The Chess Piece

It was without much drama that yesterday’s game played out; in the morning Bianca took one of Maeve’s insignificants, and in the evening Maeve took one of hers. Otherwise, there was little change on the playing field, although that itself provoked concern; it had been too quiet for the last few moves, and there was bound to be some disturbance soon. It was her fifth game now, and if there was anything she’d learned in the past four, it was that the center could never hold. Best to make the first move….

It was a new morning—this Bianca knew, because the chute in her room opened up, and a fresh breakfast had been distributed. (This was the only way to judge the passage of time here, besides the more obvious option: the passing of the rounds.) She bit into the apple’s flesh, trying to settle the uneasy feeling in her chest. In the mirror, she pulled back her hair, smoothing the worried lines in her face; the transformation was unsettling, but Bianca supposed she had become particularly good at masking those inner turmoils. 

Throughout the compound, the first warning bell sounded. 

Bianca gathered her thoughts and compressed them into that pocket of her ribcage that she reserved for such trepidations, and properly equipped, she descended to the control room. The door creaked as it swung open, and after a deep breath, Bianca crossed the threshold with sure, measured steps. The room was dark, except for a timid fire that burned in the hearth—eternally, it seemed, for Bianca had never seen it extinguished. The orange glow illuminated a small table, which was adorned with a chess board and thin, beautifully crafted pieces. Eerily, the fire was at such an angle that it cast larger-than-life shadows of the chess pieces onto the opposing wall: a wholly disorienting experience, Bianca always thought, because it made the room feel stiff with ghosts.  

There were two vases on the table: one with a white orchid, one with a black orchid. Their presence had been a source of confusion in Bianca’s first game, which felt like it had occurred years ago; and yet their purpose made itself very clear in no matter of time. At the inception of each game, the orchids were in full bloom, stems drooping with the weight of their flowers; with each sacrifice, each passing, a petal fell. Only a week ago or so, if her measurements could be trusted, both Bianca’s and Maeve’s orchids had been sagging with fruit; now they stood easily, their cargo relieved. Shriveled up petals remained on the table surface, unmoved. It was an unspoken agreement, that the petals should remain as they were. Neither dared to remove them, for it felt like defiling a grave, and there was enough defilement in the games themselves. 

Behind the hearth was a glass panel, behind which stood the live pieces: Bianca’s dressed in white and Maeve’s in black, all on their respective squares. They seemed incredibly small as they stood on the playing field—smaller, even, than their shadow counterparts, which were reflected onto the wall juxtaposed from it. 

Methodically, Bianca slipped into her place at the table, eyes perusing the pieces that stood, poised, like graceful figurines. Her fingers traced the edge of the table subconsciously, feeling much like a surgeon holding a beating heart in his hands. 

The door opened up with another creak, and Maeve emerged, her black robes sweeping against the floor, netted veil shadowing her downcast eyes. They had always been her prettiest feature—those wide, captivating caves, a brilliant shade of sea-foam green—but now they were calculating, hollow. She had changed so much from the first move: from terrified and clumsy and confused, screaming her head off whenever a piece fell, to sober and careful. But that was to be expected. No one went through the games unchanged, and the queens underwent the most dramatic transformations. 

Maeve slid into the seat across, not breaking her gaze. Bianca held her own eyes defiantly. 

“You’ve lost weight,” said Maeve nonchalantly. 

“Food hasn’t been fitting my taste lately,” Bianca countered casually, knowing fully well that she meant something else: that she looked tired, like a rock beginning to wear down against the elements. 

The penalty bell resounded through the room, breaking their banter. 

After a moment of silence, Bianca lifted the bishop and moved it diagonally, knocking over a black knight in the process. The piece fell with a loud clunk! that echoed in the small stone-walled room, and on the left wall, Bianca watched the shadow of Maeve’s knight fall and roll around helplessly on the chess board, before finally it came to a halt. She never watched the actual violence play out behind the glass panel—but she could imagine the boy fall to his knees as the life winked out of him, and she could hear his muted screams, before even that, too, was silenced. Bianca turned her eyes to the black orchid, which sorrowfully shed a single, delicate petal; it fluttered for a moment in the air, then slid down the vase like a teardrop. 

Maeve’s shock was unmistakable. In the process of taking down her knight, Bianca had sacrificed her last bishop. And for what? She tried to convince herself that it was a strategic step in trying to control the center. But even that reason was weak; she hadn’t gained any positioning; in fact, she had lost the small advantage she’d worked so hard for. Though now her bishop checked Maeve's king, it would be an easy kill in the following round at midnight.

Quite simply, Isaac’s piece had been too close, and so she’d put the bishop up for sale—if only to keep the sweet boy safe for another two rounds….

