The White Queen - Part 04

The White Queen covered up the red counter, sighing.
" So many of them falling at the first hurdle. I'm going to have to think of a harder game."
Presto rolled the dice. Straight after this game, they were leaving. They were definitely leaving.
Straight after this.

Hank peered off into the distance. He could just about make Eric out at the other side of... what was he standing on? A giant game board? The side of the board separating him from the still foetal Eric appeared to be split into areas of different colours, and wound off to the right after Eric's corner. The coloured areas were further split, and some of them had plastic buildings on them. Hank looked down at where he was standing. He was also on a corner, standing on a large square, marked with the word GO and an arrow pointing at Eric. Hank looked at the first rectangle. It was brown, and had no buildings, and was marked "There's That Rich Kid". Hank shrugged to himself and, since there was no other way to get to Eric, stepped forward.

He found himself back on Earth, on a sunny day, on a street next to a park. He remembered the park from his childhood. He had played there sometimes with other boys. There were a couple of basketball courts there, and room to play baseball. He breathed in deeply, enjoying the scent of mown grass and hot tarmac, and walked on. There was a bit of a scuffle going on between a few kids the other side of the street. Just a bit of rough and tumble. No need to intervene. He watched as a smaller boy broke free of the skirmish and started to sprint off. The rest of the group, all much bigger boys, stood up and began to chase the little kid. OK. Maybe there was a bit of bullying going on. But there was no need to get involved. One of the bullies made a grab at the younger boy, who twisted out of his grasp expertly and changed tack, now running full pelt at Hank.
" Mister!" yelled the little kid, "Hey, Mister!"
Damn. Junior wanted him to help. No wonder, he couldn't have been more than seven and the four boys chasing had to be at least ten. He'd never be able to fight them. He should help. But he really, really didn't want to. Did he have something against that kid?
The biggest bully made a tackle at the little boy's legs. The black haired kid went down, but looked up at Hank with furious dark eyes as the other boys piled onto him.
" Why won't you help me?"
Hank turned his head and walked on.

He was back on the board.
" Woah."
That had been pretty trippy. He knew Eric had been bullied at various points in his childhood. Legend had it that he and Presto had met whilst being simultaneously pummelled behind the gym. He looked down at the next rectangle. It was called "Get His Shoes". He had a feeling that his journey over to Eric's corner wasn't going to be particularly pleasant. And he didn't like the look of all the little buildings cluttering up the last space. He decided to run.

Most of them were more bullying sessions, only broken up the once by a ten year old Eric being told over dinner that the dog was dead and to finish his greens. Hank teetered a little at the last rectangle before Eric's square. The first buildings. He wondered what they meant. Hank took a breath and stepped in.

A gallery running along the top of a large lobby. All oak and thick carpets. Eric's house. It was night. There was shouting. He knew straight off what this was, and why he shouldn't be there. The twelve year old boy crouched in pyjamas near the top of the stairs hadn't noticed him, though. He was just hiding, and listening as his parents screamed at each other downstairs. Hank walked along the gallery swiftly and steadily. The woman had a coat on, and several bags. Both adults were clearly drunk.
" So that's it?" yelled the man, "You're walking out on your husband? Your only child?"
" Don't you use that fucking kid on me, Charles!" snapped the woman. "I am finally going to do something for myself and nobody is going to stop me!"
" But why? Why are you doing this? You never wanted for anything!"
The woman opened the door and looked at her husband.
" I wanted for love. And there isn't any in this house." She smiled a tight smile. A taxi pulled up beyond the opened door. "I hate this life. That's why I'm leaving."
And with that, the door slammed shut and the taxi sped away, and there was no noise save a soft sobbing from the gallery. The man stood, still and alone, in the lobby, watching the closed door. Finally, a child's voice spoke quietly.
" ...Dad...?"
" Good night, Eric." The man didn't turn, didn't even stir.
" She didn't even say goodbye..."
" I said, Good night, Eric."
The boy didn't go to bed. But he didn't bother his father, either. He sat in the gallery, and failed completely in his efforts not to cry, but at least did so quietly.

