When Saw slapped down his last card we knew that things were going to change. There was something in the air, smothering our voices like hanging bones. It didn’t help that we were playing out in Janice’s backyard, which was still decorated with the plastic ghosts and tombstones of last Halloween.
I tried not to act too surprised. We are all defined by our decks, and this was surely a facet of Saw’s personality. He was a dark fucker, that was for certain. We just never knew how deep that darkness dug. The others- they didn’t take it so well. Janice looked like she was going to cry, and Carl looked like somebody had shit on his head.
On the card: a black door. A girl with a dress made from her own blood. Symbols. A shadow. The art murder card. We all had heard of this card–but none of us had ever played in a game when it came up. Janice consulted the rulebook, seeing if there was some way we could banish it, some way we could make that jackass pick his card up and shuffle it back into his graveyard.
She shook her head. Nothing.
“Why the fuck,” she said, “did you slap that down, Saw? What are you trying to prove?”
Saw shrugged, his black hair falling over his face. “It’s all part of the game. I got that card when I bought a booster pack last week. You guys knew it was going to come up eventually. Hell, it’s why some people play this deck in the first damn place.”
I leaned back and lit a smoke, trying to stay cool. One of us would have to die. That was the rule. I looked down at my hand. The three-headed dog. The hanged god. The burning soldier. Nothing. No way out of this hand. I was going to have to play one of them or be killed.
Carl coughed and rubbed the round of his stomach. He looked at Janice, and you could tell he had something up his sleeve. Carl was always trying to impress her. I could tell he had a thing for her–even if she was Saw’s wife. Some part of me thought Janice had a thing for Carl too.
Saw grinned. “Well, come on chicken shits, let’s keep the game going. We can’t call it quits now–we are all defined by our cards in play. So smack that shit down and let’s get going.”
Saw got off on the whole thing, that much I could tell. He probably had a thick inch of wood under the table. He was in love with power, with making people do what he wanted. And now he wanted one of us to die. I guess that’s just how it goes.
Carl smacked down a psychopomp card. This one was the lighter aspects of death–a sleeping figure with a black notebook and a scythe. He smiled, knowing that this put Saw into a corner. Only one person could play the psychopomp. Now Saw was in the line of fire as well.
Saw seemed completely unfazed. “Now,” he said, “That’s what I’m talking about. Let’s keep this going until all of our aspects are created. You guys know the rules.”
Janice shuffled her hand. I decided to play my hanged god card. What the hell–it could only help me. Janice saw my card and laid down a card that shocked each of us. The card had a man lying on the ground with a dart in his eye. Baldur, sweet Baldur. The card of sacrifice.
Saw grinned.
Janice wiped her eyes and then moved some of her wine-colored hair behind her ear. “Well, jackass, are you going to pony up or what?”
Saw peered over each card, milking the dramatic moment to its fullest. He laid down a psychopomp card. A figure in white, drenched in blood with a death’s mask. “Well, I can’t play that card,” he said with an overblown flair.
He laid down another card. A victim card. “And I guess I can’t play that one either. Looks like all I can use is this.”
He laid it face down, and then slowly peeled it back to reveal a picture of Chronus eating his children. The demiurge card. Carl laughed while rubbing his stomach. This was too much. “The demiurge. Just what the fuck did you have planned for this evening?”
I lifted the card up to the light. Detailed, full of ink and blood. I wondered if the artist had bled into the card before sending it out to be shrink wrapped and displayed in stores. “Definitely not pizza and wings,” I said.
Saw shrugged. “We can still eat afterwards.”
Janice held her head with her hands, framing her face. Her lips moved in the shape of a scream, but no sound came out. She gnawed on her palm, drawing blood across her lifeline. “I don’t think I’m going to be hungry,” I said.
Carl nodded with me.
Saw lit up a smoke.
“Suit yourself.”
We pulled a card out of the major arcana deck to my left. This was the last stage of this hand–the four cards that would determine everything that came next. Saw smirked, the tips of his lips fuming with smoke, and I wondered if he had stacked the deck somehow when no one was looking.
