Checkmate, Death Page 2

  I moved my queen up, diagonally and to her left, so that she nestled nicely on the black squared beside his pawn. She was lined up perfectly with his king. And with no possible impositions, no pieces to place between my queen and his king, and no flight squares, he was dead. Checkmate.

  I knew I would win the game. But I had no idea it would only take two moves. For a moment the two of us sat and stared in disbelief. Zanus then flung his hands out, moving pieces around, trying to find any defense. In his desperation, he even seemed to forget how each piece moved and tried to shove his knight into my queen's path.

  Nothing worked. He was done.

  He stood up and stormed away, leaving his tea, leaving me without a handshake or even a screaming, spitting barrage of insults and demands for a rematch. I don't really blame him for leaving so abruptly. What an embarrassment, an utter failure in every way. What an absolutely perfect moron he had been.

  It's not that Zanus and I had been tight up until then. We had never liked each other much. He was jealous of me. But I sometimes think we might have eventually become friends after that match, now that he had been humbled.

  But me being me, I couldn't help but hold my stunning victory over his head forever after that. I harassed him about it at every opportunity, I lambasted him in public, I told and retold the story of that match countless times. It never failed to make me laugh. And it never failed to make some of the listeners laugh, too. Sometimes they were other angels, friends of Zanus's. This embarrassment festered in him for a million years. This outrage and shame.

  We never played another game of chess. As far as I know, Zanus never played again at all. And he has hated me ever since, instead of merely disliking me. As an angel, he could do nothing to take revenge. Now that the window to challenge me was over, there was nothing at all he could do except nurse his hatred and wallow in his self-pity. He's never gotten over it.

  It's not as if every single game I've won came that easy, though. This was just a fun anecdote to kick things off. The juicier, raunchier stories are yet to come. Including the spiciest tale of them all. Maybe you'll know it when you read it.

  3

  And so, this begins the overarching story of how Death lost everything. You weren't expecting that, were you?

  No one ever expects to die, to fail, to reach the end of whatever path they set out on so long ago. That's true of all humans, and it's also true of most Celestials. Including me. I guess the millions of years of my supremacy sort of clouded my mind and my perception of reality. I never thought I would reach a point where...

  Well, I could keep going on about it. But you wouldn't understand. And I want to make sure you do. It's sometimes hard for us Celestials to remember the way that you humans perceive time. A river that only flows in one direction. To learn things, a human has to have a straightforward, linear approach. You have to start at the beginning and move along toward the end.

  So that's what I'll do here. For you to understand how and why I lost everything, you need to know more about me when I was still in my prime.

  Zanus was not the only one to ever challenge me to a game of chess. He was just the only one who assumed he could beat me. Every other Celestial I've ever played has challenged me out of boredom or curiosity, rather than greed.

  Take, for example, the angel Lamina.

  If I had been any weaker of will, her beauty and grace might have blinded me totally and given her the win. But I have always just been able to hold my composure around her. Even while drunk, I don't believe I have ever made a fool of myself in front of Lamina. Not that I can remember, anyway.

  I had never heard anything about her playing chess or any similar game. I had never once walked into the Celestial Café and seen her engaged in a game. But she turned out to be a decent player. Better than Zanus, though that wasn't saying much.

  Assuming you, the person reading this, are a heterosexual male... Or maybe you are a homosexual female. Or a bisexual person of any gender. Whatever your particular eccentricity may be, maybe you will understand what I'm about to say. When a beautiful woman, angel or no angel, approaches you with a sly smile on her face and touches your arm, what is the first thought that will flash through your mind? You will assume she is coming onto you, making a romantic advance.

  And that is what I assumed when, while on my favorite walk through the area of Heaven where all the angelic wings are manufactured, Lamina appeared out of a little alleyway and touched my arm just so.

  Looking down the alley, I saw at its end a gazebo and a pond where a bunch of iridescent fish swam through the eons. And here I must digress again, just for a moment. No, there are no such thing as Celestial fish. God created humankind in His image. He is the original Celestial. Therefore, all other Celestials are also in His image. The fish were just fish, brought up from Earth at some point in the past. But Heaven, I must tell you, is a timeless zone. Any creature, however mortal, that is brought into it becomes essentially ageless. So the fish could have been there in that pool for a few days, or perhaps a few millennia. That is a bit of information about Heaven that may or may not be important to you.

  At the time though, I wasn't actually thinking about fish. I was thinking about Lamina, and how impossibly gorgeous she was. Even among angels, she stood out. Her perfection seemed impossible. And yet there it was, before my eyes. And there it was in the warm, firm strength of her fingers on my arm.

  "Death, my old friend," she said, though we had never been friends. Nor had we been enemies, either. "What brings you out here?"

  "Just walking," I replied. I could think of nothing else to say. And even if I had thought of something, it was doubtful I would have been able to get the words out. My throat just kept bobbing up and down, and I kept licking and wiping my lips unconsciously.

  Love is life. I've heard that saying before. During certain periods of human history - the Renaissance, et cetera - romance and chivalry were considered to be great pursuits. Sex has, of course, been a great pursuit since the first reproductive organ mutated into existence. A certain human writer once said that love is nothing but sex misspelled.

