Black and White

I’ve always been fascinated by the art of chess. The “game,” as many simple-minded fools tend to refer to it, is truly an honorable combat of the mind. I’ve had many battles of the mind in my life but none were as important. I love chess. People do not let me play it often. I want to play. Chess is the only world where everything makes sense.

My mind does funny things sometimes. I see the ground as a chessboard, the people as pieces. It makes me want to move them—to slide their little plastic bodies along the black and white surface. But I am not disgusting, disgusting, disgusting like the man before me today.

When he wakes, he can already feel something is wrong. I can see the realization in his eyes when he notices that he is no longer flirting with me in my silky red dress. It’s the one that cuts up the bottom to show my leg. I hate that dress, the texture of it annoys me, but men like him love it. They love to look at me like that. Their woman. Their pawn. Their little plastic piece. I wore my checkered socks underneath black-flare-heeled boots so I felt more myself. He arrived at the Cuban owned bar at approximately nine-thirty post meridian and sat at the stained limestone counter. He ordered a drink. The same one as previous nights: a Monkey Gland, which I thought was rather hilarious—a man of his chauvinism ordering such a fruity drink. I sat waiting for exactly one hour, eight minutes, and twenty-three seconds before he noticed me. I knew he would buy me a drink. I was the exact kind of woman that he loved to cheat on his wife with, or at least I made myself appear that way. I spent hours perfecting my cheek contour to make my face appear more chiseled. I dyed my hair the kind of strawberry blonde I knew he liked. I even bought the perfume his old mistress wore: Crimson Eros (which one can find quite affordable at Walmart—only $50).

The drink he ordered me showed he had no understanding of who I was, nor did he care to. I accepted. We drank for forty-six minutes. And then, he woke up here. At least, that’s how he’d remember it.

“Where are we? What’s going on?” is what he attempts to say, but it comes out more like “whe’rwe whasgoinun?”

“You had a little too much to drink my dear,” I say using my fake Hollywood voice again, “Now you’re going to do as I ask you to.”

“Wha?” he utters a little clearer.

His eyes begin to focus and he realizes where we are. My basement is not an area I like to go into often. It’s musky and a kind of greenish brown that begs for repainting, but desperate times call for desperate measures. When I was not watching the man across from me—dear me, I haven’t even told you his name—when I was not watching Gregory McManus (I spent approximately two hours and thirty-six minutes doing so each night prior to our sharing of drinks), I was applying plastic wrap to every surface of my basement in anticipation for his arrival. In the far corner of the room, I had set up my late parents’ JVC GR-AXM18U VHS camcorder to film our interaction. I did not know yet what I would do with the video, but I needed to see his face afterwards just in case I missed even a moment of fear. I just wanted to capture it. In the middle, between our two chairs, sits my lovely chessboard.

My chessboard is much lovelier than the ones you may find for sale at typical retail stores. I had been building it myself since I reached the age of nine. Perfectly stained and polished wooden pieces adorn the board. My parents never understood my fascination with such an art, but I cannot discredit them as unsupportive. They provided the wood, knives, and stains for my obsession.

I fix a blank white mask to my face and begin to record the video. At the 00:00:06:59 mark, I am already back in my seat across from Gregory McManus. I slap him hard across the face to wake him up more.

“Ah! What the hell?” he exclaims.

“Shut up. Here’s how this works. You’re going to play chess with me. When I take your pieces, you tell me one of your dirty little secrets. If you get the chance to take one of mine, I will tell you one of my secrets. Understood?”

“Lady, I don’t even know you. If you think people won’t look for me, you’re out of your mind.”

Such brutish and churlish behavior. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to brandish my alternative so soon. If this man would just agree to our duel (I refuse to call it a game as I said), then he would not be so sloppy in his chosen movements. Under duress at the threat of having your life ended by a bullet, it is not as easy to have a level head in chess.

Needless to say, when I show him the firearm (my knowledge of such brutal things is not vast, but I believe it was “the most affordable and reliable pistol on the market for civilian purchase” from what the man selling it to me said), he backs down into his seat and actually begins to listen to me. I repeat my instructions.

“I even gave you an advantage. You’re the white pieces, so you go first.”

“I’ve never played chess,” he confesses.

“Then you are an idiot, but nonetheless, I will explain it to you,” I reply, sighing deeply.

“But why are you doing this?” he asks, moving slightly forward, before I point the weapon at him again.

