I drug my backpack behind me as I entered the lab. Dr. Landon was ready and waiting, looking like a man ten hangovers in at once. He was not, in fact, ten hangovers in at once. His scraggly appearance was just the collateral of his newest project.

“We’re at the precipice of the future, young protege!” he declared when he saw me. “Two years of work has finally paid off. With this new invention we’ll be able to extract fictional characters from any literary setting. Name a novel, name a context, name a name, and bam, we’ll pull ’em right out and plop ’em down on these great linoleum floors.”

The fiction-to-reality converter was, in essence, a glorified box. It was simplistic and metal, vastly anticlimactic. But for one who knew its uses, the possibilities were endless. All you’d have to do was crack the book of choice open, place it inside the box, zero the scanner in on a name or image, and the converter would do the rest. Analytics was nothing. Dr. Landon was a genius and he’d already resolved the intricacies.

“How does it work?” I asked.

“Science!” he yelled.

“No, I mean, what’s the process behind quantifying something fictional? What brand of quantum physics allows for a—”

“Science!” he yelled.

And that was good enough for me.

I drew my book of choice from the gaping mouth of my backpack. “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Where my classmates had endured such a book, I actually quite enjoyed it. Among my favorite characters was the main boi Raskolnikov. Murderer as he was, I was fairly intrigued by his ideas and mullings. That’s right! For the first fiction-to-reality conversion, I chose a fictional murderer. What could go wrong?

Upon inserting the book, I shut the door of the contraption and Dr. Landon switched it on, monitoring the process carefully. Like a printer, it scanned the pages, honed in on Raskol’s name and something started churning. A strand of light wormed its way down from the projector attached to the box’s righthand side. Soon, the projector threw forth a full-blown cast of light, and in that curious womb germinated the hintings of some spectral being. Slowly, he materialized. He was standing upright, eyes empty of thought. That came later. As he stepped from the bluish pocket, the lab’s white flushmounts caught him and then I could see. It had worked! I...think? I had to ask myself—did I know for certain what Raskol even looked like?

“Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov!” I cried, for the sake of insurance.

“Where am I!” he cried back.

I took that as a yes.

“Really?” Dr. Landon sighed with a great sense of defeat. “Him?”

“Hey, at least I didn’t materialize Alex DeLarge,” I retorted.

“You’ve never read A Clockwork Orange in your life.”

“No, but I’ve seen parts of the movie.”

“Where am I!” Raskol was now flipping out. Perhaps it was the modernity of our stark-white lab hitting him like a sledgehammer to the gut.

“Hide your sharp objects,” Dr. Landon muttered. “Especially the axe.”

“We have no axe,” I replied.

“Well, materialize an axe and then hide it.”

Logic! Dr. Landon did not like to be wrong.

“This is getting kinda’ mean. I’m gonna’ explain things to him,” I volunteered.

“Good luck with that,” Dr. Landon dismissed. “He’s your problem. I’m gonna’ go fetch my Superman comics. And maybe materialize a character who hasn’t killed anyone.”

“Zod.” I reminded.

“That’s not canon!” the doctor cried, indignantly.

“If you say so...”

*****

After unloading my spiel to the frantic Raskol, he calmed down. Said the last thing he remembered was passing a tavern where some most “unceremonious” language was wafting out. In other words they were cussin’ a blue streak.

“Well, you should feel right at home here then,” I replied. “Unfortunately, modern day’s pretty much the same.”

Upon the conclusion of our bizarre heart-to-heart, he asked if we had any card games around to pass the time. So I took him up on his enthusiasm and brandished my Uno deck. I never left home without it.

Halfway in, I was miles ahead, and he apparently found this irritating enough to accuse me of cheating. All the while Dr. Landon was scurrying to and fro in the background, hauling in armful after armful of novels, comics, and magazines. All I knew was he had better keep his naughty mags out of the converter. It’s a shame when a 17-year-old has to uphold the decorum in a scientific partnership as this.