Hank found himself in Eric's square. He was still lying, curled up in a corner. He was shivering and sweating at the same time behind the shadow bars which made a little corridor around the outside of the square in which Hank could get to the rest of the board without disturbing Eric. There was writing on Eric's corner of the square which read "In Hell". The writing on Hank's walkway read "Just Visiting". Hank shuddered and reached through the bars towards Eric. He stopped, a little short of touching the other youth and shaking him out of his nightmares. His hand still extended, he gazed off at the next line of spaces. He could make out a couple of markings that suggested times from the first voyage into the Realm. There was another big cluster of buildings near the next corner. The last one looked kinda... shiny. Like there was something on it. Something good. He remembered what the caterpillar had said about his prize. He had won, after all. What had he won? He looked back down at Eric. Well, it wasn't like he was going anywhere. He'd only be a minute...
He sprinted off down the other side, passing a little more bullying and isolation, and then... the Realm. Exhaustion, fear, hunger, ridicule... juvenile stirrings for Diana unkindly brushed off, terrible pangs of jealousy of... Oh! Of him. Well, of course Eric had been jealous of him. Hank stopped, looking down at a rectangle with a lot of buildings on it. It had hotels. He read the marking. "I'm Only Fourteen". For some reason, Hank really, really didn't like the look of it. The one after that was the shiny one. The prize one. It had three hotels and a skyscraper on it! It was called "That Was A Very Stupid Thing Which You Did". Sounded like fun. He took a small step back and leaped over "I'm Only Fourteen".

He landed in a swamp, in the Realm.
" That was a very stupid thing which you did."
Hank jumped aside to see Dungeon Master, standing behind him. He was not addressing Hank, who he didn't seem to be aware of, but what appeared to be an animated patch of mud. The mud reached two arms up and scraped the filth away from its eyes. It was Eric, sitting propped up in the swamp's mire.
" I know, OK?"
The Dungeon Master stepped towards the muddied Eric a little. There was something in the DM's eyes that gave Hank the jitters. A seriousness he'd only seen a few times before - when No-Name had showed up, when they'd put real thought into killing the villain they later discovered to be the old man's son, and when he was dying. And then... there was something in Eric's expression that was all out of place, too. The freaked look! That look he thought had only started after the burn! There it was! There it was!
" If I hadn't arrived when I did..." started DM.
" I said I know." Eric was feeling around in the mud for something. He retrieved his breastplate and shook the worst of the muck off it. Why wasn't he wearing that?
Dungeon Master also stooped to grope in the swamp.
" You made a promise that you had no intention of keeping," said the old man, pulling the boy's shield out of the swamp with a slurp, "it was certain to come back to haunt you."
The mud-creature stood up. "I said I KNOW!!!"
The Dungeon Master was as taken aback by Eric's sudden fit of rage as Hank, and allowed the boy to snatch the shield off him. Eric stormed off a couple of paces, then turned back on the mystical midget, furiously.
" So, what? You think I deserved that, then?"
DM looked up at him, sadly.
" Of course not. You're a child."
Eric leaned his back against a tree. "Yeah. Well I told her that. It didn't seem to make much difference to her."
The old man nodded.
" There are some people in this world who see other people not as people, but as commodities. Possessions to use as they see fit."
" Y'don't say," growled Mudboy, "we got people like that in my world too."
" You have a word for what they do," said the old man, softly, "what she tried to do."
There was another horrible pause. Hank watched the two others stare one another out.
" Do you want to say it?" asked the Dungeon Master.
Eric said nothing.
" Do you want me to say it?"
" What good would that do?"
" It will prepare you for when you tell the others."
Eric just looked at the Dungeon Master, aghast.
" You have to tell the others."
" No!" Eric turned, and started marching off, still scraping mud out of his hair.
" It will help you!" called the Dungeon Master after him.
Eric span around again.
" How? How will it help? It won't change what happened, or what didn't happen. You're the only one who could stop it and you did, so thank you, and now I really must be going."
Jesus! Hank looked between the two of them, both as serious as they could get. What the fuck happened here?
" You should tell them!"
" Tell who?" Eric spread his arms out wide, as if addressing the whole world. "Who should I tell? The girls? No way, DM. And Bobby and Presto are both too young, they shouldn't know this sorta thing even goes on."
Eric clapped his arms to his side, sighing.
Hank, unseen, took a step towards him.
" You're forgetting me, Eric. I was the leader. Whatever it is, you can tell me!"
" There's always the Ranger," interjected the Dungeon Master.
" I know. There's always Hank." The bitterness in Eric's voice was blatant.
" Couldn't you confide in him?"
Eric smiled sadly, biting his lip.
" I'd rather die." And he meant it.
Hank stepped back, hurt, and amazed at being so hurt. But he'd been so approachable!
" I'd rather die..." sighed the boy again, "I'd rather die..."
A dizziness seemed to take Eric, and Hank watched him stumble to his knees, catching himself with the palms of his hands. He should help pick him up again. Poor kid. He was only, what... fourteen? Watching the scene just brought home how young they'd all been.
But he didn't help. He stood and watched as two extraordinary things happened in close succession. The first was that the Dungeon Master walked up to Eric, wrapped his long, simian arms around the kid's shoulders and held him, tightly and sadly, pushing his face against the boy's cheek and stroking his hair. The second was that, almost simultaneously, Eric broke. Really broke. Not with the soft, free, child's tears of two years before. There was something disturbingly adult about the way he cried. As if everything was coming out in an unmanageable lump. Hank winced back. It wasn't as if he didn't remember what it was like to cry like that - his own first 48 hours back on Earth had largely been spent red-eyed and trembling in a darkened corner of his locked bedroom - it was that it was Eric. Eric, who always complained and sniped and used unkind humour precisely for the purpose of side-stepping getting like... like that. No matter how frustrated, or sad, or hurt he'd get, he'd barely ever admitted weakness to the others, and never once shed a tear. After he'd been burnt, Hank had believed him to be unbreakable. But here he was, only a few months into the Realm, from what Hank could tell, and he'd gone.
" Please..." sobbed Eric into the old man's long, white hair, "please, let me go..."
" Let me go?" echoed Hank, incredulously. He'd gone first! He'd broken before anybody else, and then he'd have the nerve to tease Sheila and Bobby for crying sometimes!
" I'll be good... I've learned my lesson... I can be a good person... just please, please let me go."
DM just held him and rocked him and whispered "ssshhh..."
" But you're not going to, are you?"
" ssshhh."
Eric's sobs were beginning to calm down already. "Tell me why. Why us? Why me?"
" ssshhh."
" Why me? Why me? What do you want?"
" ssshh."
" How many pupils have you got through already, DM? And when you get what you're after, what'll you send back? Because it sure as Hell won't be six kids."
DM said nothing, didn't even hush him. He just looked out at the swamp, sadly.
" She said I wasn't a child any more. And I'm not, am I? I don't know what I am."
Eric pulled out of the hug, wiping the last of the tears from his eyes.
" What are we? What strange creatures have you turned us into?"
The Dungeon Master produced a handkerchief from nowhere and wiped a phlegmmy teardrop from Eric's nose.
" You are my children."
The boy eyed the old man. "Terrific." He pushed himself back up onto his feet. "We'll all end up looking like you."
Eric smiled a little, finding that self-mocking curl in the corner of his mouth, the one he used so much nowadays.
" Needless to say, Your Shortness, none of this ever happened. I ran off, I got lost, I fell over. That's all. And you were never here."
DM sighed. "As you wish, Cavalier."
The show was over.

