"How about a game of chess?” he asks.

When the sun and its warmth receded, so did the energy of the party, and as it flowed away the crowd followed. Almost everyone has dissipated, chased away by the cold lifeless stare of the moon beaming down through a glass roof embroidered with God’s servants. The entertainment then found none to entertain. The orchestra dropped their instruments in boredom, and the beautifully crafted tools they were so delicately handling fell to a floor that was, and remains, deadly still, as actors and jesters had ceased their dances upon it. Those who chose to stay are scattered and motionless, their exhausted lips weakly opened for silent breaths, lips tainted blood red by wine. Why they stayed, I haven’t a clue. Perhaps their intoxication infects them into incapability or slumber. Regardless, my friend and I suffered quickly from the monotony. We came for the thrill of the night. My friend, Janus as he’s called, dressed in attire from those who guard The Papacy, many days south of our home in Firenze. He painted over the bright solar yellow with charcoal black, and the red-blue streaks found head to toe were made crimson red. The rest of the gear, armor and weapons alike, were sold to mercenaries soliciting work from would-be usurpers of the Granducato di Toscana. His ambitions to swoon a fair maiden into marriage were given to me as reason. Maybe he’d start a dynasty, and with fanciful colors in both dress and words tonight would mark the beginning. No woman must’ve sparked his interest, and when most departed he was simply examining the unconscious left behind, his hand lightly touched to their necks. All the while I sat bored with my attention to the floor, drinking a tasteless beer. Himself seeing nothing of interest and seeing me on the verge of sopor, he offered a cure to our woes, and claimed such a remedy has the power to light up our minds with intellect and strategy. Chess. A vague and noncommittal answer is trapped in my throat. Of all games to choose, it’s expected this is his choice. He is a master of the checkered board. In a mere 10 moves from his marble army can he pin down the opposing monarch. Sometimes it’s faster, and to those he faces assures no hope. I, among others, jest by calling him the grave-maker, since the life of every piece on the board is at his whim. Others call him Bacchus, manipulating the board as Bacchus did the men and women of Thebes. He is well known throughout Toscana and it’s suspected by many, including myself, that prestige reaches further than the Alps, traveling like wind with the speed of his intellect. Against Janus, the grave-maker, envy of Bacchus, I wouldn’t win.

“Just one game,” he pleads, “it won’t be long.” He has an innocent look on his face, but it is solid like a statue, meticulously sculpted to appeal to the unwise. I know better of course, it’s a trick to lure prey, a scheme to achieve another victory, but there is no reason to refuse. I should indulge him.

“Of course I’ll play!”

The room we enter is more lifeless than the passed out drunkards a hallway away. It bursts with activity, yes, with flames reaching out from the walls and the centered table almost shaking at the excitement of finally being used. However, it feels as if I’ve been sealed into a tomb, trapped, destined for an isolated death, and everything seen is merely the particles of dissolved corpses creating an image with the energy radiating from our flesh. My anxiety stricken body pulls out a chair and rests itself upon it, and as its limbs shake, the rickety chair’s screeches echo throughout the room. On the table before me, under the layers and layers of dust, a chess board is carved into to the oak and layered with marble, and it feels as if it’s been anticipating this game for decades, maybe centuries. A latch snaps itself shut behind, and I turn to see my friend locking the door. My legs straighten, ready to burst to my feet, but they relax as he forces that same innocent look.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m just keeping those imbeciles out.” From his chest comes a hearty laugh and my lungs struggle to join him, yet join him still with hint of weakness. Why can’t I resist his actions? Why can’t I demand honest explanation? My body tries resisting but its forced not to. I’m playing directly into a plan, a trap maybe. I know it, and yet still continue to play along. He not merely controls and manipulates the pieces on the board, but the world around him. Yet something greater is present. The world feels off, and when he sits down across from me his innocent smile becomes confident, psychotic even. He knows something I do not. After the dust is swept away and the pieces put in their pace, he leans back and puts a curled hand to his face. “Your move”

