A Game with Death

White the train of smoke that followed him as he walked, even preceding by a step or two to mask the footfalls if there were any that his legs set down in trackless step through the wastes around the lone city.  Lone was its lot, for all the other cities had fallen or grown so old to die off as man did in his old age.  Only one needed to prowl the wastes there for there was not enough for him to do let alone two of his kind.  One by one as cities had fallen and the men hiding inside their ramparts departed to kneel before the white-shrouded masters those same masters had gone on their way, guiding men in flocks like sheep deep into the earth by way of easily sloping stairways.  Perhaps the echo that resounded up from below was a stream or a river. Still, many resigned themselves to the thought that the screams from below just distorted and climbed the tunnels until they formed one low wail.

One city stood midst the wastes, grey walls against a bright blue sky, cheery in the heat it rained down and harsh in the lack of rain it tossed out for almost as long as the figure patrolled the edge of sight from those within.  Each soul had seen a speck once or twice and some refused to remember it, infighting over its existence being a key talking point among the trapped men and women, each day finding their sanctuary more and more barred in like a jail.

Those who in a crazed fit never came back.  Those who left confirmed the smoke trail to be very real, and in some ways pleasant for his company.  Waiting would take longer than just one escapee's journey, so the habit he had gained in his absence from the depths he called home was to play a game with those who might linger in his care before being sent on down.  A game of chess at times, yes.  Men and masters were somewhat of a sentimental lot, remembering their fears and little jokes that had been made over the years.  Sometimes baseball, the master fashioning more than mere pawns out of the sand and gravel, but golems to play the pieces and set their art against the gifted pairs that were in thrall to the man, or woman as it might have been.  Basketball, soccer, checkers, poker.  Each had some preference yet the lone figure never seemed to mind or voice an opinion.  Each time he would smile, if that was a face that held his mouth and then begin his preparations, newly exposed white spears glinting in the sun in twice opposed rows like a shark on a good day.  There were no more sharks, just sand.  Then the game, whichever one it might be, and with whatever quirks and rules to fit the players as were needed.  It never took more than a day, and as the sun went down, the defeated would sit, looking up at the alien, almost marble features that still grinned down and find themself accepting their journey down, the newly opened spiral of glinting grey steel inviting to them in a dreadful way.

If the men on the walls watched and listened closely enough, they might have caught a small idea of the sights and sounds that went on out in the desert, yet none were that attentive, preferring to frown and mutter about the state of things inside.  Less water pumped up from the well every day.  Talk was of boring another down on the other side of town, but nobody was exactly sure how to go about starting, so the topic stayed as a black spot on the agendas of those who felt the need to say that they were "in charge" of all the rest of them.  In practice, nobody really bothered to listen to them anyway, so it was pointless in a very necessary way.

When eyes did drift out into the desert, it seemed that it was less to find something out there that was real and more to project silently the own inner turmoil that all the people there secretly shared, yet knew with a certainty that every other person knew what it was like, and so they didn't talk about it.  Time would pass, sunrise and sunset.  Some days a body would be found curled somewhere on the ground and covered with the only other thing besides humans that really lived there.  Flies being ever so happy to nest and land around the squalor that the heat and laziness wrought.  The bodies were dragged up the walls and pushed over, no fanfare about it or anything, no real ceremony.  Nobody thought much about how they disappeared come morning, no trace on the sand of dragging or walking or burrowing.  The last might have been true if there were anything left that burrowed out there.  Grown man and grown women each disappearing one after another until there was but one man left.

He sat on the throne in the hall at the center of the city and thought all day, sleeping in the same place and accruing many aches and pains for his trouble, stone seating being bad for the back and the hips the way it had been designed so many centuries ago.  No name was left him, and the title of king was very vague in his mind, and at some point he had the conscious thought that even the throne he had taken was pure vanity without subjects.  He hadn't taken to the quirk until the second to last man had left, so he wasn't sure how that would have felt either, being king over anyone.  It was around then that the white master came to call, knocking on the door and letting himself in unannounced, giving ever so little of a bow as to seem quaint to both the man and his visitor.  Neither really took it seriously, neither was surprised much at the other's presence there that could be found from their facial features, if they both could be said to have them.  It was a pure acceptance of the type that inevitability looks like on a book cover, books being a thing to last that long in the decay of the land, not in a pristine figure since it all had decayed a little but still there.  It wasn't as it had been for each other soul who passed the white master's way, a challenge and a game to play, even if riddles and the like had certainly been among the games that he had played in his long years.  The old man on the throne sat there and watched as somewhere from the smoke that trailed the white master a thin shiny hand fished out a blank white cube that was tossed him in a lazy arc.  A bow, answered after a moment from the stone throne and the trail of smoke circled around and left.

It was the first and last time the old man had seen the figure, a creature of legend some had said.  He had always accepted the existence of the white masters as a fact, expected to see one when he himself went away like all the others had gone.  Yet he was left with a present and a sense of curiosity that had not been felt in the city since before the rain had stopped.  Moving the cube around, watching its smooth, featureless faces shine a dull reflection in the setting sun that peeked through the open doorway, he chuckled to himself.  Happiness was not what he had expected in the last days, but somehow it seemed right to him.  There was a riddle to answer in the gift and like all the challengers that had faced the lone figure that stood around the city, he felt a smile creep upon his face in anticipation of the game he was about to play.

It was dark, but he let his fingers probe at the cube, run over its semi-smoothed corners, feel the cold surface that never warmed up in his hands.  He did not sleep.  When dawn came, he looked down at his hands and the cube was gone and his hands were white as marble, and dimly reflective just like the lone figure who had brought him the cube.  A white mask stared back at him in his smooth, reflective hands.  He could think of nothing to do but wander out to the wastes, and when he did, passing through the decayed wooden gates and stepping into the sand, a great grey glistening stairwell formed, grains of sand running down the smooth surface before him.  The cloud of white smoke followed him into the depths.