Above, I heard a crow cawing at the setting sun as the plastic ghouls shook in the spring wind. I looked over and saw Janice rocking back and forth, the sun crowning her head with a halo of red. I wanted to reach across the table and hold her, but knew I could not.
Soon the cards I played would define me. Our cards would define all of us. An hour worth of slapped plastic against that white poker table recreating our personalities and burning our souls with the architecture of myth.
I held my breath as the four major arcana formed a cross of cards in front of us. The gorgon’s lair. Medea’s nursery. The unsung knife. The burning arm. The scene was set. The characters drawn. Now it was time for the game to really pick up.
#
#
Dark. Night. The stars spun over our heads, the only light that of the red and orange pumpkin globes strung from tree to tree. The globes spun back and forth, violently sending light like knives dragged across the skin of the darkness. A game doesn’t stop until the last card is drawn and the final act is played out.
A knife in the center of the table glinted with light stolen from the moon. I saw Janice’s face reflected in it, her eyes scared, blind. She wanted to run but couldn’t. Carl belched, then drew some new cards.
I threw down a smiling sun. Simple card, but it mixed things up a bit by making me and Saw trade hands. Kept things a little more fair this way; even if he did stack his deck and the major arcana deck, he couldn’t fiddle with ours. Not without the proper card.
Saw shrugged. I tossed the remainder of my smoke into an empty beer can. The soft red of the butt disappeared in an audible hiss as Saw handed over his cards and I gave him mine. Not a bad hand he had there–you could tell he had spent a long time building up his deck to match his personality.
Dark cards. Reversed cards. The bone grinder. The witch’s tit. The mouthless demon. I guessed these were part of me now, his personality absorbing into mine as his cards entered my hands. Shadows passed over my memories. The hanged god inside of me twitched and paced in my mind. He didn’t like these cards. They might take us someplace he didn’t want to go.
Carl slapped down the drinking whore card. His face took on a sly and simple smile as his hand moved over and under the table, clutching Janice’s bare leg under her skirt with his sweaty palms. She yelped a moment, her mind still racing with rabbit thoughts.
Saw looked on, his gaze one of interest and not jealousy. It was as if he expected Carl to play this card. I knew I should be uncomfortable in this moment, but I was too worried about what was going to happen to let something as small as infidelity bother me. Murder outweighed all other crimes committed tonight.
One of us would be extinguished. Sure, you’re thinking that Janice is the one, but the game isn’t over yet. The rules always change, things always transgress and then come ’round in a different direction. The people change, their relationships change. It’s all symbols being rearranged into meaningful patterns. A lot like how life is.
Take, for example, last week’s game. Last week I was married to Janice, and Carl was drunk and suicidal. Saw was homophobic and an anti-Semite, this week he’s married, bisexual, and Jewish. It’s all about the way the game plays out, how the cards rearrange who we are.
A classic power display. A Foucault’s Pendulum of personalities, relationships, and emotions, all dictated by a card game.
Kind of crazy, isn’t it?
We wouldn’t have it any other way.
Saw slapped down the haunted library card, which brought the burning arm into play. He poured gasoline on Carl’s skin, the smell of it clinging to the air. Carl looked shocked at first, but knew what needed to happen. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t scream. You can’t ignore what you could be anymore than you can ignore who you are now. Denying such possibilities is a crime against your soul.
He blinked back tears of pain as his arm went up in orange and red flames. He kept his other arm steady on Janice’s leg, moving it up higher on her thigh as the fire burned into his flesh like a tattoo. He would have to play like that for the rest of the game. We knew the game probably wouldn’t last too much longer. Once the unsung knife came into play, it would be done and one of us would be dead.
#
When we first heard about the art murder card, I was like, y’know, cool! We’ve got to find that one and give it a whirl. When I woke up and my mom was dead, I didn’t think it was so hot anymore. But the game changed me after that, and I was too far into it.
-Interview with a Sesun player for the article Sesun: The Cult of Death.
#
Because of Saw’s last few cards in play, I shrugged off the identity of hanged god and instead became the lion who ate the sun. I’d grown green fur and I got these big teeth with ripped bits of a red dress stuck in them. I looked over at Carl and he was almost consumed by his flames. His good hand rubbed in circles against Janice’s clit. We saw that grin on her face and her body getting tenser as she got closer and closer to cumming.
