When you’re young, they tell you it takes practice. They tell you not to worry if you lose. They tell you there will be other opportunities. Take chances. No regrets. Be trite when you’re in a corner. When you do finally win, your trainer will tell you to be humble and to expect the rules and the players to change, rotate, and evolve – to become better than you. Because when you do win, when you collect your coins and put them in your front left pocket for everyone to see, you are still just another player in a world of them. And even if the coins glow this bright red color, seen right through your white-collared shirt, most people disregard it, because we’re all hunters. And even if your prize wears the heart-shaped necklace, she’s still up to be won again in the next match. Ask me why we play it at all, and to tell you the truth, I don’t really know. I guess it’s a passionate game. I might explain the rules to you, but you either know them or don’t, and if you do, you know that there are no rules because people keep breaking them, toying with them and me. If I could compare it to anything, I’d say it’s most like hunting deer, except in the woods, everyone has a cloak and a weapon of their choice. Some use their teeth or tongues, some use their arrows, and it’s easy to quit because it always seems like you’re either outnumbered or out-weaponized. I usually forfeit.

I was sitting at the gaming table, wooden and three-legged. The fourth leg was a collection of beer cans piled on top of one another and I thought it awfully funny because I was there when the original leg was ripped off. One of the players lost his temper at the moment his piece went missing. You should never lose your temper. The prize usually asks for the contestant to be removed because one should never show any sign of emotion at the table.

My opponents were scattered, some standing behind me, across from me, or across the room. They were all drinking spirits to loosen their minds. I took my pieces and moved them as carefully as I could. The prize was in the center of the table, sitting there with her legs crossed at the shins and the soles of her feet on the pavement. Sometimes I would glance at her and I could tell she wanted me to win, but didn’t think I could. Didn’t think I had the skill. When I moved one of those ponds forward, she would look at me and frown, shaking her head from left to right and taking sips from her wine glass. My opponents would smile calmly at me, giggling under their breath, and I wanted to hurt them, take one of the shards from my back pocket, broken pieces of previous prizes – the girls. And I wanted to stab my enemies as quickly as possible. And even though I knew that was against the rules, harming another opponent, I wrote under the table with my index finger everyone breaks the rules. As more people entered the gaming room, taking glances at the prize, they would size up all of the players and start their own game.

My adversary at the moment was across from me. She was a girl which was an odd match, but I was forced to accept it. She had her hair down, free and leading to her breasts, and she was awfully pretty, with these blue eyes that would only look at the board or into me. When I say, “into me” I mean that she would stare right into my eyes and I knew she could read all my moves because I wasn’t as experienced as her and I always liked to quit. I remember wondering if she could speak at all because her lips were so thin. She was much faster than me, moving those ponds on the prize’s legs without a second thought. She had already won most of the territories, whereas I had won the rights to manufacture feelings. I don’t know how I had gotten so far in the game, to be honest, because at first I didn’t much care for it. I categorized this particular prize as unattainable, unmanageable, and unreachable. I had accepted that long ago.

And at moments, years before, when it would just be her and I, I would no longer think of her in that implanted objective way. Once, she was sitting on my bed, honestly laying with her head looking towards the ceiling and her shirt low, showing off one of the heavier heart necklaces she kept. The thicker and darker the necklace, the more claimed she had become. I thought she looked so awfully warm, so as she turned her head away from me, I took my hands and took a picture with my index finger. Click. The sound was loud, so I turned my head away from her towards the floor and I could see her gaze fall on me again from the corner of my eye and she said, “What? What’s your deal? Can’t you just say it?” So I pretended that I didn’t hear her and changed the subject. I really didn’t want to be part of the game, I just wanted to keep her for a little while. I didn’t want her to be some shard in a pocket or a tally on the boards.

I took that moving Polaroid and I’d use it as a bookmark. And always at the end of a chapter, I’d look at that moving picture, see her mouth change from a lack of emotion to a smile, as if she had just told a joke to herself, and my stomach would drop a little. I’d close the book and start to make up stories in my own head so I didn’t have to worry about the game.

Then, years later, I noticed the picture went missing and I realized I had been invited to the games, though I never bothered to put a ballot in.

At the end of every match, the prize would come up to me, real close, and take the moving Polaroid out of her jacket pocket, hold it up to her face and say, “You can quit any time, you know. Take the picture and move on.” I’d shake my head and say, “No one likes a quitter.” Talking to the prize outside of the game was technically against the rules, but I felt it was sort of an investment. And though I finally lost, at least I got to keep the picture, a little torn, but mine.