A Desperate Game

You sit down on the park bench, feeling completely drained. Too worn down to even think of tears, you simply sit with your head in your hands. Another trip to the clinic with your wife, another confirmation that the cancer was spreading. You got her home and resting comfortably. She told you to go take a walk, she knows you always feel better after getting some fresh air.

You weigh your options, mulling over everything in your head for what feels like the thousandth time. Your savings were completely drained, and you had taken on more medical debt than you could pay back in a lifetime. Time after time, again and again, nothing worked. The cancer was just too aggressive, it was spreading too quickly. Nothing worked. Nothing ever worked.

One last desperate hope was in front of you, but so far away it would be like trying to swim across the ocean. An experimental procedure in Colorado, with a high success rate of remission, and a price tag of twenty thousand dollars up front.

You shake your head, still bowed into your hands, with a defeated sigh. You had already borrowed from all your friends and family, you had crowdsourced, and you had taken on so much debt. Twenty thousand dollars was impossibly far away.

You make a choked gasp, feeling overcome with the sorrow of it all, but then stop. Still to drained to even cry. Sitting there you do something you thought you would never do. You prayed, with all your heart, and all your conviction you prayed to any god that would listen, that would help you.

“They’re not going to answer”, a man’s voice said from beside you on the bench. You jump up, trying to rapidly regain your composure. You had not heard anyone sit down next to you. Sitting beside you was a goth man. Dressed in all black from his shoes, pants, shirt, and some kind of tailcoat type jacket, his ears and eyebrows were pierced with silver pendants in the shape of strange symbols. He had flaming red hair combed back and hanging down to his neck and his face wore an equally fiery goatee. Around his eyes was black eyeliner, which exaggerated his unusually blue eyes.

“I’m sorry, what?”, you say to the man, still stunned to find him sitting on the bench. He was sprawled casually, one legged crossed over the other, his arms thrown across the back of the bench. How had he managed to get that close to you without you noticing? You were a bit distracted, but not that much!

“Those gods you’re begging to. They’re not going to answer”, he said casually.

“What do you- how did you know- who are you!?” you sputter out, stunned that this man knew exactly what you were just doing.

The man gives you a charming smile, then jumps out of his seat to shake your hand. “Let’s just say I’m someone who cares. That is, at least compared to my fellow divinities. Really, trying to pray to them gets you nowhere.” He lets go of your hand and starts to walk around you and the bench. “The modern gods are so arrogant, requiring constant worship and affirmation. If you don’t worship in the exact way they spelled out, they simply ignore you. Also doesn’t help that most of their followers mangle up what exactly the rules of worship are. Ahh, I miss the old days sometimes. Anyway, what was I talking about?”

He pauses, now having circled back around in front of you. “Right, right, answering your prayer. You need money, right? Fixes all your problems, makes life easier, less stress on you and your partner, yada yada yada. Not the most original of requests I’ll admit, but I don’t judge.” As he finished, he reached into the pocket of his tailcoat and pulled out a little black notebook, offering it out to you.

You reach for it hesitantly, increasingly certain the man in front of you recently escaped a mental health institution. As you touch the notebook, you feel a slight vibration, as if you were touching it while it was on top of an agitating washing machine.

“Now, if you want my help, you have to play along with my games. Personally, I always have fun with them, but those around me tend to have mixed feelings”, the strange man said. He started walking around you again, now spinning a silver tipped cane, which he had not had with him a moment before. “The rules are simple: you look at a person and focus on the image of them in your mind. While doing this you hold your right thumb on the front of that notebook. Say to yourself ‘I accept these terms’ and BOOM! You’re done”, he says tossing the cane up into the air and catching it with a flourish.

The man turned to you and gave the charming smile again. “In return for you participating in my game, every time you do this, you will receive one thousand dollars of legal currency. No worries about if it was stolen from a bank or some other nonsense that you people think up when talking about genies or other wish granters. All perfectly legal, you’ll even receive a tax form at the end of the year. I do try to be full service in my miracles.”

The goth man looked at you with a raised eyebrow, still smiling. “Understand?”, he says to you.

“Well, I- umm- “

“Oh! Right! Silly me, you want to know what precisely makes this a game. You see, what makes this notebook so fun is that it turns chaos into order. The order in this case, is you receiving money; however, you are receiving a lot of money at once, more than the vast majority of people make without putting in significant work. The universe needs to balance out that debt. So, when you focus on the person, you send all the chaotic energy to them. Something good might happen, something bad might happen, or something entirely random, even I don’t know. And I get to sit back and watch you mortals scurry around trying to make sense of it all.”