“Stop!” Raskol demanded, checking behind him for reflective surfaces. “You’re spying on me. I know it. You predict my hand much too well.”

“Hard to cheat at Uno,” I retorted. “But you’re forgiven since yer still learning the ropes. It’s all in the deck, man. All in the deck.”

“You shuffle it purposely then,” he theorized. “You know what cards are where.”

By then, Dr. Landon had everything from Tarzan to James Bond to the Joker running around. And he’d been cross with me for picking Raskol.

Honestly, though, I was starting to see it. What an ill-temper on this one. He was kind of a sore loser. Not my fault he was so unversed in the art of Uno.

“Curse these modern games!” he finally declared, flinging his deck down in a flare of annoyance and storming out.

Whenever he returned I decided to ignore his outburst and opt for optimism. My decision was only squelched when he reappeared in the doorframe, a rusty axe in his hands.

Uhhh...maybe I’d picked a little too early in the novel to extract him.

He was, perhaps, stuck in some kind of “nothing left to lose” phase. As he chased me around the lab floor, I hoped this phase passed quickly. What an idea this was! Tarzan was now strangling the Joker, negating the longsuffering mercies of Batman. Superman glided through the air above, crashing through walls, searching for his bearings. A bunch of Vegas showgirls giggled demurely in the corner, surrounding a euphoric Dr. Landon.

Why was I not surprised.

Still, with every dodge of Raskol’s axe, I figured I had bigger things to worry about.

#fiction, #strictlyfiction, #don’ttrythisathome

Mitya stands wide-legged in the opened doorway of a speeding rail car. He peers back into the darkness, always back, but there is nothing there to see. The American is gone, vanished into the cold night as though he never existed, except that Mitya’s eyes still throb, and his knuckles still ache.

Mitya is a simple man, a man adverse to complicating matters. That there is a God is unquestionable. That God ever gave a single moments worry over Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov is, however, not only questionable, but is highly unlikely. But suddenly Dmitri, or “Mitya” to friends and family, has been uncomfortably separated from the herd, singled out under God’s gaze in a defining moment, a moment rife with both life, and post-life, implications.

Dmitri Fyodorovich was put on this train wrongly. It was believed that he killed his father. He was arrested in innocence, but that innocence is suddenly gone. He deserves to be on the train now, as much so as do these swine who are huddled around him, for he has just killed the American. The irony is almost too much for him to contemplate.

“So then.” Dmitri Fyodorovich speaks to no one in particular. “My conviction is not a sentence of Man after all, but is the sentence of God!” Mitya finds himself somewhat proud of this fact; that God, with all of his important goings-on has created a moment just for him, even if the moment was only made to catch him in a wrongdoing. After all, is any moment of God’s time not a worthy moment?

Cold and clear the night. Wide and twinkling the skies. Like starlight the eyes of God hang low and large over the Siberian Plateau, gazing downward. Ahead, far into the vast distance, twin, silvery ribbons of rail point dreamily toward the preordained destiny God has mapped out for Mitya. Try as he might Mitya cannot understand it all.

“Not my will, Father, but yours be done.”

For thousands of miles nothing moves through the frigid darkness in any direction save the solitary, sequestered beam which creeps upon the darkened steppe. The drab light has done something that all of Mitya’s cursings, and ragings never could; it has drawn God’s eye, and his ire. The beam has spotlighted Mitya, along with the other unfortunate souls riding in the railcar with him. Seen from a million miles above Earth the locomotive’s headlamp would appear motionless to God, suspended in time even as it raced straightaway through the night with a singular purpose, and to a singular destination. But now a mortal sin has made the lowly beacon worthy of God’s attention.

“Is murder,” Mitya asked in a low voice that was immediately submerged in the blast of frigid air rushing through the doorway, “not permitable when committed against he who would take what is rightfully yours? Is that not what war is, and is killing in war not only correct, but glorious?” Mitya had himself once been a decorated soldier.

These are Dmitri’s thoughts as he considers the past and the future, but mostly he considers the more recent events of the preceding moments...

