Erik. His rigid body missed in the air and crashed into the frozen floor, and lay in a crumpled heap. Then Bjorn slowly turned his face, and in the low light Erik could see if mouth was open wide. As wide as he could, and from his lips cracked grooves deep and red, and blood oozed and dripped down his chin and he screamed. “It's mine! Mine! You’ve cheated me! It’s Mine!”

“The game was fair.” Said Erik, his voice strong and firm, and his eyes trained on the panting and oozing Bjorn on the floor. “Now stand and leave here like all the rest did. Keep your promise and leave like a man.” Erik lifted his finger and pointed towards the door. He too was panting.

“You coward” said Bjorn, and tried to spit the now frozen blood from his mouth. “Was it the same for the others? Cheat them too? Out of their boots, blankets and rations? And you say leave like a man, well Erik, then as a man I will go and so will you. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow. But we both know no one is coming for you, and that one tin will only last so long.” Then Bjorn stood, and slowly peeled his jacket and clothing from his body and Erik watched, and his pity grew. 

On Bjorn's body there were lesions. Deep channels eating their way across his chest and thighs and arms, running in every direction. Everything about him withered and dying. His nails cracked or gone. His alabaster bones shining through their purple and black barrier, one false step away from splintering to shards. Under his hat, his hair was matted and missing. And more wounds decorated his scalp in a once oozing, but now frozen landscape. 

“Your no different” said Bjorn, now standing shivering, naked and moments from death. “Your clothes won't hide the inevitable, Erik.” Then Bjorn turned towards the door, and in that moment Erik’s pity swelled to a crash.

“You are right, no one will come” Said Erik. “I'm sorry you lost Bjorn. I would never cheat you, or anyone, and if no one will come, as we both believe, we should share the ration together” Erik leaned from where he stood and picked the tin from the floor, and felt its frozen corrugation fix to his palm. “It's not a choice for me to make so let us not be chained by fate to die alone.”

Then, from where I stood at the window, I saw Bjorn’s face light up. His eyes bulged bright, and his gray smile flashed and I saw, clenched in his hand, his open knife.

“Look” said Erik, who held the last of a single burning wick. “There is still light from the candle and we may be able to heat the tin just enough that we can chew-” Then a wave of darkness took his vision as Bjorn, once again, flung himself to Erik and plunged the knife into his neck.

“When you cheat, you always lose” Bjorn whispered, and watched as the light faded from Erik’s eyes and the candle burn to nothing but smoke.

Then the cold came.

“Where are you tin?” Stammered Bjorn. His body naked, frozen, reaching and stumbling. The shack was pitch dark, and in every direction Bjorn turned there was nothing.

“No. Where are you Tin? Jacket? Where are you, where are you?” His voice turned frantic, and rasped with frozen air. Then, as if he drew a second Ace, Bjorn’s gnarled hands grasped a metal cylinder.

“Tin” He said, and with his last breath sighed in relief, and froze entirely, dead.

For a moment I stood and watched in the darkness then lit a match of my own and opened the door to the shack. I laid my bag of boots, clothes, jewels and countless rations beside the frozen men, and announced that I had arrived at precisely at the right time.