Infinite Games

16. Phosphenes

"Kill me!" the fallen soldier screamed through the dust and dirt up to the heavens.

"Kill me!" the beaten wife glared at her husband.

"Kill me!" a deranged inmate spat at a prison guard.

Then, a pause. A single moment of calm...

Before I watched them all die. A shot rang out on the battlefield. The husband threw his wife down the stairs. A maddened, spit-faced officer got the inmate in a chokehold, and squeezed a little too long.

I felt the shot hit my heart and tear out my other side. The stairs rammed into my back and the bones in my neck could be heard crunching as I tumbled. My vision distorted with black spots, filled with red, and left me in total darkness.

Only one thing remained with me there: the voices.

Kill me. Kill me! Kill me!!!

They surrounded me and chanted the words over and over. Yet no one was there.

I could not bear it any further, so I replied, "You shall all die!"

But that did not quench them.

What is it like on the other side? They asked.

Is it wonderful? Is it dark?

I could not speak further. I could not reveal what lay beyond. Should I?

But then came the light. Demimonde again. I rested in my Game Master chair and could look out upon the players. The players whom had died deaths that may be worse than those I had so far witnessed. More deaths played in the background of my mind like the banners that run during a newscast.

"Lord," I said, turning towards the golden, brawny ruler I was now equal to.

Did he experience the same torture to achieve his spot, I wondered. Was I the only one who kept hearing the unending voices in my mind, begging for a mercy they did not begin to comprehend? Could I speak to them, and tell them how foolish and how dull their death would be on the other side?

"Speak," he said, reflective eyes focused on spinning the bingo ball cage around until a yellow ball dropped from below.

I watched the ball roll along the track, and stop against the collection barrier. The number was...

"B one," I announced. "Lord, did you ever-"

"O four," he said in haste, spinning the cage of frothing yellow balls faster to avoid my question.

"-ever hear voices?"

"B fifteen," he said.

"Did you ever?" I said as another ball rolled out. But it was my turn to announce: "N twelve."

"Elder one," my fellow Game Master murmured, metallic features crinkling into a sneer. "I do not care what you say you hear --G eighty-- for I am not to bear your burden. You are the human plight, and I am the final executioner--"

"You? But what about bingo?!? I thought that determined --N forty-- who is chosen to die. I saw what happens when someone wins. I-I won once..."

"Demimonde is not the only way --B thirty-- to kill," he replied. "Bingo is, in many ways, very ineffective for a large mortal population. Other ways have been devised to tend to the deaths of the living."

"Other ways?" I frowned, "So Demimonde... isn't the only place..."

"Bingo!" an angel shouted in delight.