THE PAWN

A chess piece. A mystery. An old house. [Flash Fiction #02]

THE PAWN

A chess piece. A mystery. An old house. The words echoed in his mind like hollow daggers darting for ideas that would suit the narrative. The Grand Design. It had to be witty. It had to be clever. With a surprise twist at the end, of course. It was no use. The daggers fell into a void, a black hole, a wordastrophy.

The fridge was gurgling in its grating rhythm as if to whisper: Come, open me. I have what you need. All the words. Cool and ready to use.

Torn between sofa and chair, fridge and television, he paused. Silence. The refrigerator had turned itself off with a final rattle.

Now or never, close your eyes, imagine an old house, go there, now!

“What took you so long?”

“Huh?”

“I’ve been waiting in this shithole for over an hour. Stop jerking around and get to it!”

“This… we are in an old house—”

“No shit, Sherlock!”

“What’s that smell?”

“Smells like ass, if you ask me. So what’s the deal here? Why am I here? And can we get the hell out of this dump, like, right now? I’ve got places to be, things to do if you catch my drift.”

“These stairs… they look familiar.”

“Who gives a flying fuck, man. Stop the tomfoolery and write us a way out of this deathtrap.”

“Deathtrap?”

“Ya, duh! First, you put me here, in this dumbass dark hole of a house, giving me nothing but this…  what you call it, pawn thing, and then you leave! Focus, man. We need to get out of here before you pull another Houdini.”

The fridge came back to life with brimming sensation, announcing its presence like the overindulgent host of a never-ending sitcom, in which you are forever cast as the audience.

Tune out the noise, focus on that old house, the man inside, trapped. The chess piece. A pawn. Was he the pawn?

Something was rotting away in the basement. The smell was foul, yet the man was drawn to the stairs that led to what screamed to be a trap.

“Are you kidding me right now? You can go down those stairs yourself, Mister Cleverass. I ain’t going, na-ah. Fat chance in hell. It’s a trap. Here!” He held up the chess piece and threw it down the stairs.

“There, you can go get it yourself. I’m going to get outta here.”

Try as he might, the obnoxious man could not escape. All the doors were shut, and the windows barred from the outside. In the twilight of the room, he raged, torn and tattered tapestry hung from the walls, and the pungent smell of excrement and mould mixed with a sweet-sour odour emerging from the basement made him gag. He spouted off more livid vulgarity, blaming me for his misery – me of all people. I was trying to help, but the poor man was hellbent on sabotaging his only chance of salvation.

“Why did you throw the pawn down there?”

“Because I wanted to!”

“What if it is the key to getting us out of this place? You have to go and get it back.”

“And you have to put your finger up your ass. Go, get it yourself. I am not your errand boy!”

“Why are you insulting me? I have done nothing—”

“Exactly! You done a big ole bag o’ nothing! Nada! Zilch! Stop procrastinating and get us out of this rotten, stinking dung heap. Geez, how hard can it be? What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know,” the man mimicked, his face a vile grimace. He grunted, wiped the sweat from his forehead and rubbed his unshaven chin, muttering and cursing.

Something stirred in the basement. A grating, rattling noise, like metal being scraped over concrete.

“What was that?” The man perked his ears and turned towards the stairs.

Scrrrrrrrreeeeech…

“Oy! Somebody down there? Hello?” The man inquired. “Yo, we’re not buying that stupid monster in the basement shit! Get your dumb ass up here, or I come down there and put my foot in your face!”

Silence.

“Why did you shout? Who knows who’s down there? Could be armed for all we know.”

“Oh, really? You still trying to play it that way? You probably already wrote me off dead, didn’t you, you cruel bastard! Don’t you dare tell me you don’t know!”

The rattling started again, this time louder.

“OK. Tell you what… we both go down, I’ll be right behind you."

“You mean, I’m right behind you. You go first!”

“Suit yourself. Ready?”

The man nodded, and together they descended the stairs, each step announcing their coming with a sinister wooden creaking, a certainty only surpassed by death. Halfway they halted.

“You hear that?”

In a state of heightened nervousness, a short explosive sound of the passing of gas assaulted their nostrils.

“Hear what? Keep moving.” The man grinned.

At the bottom of the stairs, they stopped, listening. Their eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light falling in from upstairs in a weak attempt to penetrate the darkness before them. Schemes of broken furniture were strewn about the dirty floor, like long-forgotten corpses, covered in dust and spider webs, lying in wait for whoever was to come and put them to their final rest. Leaning against the wall to their left was a large wooden frame. A tattered canvas showed the half-torn ashen, grey face of a man, a wild look in his one remaining eye, glaring at them in terror. Then they heard it. There in the corner. An old battered fridge, erratically rattling away on its last breath and in front of it, on the ground, the black pawn, gleaming in the dark.

“Oh man, you nearly gave me a heart attack. A bloody fridge, dude. Seriously? Forget about it. Ain’t no mystery here! There, go get your stupid pawn.”

Both looked at the ground again. There was no pawn.

The fridge opened with a screech.

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A thousand words. No more, no less. This flash fiction is a revised version based on a writing prompt: A chess piece. A mystery. An old house.

Initially, I was stuck, and the writer’s dilemma was my way into the exercise. From there, the words poured forth. No doubt, I was influenced by popular horror tropes, haunted houses, creepy basements, and possessed objects (hello, R. L. Stine) with a bit of a “Stark” angle (I am sure Steve won’t mind). Growing up, I devoured Barker, Herbert, Koontz, and King, to name a few, and while I read far more SF and Fantasy than Horror, I do like to try different things, esp. with writing prompts and short-form fiction and have some fun with it and hopefully you have, too.

A few observations.

Dialogue

I did not use any dialogue attribution, except for “the man” in places where I felt it necessary. I don’t like them all that much. There are two characters. Context makes it clear who is speaking.

Word limit

The first draft was 887 words. After one editing pass, the count was down to 864. Then I added one detail, resulting in 1004 words. I cut those four stragglers in cold blood.

Writing to a specific world limit can be satisfying, plus it forces you to look at your word choice, e.g. fill words get the axe unless they are part of the character’s dialogue, “just, like, you know, literally gotta keep ‘em then.”

Intertextuality

I hinted at some instances already, most of which come from one’s “pretext” when writing and discovering them as a reader depends on how much of said pretext overlaps between reader and author.

Ages ago, I wrote my thesis on “Forms and Functions of Quotes and Allusions in Selected Novels by Terry Pratchett – An Intertextual Analysis,” and one book that I found most interesting on that subject during my research was “Intertextuality” by Graham Allen, in case you are curious.

No text has meaning alone. All texts have meaning in relation to other texts.
—Graham Allen

While there is no particular Pratchett allusion in the above story, there is one specific reference to another author I put in deliberately.

The fourth wall

Did I break it? I let you be the judge. Should we break it? I’d love to hear what you think.

And don’t be a pawn. Stay away from that fridge!

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If you liked “The Pawn”, you may like “Special Flavour,” too, a flash fiction about a boy and his ice cream.

Special Flavour

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