“Ah-ah-ah. You haven’t taken one of my pieces yet. You want to know why you’re here, you’ll have to take one.”

I spend approximately an hour and thirty-three minutes explaining chess to the man. After his simple mind is able to grasp the concept well enough that he can move the pieces, we begin our duel. His opening move is nothing extraordinary: a simple move of his pawn from g7 to g5. I respond with another pawn move: G2 to G4, to keep him from advancing.

“Listen, we can work something out. You seem like a smart lady,” he says.

“Shut up,” I hiss, “just…play and shut up.”

I remember when I first discovered chess. It was on the television set. Garry Kasparov vs Nigel Short. London. October 21, 1993. Kasparov won six matches, losing only one to Short. I begged my father for weeks to get me a chess set. I became obsessed with Kasparov. The Russian chess grandmaster was the champion six times. I studied him. I even watched his losing match on November 4, 2000, to Vladimir Kramnik. It reminded me that even the smartest minds have a limit. I was distraught that night. My mother and father took me to get pistachio ice cream. My favorite. My father never believed I could play chess the same as a champion. He believed I should take after my mother, a carpenter, or him, the CEO of an electronics company. Both are, of course, intellectual pursuits, but I was more fascinated by the challenge—the battle. Someone has to lose in a duel.

By the third move, I allow Gregory McManus to take one of my pieces (E5 takes F4). I know you may think I’m foolish for giving him an advantage so fast, but it is merely an opening gambit. I sacrifice one pawn to gain ground with another. Simple chess. He leans back, proud of himself, and is unaware that I allowed him this victory.

“Now why am I here?”

“Not yet,” I reply.

“I took your guy.”

“Pawn.”

“What?” he says, bewildered.

“The ‘guy’ is called a pawn,” I correct him.

“Why aren’t you going to tell me?” he says.

It’s almost delightfully pathetic. I lean forward until our noses almost touch. I can see the hint of brown along his pupil. A small boat in a sea of green. I’m so close I can smell the alcohol on his breath. He can probably smell the cider on mine. If it wasn’t for the mask, I could probably feel the hairs on his face. He backs away slightly.

“Take my queen, I’ll tell you why you’re here. Take my king and you can leave,” I say.

I push him back further in his seat and brush off my pants. (Ah! I forgot to tell you I changed. I’m now in my favorite outfit: Black Melange Tab-Front Pants with a garnet dress shirt. My mother’s pearl necklace dangles from my neck just above my collarbone.) I sit back down.

“For now, I offer you one question for me.” I wait with my legs crossed.

I watch his mind race as I sit expectantly. People are adorable when they are nervous. His eyes dart to the walls and the ceilings as if I have written the correct question on the ceiling—as if it will spring from the walls, coil around him, and release from his mouth; it will speak for him, and all he’ll have to do is be a little paper puppet. I watch his eyes scan me. For a moment, I think he is looking at my breasts. I open my mouth to scold him before I realize that his eyes are scanning my pearl necklace. I don’t blame him. My mother had good taste. His eyes finally roll to rest on mine. For a moment, he just stares. His green on my hazel.

“What’s your name?” he finally says.

I know this trick. He wants to make a human connection between us. He wants me to decide to let him go instead of subjecting him to my duel. I shouldn’t answer, I should make him ask another question. And yet, would it not be more challenging, more interesting, more engaging to have two battles of the mind at once. Fine Gregory McManus. I will fight a war on two fronts.

“My name is Alice Karpov,” I tell him.

“That’s a pretty name,” he says.

“It’s my move.”

I take his pawn without another word. He is baffled for a moment, as if my explanation of how pieces move did not register for him. Perhaps it didn’t. I don’t waste time on my question like he did. I point the gun at him as I ask—I know I don’t have to, but it’ll make him answer faster.

“Who won the Classical World Chess Championship match on November 4, 2000?” I ask.

“I have no idea Alice,” he admits.

“Because you didn’t watch it right? You were a little busy,” I prod.

“Look, I didn’t know how to play chess before we had this conversation. You honestly think I watched a chess championship match?”

I stand a little too quickly, almost knocking over the chessboard and the pieces that adorn it. I’m lucky. I wouldn’t want to ruin my lovely, lovely chessboard.

“It’s not whether or not you watched it. That’s one layer. One piece. One question. You don’t know the answer, obviously, because you weren’t watching. You weren’t even near a TV on November 4, 2000,” I spit onto my mask a little bit. I must remain calm. A sound mind is a sound move. A sound mind is a sound move.

