Ash Reveals the Game

Chapter 2

April

I watched as Ash took out the deck of cards and began thumbing through them, creating six separate piles on the table. Ash was the coolest girl I’d ever met, and the prettiest, and even one of the nicest. Weird, but nice.

“To start, everyone is dealt the same hand with the same five cards, so come and get them,” Ash said.

Frank was sitting closest, so he immediately reached out to snatch one. “Wow, these are heavy. What are they made out of? Stainless steel?” He tapped his hand of cards against the edge of the table, a dull thud of metal on wood.

“Made to last,” Ash said.

“With how thin these are, bet you could use them as a throwing star,” Ken added as he examined his own cards.

“Well, that’s my first point of feedback then. If you’re going to make a game product, it shouldn’t also function as an improvised weapon. Though I do admit, I like the way these look and feel in my hand,” Rayne said, looking them over now too.

“I don’t get it.” Haruka was holding one of the cards close up, turning it over in her hand. “There’s more to it than this, right? There’s not even any text on the cards?”

“And one for you too,” Ash said as she took my hand and gently placed my own five cards into it. “Have a look.”

“Th-thanks.” I hoped no one noticed me blushing. I looked at the cards myself and immediately understood Haruka’s confusion. Only five cards. One side was black with a simple gold trim, and the other side was almost identical, save that there was a different symbol at the center of each card depicted using the same gold trim.

A fist. A dog collar. A brain. A six-sided die. And a coin.

“So where’s the rest of the equipment?” Frank asked.

“There isn’t any,” Ash answered.

“Oh… oh!” Frank raised his voice with excitement. “Is this an AR game we need to use our phones for?”

Ash shook her head, “Nope.”

No one said anything else for an increasingly awkward silence, before Haruka finally said what we were all thinking. “This isn’t another dumb Wiccan thing, is it?”

“Maybe.”

“Ughhh…!” Frank slumped in his chair.

“Ash…” Rayne didn’t sound angry, but only because she was disguising it as disappointment.

“So uh… anyone want to tell me what’s going on?” Ken had just joined our group a few weeks ago, and really only to spend more time with me most likely.

“Ash is a practicing Wiccan, and even though we have stressed that this is a group for traditional games, she sometimes likes to… well…”

“Ouija boards. Tarot cards. Voodoo dolls. Middle school slumber party crap,” Haruka listed them off.

“The ouija board was fun though.” Ash smiled. “Remember how Frank started crying?”

“I wasn’t crying!” Frank banged his hands on the table, then withered from the glare that earned him from Rayne. More quietly, he continued, “It was a panic attack. And it wasn’t fun or funny.”

I didn’t think that had been much fun either. Laid back as she was, Ash took her occult hobbies seriously, and it seemed like every time she did, she only wanted to spook everyone as much as possible. The tarot card incident, I remembered Ash insisting over and over that I needed to start jogging at the park if I wanted to find true love. At the time I had been convinced that it was a roundabout way of calling me a fatass. But no. She and everyone else agreed it was just Ash being Ash.

And besides, if I hadn’t started my morning jogs at the park just to pacify Ash, I’d have never bumped into Ken, so in a roundabout way, the tarot card reading had been genuine.

Thinking about it, I realized that wasn’t what “roundabout” meant at all.

“Wait, guys, remember when Ash said I needed to start jogging in the park to find true love? I met Ken in the park!”

I thought that was the most conclusive proof of fortune telling being real ever, but the rest seemed less than convinced.

“April, honey,” Rayne started. “You went from spending all day holed up in your room at your computer to going outside wearing yoga pants and a sports bra that didn’t fit. You don’t need magic to find a boyfriend that way.”

“God, that sports bra looks amazing on you,” Ken pitched in.

“I don’t suppose there are any pictures of…” Frank managed to stop himself only after it was too late, but faster than usual. I considered that progress. But the thought of him seeing me in my workout clothes still made me wince.

“Guys, chill. This one is different. Trust me. You’re going to love this.” Ash was still calm, a slight smile on her black-painted lips. “Now, hold the cards in your hand and answer. Do you accept the challenge?”

“Sure, why not?” Haruka answered first, her cards fanned out in her hand. As soon as she did, the gold trim on the cards started glowing. “What the… they’re warming up. Ash?”

“Frank?” Ash looked him in the eye.

