Checkmate by Jeanine Skowronski

We have to mark the person with our whole hand. Fingers, palm and thumb. No partials, no halves. No strokes, no smears. If there isn’t a full handprint, Mother Death can’t take them. And if Mother Death can’t take them, there’s hell to pay.

Those are the rules and, for years, I’ve followed them blindly. A stiff pat on the back. A clamp of my fingers, a stamp of my wrist. It’s not as hard — or awful — as it sounds. Most of the people you mark for Death know she’s coming.

But my hands go numb when I see the boy.

He’s sitting on a stone stool, blonde hair backlit by an afternoon sun, eyes greener than the grass at my feet, skin the bronze to my silver. He’s close to my age — at least in appearance. Time works differently in the Black Houses. I look thirteen; I might be a hundred.

The boy studies the chess pieces lining the concrete table. I watch from a park bench as his latest opponent — a middle-aged man in a melba toast suit — fiddles with a captured pawn. The boy’s hand hovers over a white knight. He winds up moving his queen. The man smiles and counters with a black bishop.

“That’s mate,” my mark concedes, but his voice is light and sweet, like spun sugar, and the corners of his mouth point to the sky.

I want to touch him. Just not in the way I’ve been told.

#

We live in the old, Black Houses on the corners of many streets. Their outsides look different to you — a crumbling mansion, a condemned warehouse, a derelict hotel — but, to us, the inside is always the same. I walk hollow hallways with cold floors and cobweb-covered ceilings. I sit in shadowy corners as dust floats on fluorescent light. I peep through cracked, crumbling windows, because Death is everywhere and nowhere at once.

Doom arrives at dawn. He marches into our musty dining room. Glory looks up from her ledger; I stiffen in my seat. 

“Morning, sisters," he says, tossing back the black hood of his long coat. Our family shares the same features: silver skin, ink-blot hair, rust-red lips. But Doom carries the most weight. His chest is perpetually puffed. His biceps are always bulging. His long, thick legs remain hyper-extended.

My oldest brother smells like sulfur and ash and sweat after its dried into your clothes and I always feel a little sick to my stomach when he's near, so I let Glory do the talking. 

"Morning," she says. "What are you doing here?" Doom doesn't like to waste time indoors. 

"Mother sent me," he replies. "With a warning."

“A warning?” Glory sighs. “Don’t tell me Chance marked the wrong person again?”

“No,” Doom coughs. “Chance made his quota.” He jerks his square chin in my direction. “But Destiny came up short.”   

“By one,” I admit before adding a lie. “There was a boy that got away from me.”

Glory waves a hand. “A youth’s mistake,” she says. “Destiny will get him today, I promise.”

“She better,” Doom replies. “You know what happens if that boy avoids the dirt.”

#

I do know what happens. A little. I heard Joy tried to cheat Mother Death. Glory says she only went a few days without side effects and less than a month before disappearing. I don’t want to follow in her footsteps. I swore to Glory, earlier today and long ago, I wouldn’t.

But when I get to the park, the sun is hot and high in the sky and the boy is just as bright and shiny. He catches sight of me and blinks a few times — a common reaction when your kind spots my kind out of the shadows — but his mouth quickly re-curves.    

“Hello,” he says. His voice is a slow drip of honey. “Want to play?”

My heart flip-flops into my stomach and catches in my throat. “No,” I choke. “I mean, maybe tomorrow.”

#

The next morning, I wake up with black marks mottling my arms and my left eye drained of color. I cover up best I can, but Glory gasps as soon as I sit down for breakfast.

“You said he got away from you,” she whispers, pushing back my black hair to expose the white iris.

“Only because I let him,” I admit. “Twice.”

Glory runs her fingers over the dark lines blotting my skin. She smells sweet, but sickly, the core of a rotten apple, the petals of a dried, dead rose. 

“Why?” she asks. “Because he’s young?”

“Not because he’s young,” I say. I’ve marked babes before. They were small and frail. Sometimes blue, sometimes yellow. Screaming or wheezing or all-too-silent. Always in need of mercy, in need of the mark. But this boy … “He’s radiant.”

Glory’s eyes fall to my feet. There are loud footsteps in the hall.

“Hello?” Doom bellows. "Little sisters?"

“Go,” Glory pleads. “Fix this. Now.”