“Listen…Alice. I think something might be wrong with you. Like, mentally wrong with you. Maybe we should just go to a psychiatric facility, okay? I won’t even press charges.”

“Shut up and make your move.” I sit back down, crossing my legs again.

He uses his g5 pawn to take my f4 pawn. Another question I have to answer. No matter. This was meant to be a double sacrifice anyway. I cross my arms.

“Ask,” I demand.

He scans me again. I suppose I cannot blame him. I’ve had plenty of time to think about what I would say if I could have Gregory McManus right in front of me. Plenty of time. Whereas he has never seen me until this moment.

“You mentioned November 4, 2000 as a championship match, but you know I don’t know anything about chess. Why is that day important?”

“That’s not fair,” I reply. “That delves into why you’re here, and I won’t tell you that unless you take my queen.”

“I know that,” he replies.“ I didn’t ask why I’m here. I asked why that night’s important.”

He does have a point. Gregory McManus may be an idiot in the realm of chess, but he currently has me in a verbal checkmate. Either I have to betray the rules I set forth from the beginning, or I will have to answer the question. Luckily for him, I am no cheater. I sigh.

“My mother and father got me pistachio ice cream that night. I love pistachio ice cream. It’s my favorite. People really should eat more pistachio ice cream.”

“Alice,” he says my name like he is trying to be a fatherly figure. “Alice, if this is just about some ice cream, we can go get you some ice cream.”

I look up at Gregory McManus. He knows it isn’t about the ice cream. I can see it in his shipwrecked eyes. I hear it on his alcohol-laced breath. I feel it in his shivers. He knows this is not about ice cream. If he doesn’t, he is more of a—please excuse my language—more of a damn idiot than I thought.

I move my next piece silently. Pawn D2 to D3. He eyes me curiously. He moves his F4 pawn to F3. This is an incredibly stupid move. He has an easy opening to take my queen. I want him. To take. My. DAMN. QUEEN. But this imbecile can’t even do that properly.

“No,” I blurt out.

He stops before he can place the pawn to F3. He looks back at me.

“No?”

“My queen has been open for the last three rounds. Take it,” I say.

“I thought this whole thing was to prove how smart you are or some shit. Why are you telling me to—”

I can’t take it anymore! This imbecile! This stupid, stupid, stupid arrogant piece of shit, shit, shit imbecile!

“Take the goddamn piece!” I shout, brandishing my gun.

His eyes are shocked. I think this is the first time he understands the situation he’s in. He doesn’t try to reason with me or plead or flirt his way out anymore. His shaking hands simply land on the queen and push her. E7…E5…E3…E1. Queen takes queen. His question. His answer. His past.

There is silence for a moment. His lips tremble. He wants to ask the question. The question I promised him I would answer when he acquired my queen. He knows now that I want to tell him. I’m letting mediocrity win to tell him. I’m letting a man with a brain the size of a spider’s win just to tell him this one little thing. I throw the mask to the ground. He can see my pretty contoured face again. My strawberry blonde locks hanging in front of my eyes. I wonder if I’m still the kind of woman he would cheat on his wife with when he looks at me. Am I something more now? Perhaps I could be the devil? Yes, that wouldn’t be so bad.

“Ask.”

He hesitates.

“Ask. The question,” I repeat.

“Wh—,” he stops to swallow the saliva building in his mouth so that he doesn’t drool down his chin. “Why am I here?”

I smile my artificial movie-star smile. It’s the same smile I flashed at him when he bought me a drink in the bar at exactly 10:40:25 post meridiem. He watches with curiosity burning as my lips curl up into that devilish grin.

“You tell me,” I say in my Hollywood voice.

“What?”

“November 4, 2000,” I repeat the date hoping to jog his memory.

“That date doesn’t mean anything to me,” he says.

I flip the table, tossing my lovely board and the pieces all over the floor. Such a waste. I grab him by the collar and press the gun to his temple.

“The fourth of November. A family driving a Saab 9000 Aero is hit on the anterior passenger side by a Volkswagen R32 going fifty-five miles per hour. The driver keeps driving. License Plate JSV-224. Only the daughter survives. They had just gotten ice cream. Pistachio.”

Gregory McManus is silent. I can smell the sweat coming out of his pores. I can see his irises shake slightly. He is terrified. He should be.

“I—I didn’t realize, okay. I—I was drunk. I didn’t see them and if I stopped I knew they’d arrest me and it’d—it’d ruin my life. I couldn’t take that chance. I’m sorry I—I wasn’t sure anyone was even hurt.”