The man looked at you expectantly again. You start to think about how you can politely walk away from this insane man. People were nearby; if he got dangerous you could just start running and scream for help…

The strange man’s face fell, morphing to exasperation. “You see, this is why I miss the old days. Used to be I could appear around someone, say ‘I’m here to grant your desires’ and we start working out details of the miracle. These days, all you modern humans with your logic and reasoning just can’t handle a proper divine interaction. No, I’m not insane, at least not in the way you’re thinking, no this isn’t for a prank show, nor am I some oddball con artist.”

He put his hand up to his head, looking as if he had a headache. “Ok, I’ll break the rules slightly. Just for you. Sound good? The first round of chaos is on me. Tell me exactly what you want to happen. Though, do me a favor and keep it within reason, huh? Flying pink whales, though a spectacular representation of my divinity does tend to cause panic.”

Once again, he looks at you expectantly. “Uhh”, you say just to play along, “The person finds 500 dollars on the ground.”

“You really are focused on money right now aren’t you? Ah well, like I said, I don’t judge.” He tosses the cane over his shoulder. Oddly enough you do not see it land anywhere behind him. He makes a quick snapping motion. As he does that the vibration of the notebook changes, feeling more like how you imagine touching a beehive would feel.

“Well go on”, says the man, turning towards the park, holding his hand out “pick someone and do as I said.”

You look around the park, and feeling foolish, focus on a woman jogging on a concrete path nearby. Pressing your thumb into the book’s cover you say “I accept these terms.”

You feel a warm gust of wind pick up. Carried by the wind, something green flutters next to you for a moment, before landing in front of the jogging woman. She picks it up, looking stunned. She looks around, and sees you staring at her. She jogs up to you and holds out a five hundred dollar bill. “Did you drop this?”, she asks politely.

“Uh, no, but he might-“, you turn to the goth man, only to find him completely gone. All around you for hundreds of yards the park was flat. No way he could have gotten away that fast!

Looking confused about you spinning around she says, “well, I think it’s my lucky day then!” She smiles at you before jogging off with a spring in her step.

You look down at the book stunned. Dozens of different emotions swirling inside you all at once. Surprise, skepticism, and fear jumping to the surface before being replaced by confusion and hope, then moving to longing, all to have it start over again in just a few seconds.

You open the notebook to see what is inside, only to find a single note scrawled on the first page.

As promised $500 for her and $1000 for you. Try again and see what happens.

You jump as you hear your phone beep with a notification, then nearly faint when you see the message. An alert informing you that Eris Holding Company had just deposited one thousand dollars into your bank account.

You shakily walk out of the park, back onto the sidewalk. That had to be a coincidence, or a prank, or something, right? Regardless of what that man told you, there had to be a logical explanation for this.

You walk up to a red light, waiting for the crossing signal, still holding the black notebook. Your curiosity takes over, you look at a man across the street from you. You focus on him, while placing your thumb on the notebook, and say, “I accept these terms.”

A car screeches through the intersection, running a red light. It hits another car currently crossing, which spins out of control into the man you focused on.

Red.

So much red.

Like an overripe fruit exploding.

You fall to your knees in stunned horror. You just sit there staring, as people jump out of the car. You hear them yelling, but you don’t know what they’re saying. You stare as people pull out cell phones and desperately dial for an ambulance. You stare as people start to administer first aid, you stare until the ambulance arrives, followed by police cars. And you stare as the EMTs load the man into the back of the ambulance, taking off, all while the police sort out the remnants of the crash.

You only come to when the police rouse you, asking for a witness statement. They are gentle, commenting on how you must be shocked. Why are they being gentle? You caused this. You knew the book would cause chaos, good and bad, but you did it. This whole thing was your fault.

Your fault.

The police collect their information and walk away. You open the notebook again, this time with absolute belief and true fear.

Looks like it didn’t go so well that time. Oh well. The book is yours now. Will you use it?

Your phone pings, alerting you to another deposit. You stare off into space. Twenty thousand dollars. Eighteen more people. Some will have good fortune; some will have great pain.

Can you do it?

For your wife, can you avoid it?