I hope it snows soon.

An old man stands by the entrance. The cigarette between his fingers is slowly falling apart. As it becomes shorter and shorter so do the breaks he takes between each drag. He senses the approaching end. The doors slide open, close. Nameless, faceless, strangers leave and enter without much time between the two. The only difference is when they leave their arms are laden with plastic sacks straining to contain their bulging insides, the repeating logo printed on the bag expanded past recognition. They turn away from the old man. He calls to them. But they pretend not to hear. They’re engrossed in the glowing screens before them, or a tassel hanging from their hat -recently dragged out of a musky closet- or maybe just a thought suddenly occurring to them, conveniently. Things are much too loud for them to hear the man’s insistent crackling voice. Much too loud on this muted, muffled night. Cars swoosh past on a nearby highway, surpassing the speed limit. The neon sign buzzes overhead trying to push back the suffocating darkness. Empty straw nests are nestled in its nooks. Casting shadows through the twigs every time the middle letter shorts, and restarts, giant abandoned homes of winged creatures expand on the walls -a clearer signal of what the store offers then the glowing name. The display is distorted by white blobs that float through the air lazily drifting before settling to the ground, forming numerous piles and shapes all instantly mingling with the dirty slush. The fresh white will soon be stained brown like the layers underneath it. Old and new mingling in the worst way. The air inside the car is changing. Slowly the warmth that radiated from the vents is being leeched away by the creeping cold. The fight is weighted heavily in favor of the cold as it sinks into the steering wheel. The inside of the car is quite a contrast to the snowy soft outside. Sharp corners. Hard plastic. Seats that skin sticks to. Consciously cleaned, specifically stylized. No place for the light snow, or the sneaking cold. Suddenly the old man realizes he is being watched. His head swerves and his eyes meet mine through the fogging glass. The dashboard almost shatters under his sharp gaze. His stare shoots through me like a bullet and my thoughts scatter like my insides would. After a moment I realize he doesn't really see me. At least not clearly. Like the drifting white all around I am not quite solid to him. I am not yet a pile of slush slowly becoming dirty sludge. I float; an unrecognizable shape, avoiding the sharp corners and the sticky seat, soon to be melted by heat that will escape the vent when a key sparks the ignition.

Cards of Darkness and strategy games

The natives were of no concern to me. As they were not real. My only goal was to win the game. At first I wondered if there was a trick – a secret to beating the game. I thought through strategies. I thought Mr. Lindsey likes video games. In video games if you choose the nice options like not harvesting ‘Little Sisters’ for the maximum amount of eve in Bioshock 2 and instead having them thank you and crawl away giving you less eve therefore less chances of upgrading your skills, good things happen. Like your daughter doesn’t kill you in cold blood. Or if you don’t steal random things or kill many people in Fall Out 3 you get good Karma which helps in numerous ways even if you have to run from scavengers instead of giving them what they deserve. But then I realized this was not a video game. These were cards. Mr. Lindsay made this up over Christmas. There is no way that much time spent near relatives in close inescapable quarters would lead anyone to create a game that encourages a true and honest path. So that’s when my team and I got to work. We pressed the natives from the get go. We realized there was no way for us to get resources without using force. We took our chances with the Native Relations pile and we used our ammo unsparingly. We fell into a lulling routine. Quickly gaining and losing our resources and tainting our native relations pile with clubs. We were power hungry. We wanted those diamond cards. Much like Romeo portrayed by Leonardo Dicaprio in the death scene of the 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet we had nothing left to lose.

Except our ammo. And when we were out of ammo; we had our precious diamonds taken from us. One by one our beautiful resources pile was diminished. It was painful. Each Diamond card removed from the deck to satisfy angry natives or recover from rainy weather was unwillingly given up. Shaky hands replaced the resources back in the hands of the now livid natives. And almost at the end of our second to last round was when I had my realization.

this was my face after the realization

IT WAS ALL CHANCE. Dang it. There was no strategy. Even if you had the worst strategy in the world if your weather was great and your natives were happy (even if you had been mean to them) you would win. THE ONLY THING YOU NEEDED TO WIN THE GAME WAS GOOD LUCK. (Or a cheater’s shuffle who knows – I mean I’m not pointing fingers at any other teams but…) 

I realize I got a bit caught up in the game. I wanted to win. I wanted resources.
I thought a while. Would I really act like this if put in a real life situation similar to it? And the answer was no. I could never threaten another person for no reason. Just like I could never actually skin and kill an animal like I was forced to do in Far Cry 3 to survive. Or if I was faced with zombies like I was in Left 4 Dead? I would be alone in a bathtub crying while the AI fought the zombies eventually leaving me alone as they were killed off one by one. And then I would die - because I would probably startle a witch. 

this is how cool we looked

It's important for me to remember it was just a game. I acted like a horrible person. We did get a hella rad amount of resources though. If it had been real? And I was a stone cold witch? I would say we did a pretty good job.