For it was only moments ago that the American was alive; a living man whose breath fogged white when it voiced his dreams, just as Mitya’s breath did. The prisoners in the railcar had spent the time cutting cards. The thin, colorless, corrugated walls of the freight car offered the men inside it no protection from the Russian winter, besides which the car‘s door had long since been removed, leaving the soot-coated prisoners inside the car to endure not only the fears of an unkown future, but also the mercilous gusts assaulting them from outside.

There trailing car contains the guards. The soldiers’ car is a caboose, fitted with seats, and with a decent wood-stove backed by metal reflectors. The guards give no thought to the missing door on the prisoner’s car. The guards are known to each other. They have made this trip many times. As comrades they are free to huddle together beside their stove with no worry of their prisoners escaping. Where, after all, would those prisoners escape to? There is nothing but slow, cruel, frozen death on the other side of that opened doorway on the prisoner’s car. Let them jump! They had might as well leap straight into the fires of hell!

So the prisoners in the freight car do not jump. Instead, they shiver inside their coats while donning their bravest faces. With hat brims pulled low they gnaw at their pipe stems, or stroke thick beards with stiff fingers, feigning nonchalance as best they can whilst the two largest of them argue.

One of the arguing men is Russian; a soldier, or a former soldier. That he was a soldier is obvious from his bearing, his polished shoes, and from the authoritative ring in his voice. He is the angry one, the contemptuous one. He was easily riled, and he will be quick to strike a blow.

The other is American. This one is more tranquil, but occasionally a red streak of something angry flashes from his eyes, or possibly it is only a mirage, just the glowering gleam from the wood-stove reflecting when he turns his head just so.

It is a small wood-stove in the prisoner’s car. It squats timidly in the corner, so small that it must be constantly fed, and still it does not glow warm enough to completely thaw even one man against the incessant, arctic gusts of cold air that rage through the opened doorway. As these are hard men, and strangers, there is no huddling together for warmth. Instead, the men stand at arms length, swaying stiffly to-and-fro like aquatic life within the unsteady motions of the car. Theirs is a strange dance performed to the steady clatter emitted from steel wheels beneath rough board floors. For added annoyance the occasional steam whistle reverberates within the car’s metallic walls, piercing the men’s ears, forcing them back awake, which is good. To sleep on the train is to die a frozen death.

The men are killing time, cutting cards for the chance to win short turns squatting in the warmth next to the stove. Mitya’s card, a “suicide king,” should have proven a winner, but then the American drew an ace. Despite Mitya’s indignant protestations the undisturbed American brushed past the angry Russian, giving an extra nudge with his shoulder in so doing before taking his attained spot beside what little warmth the stove might muster.

This insolence proves too much for Dmitri Fyodorovich. With suprising speed for such a large man, the Russian slams the American loudly against the tin wall of the car. Face to face the two men scream their rage. The Russian grasps the lapels of the American’s jacket, feeling for his neck, and throat. Undaunted, the American lifts thickly carved thumbnails up to the Russian’s eyes, thrusting them into Mitya’s closed lids. Desperate, a screaming Dmitri Fyodorovich lifts the American, tossing him unceremoniously through the open space where the railroad car’s door had once slid closed. Mitya’s momentum carries him to the doorway’s very edge where he teeters precariously, very nearly following the American into the dark void, an event that would have proven a relief for those lesser men left shivering in the car, had it happened.

... and so, now the Russian stands in the doorway, watching the snowy landscape, and the lowering stars like the eyes of God as they drift past the railcar. There is an inexplicable heaviness within him. He has been sent to a Siberian exile for a murder against Man that he did not commit, but one that he wished to commit all the same, as though God has read his mind all along. And now he has, in fact, committed a murder, so that Man’s punishment is justifiable, while God only watches. The ways of Heaven and Earth are strange, indeed.

Dmitri Fyodorovich is cold. He walks slowly to the place by the stove where the American should be. Mitya’s head is lowered, his mood solemn. He takes the American’s place, backing himself up to the furnace’s small comfort. His eyes wander through the car, taking in each man, wondering who the next challenger for this preferred spot might be, but it was the American who was the strong one. All of these others are weak, and resigned to their stations.

