The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Game Faces
by Angela Yuriko Smith

“Checkmate,” one god said.
He smiled with self-assurance.
There was no answer.

The other god reached
across the board for her queen—
an overlooked threat.

“Maybe a stalemate,”
she said. “This time, no losers.”
He narrowed his eyes

seized hold of the board
and flipped the pieces skyward—
pawns shattered on tile.

“Everyone loses,”
he said. “I win or no wins.”
He stomped on the shards.

“It’s in this moment,”
she said. “That we all collapse—
humanity lost.”

She knelt and retrieved
a pawn, crushed beneath his heel
and set it upright.

“Without every piece
there’s no more game, no more wins—
every pawn matters.”

Beneath them the world
continued in its orbit
unaware of us.

Fiction © Copyright Angela Yuriko Smith
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Angela Yuriko Smith:

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Book a stay at the Bitter Suites, a hotel that specializes in renewable death experiences. Whether you schedule your demise as therapy, to bond with a loved one or for pure recreation, your death is sure to give you a new lease on life. Renewable death is always beneficial… at least to someone.

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