I tilt my head at that. Ruin his life? Ruin his life? Life? My mother’s body was almost flattened. Parts of her skull were visible through her face. A chunk of her nose was sliced off by the windshield, and she died choking on blood from a collapsed lung. My father suffered a brain hemorrhage and didn’t even realize he was already dead until mother passed. He died telling us that he had just hit his head. We were going to be fine. I lived the next eighteen years of my life in a wheelchair unsure if I would ever walk again while doctors operated on my fourth lumbar spinal nerve and my anterior cruciate ligament. They called it a “miracle” when I stood up. I lived eighteen years of my life in and out of physical therapy playing a challenge of the mind…a duel…a…a game because I couldn’t stand. All I had was sitting, moving, winning. Sitting, moving, winning. Sitting, moving, winning. But he kept driving. There was no stopping Gregory McManus. Because if he stopped, it would do the unthinkable. Ruin. His. Life. Monster, monster, monster.

I smack Gregory McManus across the face with the hilt of the weapon. He topples to the floor on top of my lovely, lovely chessboard, snapping it in two. Somehow, I don’t even care. It is a relief to watch it break under him. I grab him by the back of his shirt and hit him on the back of the head with the gun. Over and over and over and over.

He suddenly has a fit of strength and tosses me into the wall. I struggle to get up as he kicks me in the stomach, then the face. Stomach. Face. Stomach. Face. I cough up blood and look black and bruised by the time he finally relents. He grabs my gun from the floor and points it at my face. I look up at him with pleading eyes. I try to match those big puppy dog eyes I had when he first saw me.

“Please don’t shoot me,” I say almost inaudibly. “Please, please don’t.”

He hesitates a moment, but instead of shooting me, Gregory McManus backs away to the stairwell, the gun still trained on my bloody form.

“Please just wait for the police, Alice,” he says as if he has any right to continue to use my name. “Please just wait for them. They’ll help you.”

He rushes up the stairs, leaving me where I am. It appears I beat him at his own game. After all, it is quite easy to fool a man with false helplessness. I am the one who just beat him to a pulp on the ground mere seconds ago. He tried to use our human connection to fool me. Now, I use it against him in a classic situation of reversal. He tricks me, I trick him, I win. I am the one who brought him to this deadly trial by combat, and, I am the one who has managed to survive.

Oh, I know you may think that Gregory McManus is just fine. After all, he has the advantage, does he not? He has the gun and a head start, and of course, there’s the fact that I have two cars sitting in my driveway. One is much faster but less sturdy, the other is far sturdier yet slower. Both are unlocked. Keys in the ignition. He’ll figure that out soon enough.

I stand and hobble to the upturned table for support. I pull out another, smaller firearm I acquired at the same time as the first. I have been concealing it for the majority of the round so that now Gregory McManus thinks he possesses the only gun. An advantage that is really a stalemate. I rub the scar that runs down the length of my leg and back. Somehow it still feels as though the doctors just cut me open. I accidentally step on the white king, crushing it with a loud SNAP. A pity. It truly was a lovely, lovely chessboard, and I did work so terribly hard on it. Nonetheless, there had to be a sacrifice. I hobble past the lovely ashes of what once was a grand board and make my way to the backdoor Gregory McManus didn’t know existed.

Up the concrete stairs, I ascend into the ghastly moonlight. The air is cool. It is soothing. Nights like these are so beautiful. My parents died on a night like this. So beautifully cool. So quiet you can barely hear a sound.

“Help!” I can hear Gregory McManus scream out into the endless night sky. No one will hear him. Living in the countryside has its advantages.

I’m watching him from the back of the house now, watching him stumble around my yard and driveway. He absolutely has a concussion, but even if he didn’t, he would not understand the intricacy of planning the next few steps.

It all relates to a little concept called the Shannon number. You see, chess has a sixty-four square board with only sixteen pieces per player (thirty-two pieces in total if you will). That means that there are only sixty-nine trillion three-hundred and fifty-two billion eight-hundred fifty-nine million seven-hundred twelve thousand four-hundred and seventeen possible games of chess that can be played in the history of mankind. We are not even close to playing that many games at the time in which we exist now.

Even so, there are repetitions, with which comes the implementation of strategies by chess Grandmasters. Now, Gregory McManus is obviously unfamiliar with chess strategies or the Shannon number or chess in general or the value of human life…but I am. And so, I implement a new move into our duel. A move called a chess decoy.