Maeve rose silently, her hands enclosed in fists, and exited the room without a sparing glance, the scent of lilac following her. Alone now, without fear of Maeve taking in her raw emotions, Bianca turned towards the glass panel, bracing herself: the black knight lay still on the ground, and her bishop stood atop his mangled carcass, blood spattered across his white garments. He was turned towards the glass, eyes wide with fear, anticipation, betrayal. A tinge of anger. Mostly dread, the life draining from them by the second. (Did she mention this was a place of ghosts?)  

The rest of the day dragged on. Lunch and dinner were served at their usual times, or so Bianca thought, although one could never be truly sure of these affairs. She ate alone in her bedroom, although she was terribly aware of the whispers. For a while she attempted to sleep, but such luxuries were always evasive, and as was usually the case, Bianca found herself unable to close her eyes without imagining ghost eyes and shadows of chess pieces flitting across her line of sight. 

She began to sort through her thoughts: the first being that the compound they occupied was truly a beautiful one. The walls in their division were spotless, pure white—although a little hard on the eyes, since the light streaming from the windows and the light fixtures were also a harsh white (and cold, too); these matters were more trivial, though. Other than that, though, the compound was like some hidden gem embedded in the heart of some desert. Beautiful sand stretched in every direction until the horizon, so still and unmoving that, from the windows, it looked timeless. If there was a word to describe the compound and its views, it was this: regal. 

This was the first of her thoughts, although from there, they devolved into something much more tricky and dangerous. As the games passed—new queens enthroned, new pieces replaced—Bianca began to wonder why they seemed to be trapped in this cycle of violence. There never seemed to be any particular reason, except for the fact that this was how it had always been—there had been previous white queens before her—and, to that point, she couldn’t even remember a time before her induction to the game. She had no recollection of a life before the one she led here. 

There were few truths in the complex. One was this, and it was no secret amongst the queens, past and present: that they were ensnared in a volatile game, darker and bigger than they could probably ever imagine. To compare it to a maze was amateurish, because there was no way out—not even if all the walls were broken down. A more accurate term, Bianca supposed, was psychological warfare—something that transcended the chess game itself and followed the players to their most sacred spaces, defiling them. On the nights when it seemed the blood would never come off her hands, even when she’d scrubbed them raw, the ghosts would appear in peripheral vision. Even that sacred space inbetween the ears was polluted. It was in this game, Bianca knew, that she reigned queen. 

She stared at the ceiling of her room, musing. On one hand, she led the pawns, the rooks, the bishops, the knights….led them, maneuvered them, decided who would be taken, who would remain. On the other, she was helplessly tied to a faceless king—for whatever reason, he was the only piece who wore a mask, and he resided in a separate quarter: one of few restricted rooms in the complex. [There were three rules in the game: 1. Make a move during your turn—whites in the morning after the first bell rings, blacks in the evening after the second bell; 2. Do not be late; 3. Do not enter the kings’ quarters.] Whenever she entered that barren place, the executioner’s room, she could almost feel her limbs fuse to his puppet strings. It was as if she were lawlessly controlled by his hand. 

Before she went to sleep, Bianca would turn her back to the fireplace in her private quarters and whisper: I am the queen. But each repetition felt less compelling, less believable, and in the end, she always fell asleep to the flickering of shadows on the wall. 

It wasn't exactly a falsehood that Bianca remembered nothing of a previous life. But it was a white lie, and she was used to telling it, since secrets like that were volatile, especially if they fell into the wrong hands. 

She couldn’t remember her past name, her past occupation; what she could remember—and what she clung onto with the force of her miserable life—was the one face she recognized in the complex: that of her brother’s. Sometimes she wondered if he actually was her brother, or if even this was something artificially grafted into her mind for further torture, but regardless, she felt such a strong connection to him that it didn’t matter.

Isaac—or Izzy, as she referred to the boy in private—was an angelic child, little hands and rosy cheeks and all. Occasionally Bianca would find an opportunity to usher him into her quarters, and they would sit on the bed together and do puppet shows, using the fireplace as a source of light. Other times, he would climb into her arms and sleep soundly, with such naive ease. Bianca liked to watch his chest rise and fall; the movement grounded her, humanized the place. In those rare moments the puppet strings snapped, and the chess board fell away; she felt human, and the blood on her palms seemed to disappear. Normalcy was a breath away. 

But the clock always struck again, and the magic would fade—the stony expression would settle back into place, and to the control room she would descend again….

A few hours after dinner, Bianca encountered Izz in the hallway. There was no one out and about, so she pulled him into a tight embrace, then asked how he was doing. 

“I’m fine,” he said, smiling tightly. A pause. “Are you nervous?” 

“No, of course not,” was the automatic response. Bianca squeezed his shoulder, although even the effort seemed half-hearted. “I won last time, remember?” 