Tomorrow Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov will be a prisoner, a slave in a Siberian mine. After that, he will be in God’s Hell. But for now... well, for now it is enough that he is warm beside the fire.

God’s will be done.

I could not speak Russian very well. Fyodor Pavlovich had been almost patient with me at the beginning, but I noticed as time went on and he began to empty his flask of vodka he was becoming more than a little tired of my mistakes, my tangled grammar and embarrassing pronunciations. I tried to avoid speaking and kept my eyes lowered, feeling a blush spread hotly across my face.

I was not an expert on cards, either, and I had not realised what a quick learner Fyodor was when it came to card playing. He had suggested a game of durak and I had denied, knowing I had no chance at all at that unfamiliar game, and instead had offered to teach him Texas Hold’em, despite my inexperience. We had had three pilot rounds over two hours, and he had won the last two games. Slim wins, but still ... I would have to rely on the amount of alchohol he was drinking, I thought uneasily.

Texas Hold’em is a relatively uncomplicated game, but keeping a card up one’s sleeve is more difficult than one might suppose. The first time Fyodor had tipped his head back to drink, I had clumsily pushed an ace up my sleeve with a horrible feeling of guilt that settled in the pit of my stomach and remained there uncomfortably . But thank goodness for the Russian winter and long coat sleeves!

I felt like gulping down the vodka that sat temptingly beside me in the little flask, myself, but Fyodor was already lifting it and pouring out the last of it into his own glass, his hand a little unsteady. I ought never to have accepted the offer to play cards ... as if I knew anything about them, really. My palms were warm and damp, my knees pressed together to calm myself. Perhaps I shouldn’t have placed such a high sum on the table. A few rubles would have been alright, for the fun of it, but if my father could have seen me gambling away half my inheritance he would have turned in his grave. What kind of fool confidence had siezed me? Whatever it was, it had left me the moment he agreed to play.

I felt Fyodor’s eyes on me. Bleary and unfocused as they were, they frightened me half out of my wits. I couldn’t play with him staring at me that way ... he was turning me into a nervous wreck. I jumped when Smerdyakov came in and placed a bowl of hot soup by my elbow, feeling his presence uncomfortably near; it was as though he were peering right over my shoulder every minute, even when he had gone to stand by the door. I saw him looking at me whenever I turned around, and Fyodor did not ask him to leave.

The game dragged on slowly, frequently interrupted by comments from Fyodor or stories and jokes that I pulled from the back of my mind and tried to translate to Russian, in an miserable attempt to stall the inevitable. I began to wonder how it was that I found myself seated in Fyodor Pavlovich’s kitchen, playing at a game of cards, seeing Smerdyakov grinning disgustingly by the door and scalding my tongue on steaming soup. Drat my sister and her ridiculous notions! Hadn’t she said a few hours before I went to bed that when you whisper something into someone’s ear as they sleep, they dream about it? Of course. She knew that I was in the middle of reading The Brothers Karamazov, that I had read Crime and Punishment.

Perhaps, I began to think in a panic, Perhaps Rodion Romanovich will come in through the door any moment with a ...

“Look!” shrieked Smerdyakov excitedly from the doorway, pointing at the floor below my chair. “An ace slipped out of her coat sleeve!”

“What?” mumbled Fyodor, looking up. “Cheating?” He dropped his cards on the table and tried to stand up, swaying with the effect of the vodka. I couldn’t run out the door with Smerdyakov blocking it. I wanted to stand up and tell him he was a liar, but there was no use. If only he would come towards me, I would have a slim chance of running around him and flying out the door before he could put his hands on me. But it was just a dream. A dream. I would wake up any moment now, in my own bed. I was not a cheat, I never played cards, I didn’t even know what the words Texas Hold’em meant, and I most certainly was not gambling away half of all the money I owned in the world.