“It’s voice activated? Wait, what? How? Oh, I accept, yeah.” Immediately, his cards began to glow too. “What the hell.”

“I accept.” Rayne was getting into the spirit of things. “I’m trusting you, okay, Ash?”

“Yeah, let’s fuckin’ go.” Ken joined in, and barked out a short laugh when his cards glowed like the rest. “Woah. Are these nanomachines?”

“Nanomachines aren’t real,” Rayne said as she studied her own glowing cards.

“A few nanomachines are real, but you wouldn’t use them for something like this. Just wondering how this works. One of these cards must have a microphone, and they need to communicate in some way. Is it connected to an LLM? Or—”

“April, do you accept the challenge?” Ash said, looking me directly in the eyes.

“I uh…” Ash had that spooky look in her eyes again. Whatever she had planned for tonight was going to be scary. I just knew it. But I also knew that if I was the only one to back down, it’d ruin the night for everyone else. And it did look like Ash was excited about this, so…

“O-of course. I accept.” The cards heated up in my hand, like they’d been warming in sunlight for an hour. What kind of a game was this?

“Me too. I accept,” Ash said with a smile. “And so, the game begins.”

The cards were getting hotter in my hand, glowing brighter, and… tugging? Pulling away from my hand. It was slight at first, as if I’d imagined it, then again, stronger. The third time pulled the cards right out of my hand, and not just mine, but everyone else’s too. All of the cards were drawn in like magnets above the table, lining up into a rotating circle.

“Huh,” Ash didn’t look as surprised as everyone else, but it was clear she wasn’t expecting this. “Okay, game begins in a few minutes.”

Frank shoved his head under the table to look for, I dunno, a giant electromagnet or something? “What the hell, there’s nothing under here! How?”

“Magic,” Ash explained.

“Ahh shit, really?” Ken was immediately on board, but the rest of us weren’t there yet.

“Okay, but really, Ash, how…” Rayne started, but trailed off. Whatever it was, Ash wasn’t going to tell us. A magician never reveals her secrets. “You know what? Fine. How does this work? How is… this…” Rayne raised up both her hands and shook them at the cards spinning through the air in a ring. “...how is it a game?”

“This isn’t part of the game,” Ash explained. “It’s more like… a loading screen, I think?. This is going to need a lot of magic, so even if this building was built along a powerful leyline, we can’t begin right away.”

“How long is this going to take?” Frank asked.

“Dunno.” Ash leaned back in her metal folding chair. “Told you, this is a prototype.”

There was a beep from the kitchen, and Haruka stood up. “That’s the pizza. Magic or no, we don’t want it burning, so…”

One pizza went on the cooling rack while the next was popped into the oven, and the tension was slowly relaxed. I leaned over to Ken and whispered. “This is weird, right? It’s safe though, right?”

“Don’t worry.” Ken pulled his folding chair right up next to mine and wrapped his big, warm, muscular arm around me, giving me a tight squeeze. “Things get dicey, I’ll keep you safe. But relax, this thing is neat. Way cooler than the whatever with the things last time.”

“Ticket to Ride?”

“Yeah. Wow. I hated that. But this—” Ken titled his head towards the floating cards. “This is some straight up anime bullshit, isn’t it?”

Better anime bullshit than horror movie bullshit, I thought. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach, and I kept remembering when I was little, my grandmother telling me not to read the Harry Potter and Twilight books because they were written by the devil, that witchcraft was evil, and I’d be damning my soul before I knew it.

“I just wish we didn’t have to keep waiting like this,” I said, and somewhere out there a monkey’s paw must have curled its finger, because as soon as I did, the cards stopped spinning. Instead of falling back onto the table though, five of them flew as fast as an arrow, straight into my chest.

I let out a shocked squeak, almost fell out of my chair, and frantically patted down my chest, searching for the gaping wounds that should be there. Nothing.

The same thing had happened to everyone else, all of the cards vanishing inside of us. Everyone was right back on edge, and my heart was hammering. Across the table, Ash took another bite of her anchovy and pineapple pizza, chewed slowly, and swallowed.

“Ray, okay if we go ahead and start? I don’t think we’ll make a mess this time.’

Ray pursed her lips together in silence, staring daggers at Ash for a silent moment, then threw up her hands. “Sure! I don’t think anyone is going to even be able to taste the food until we get this over with anyhow.’

“Great! Then, for real this time… let the game begin!”