I wondered if she had stopped being a victim, and maybe she’d traded places with Carl. Like the death was transferred between them in the moment of orgasm and sticky fingers. So many cards in play now–it was hard to keep track of who was who, and who was supposed to die.
Was the art murder card even still in play?
I leaned over and lit a smoke off of Carl’s flames as Janice came violently next to him in screams of passion. Saw looked on, smiling still. He watched me, and I saw in his eyes that he wanted to touch me. But I bit and I could eat and that unsung knife card was moments from being in play.
Soon, soon. Soon the murder would happen. I could feel it running across my fur, dancing in the air in waves of shadow. Closer and closer it came. I looked up at the moon and I was hungry. I wanted to eat the moon, to take it away from the sky. I was so jealous of those stars and clouds being hung in that same void of space as the moon. I wanted to leap up and growl and suck it into my stomach. Maybe then my stomach would light up, and everyone would come to me for the warmth of the moon inside of me.
Saw flipped up the lovers card and laid it down reversed. A mad situation. Medea’s nursery came into play and we all switched decks, leaving a dozen cards to die in the plastic graveyard around us. I left the last of me behind when I picked up Janice’s cards.
Was I the victim now? Was Carl? Was Saw? Saw looked too cool, too calm to be someone who was about ready to die. Carl was on fire, and very rarely did someone on fire die in one of these hands.
“You guys hungry?” Janice asked, her eyes slit.
Carl smiled. “No,” he said, “I’m good.”
We all nodded.
“Let’s keep this fucker burning. Keep this game going. We’re getting close, I can feel it,” Saw said, bumming a smoke from me.
I tossed him one.
Carl put a card into play. The dancing ruins. I didn’t see that one coming, not in a million years. He picked up a skull mask and placed it over his face. I could see his eyes peeking out from that rotten plastic and I just got the creeps. Was Carl dead now? Was the game over?
He picked up the psychopomp card. It was closer now, almost time. He had assumed his essence of death. All we needed was the unsung knife to come into play, and then it would all be over. Janice leaned over and kissed the back of my neck and put her hand in my lap.
With her other hand, she slapped down the witch hammer card. She climbed on top of me, unbuckling my jeans. Saw cheered on and Carl just watched. I could feel Carl’s jealous eyes on me, spiking my soul with his new personality. I didn’t want this–not now, not like this. Someone was going to die soon, and I sure as hell did not want it to be me.
#
- The Heart Sutra
When all was said and done, I wasn’t surprised when Saw laid down the suicide card and the unsung knife came into play. We should’ve all seen it coming. He’d wanted to die for a long time now, and I think that’s why he played in the first place. To recreate himself or to kill himself.
It didn’t matter, really; in the end both had the same result. You weren’t you anymore. You were someone else, or you were dead. A transition of states. The cards were constantly killing us and bringing us back to life. I’m not sure why I was afraid of being killed before.
Maybe it was the cards that did it? Maybe they made me think I didn’t want to die, when really I was already dead so many times over?
#
When Carl was done we had to fulfill the first card’s promise and turn this murder into a work of art. We carefully arranged the body, we cut images into his skin. We took turns. I removed his eyes and placed them in his hands. Janice put coins in his sockets and then spit down his dead throat.
Carl never played again. He stopped calling us, stopped coming over. Sometimes I can see him outside of Janice’s house, haunting the old plastic ghosts. I wonder what he’s thinking of, why he sits and watches and never approaches us.
Janice is much darker these days. Sure, we play the game from time to time. She’s much more into it than I am. Sometime she’ll drag some girls from the bar in, or a few guys. Sometimes she’ll have sex with them in front of me–using the game as an excuse to do whatever she wants.
I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t like the game anymore. But in that moment, when Saw died, I saw emptiness in his eyes. It danced right behind his pupils, this dark muttering maw of shadows. I felt blind in that moment, and then saw nothing but illusions. I was a void. He was a void. Janice was a void. The card game was a void. The void was everywhere.
And it was hungry.