Of course he remembered—but he was still scared, and Bianca could sense the fear rolling off of him. She handed him a pair of earplugs, insisting, as she always did, that he keep his ears and eyes shut. The boy nodded, although nowadays there was something almost exasperated about the action, as if he himself thought it was a pointless gesture. And it probably was, Bianca knew; regardless, he was still a piece, wedged in the very center of the war aged each morning and night. 

The bell rang, echoing throughout the corridors. 

“Shall we go?” Izz said, motioning towards the doors. 

“You go on first,” Bianca urged, patting the boy’s head. He frowned distastefully, his little button-shaped nose wrinkling up. “I won’t be late, I promise.” She watched as he disappeared down the hallway and down the staircase, waiting as long as she could before following suit, keeping her head down so as to not make eye contact with the other pieces filing into the room. She could feel the knight’s resentful stare grasping at the back of her neck….

At last, mere seconds before the penalty bell, Bianca entered the room and took her place at the table. 

“Cutting it close, aren’t we?” rang Maeve’s voice, soft and deadly. Then: “You seem very fond of that pawn of yours, don’t you?” 

Bianca knew she was prying—guessing, even. But even as she tried to keep the muscles on her face carefully arranged, she knew by the victorious smirk on Maeve’s lips that her eyes had dealt betrayal. “Finally, a crack,” Maeve grinned. “Oh, did it take so long….you know, my dear friend, this morning you took away someone very special to me.” 

Bianca didn’t know how it happened. [She didn’t want to believe it.] Things seemed to play out in slow motion. Someone was screaming—she realized, vaguely, that it was her own voice—and then the little pawn, too small for its own square, tipped over and was no more. 

As queen, Bianca should have celebrated. In under twelve hours, one small move would lead to checkmate, and then Maeve would be executed, along with the rest of her army. She had survived another round. But when, in the peripherals of her vision, she saw Isaac’s still form, crumpled at the edge of the playing field, she could only see red. 

Oddly enough, Bianca did not blame Maeve, even if she had cast the final blow and knocked down Izz’ piece. For a long time, she had seen the black queen as much an adversary as a victim: subject to the same circumstances, the same fears and guilt. She suspected that each opponent she faced, like her, had someone they remembered in the game—something to drive the stakes.

Bianca's legs moved erratically now, taking her out of the control room and down the corridor to the kings’ quarters. She’d gotten halfway up the stairs and had extended her hand towards the doorknob when, suddenly, Maeve appeared at her heels and clawed at her robe. She wrapped the material in her fingers and yanked hard, pulling Bianca backwards. The impact was jarring, and there was a resounding crash as Bianca fell onto the steps, but she was up on her feet in a matter of seconds, hands reaching out to grab a fistful of Maeve’s hair. 

“Congratulations,” Maeve spat, “You’ve won the round, so where are you going?” 

They continued to struggle, making their way up the stairs all the meanwhile, although Maeve’s grip on her shoulders was terrifying and masculine. “You don’t get the easy way out,” Maeve spat. They’d reached the top of the stairs now. Bianca pulled harder at her hair.

“Let go of me," Maeve screamed.

And so Bianca did.

Maeve fell backwards, twisting the doorknob and falling through the forbidden doorway, her torso crossing the threshold, legs keeping the doorway propped wide open. Rooted a couple feet behind the hazard line, Bianca stared into the room. 

Inside, there were two large, floor-to-ceiling windows, and the light shining through them was warm and yellow—there was heat on her face, so foreign, but altogether strong and disturbing. Maeve, too, raised her hands to guard her eyes. There was just so much of it, they had navigated through the compound in near darkness for so long.

Eventually her sight adjusted, and she found herself facing a large room—but not anything near what she envisioned for the kings’ quarters. They were barren: no furniture, no bed. Instead, there were two computers, one stationed on each side of the room. One was white, the other black, and both were supported by huge blocks of machinery with smaller screens: these blinked green, with numbers running so fast the lines blurred. The large screen streamed the chess board from the control room and playing field, where Isaac was still motionless on the ground—the others had filed out….

Outside the windows, Bianca realized suddenly, was only rocky terrain, which she had never set eyes on before. Where was the sand? The beautiful, timeless sand, so still and perfect?

“YOU HAVE BROKEN RULE TWO,” said a voice—the computer’s. 

Maeve turned towards Bianca, her seafoam green eyes widened in horror, before the collar around her neck chirped with electricity. Her body squirmed and trembled until it was cold and still; in the process, her feet curled towards her, and the door began to shut once again. Frozen at the doorstep, Bianca watched as the warm sunlight disappeared and the door clicked in place; the image of green numbers running on screens stayed with her, as did the rocks, so rough and jagged, unlike the perfect sand dunes….

Another announcement: “END OF ROUND 5.” 

The game was endless. At a loss, Bianca sank to her knees at the top of the staircase, wondering if she should bother to go down again.