The Juggler
by mlhart
This game, it requires many players.
This game, it requires ample time.
This game, it requires strategy.
This game, it will frustrate you.
You will never be good at this game.
In fact, you won’t ever win this game.
You will shed tears over this game; sniffling ugly snot tears bringing up blood on your cheek, hot to the touch.
But this game, it will make you laugh, too; out loud, even, and at an inappropriate time, perhaps over dinner in a crowded restaurant at the moment when everyone else falls silent, only cutlery scraping.
This game, it will make you lose your mind, will turn you raving; lunar tide pulling melancholic sense the shore across, impulsive sanguine bubbling up: boisterousness taking over.
This game will open without your permission and likely without your knowledge.
In this game, you may only ever move forward.
Once you make a move you can never go back.
You will mess up this game many times. You will tear a hole in the knee of your favorite pants playing this game. You will soil your undies. You will brandish scars like battle flags. You will cut your hair and let grow it back again. Your body will lose its shape, and you will find it again, but only for a short time: it will fall back out. Your skin will sag, wrinkly and soft, and your senses will weaken. You will forget the moves you made one thousand turns ago. Your pawns will be taken hostage, and you will forsake them. You will lose pieces you can’t replace. You will waste turns trying to throw this game. You will toss your original strategy out the window and watch it get run over by a careless delivery truck driver, your best intentions wound tight around the axel, sinewy and stretched beyond capacity.
But you won’t trade this game for anything. Not even a chance to start over.
xoxo
M.L. H’art
Very nice. We know what the game is practically from the start, but you still make it worth our while to read.