Hank stepped back a little, then turned and strode out into the trees. He should be back on the board any second... any second now...
But still he was in the swamp. He shook his head, sighing.
" C'mon, Eric, where's the exit?"
He smiled to himself, and added, maliciously "Ya whiny little cry-baby..."
A flash of golden light whizzed past his eyes. He managed to control his shocked stumble backwards and rolled onto one knee, his hands groping behind his back fruitlessly. Shouldn't he have a weapon? He was sure he had...
There were running footprints in the mud. Somebody was coming, and fast, and where the fuck were his weapons? Oh well, he guessed fists were just going to have to do.
He launched himself at the approaching youth, managing to get in a blow to the abdomen. The other, slightly shorter young man exhaled harshly through clenched teeth, but came nowhere near folding as Hank had expected him to. The guy had good muscles, mind... quick reflexes, too, thought Hank as the other guy managed to grab the fist flying towards his face and pin him against a tree trunk. Hank struggled against the hands that held him against the tree. He knew the backs of those hands.
" No..." Hank wasn't entirely sure who had said that, with such intrepidation in his voice.
The blue eyes met his, gazing up through the thick blond fringe furiously.
Oh for fuck's sake!
" Who are you?" demanded the teenager, angrily.
Hank didn't answer. The kid pushed him against the tree harder and Hank could only wonder at how strong he had been, and how out of shape he had become.
" Who the Heck are you?!?" asked the kid again.
Oooh! A four letter word! You must have got him super mad!
" You really want me to answer?" replied Hank, "You haven't seen a mirror lately or somethin'?"
The kid's mouth formed a snarl briefly, then composed itself.
" Don't you dare," he said, quietly. "This is some sort of trick, isn't it?"
Quite. This wasn't right at all. This hadn't happened. If it had, there was no way that Hank would have forgotten. Meeting a messed-up, burnt out, cynical bastard version of your future self is the sort of thing a guy would at least make a note of in his journal. Besides, what was he doing without the others?
" What are you doing here?" he asked the boy.
The younger Ranger pushed himself away from Hank, his hand still on his bow.
" I heard someone crying. Thought they might need help."
Hank snorted a short laugh. "Oh. Don't worry. It was only Eric."
The boy's hands tightened around his bow.
" What did you do to him?"
Hank just laughed again, incredulously. Talk about the Last Boy Scout! His laughter was stopped short, however, when he found himself looking at the point of a shining arrow glowing in his own bow, his own fresh young face darkened with a surprising rage.
" What did you do?"
" I didn't do anything. I don't even know for sure what happened, but he'll be fine. DM's with him."
The boy lowered his weapon.
" Jesus, chill out, kid," sighed Hank, "it's not as if he'd accept your help. It's not even as if you like the guy."
" That's not the point," growled the youngster. "I shouldn't'a left him like that. They're all my responsibility. So if one of them gets hurt..."
" But you don't deny it," interrupted Hank.
The kid stopped short, looking up at Hank, shocked, his lips moving silently as he searched for an acceptable answer.
" It's OK, Hanky Boy," shrugged Hank, "it's OK to admit you don't like someone. You're only human. Just like it's OK to admit you do like someone." He gave his younger self a small smile.
But the boy was shaking his head, grimacing, and backing away.
" I don't know who you are," he spat, "but you are not me. You're malicious and hateful and... and weak. I'll never be like that. You're disgusting. You're nothing!"
He's right, you know. If you ever let Hank talk to you, instead of Eric, you'd never hear the end of this...
Hank could feel the darkness begin to fall around him. Fighting it, he stepped towards the boy.
" Kid! I'm you!"
You're not.
" You're not!" The boy grabbed Hank by the throat, and Hank could see into his eyes, deep deep down into the void of his pupils and he could see there that he was indeed no longer Hank.
" Stay away from my friends." The kid pushed Hank back, sending him flying into the mud. The teenager turned to walk away, then stopped and pointed at him. "And, so help me, stay the Heck away from Sheila."
Sheila. Sheila. Red. The boy was walking away and the blackness was coming in. Sheila. He had lost Sheila. But worst of all, he'd had Sheila. He had turned into a monster, and the monster had touched his darling girl. Stay the Heck away from Sheila. The monster had touched her, taken her virginity, cheated on her, yelled at her, shot at her, made her cry. Made her this defensive creature. Made her this murderer.
Darkness took over, and time came to a stop.

