Had forgotten this existed. Don't remember when exactly this is from - but it was for one of the Cutlet magazine exercises.
“Queen to f6,” the cold voice vibrated across the airtight chamber, and the white walls seem to reverberate with the sudden break in the stifling silence.
If the severe-looking high-backed chair against the far corner of the room had been of less renowned origins, it would have creaked horribly under the sudden jerky shift it now had to bear.
The heavy white shape dragged grindingly across the frozen marble. Its movement was deliberate, prolonged.
The emotions were mirrored on a face across the room, with its back against the near corner. Impossibly thin lips drew back slowly – sadistically – into a half-smile.
The pair of glassy brown eyes opposite shot a half-glance at the smile and looked again at the last three black soldiers, standing tall – but fragile – between them.
The Knight, strapped to the back of a stone horse – a massive brute of a creature, its monstrous head towering high above the delicate human figure crouched behind it.
The Queen. An impassive beautiful face streaked with long-dried tears of kohl. Long white arms bound together excruciatingly.
And the lone Pawn, a head shorter than the rest, pale and thin and drawn.
It was towards the last that the brown eyes now shifted, not daring to look at the desperate pleading gesture in the tense tiny shoulders, the silent whimper in the frightened eyes.
A manic laugh echoed from across the room.
“Come on, come on, we both know answering immediate threats is not getting you anywhere.”
The brown eyes flicked away from the centre of the room to the steady blue ones facing him.
And held their gaze.
The laughter died away slowly. Something changed in the room.
“They told me he was your favourite… they said you never give him up…” The voice sounded nothing at all like it had a moment ago. The cool confidence that had carried it across the room had faded away, as had the mocking half-smile.
“Pawn to d2.” This voice was steady, emotionless.
“But – I thought he was your son –”
The pause stretched threateningly into the following silence.
“King to d2…” The blue eyes lowered, and shut slowly.
“Like you said – answering immediate threats would never get me anywhere.” The wrinkles around the brown eyes creased in a quiet smile as the white king took the pawn.
“But you’d never threaten that pawn if you were playing white – that’s what they told me...”
“You forced me to play black. Play the pieces I’d designed specially for the loosing side. The human faces etched in eternal torment. It’s true I don’t usually take that pawn. He does rather look like my son. I’ve never had to sacrifice him before.”
“I thought I’d threaten your Title…by forcing you to play the losing side of your own chess set…by threatening your favourite piece… ”
“But he isn’t my son, you see. Just like you’ve never really been a threat to my Title. He’s only a chess piece made of stone.
“Queen to e2. Checkmate. ”
And the man with the glassy brown eyes stretched his hand across the table between them, picked up the frozen little statue of the tall brave queen with her frozen stone tears, and took the white king.