#

I take one, two, three laps around the park before slinking into the bushes behind the boy’s favorite table. I rub my palms together. I flex my fingers. I crack my knuckles, my wrists, my neck, my toes.   

An old woman in a pink visor sidles onto the stool across from the boy. She sets a small analog timer on the concrete slab.   

“Three-minute base time,” the woman says. “Thirty-second increments. You game?”

“I’m game.” The boy nods. He pushes a middle pawn forward two spaces, then taps the gold button on the timer. It’s my move, really, but I keep looking away from the boy’s blush T-shirt, so smooth against his shoulder blades, and toward the moon, which is somehow visible, a heavy white thumbprint pressed against the clear blue sky.

“Ah, you caught me,” the old woman says, exchanging a knight for a pawn. She taps an orthopedic shoe against the pavement as the boy advances his queen. The timer’s red second hand tick-tocks, tick-tocks.

I inch forward and get a full view of the board. White controls the center. The black king is exposed. All the boy needs to do is connect his rooks and the game is won. Instead, he pulls back his bishop and exposes his queen. 

Four moves later, “that’s mate,” he says, extending a hand. “Well done.”

The woman smiles as she shuffles to another table. The boy resets his chess pieces. I think to unfurl my fingers. My mouth opens instead. “You’re good,” I say.

The boy turns and blinks at me again. I toss my hair over my face and pull my sweater sleeves past my fingertips.

“I lose every game,” he chafes.

“Right.” I nod. “Because you let them win. You’re good, you know. Good.”

“Oh,” he laughs. “Good.” He runs his golden fingers through his golden hair. “Like an angel, you mean.”

“Yes,” I say. “And at chess, too, I guess, if you can manage to always lose it. But why throw the games?”

The boy shrugs. “Because losing upsets people.” He looks at the board. I look back at the moon. I wonder if it prefers mornings, if the only reason it shines brightest at nights is because someone commanded so.

The boy motions to the stool. “You must be good, too, if you noticed,” he says. “Want to play today?”

I shake my head, so he starts to pack up his chess set, pawns first, knights next. The black queen falls from the concrete slab and rolls toward my foot. I notice three dark lines climbing my ankle. When I reach for the piece, there are two fingernails missing from my right hand.

“Here,” the boy reaches out to me.

I slip the piece into his palm and wrap my fingers around his wrist. Clamp and stamp, I tell myself, but the boy smells of lemons and there’s warmth, so much warmth, pooling in my toes.

“What’s your name?” he says.

“Destiny,” I say. “What’s yours?”

“Beacon,” the boy replies.

Of course, it is.

#

Glory says if I don’t mark the boy, I’ll start to look like all the death that’s bottled at my fingertips. The ink at my palms — the stores I cannot see — will devour my heart but bloat my belly. Shrivel my skin but fatten my lips. Turn my bones to sausage and my brain to stone. That’s what happened to Joy apparently. She didn’t disappear. She became a monster.

I tell Glory if I do mark the boy, it’s all the same.

My sister pushes her black hair from her eyes. She rubs her temples with a pair of blood-red fingernails. “How long does Destiny have to change her mind?” Glory asks. 

Doom examines his fat fingers. “Two more days at least,” he shrugs. “Five at best. Mother Death is quick and mean.”

So is love, I guess.

#

On that last day, I watch the sun come up. I stare at the blue sky. I smile at the morning moon. I listen to the birds. I wait for Beacon, who comes right after the school bells ring.

“Hello,” I say, once he’s finished placing his chess pieces on the board. “I’d like to play today.”

“Okay,” Beacon nods. He plucks two pieces from a small, wooden case and holds out his fists. “Go ahead,” he prods. “Pick.”

I point to his left hand. He flips his fist and fans out his fingers. A white pawn rocks in the cradle created by his knuckles.

“You’re first,” he says, holding the pawn by its head. I reach for its base. His eyes spot my missing fingernails. They follow the dark lines up my wrist and settle on the gray roots of my once-black hair. “Are you sick?” he asks.

“A little,” I admit. “But that doesn’t mean you should throw the game.” 

"All right." He nods. 

I open with the pawn freshly plucked from his palm. Beacon counters with his knight. “You sure?" he asks. 

“Yes,” I breathe in lemons. I drink up grass. “I promise, I’m fine with losing.”

………………..

Jeanine Skowronski is a writer and journalist based in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in Inc. Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and more. She thinks fires are bad and trees are pretty. 

Twitter: @JeanineSko