The White Queen covered the board with the boot and the chess piece with a piece of cloth.
" Endgame," she grinned, passing the dice to Presto.
Presto frowned, and put the dice on the table.
" I don't want to play."
The White Queen leaned over the table and picked the dice back up again, pressing them into Presto's hands.
" Play!"
" I don't want to." He picked the pen top up off the middle board. "You win."
The girl blinked in confusion. "So, you... you forfeit?"
" Yes."
She looked up and grinned at him. "The forfeit is, we play again!"
Presto stood up so suddenly that his chair toppled over behind him.
" No!" He threw the pen top across the dusty room. "We're leaving!"
The Queen folded her arms. "What do you mean, 'we'? I'm not going anywhere!"
" I meant me and my friends."
The girl just stared at him curiously, her head cocked to one side.
" But there's nobody left here except you and me."
Presto backed away from the table slightly. Everything was so confused!
" You've got them... you've got them, somewhere."
" Silly!" smiled the girl. "They've been playing in this room with us."
" ...silly..." echoed Presto.
" But they lost. Don't you remember?"
He could see them now. Oh God! Oh God! How had he not seen them before? They were still sitting in their original places around the board, slumped back, glazed eyes staring at the ceiling. Their throats cut. They had been dead for hours.
" Don't you remember?"
He'd seen her do it, one by one. Eric, then Sheila, then Bobby, then Diana, then Hank. He'd sat there and moved a pen round and round in a circle and watched her kill them all.
" Don't you remember?"
Of course he remembered! Sitting there helplessly as she went around them with Sheila's knife, pulling their heads back as the gashes opened up across their necks and blood pooled thickly on the table. He remembered. Oh God... Oh God... Oh...