  Love is life! But I am Death. Therefore, I am no good at love. When God spawned me, he did not add a single touch of romantic sensibility. It's a cause of my long existence and the kind touch of statistical probability that I have had any romance at all. It is easy for me to speak to anyone, even the most beautiful woman, and be just fine. But the second I notice she has shown some form of romantic interest in me, I suddenly turn into a blathering idiot who can't even walk properly.

  Luckily, the angel Lamina was an eminently charming and socially adept creature. She was able to navigate the two of us through these clumsy first moments with admirable panache.

  "Darling," she said, "not to say I'm not happy to see you, but don't you have some souls to reap?"

  I shrugged. Unable to give her an answer. I just knew that if I opened my mouth a bunch of stuttery mush would come out.

  Heaven being a timeless zone, there's no reason to rush down to Earth every time a death happens. There are a lot of deaths every day, up to about one-hundred and fifty thousand. I like to let them build and hit them all at once. I can even be in a thousand places in the same instant, from the perspective of a mortal. I suppose in some ways I'm like Santa Clause.

  That was the response that I couldn't give to Lamina. But in reality, she didn't really care why I was in Heaven. She had other things on her mind. And, as she drew her hand up my arm and touched the back of my neck, I thought I had a good idea what those things were. Until she said those other words.

  "How about a game?" she asked.

  "Huh?" I replied.

  "A game of chess," she said, smiling at me. "I'd like to test my skill, and what better way to do that than to challenge the greatest player of all?"

  I cleared my throat, pushed those idiot thoughts of love out of my mind, and became my usual composed self.

  "A sound argument," I said. "I'd love to p
lay a game. It's been a while since I've had any sort of challenge. Do you think you could give me one?"

  "We'll see," she said in a quiet, sultry voice, dragging her fingernails delicately up through my hair.

  I now saw exactly what she was doing. And I began to wonder what skill she was really trying to test; her chess skill, or her skill in manipulation?

  Well, she wasn't going to win at either game. Not with me. I took her hand and led her away, acting the perfect gentleman, letting her think she was in my head. That she had me wrapped around her finger. It would be that much sweeter when she realized I wasn't going to roll over and let her beat me at my game. Hah!

  In a further attempt to throw me off balance, she took me back to her own residence. I had never been into the bedchambers of a female angel before, but now I can tell you that they are among the most sickening places you could ever find in all Creation. If you're a fan of having your retinas burned out by bright whites and golds and pinks, and your nostrils singed by an overwhelming stench of flowers and spice and everything else that has ever been considered to be a "good smell", maybe you would like to visit such a place. It would certainly be worth it if the two us were about to take some horizontal refreshment. But as a venue for a game of chess, you could have done a hell of a lot better and not much worse.

  Even her chess set was prettied up to a terrifying degree. The pieces were oversized, painted in delirious hues. The squares were not the normal white and black but instead pink and red. Absolutely horrific. Disgusting!

  We sat. Already I was physically uncomfortable, because her seats were strange. The backs were completely straight, which did not allow me to lean back at all. And they were also curved, so that either end dug into my ribs. The cushions were far too thick, shoving me up eight or nine inches above the actual seat. I felt like I was sitting on a marshmallow, teetering to either side. I had to plant my feet firm and wide so that I didn't fall.

  Lamina was right at home, obviously. She was letting me play as white. So I made a rather unusual opening move; I took the pawn that stood in front of my king and pushed it forward two spaces. Opening your king up in such a way, at the start of the game isn't usually a smart idea. But I thought it might push Lamina into playing more aggressively and openly, so that I could learn her style and mentality sooner.

  She responded in the opposite way by moving the corresponding pawn on her side forward, but by only one square. A more sensible opening move. She was perfectly poised on the edge of her seat, one long, slender leg crossed over the other. Her back was straight. She sat like a perfect princess, smiling at me across the table with her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised. I wanted to either slap her across the face or throw her onto the bed and ravish her, and I wasn't sure which urge was stronger.

  Instead of doing either of those foolish things, I instead moved my king-side knight out and forward. She kept going with shuffling her pawns outward, clogging up the middle of the board and blocking me from getting any clear shots at her back rank.

  But I had my ways. I could see the end of the game already. The trick was to get there, to make sure I kept herding her in the right direction. If she was a truly great player, she would have recognized that I was herding and resisted it. But she was only good. Better than Zanus, by far, but not nearly on my level.

  About halfway through the game, I suddenly found myself in a good position. I moved my queen-side knight forward, up two spaces and one to the right. This put me in a spot where, in my next move, I could start working my way toward a check and putting some real pressure on her. If she had been a bad player, she wouldn't have been able to look forward and see what I was going for. It is the hallmark of a decent chess player that they can easily think beyond their next move and consider the board as a whole, as a single machine with many moving parts. Lamina had that ability.

