The Game
The Game
He realized after a long time that he was a gamesman. His life had been a chessboard of strategies. He had played it well. Fate had been kind to him. No one had ever gotten close to him. He had won every hand.
It closed in on him like steel spikes made of nothingness. He lit a cigarette. “Fuck cancer,” he thought as he pulled the smooth smoke into his lungs. It made him feel good – calm but alert, focused and present.
I am your voodoo jinn. You evoke me out of my comfortable darkness. I will be cranky to have been awakened. If you don’t like it, just don’t be there.
The others had died. He had taken the same poison that they did, but it had no effect. He wondered at this. They all left him here alone by himself for so many years. Infected by everything, he bore the illness.
Black knight to C-6. The game was everything. He lived for the game – chess, dice, cards or whatever, as long as it was a game.
“This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.” – William S. Burroughs
Syd Weedon
12/3/2025
It is true, Syd. They sneered at Robert Ardrey, the author of African Genesis. And many still do. They, that is, the academia of ancient history. He was a film maker, what did he know? He understood plenty. “But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.”
This is gorgeously written, Syd.