"Time to wake up, now, Arthur."
Arthur sat up in his bed, gasping. The sun shining through his thin curtains turned everything in his room a strange shade of blue. Besides that, he couldn't see much. He fumbled for his glasses. There was that sharp smell again! He knew that was all wrong.
" Oh dear," came the kindly voice, "another nightmare, was it?"
Arthur put his glasses on and looked down at the wet patch at his crotch. That explained the smell.
" Oh no."
" Don't you worry, Arthur," said the elderly male nurse, "we'll get you washed up good as new."
Arthur let the diminutive old man guide him out of bed. But something wasn't right.
" You're not a nurse."
The nurse sighed. "Not this again." He helped Arthur out of his wet nightclothes. "Now, you know that I'm a nurse, and I'm very much alive. I am not some sort of powerful, immortal mystic. And neither are you. You are an ordinary young man with terrible delusions, but no magical powers, I'm afraid. And as soon as you can come to realise that, you'll stop having these dreams, and as soon as that happens, you'll stop having so many little accidents."
" You were dead. Everybody was dead. I had all this power and there was nothing I could do."
" What do you mean, 'everybody'?" The elderly nurse passed Arthur his dressing gown, although he was too short to put it on him.
" My friends." Arthur pulled the dressing gown on. "I had these friends..."
The nurse unlocked his door and opened it.
" You remember where the bathroom is?"
Arthur nodded, but the nurse led him through anyway while he talked.
" You still have your friends, Arthur. But they're adventurers of a different kind. They're on a voyage towards good health..."
The tall nurse, in his state of distraction, almost bumped into Arthur. Arthur recoiled. He didn't like that nurse, even though he knew deep down he was only there to help. As the tall nurse turned to face them, Arthur saw the other man in his grasp. He recognised that look on Eric's face, that dull-eyed, lethargic complacency. Morphine.
" Is there a problem, Sonny?" asked the short nurse.
" It's under control," replied Sonny. "It just seems that somebody can't be trusted to use a fork any more."
Arthur only spotted the bloodied bandages on Eric's forearms seconds before the tall nurse turned and led the other youth away.
" You remember them?" asked the older nurse as he ushered Arthur towards the bathroom, "who they really are?"
Arthur nodded. "That was Eric. He hurts himself. And there's Sheila, she's a Kleptomaniac. There's some aggressive Manic Depressive kid called Bob, a guy called Hank, who has split personalities and... Episodes. Psychotic Episodes. There's a British girl who just plays games all day... Alice. And Diana. She's delusional. She thinks she's some sorta Superhuman."
" Like you do."
Arthur said nothing.
" Can you tell me who you are?" asked the nurse, unlocking the bathroom, "do you remember?"
The nurse opened the bathroom door, and Arthur caught sight of himself in the dingy mirror. A gangly, geeky dark haired young man with bad teeth and worried eyes behind thick glasses.
" Yeah. I remember. I used to live at number 42, Summer Street. I was an average kid in an average house living an average life and I hated it. I tried my hand at being a performer, but I sucked. So I started dabbling with the Occult, when I was about thirteen. That's when the delusions started. First that I could perform real magic, then that started to mingle with a recurring dream about a fantasy Realm. I began to believe I was the most powerful Wizard in that world, and that I was on some sorta... Quest. When I got brought here, I made the other inmates and the nurses part of the Quest too."
The nurse began to run him a bath.
" Very good. But what about your name?"
Arthur thought for a moment.
" Arthur. Arthur Greene. But everybody calls me Presto."
" No they do not, Arthur," sighed the nurse, "we don't want any magical names here. You are not Presto, you are not The Magician or The Wizard or The Dungeon Master, whatever that is. You are Arthur Greene, and you are an ordinary, if very ill, young man. You have no powers."
The nurse tugged Arthur's robe off him, leaving him naked.
" You have no powers, Arthur."