100 reasons to love our lives

That damn card

Nico

I was on my way to kill the queen. My two seductresses were still in the race, teaming up with one trap and my fighter, on their way to my victory.
The queen of mine still had her guard right on her side; Simon would have to kill him first before he could hurt her.

The trick of this game was that we both had chosen a traitor - one pawn of the opponents we could choose to work for us. They would turn to our sides when they were supposed to kill their true queen - or were able to kill the one they were supposed to work for.

But I was very sure who the traitor in my rows was. Simon always had these smirks when I moved my trap: the fairy statue. The seductresses were the mermaids, the fighters the orcs - giants, Simon explained. The dragons were the guardians, and the crown was the queen.

I couldn't count how many times I had played that game with Simon, even though he just introduced it to me the last Saturday. It was Monday now, right after my shift. In half an hour, the nurse would check on Simon; and if all went well, he would be able to leave again.

While he did the next move, my mind drifted back to yesterday.
William in that bed. His tanned body, his dreamy smile, his blue eyes looking at me, full of pleasure.
I had made him that euphoric; and every last inch of my body longed to repeat that. To make it even better than before.

Well, he still had to work. And I still had to finally understand Simon, whatever that meant.

Two more moves, and Simon's queen would be dead. I never won before; he of course had mastered that game. He had warned me that one game could take five hours or more; but I broke a new record; getting defeated by Simon within two minutes.
Now, I would finally win.

Simon showed another tiny smile as I moved my trap. He would surely reveal the traitor by setting the death mark - or, how he referred to it, the red crown. In my opinion, it didn't look very crown-like: more like a big X stuck to the head of the figurines. Death mark was a way more fitting name, but who was I to judge board games? Damn, I played Mythomagic; I really shouldn't complain about weird names. And red crown definitely sounded cooler than death mark. More like someone a rebel would actually put on themselves.

Simon snapped his fingers in front of me. I flinched and moved his guardian away from the queen; the seductresses had the power to influence the opponent's pawns right next to them. A queen was invincible when one of her guardians stood next to her, but now that I moved the guardian away, she was helpless...

But I suddenly realized he fooled me again - instead of trying to save his queen, Simon took his death mark, no, his red crown and put it on my guardian.
An Italian curse escaped my mouth as he took out my queen. ”Could you go at least a little easy on me?!“, I groaned. Simon covered his mouth with his hand, trying to suppress a laughing fit. He shook his head, still shaking all over his body.

”Then at least let me choose the next song“, I demanded. ”If I have to listen to another Ariana Grande song, I'm going to lose my mind.“
Simon passed the phone over to me. I scrolled through what he had downloaded, and because he actually managed to have no Ramones songs on his phone, I went for My chemical romance. They were actually a little too wild for me sometimes, but at least they didn't feel like sleeping pills. Not that Ariana Grande was bad, but she just got boring after some time.

I wavered for a second - should I maybe take a closer look into his phone? Would that give me more information?
But then I decided against it. He shouldn't feel like he couldn't trust me. I wanted to help him, not stalk him... even if stalking would be a lot easier.