  She pushed one of her pawns forward, into a spot where, if I continued moving my knight forward as planned, she could just capture it with her pawn and kill my effort. I was impressed by that. I hadn't been expecting much from Lamina, especially not after Zanus's pathetic attempt. At this point in the game I actually started having fun; I realized that I wasn't up against someone who was just going to fall over. I would need to work for it a little bit. It was kind of like a cat trying to catch a live mouse versus chomping on a dead one. Both situations are skewed heavily in the cat's favor, but one requires the feline to work harder and thus enjoy itself more. In this analogy, the live mouse was Lamina and the dead one was Zanus.

  She followed up her shrewd pawn move by taking some of my pieces, including a knight. A spectator might see this as a sign that she actually stood a chance of beating me. Or that I was weak or imperfect in some way. But in chess, it's impossible not to lose any pieces. It's like a great General going to war, winning it decisively, and then crying over the loss of a few squadrons. I would not weep over a captured knight or bishop. It is slightly worse to lose a rook, and even worse to lose a queen. But none of them spells the end of a game. None of that equates to automatic defeat. In some cases, a player even sacrifices certain pieces on purpose in order to achieve a desired position further down the line.

  I won't say that I was thinking like that - in terms of sacrifices and deep, strategic moves - during my game with Lamina. I wasn't trying quite so hard as that. But she was still taking my pieces, and not throwing herself under the bus in the process, which again reflected well on her talent.

  The game continued on. It wasn't a particularly long game, not when you condensed all the moves together. But it still lasted a good half hour. About halfway through, right around the time she blocked my knight, she started getting serious. She began to hem and haw and deliberate over every move. When finally she committed herself, and pushed a piece forward or slid it backward, she would fling herself back in her seat and start flapping her hands toward her face as though she were on the verge of fainting. Her cheeks turned red and the one out-of-place curl of hair on her forehead went dark with sweat. If possible, she was even more attractive now.

  She played well. But I eventually beat her. And here's how.

  In the final stretch of the game, I found myself in a familiar or at least desirable kind of position. I had both my rooks on one side of the board, at my back rank, one in front of the other. I had my queen positioned on the next row up, further to the right. And I had a bishop two squares up and one square to the left of my queen.

  Winning in this position should have been simple. I had enough pieces in enough offensive positions, guarding one another. Usually, I would have been able to push into checkmate in two or three moves.

  But Lamina's defenses were actually pretty good. She had both her rooks on her backmost row with nothing between to impede their movement. She had her queen just ahead of them, lying in wait. She even had one bishop left, which she might be able to move into a protective position.

  The one thing she had working against her was the positioning of her king. Because of some dirty offensive action on my part earlier in the game, the poor guy was way out there. He was sitting at B5, damn near the center left of the board. He had a few friendly pawns around him to keep him safe. But that was mostly a false sense of security. He was in danger. And because her strongest pieces were stuck in the back, she had no quick and easy way of defending her king.

  If I did it right, I could apply continuous pressure and prevent her from doing much with her rook and queens. Nothing offensive, anyway.

  But how best to go about it? On my move, I stared at the board almost as long as Lamina would, pinching my nose and watching the constant stream of potential moves and would-be futures that played out in the theater of my mind.

  One move jumped out at me eventually. At first, I looked at this move, turned it around in my head, and decided it was silly. But it came back a moment later, insisting I gave it another look. And now I saw the brilliance of it.

  It was nothing special to the untrained eye. I just took my cute
little bishop and sliced him up to my left, so that he was sitting directly beside Lamina's queen and in front of her rook. She smiled at first, thinking I was going to give her the win after all. She had two different ways to capture my bishop.

  Immediately she leaned forward and captured my bishop with her rook. She sat back, looking smug. It had been her quickest, most impulsive move of the game.

  "Please tell me that wasn't on purpose," she said.

  "It was," I told her.

  I then moved my queen up to the left, onto B7, so that it was sitting just beside her rook. This put it also in line with her king, giving check. Smiling again, she quickly took my queen with her rook. I could see the disbelief and humor on her face. And a little deeper, in the depths of her eyes, a little glowing ember of suspicion.

  She was right to be suspicious.

  You see, the two rooks I cradled in my back rank were in the same column as her rook had been before taking my queen.

  I took the first rook in line and moved it to C5, capturing a pawn and settling just beside her king.

  "Check," she grumbled.

  "Checkmate, actually," I replied.

  She looked at the board. Right away she saw that I was right.

  Her rook was now out of position, unable to take my rook and kill my check. If it had taken my rook, my second rook was still down on C1 ready to swoop in and recapture. But even in that situation, she could have easily shuffled her king out of reach of my rook, saving herself.

  The real killer was my pawn. My solitary, lonely little guy over on A5 on the other side of her king. The pawn covered her king's one and only flight square, rendering escape impossible. And since she had no pieces in line to capture my rook, she had lost.

  The true character of a chess player is not in how they play the game, but rather how they react once the game is over. A good player who jumps up and down and runs about screaming in excitement after a win is, in my mind, no better than a cockroach. An amateur who, after losing, sits calmly and studies the board to try and learn where they failed, or who shakes the hand of the victor and says "good game" may not be a good player, but he is a proper player.