* * * * *

I woke up in the cellar, a bruise on my forehead. I think I must have fallen when I attempted to swerve to the side and make a dash for the door and hit my head somehow. I think Smerdyakov must have carried me into the cellar and locked the door, and I think I will be here for a very long time.

I can only hope Fyodor Dostoyevsky bothered to write a happy ending for me.

As I have not read any Dostoevsky, I am not very familiar with his characters. I know you would know if had just taken names from Google, and I would not presume to cheat you in such a vile manner.

Which means just one thing: the card game I am playing can only be Solitaire. And it’s hard to cheat at that. (I’ve tried.)

So where does the cheating come in, you may ask? I guess it’s in the fact that this... not a story, not an essay, certainly not a poem... perhaps a musing?... is only ninety-nine words.

(Bad Rob.)

My short story takes place after “The Christmas Tree and the Wedding,” a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Mr. Dostoevsky’s classic story can be read at https://web.archive.org/web/20161206030457/http://www.classicreader.com/book/2169/1

I stood outside a gorgeous mansion awaiting my host. Julian Mastakovich was a man of money, whom became even richer by marrying a sixteen year old girl with a dowry of five hundred thousand rubles. Fifteen years had passed and the couple was quite well to do, being residents of the giant home I was about to visit. Despite this, Julian Mastakovich’s wife was seen as merely a servant and property to her husband. Believing I could give this woman a better life, I had issued a challenge to Julian Mastakovich for a solo game of Blackjack. I held a bag of gold in my hand which was easily worth at least one million rubles. If Julian Mastakovich won our game, the bag of gold was all his. But if I were to win, he would turn his wife over to me.

After waiting a brief moment, Mrs. Mastakovich answered the door. She was as breathtaking as I had heard. Despite her natural beauty, an emotionless composure stood before me. As she gestured me towards the living room of their home, I thought about how certain I was that I could bring happiness to this lovely woman. All I had to do was defeat Julian Mastakovich.

Once in the living room I took a seat in a chair by a small table, apparently set up for our duel. There were plenty of nice things to observe in the room, but a Christmas tree decorated with the finest gold, silver and bronze ornaments and garland was the standout. As I found myself mesmerized by the tree, Julian Mastakovich himself entered the room. He was a man whom looked well fed and cared for, no doubt by his loyal spouse per her wifely duties. Julian Mastakovich was dressed in a festive suit, and appeared unimpressed by my Tomura Shigaraki T-Shirt and ripped jeans. Nonetheless, Julian Mastakovich grudgingly extended out his hand, and I reciprocated by extending my own hand to shake his.

“Your hand has a stickiness to it.” Julian Mastakovich spoke in a sickened tone, his first words to me since my arrival.

“Oh, my apologies good sir, I ate a chocolate chip cookie on my way here and must not have properly cleaned the surface of my hands.” I responded.

Julian Mastakovich gave me a disgusted glare, and like clockwork Mrs. Mastakovich entered the room with a small basin of water and a towel. She cleaned his hands thoroughly and headed my way. I politely declined her kind gesture, then turned back to Julian Mastakovich, whom was now seated at the other side of the small table.

“Present the gold for your wager.” Julian Mastakovich said. I understood that this man only had me in his presence for my money, and once the game was over I would be quickly dismissed. I didn’t mind, the feeling was mutual. I was going to put Julian Mastakovich in his place and give his wife a real life. I placed the large bag of gold on the middle of the table, then confirmed the terms.

“If you win, the gold is all yours and you never have to see me again.” I stated. “And if I win, your wife is no longer obligated to you, but to me instead.”

Julian Mastakovich nodded his head approvingly, greedily eyeing the bag of gold. I presented my deck of cards to him, then shuffled the deck and dealt us each two cards, per our arrangement one card face up and one face down. He had one ace out and another card that was a mystery to me, and he asked for a hit. He asked for one more after the first hit, then ended his turn with three cards and a triumphant grin. I passed him the deck and observed my visible ten of spades. My hidden card was a ten of clubs. I asked for a hit, and as Julian Mastakovich handed me a card I prepared to compliment the Christmas tree as a distraction. Before I could do this an ace of hearts fell out of my sleeve.