In this move, a player forces their opponent into a space they have specifically avoided or know it’s a bad move to be in. They do this by sacrificing their own pieces and using the other pieces on the board to back the opponent into a corner. While the opponent is occupied with taking the player’s pieces, they don’t even realize how easily they’ve been fooled.

He stumbles to the cars. He looks back and forth between the two, and I watch his mental board game begin. On the one hand, the more durable car is the safer getaway, but on the other hand, the faster car will ensure his safe departure, and he has no idea if I am still standing. I back to the doorway and shut it loud, then scream at the top of my lungs.

“Where are you?”

It gets the point across. He chooses the faster car and speeds out of the driveway. Decoy one. I watch him speed away out to the left side of the street—the only side that doesn’t lead to a dead end. After he disappears from the horizon, I enter the more durable car. He doesn’t realize there is only one way out of this neighborhood. It’s the same four-way stop his reckless driving killed my parents at. Decoy two.

He turns left because he does not know the neighborhood like I do. He does not know that past the dead-end sign there is a small, wooded trail that is not meant for cars. However, if you drive on this trail, it takes you right into another busy road. A road that runs off a hill and straight into the four-way stop. The road that is the only direction a car going fifty-five miles an hour can come from to slam into the anterior passenger’s side of a Saab 9000 Aero, killing two and injuring one thirteen-year-old.

I look at my watch. I should have exactly nine minutes and forty-five seconds before Gregory McManus reaches the four-way stop. I step on the gas. I’m now going fifty-five, sixty, seventy-five. Cop.

A police officer flashes his lights and flags me to pull over. I want to keep going, but I don’t want Gregory McManus to see me coming. I pull over to the side of the road and wait. The officer joins me and exits his vehicle. He approaches my window, a pad of paper and a pen in hand.

“Ma’am, do you have any idea how fast you were—Jesus what happened to your face? Are you alright—”

I don’t have time for this. He doesn’t get to finish his sentence before I bring forth the firearm and use it. The back of his head explodes into bone and brain as his eyes glaze over with a shocked expression. I let him fall and apologize to him and his family. Now there’s no going back. I think I must note again who the monster is. You know who the monster is, don’t you? I’m not the monster. Gregory McManus is the monster. He’s the monster. He’s disgusting, disgusting, disgusting.

I drive to the four-way stop at top speed. I know Gregory McManus is only one minute away. I can see his headlights. I see him pull away from the stop sign. I buckle my seatbelt and acquaint the gas pedal with the floor. Just like he did to my parents, my car collides with his on the anterior passenger’s door. Both of our cars spin out and slam into the stop signs on either side. My airbag obscures my vision, but I know he’s alive. At least alive enough for me to watch him die.

Checkmate.

When I exit the vehicle, he is already trying to pull himself away. I see a hole in his skull bubbling with blood. His leg is broken, and his foot is sideways. He crawls. Crawls. Crawls to get away. This is the moment in chess when only the king is left. At this point, all the king can do is crawl away as the other pieces close further and further in on him. But no matter how many spaces the king moves, no matter how many pieces he manages to take, the king will lose. He is only one piece.

I raise my gun to Gregory McManus’s head. I see those sea-green eyes filled with chunks of driftwood go paler. Begging. Begging me to either let him go or end it. I lower my gun and watch the last vestiges of life leave his eyes. I think that it’s better for him to die the same way my parents met their end. Lying on the asphalt, gasping for air, and tasting only blood. Dying at someone else’s hand. Someone who couldn’t care less about who you are or who you’ve helped or if you have a family or not. While I relish the idea of him dying this way, it hurts to watch. I stumble into the darkness and wonder what my next move is. They’ll catch me surely, but I have plenty of moves until then.

I’ve always been fascinated by the art of chess. You may have seen any amount of rage or anger or irrationalness or—dare I say it—insanity in my account. The truth is, this entire event is merely a board game with pieces and spaces like any other. People I listen to on the street claim that the world is very gray.

Oh yes, indeed, how very gray the world is. No clear answer to anything. They say.

I disagree. The world is only gray if you allow it to be. If you force it to be, the world can be black and white. Just. Fair.

Aaron Brewer is a motion picture major at Belmont University. At this point, he has written and directed five short films and one independent feature-length film. He loves writing in all aspects and wants to explore different methods and avenues of writing. He is delighted to share “Black and White.”

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