The game was called Muggins. Some knew it as Fives. They knew it as Dominoes
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Info
Dominoes
Written by:
Wynths
This tale is an entry into the "The World Kept Turning" canon, which is set in the world of the tale "Quiet Days." The briefest of synopses is that sometime in 2024, magic disappeared from the world, and the SCP Foundation dissolves. The series covers characters reuniting, characters talking, and a general feeling of melancholia that everything is now over, and that the sacrifice is complete.
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1548 words / 7:44
The game was called Muggins. Some knew it as Fives. They knew it as Dominoes.
The little one sat at the head of the fur-covered game table—it excited them then, for it was the only time they'd get to do so—with their feet a couple inches off the ground, and a couple around them. He always washed the dishes, and the dominoes slid so smoothly on the table that it was difficult to believe it wasn't magnetic or magic.
She stacked up the little one's dominoes.1 while She and He held their 10 in hand, smirking as their eyes flitted to make sure the hand wasn't visible to the other.
When they wanted the little one to win, He would wash the dishes in an odd way, making little circles instead of rushing together and pulling apart the dominoes on the table, and one circle would always have Fives. It was theirs. They never learned that He did this, and it was a sign of His skill.
Now, She and He were playing themselves. The kid was merely along for the ride.
She was to go. She ate and pulled a domino from the boneyard.
He played Big Six.
They played Six-Two, and cried that they were only one away from 15.
"So babe, you came home early today."
She played a Six-Four, closing the spinner. 8.
"Yeah, I did."
It was tinged with a sour note. Odd. He played Four-Three and was up 5.
“…Any reason why?” She said.
They played a Big Two. She imagined it was exclusively because it had two two’s, and thus took priority in their little mind. 7.
“Uhm…” He hesitated, She tensed.
She played Big Three. 10.
“I’ll be honest: I don’t know.” He said.
He played Two-Four. He was back on top, and He had found His words just as He circled the paper.
“What do you mean?” She probed.
They ate. They grinned at the domino they had grabbed. It was a Six-Five, they both immediately perceived.
“I mean that the whole f- the whole office had been told to just… leave. At the same time.”
A Five-Three came out onto the Big Three. 9 on the board. Nine wrinkles She had gotten on Her face over the years; they’d never leave, no matter how hard She worked at it.
“What in tarnation?” She was better at censoring Herself than He. The kid laughed at the joke, an old line from a new movie that tickled their fancy.
He played Six-One on the south end, taking the kid’s score for Himself. The kid pouted, and He composed.
“It’s a real mystery. I have not the faintest idea why, that’s the strangest bit.”
The kid played One-Five. They were happy for a second, until they realized that they had scored 14 and not 15.
She hummed. She forced Herself to relax Her face2
She played Six-Five on the north end. A bold, bold move; the board was now 19. All Fives, except a bold east Four.
It was in Her 19th year that they met, He thought.
She was fucking sexy in slacks and the baggy, folding things of the 90's, maybe early 0's. If She had seemed even remotely possible for Him to know, he wouldn't have known Her. He was sure of that.
But they did know each other now; that was the good thing, the thing to be safeguarded. The 19th anniversary had come and gone a few years ago, and they spent it with the kid (how could they not?) and they had sat around and watched the one movie it (it was an it then, He thought) could tolerate being still for 90 minutes for, and then afterwards one of Her flicks was on. A "subdued" 19th anniversary. He thought of it that way as they laid about on the feather couches
But She knew that was bullshit.
"Yeah. Well, that's all I can really say." He immediately realized the mistake.
Two mistakes. The second one was this: He was going to lock the board if He played anything other than Two-Five. But Four-Blank was almost certainly in someone's hand. If the obvious play was then made, the game would almost certainly lock out. For all He knew, no one else had a Five, and it would be a pain to play on one line. He chose to eat.
"Really That's all?" She wanted more.
They played Five-Blank. He was irrationally proud of them then; it was a game, but the fact that the kindergatener'd gotten to the point that they could think far 3 or 4 moves ahead was a veritable victory.
"That's it. What else can I say? I don't know why they shut the place down." It was true. He did not know why they had shut magic down. Yesterday, 19 was a vibrant, pulsating place filled with people and elbow-bumping and door-opening and needle-syringe-pumping. The drugs, the cells, the clipboards, the handcuffs—He thought it would never cease. Today? There was nothing to do.
She thought for a moment, and took it with faith. "Oh-kay. You're getting some sort of severance, right? Or whatever the bonus, I forget its name."
She played Blank-One and got a bonus of 15.
"Oh, of course. Enough so that we could spoil ourself for the rest of our lives and not run through it all." He smiled as He said it. That was most definitely true. Magic was dead; the evidence of the Foundation would soon go. There was no reason not to eat while you still could, maybe add to the boneyard while you did.
He played Big Five on the south. 20.
The kid perked up. "Spoil? But Papa said you can't spoil!" It was said quickly, an attempt to cast away any potential doubt that they agreed with the idea of spoiling aside. Damage control.
They played a One-Three. 22.
"No, no, Papa didn't say he's going to spoil us! He just means that He can get even more time to play with us now. Right?" She bored into him with the question, and She knew it. Money wasn't the issue. Them not being able to play a fucking game of Dominoes sometimes because of His schedule.
She played Five-Two on the Big Five. 14. A crisis, a bomb of points, is in the process of being averted.
"Oh, right! Of course I would never spoil! You know that's bad, right?" He said. "Yea'!" The kid answered enthusiastically. Good.3
He played Blank-Four. 10. It was fully defused now, He thought. Of course, he'd managed to get something for himself4. He always would.
The kid smiled.
They played Six-Three. They must have picked it up along the way. 185.
"But you have more time now, right? You can…" She said it disbelievingly. That was odd; there was nothing to doubt.
She played Two-One. It's a small step down on the board, but that single line. That line, knowing that they could play and would not be interrupted by a beeping in His coat6… 17.
"Yeah. I can play Dominoes." O5-8 responded.
The Overseer's hand shook as He said it. It took everything he had to lay down the Blank-Three with anything, anything, instead of tears.7 It was a 20. Perfect. They had gotten through it in a perfect way.
The kid pouted.
"Can I go now? I can't win now."
It was a little more pouty than She and He would have liked, but it was fine. The kid was excused.8
It was them now. A little time for the Ma' and the Pa' once the kid went to bed.
Nah, more than that. It was more than just some hours spent together, supporting the other in bodyweight and hope as she and he spoke. It was…
…A lot more…
It was enough time that he could get out the miter saw and see if he could get that wooden domino set he had always wanted to make done. Enough time that he could go through some movies—for once9—with her. Enough time that—
—"It's really over. I can finally tell you what I do for work."
"What was it?" She was ready to hear it. She had been ready for as long as he'd been working, he figured.
Good.
"It was for an organization known as the Foundation."