“YOU WORTHLESS PEASANT!” Julian Mastakovich hollered at me. Before he could continue to tear at me with verbal jeers, his eyes went from pure fury to blank emotion.

“I must confess to something else besides my intention to cheat in our game Julian Mastakovich.” I said with relaxed confidence in my voice. “I never ate a cookie on my way here. My hands were coated with a special drug that absorbed into your skin once we shook hands. It is a mind control drug that was developed in my time. You were so focused on my gold and on looking down on me that you didn’t think about how different I look. I am from the future, and I came here to give your wife a better future than the one you had in mind.”

Julian Mastakovich stared at me with his emotionless eyes and expression, nodding his head against his will to acknowledge what I was saying before I continued. “I have some papers here for you to sign. You are going to give Mrs. Mastakovich everything you own. You are free to keep the clothes on your back. I will even let you take my gold. A peasant like myself could make it last a lifetime, someone like yourself I give about a month. How you use it is your call of course. Once the drug wears off, you will remember nothing about me or this transaction. You will only remember that you agreed to these terms, and you will leave your soon to be ex-wife in peace.”

Julian Mastakovich nodded his head again, and signed the papers. He then stood up, preparing to walk out of his now former residence for the last time.

“One more thing Julian Mastakovich.” I said. “Feel free to pack up the Christmas tree and take it with you. It is after all, a lovely tree.”

Julian Mastakovich nodded, then left the room to get the boxes for the tree and its decorations. The now former Mrs. Mastakovich walked in the room, watching her husband pack up the Christmas tree and its beautiful dressings before staggering out the door with the boxes. She looked at me in shock, wondering what had just happened.

I presented the now signed papers to her. “Congratulations Mrs. Mastakovich, your husband has left almost everything to you, and you are now free to live your life however you want to.” I told her as gently and kindly as I could. “There is one more thing I want to tell you. There is a young man whom would love to see you again. You may remember him as a red headed, freckled little boy whom tried to defend you from Julian Mastakovich. He never stopped thinking about you since that day.”

I looked at the young women after telling her this, and tears streamed down her face. They were not sad tears though, as a beautiful beaming smile shone on her face as well. This was likely the first time she had smiled in years. I smiled as well, knowing that I had wagered right. I was indeed able to give this woman a better life than Julian Mastakovich ever did.

If laughter could grasp the stick and lash my buttocks, it would be bearable than seeing myself in your pot of soup.

It was the 11th of September 2016. The cold weather undressed my zip; I could not click sleep. I rolled on the bed as an adolescent. It was too difficult to bear. Listening to my heart, it pumps go and try. It is your night to explore.

Just to unbolt the door, my no-nonsense mother sprouted like the mushroom.

“Where are you going? She said.

I was a dump to reply and empty in my brain of the lies to produce and confuse her innocent alert. Little did I know she was processing my silence in her heart.

She again inquired, “My dear son, how dare you keep quiet on me?”

Mother, I am very sorry. I threw to her a polite apology to pose that all was fine. In my depth of thoughts, I tried to make her let me go. She insisted that it was late.

“Please, do not let my words bother you, my son. I am just concerned. I know why I am saying this, in case of a tomorrow which may come before the sunrise.”

She hid her voice in the idiomatic solitude. I dashed out from the room telling her I am going to be alright. A few minutes later, I found myself at the nearby pub where there are different shapes and sizes. I looked for the type of boob that sized my taste and I tell you it was….

If Jesus is to come that night, I would have been the first to be declared, the wolf of young sex night expert. The journey was just at the brim when I lost my brain and injected my hard disk unprotected. I searched deep and deep my stick of tiger till the snake caught up the rivers gushing forth white porridge.

The night passed. We exchanged contacts to keep the appointment again. Next day, it was night; I tried her number, she linked me up in her place.