We all like to think we understand the thoughts of others. Many have seen Janus play countless times, including myself, yet he is dynamic in strategy as he is constant in victory. Seeing him play as much as I have merely delays my defeat. Every move I make, plan I conceive, trap I set, he is one step ahead. When my pieces move to strike his with impunity, they fall to the hands of another hidden from my attention. When I set out a pawn to lure a bishop, rook or knight, he finds his way around, and picks away at me piece by piece. My strategy is a house of cards, and by taking away only a few parts does the whole defense come crashing down, while his is a fortress carried by the swift winds of his mind. Promptly, most of my pieces are in his custody. There is hardly enough to defend my king, and only a single knight can move away with the king’s security remaining. That lone knight stands in the middle of the battlefield, isolated from the action flaring on the flanks. I can almost see it look up at me and nod a head towards his king, which is completely surrounded by other pieces. You know where to move me. It must not understand the dimensions surrounding it. The king stands just out of striking range, and only if my knight was two tiles closer could it be moved in such an advantageous way. His eyes lock onto mine staring at his king. He snickers, then begins to command one of his many soldiers forward, but he is interrupted by a loud thump on the door.

“Damn it!” He yells, throwing his chair to the ground. The lock on the door is manhandled, and to the uncivilized eye it’d seem like an attack on the wood. When the door finally complies to dances of his fingers, he stomps out of the room to deal with whoever is there. I hear blades being drawn, and bloodied screams. Rather than save a life, whichever endangered, the light of opportunity shines through dark and paralyzing fear. Now is my chance. Away from his peering eyes, my knight is moved two tiles closer.

Followed by clangs of metal on the stone floor, he returns, locks the door, and sits back down, his crimson black clothes somehow seeming darker than before.

“Who was that?” I ask.

“Swiss Guard.”

“You angered the Papacy?”

“Perhaps.”

“Did you actually kill his-”

“Is it my turn?”

I want to say something, but the words that emerge in my throat are quickly killed by a better alternative, and they suffer the same fate. So do the next, and the next, and the next. There is so much to say, yet no words could truly show that, none could encapsulate the conflict, the confusion, the fear. Is he a murderer? What if I’m next? He only killed the people who attacked him, he isn’t an aggressor then, is he? Then how did he get the uniform? Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Perhaps it-… Through all the thoughts and emotions, I can only find one distraction. Victory. I can win this game, beating Janus. The grave-maker. The envy of Bacchus. Is it his turn? It doesn’t matter, it’s my choice now.

“No.” I say. He smiles and nods, muttering agreements in monotone fashion, his expression again stone cold. Can he tell that I’m lying? He lifts the chair back up and leans himself in it. His finger shines a naked light to one of his pieces, and then to my knight. He reequips that psychotic smile.

“Are you going to save him?” He asks. He acts unaware the danger his king is in, maybe he cannot imagine losing, or maybe I’m being baited as many have been before.

I smile, “A bit more than that.” My knight rides across the marble plain, sword readily in hand and raised to the heavens, confident for what is to come.

“Checkmate” I exclaim, slamming my hand on the table. My speech and actions are made with the same hubris he had shown me just minutes earlier, a tool to spite his expectations, but his attitude doesn’t change. He is amused.

“You’re not the first one to try cheating your way to victory” He says.

I retort, “Many smart men have avoided the fates through trickery.”

“And smarter men never allow that to happen.” He flicks the knight off the table, and before my reactions manifest into movement, the table is flipped aside and a scythe emerges from what was the arm of Janus. Its emergence is quick, quicker than my mumbled prayers to mother earth for salvation. She tries to drag me to the ground with the pull of her weight, but the gravity is not nearly enough, and an obsidian blade is painted red.

He leans over me and puts his finger to my wound like a brush through paint, and the heat of my blood is drained by the cold and lifeless veins clinging to it. With clear vision of his face, I can see his skin fading away, his bones more pronounced with every second past. His blood soaked finger is put to my lips, lathering them the color of his crimson-black clothes. Through the pain I imagine such a shade on my lips, like red wine disguised as blood.

“No one out there was drunk” he whispers. The scythe finds itself in his hand once more, raised for another strike. My body pushes against the ground, trying to give some kind of resistance, but how could it? He is Janus, death, the grave-maker, the envy of Thanatos. I wouldn’t win. All I can do is plead. From my lungs air is gathered, and with the last of my strength it’s pushed through an ocean of crimson red. My words are weakly released into the air.

“I’m not ready” I groan. He smirks with rotted lips, he had the same expression almost the entire chess game.

“No one is.” The beating of a million iron bars bears down on my ears, and slashes spread on my flesh like they would on a butchered animal. His laughs are piercing, and without words they speak to me. This was inevitable.