"You can come over I am all alone to myself. I miss you a lot." That was Vannessa's voice on the phone call. I hastened as fast as I could. To switch on to the next level as she wanted it so quick, D-More, the father found us on a couch. I froze in thoughts and oozes of sweat. I only received a terrible and awakening slap that reminded me where the door was. I headed away while on underpants only. I thought it was over. Meanwhile, I died slowly of the pain at home to avoid my mother noticing it.

Four months later, I fell sick. My mother was worried about what was wrong with me. The poor widow was scared. She insisted that we should go to see the doctor. I was a bit hesitant. Later, I joined her in the chorus.

“Good afternoon Mrs Namale,” Doctor Chally said.

My mother replied in her solemn and scary voice. She told the doctor, “my son is sick and I want to have him tested for malaria.”

“All right, madam. I will have him tested then, you have to wait outside as I do so.”

“No problem, thank you.”

The blood specimen was taken with a long and painful syringe. I was mad with myself because it has been a while not been at the hospital for any sickness.

An hour later, the lab result was out. The doctor at first told me that there was a problem. Then my inner eyes which were almost dosing on the chair became as bright as if I have just woken up on a bright sunny day. I was eagerly waiting to hear what he had to tell me only to say;

“I am sorry, you are positive.”

Eeeh… Young man, you must be joking. I quarrelled at him then I realised the night I enjoyed myself to hell without protection. My consciousness returned; my guilt of cheating cautioned my integrity. Then, the poor widow lost words. The night fades in with embarrassment.

He hated us all anyway, so why shouldn’t I cheat. That was my stream of consciousness up to the very point Underground Man returned to the living room where we’d been playing Go Fish. We were playing a variation where the winner was the person who put all their cards down first; it didn’t matter who had more ‘books’ or sets of four placed down before the other. I had three aces and three kings. I knew it was very unlikely that he had one of either, given I’d asked him with my previous two questions before, serendipitously, picking up a third ace and third king on my last two goes. As he walked out onto the balcony he was hidden behind heavy, velvet curtains, burgundy… I was hidden also, to him. I scrambled silently to find the fourth ace and king in the deck, before putting both cards on my lap. It would be too conspicuous if he returned to see that I now magically had eight cards instead of six. No, I would place them on my lap and switch them with whatever the next two cards were that I picked up, discreetly, below the table top that restricted his vision.

Why cheat? I was playing with one of misanthropy’s personifications: a man whose self-imposed stoicism was incompatible with his disposition of reflection and sensitivity. If I didn’t cheat, he’d hate me all the same through some lens of fecklessness or pity. Moreover, any pain he had was his own doing and any I dished out would always simply be infused into the petri dish of misery he carried everywhere. Was it not he who simultaneously denied love and inflicted pain onto poor Liza? The young prostitute he’d met, fell in love with before condemning her like a Roman? I still don’t understand why he’d purposefully be so self-destructive… My confusion was even more so then, being fifty-three years ago, before the revolution had spawned.

He returned from the fresh air - then still pre-industrial by and large – with an air of Christ ready to forgive Judas. What right had he! Had he peeked through the impenetrable curtains? Deduced my body language was awry? Perhaps he prophesized that I’d cheat that first instance I grimaced at his mention of ‘lowly man’… He sat down and glanced at the deck, as if to check its composition resembled the same as before. Of course it didn’t and I confessed my sin.

I never learned how to play blackjack or solitare or 21 pick up (22?), and I refused to learn how from Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin; an idiot for short. Out of all the characters to be stuck with, I had to be a table away from an optimist.

Ugh...

I rolled my eyes as he shuffled the cards, smiling slim all the while under the slow swaying blub on a string. It was just a dream, right? Probably one of those Jungian situations where my pessimism drug naive protagonist from the pages of my mind. There was a lesson here, buried within those cards that lacked shapes or numbers, but held pictures of a moon, a sun, the world with little descriptions at towards the bottom. I wasn't happy with any of this.

"Let's have a good game." He cheered with honest eyes...almost made me smile with them too. It was weird how a voice in my head could be so familial.

"Whatever..." I took mine from the top of the pile, placed them one by one in front of me while tilting the edges of the bottoms. Whatever this game was supposed to make me realize hadn't been explained, and maybe there was no lesson at all.

After all, I don't even remember how I got here.

He placed his drawn cards in the same order as I; however, he looked at each with a new focus in his stare. Not of suspicion, but of curiosity.

"I don't understand." He said with a hand under his chin.

"...what?" I swallowed

"Why you can't be honest."

“Alexei Fyodorovich, you promised to tell me what happened if I won!” I spat out the words without attempting to conceal my desperation.

“Did I?” He replied. “You know I’m not much of a card player. There was no need to cheat.”

“I know a lot of things. A hell of a lot more than you.” The fury in my voice was echoed by the trembling cards in my grasp. To calm myself, I laid down the cards and I lifted my beer to take a sip.

“But you don’t know how it ends,” Alexei said, a hint of please in his eyes as he spoke.

“No,” I forced calm into my voice. “No, I don’t. I suppose you won’t tell me now.”

“You assume I was going to tell you if I lost.”

“I had your word.”

“Did you? Did I give you my word? That doesn’t sound like something I would wager on a game of cards. To be honest, that part of the conversation is a little fuzzy in my memory.”

Unfortunately, I could tell he was being sincere. I knew him too well. I knew he would not deceive me, or anyone as such. A sliver of doubt began to grow up within me.

“You don’t remember. Do you?”

I could see the haziness of his memory etched in the furrows on his brow. He clearly understood I spoke of what was before, or rather beyond our earlier conversation.

His eyes dropped to the table. He lowered his cards. Where I had felt anger towards him, I felt now only pity.

“No,” he replied with penitence in his voice. “It is not a matter of remembering.”

“Alright,” I hesitated unable to make my concerns audible. After a moment I said, “Then, what is it a matter of?”

He raised his head and caught my eyes. Instantaneously, his countenance changed. A smile played across his lips. I felt my ire rising again.

“It,” he answered, “it, never happened.”

“But the story just ended,” I blurted out.

“It did.”

“That can’t be all!”

“That was all he wrote.”

“Because he died!”

“Because he died.”

“But here you are, right here, right in front of me. It’s you the story was about, was it not?”

“Among others.”

I pulled my glasses from my face, and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “You must know what happened,” I continued, composed once again.

“Regrettably, my new friend,” Alexei Fyodorovich, stated, “I am not the author of my own story. Dostoevsky is dead, and whatever remained of me and my brothers, whatever there was to be told about us, died with him.”

“So that is it?”

“It is.”

“You have nothing to offer me?”

“Nothing, but the warmth of my silent companionship.”

I sighed and rose from the table.

“Is there any cruelness greater than leaving off the tale before the conclusion?” I whispered under my breath.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Alexei offered with a shrug.

“No.”

“It’s not mine either.”

“I know.”

I stepped away from the table.

“Next time," I told myself, "I’ll meet Konstantin Dmitrich Levin.”

It was February 22, 2014, when it was very cold and I was coming home on a bicycle. On the way I met an unknown man who was very upset and did not look like he is not from this city I went to him and asked him the reason for his trouble, but he remained silent I asked him to come with me. After a while he was ready to go home with me It was cold February and it was dinner time and he was still quiet When I gave him dinner he thanked me and then I asked him m name he said my name is Prince myshkin And then we both started talking to each other. From what he said, it seemed that he was an intelligent and a different thinker Then I asked him if you know how to play cards He said yes then we started playing cards. Despite my best efforts I could not win a single game. So when one game was over I hid some cards and in another game I will use those cards but unfortunately he caught me cheating. He put the cards back on the table and told me to come with him. I went with him. He came out of the house. I also came out of the house with him.He told me that the victory in which you have taken a wrong path is of no use. You will be happy for a while but you will regret it for the rest of your life. Then he left. I tried to stop him but it seemed like the wind blew him away.