Tic-tac-toe and Tequila at Sunset by Ryan Cole

Who ever said death had to be so bad?

            Dalton was perfectly fine here, thank you very much. Being caught in the in-between of life and rebirth gave him all the time he needed to do what he enjoyed—watering the front lawn, trimming the azalea bushes, sipping on a glass of Casamigos at sunset while the purple-golden clouds of the Beyond stretched in front of him, beckoning his soul to complete its transition.

            Which Dalton resisted. Life’s little comforts were what made him the happiest. Even if life, as he had known it, was over.

            “Your move,” said the Adversary, tracing a midnight-black X on the gameboard he’d propped up in his lap. The man—who wasn’t really a man—took a sip from his dew-speckled glass, and he gestured for Dalton to make a black O in the center of the board. A checkmate move. Just as he’d insisted every day, every night, for the last two years. Pressuring Dalton to finish their game, to follow the rules to which the Adversary was bound—to which all souls were bound—so that the gods wouldn’t come, and they wouldn’t get in trouble, and Dalton’s soul could survive, and yadda yadda yadda.

            One win, and he was free. One win, and he could leave. Cross the purple-golden gates into the glorious Beyond, leaving everything—and everyone—he’d ever known in the past.

            But Dalton was happy here. He didn’t want to leave.

            He picked up his pencil and studied the board. Three empty squares left. Three chances for redemption and pure cosmic bliss. But as in every other game that he had lost over the years, he chose the only square that would lead to his defeat.

            The Adversary cast him an all-knowing smile. Crinkling the skin around his spectral blue eyes. “You did that on purpose,” he said with a wink.

            Dalton tried his best not to wilt under that smile, the perfect pink lips that he’d come to adore, the bushy silver eyebrows and salt-and-pepper scruff and the tender caress of the Adversary’s voice, the way that he whispered into Dalton’s favorite dreams.

            He looked like the husband that Dalton never had, and which he’d desperately searched for in his seventy-two years.

            “Just to keep you on your toes,” said Dalton, cheeks flushed. Anything to squash the growing dread in his gut, the worry of what he would do if he won, what he would say if he was forced to draw three black O’s in a row. I love you? Don’t leave me?

            “You know,” said the Adversary, scratching another black X on the board. “This can’t go on forever.”

            More salt in the wound. Of course Dalton knew that. Of course he knew that someday he would enter the Beyond, and the game he looked forward to every night would disappear, and he’d never see the Adversary’s smile again, never be the husband he’d always wanted to be.

            A sentiment that Dalton was too afraid to share. What if the Adversary didn’t feel the same way? And Dalton had lost his very last chance at love, crumbling away like everything else already had?

            Better to keep the illusion alive.

            He sighed in relief as he inspected the board. “Looks like it’s a draw.” He avoided the Adversary’s unnaturally blue eyes, and he shrugged in defeat as he added the board to the stack on the floor, the latest in a long streak of seven hundred games.

            They sat, side by side, in their chairs on the porch. Sipping their tequila in comfortable silence.

            How many more games would the two of them share? How many more nights could they sit like this, when Dalton could pretend that his world wouldn’t end?

            He was running out of time. Running out of chances. Running from the man he’d always hoped he could be.

            So, he decided to do what he’d never done before.

            Carefully, quietly, he let his hand dangle in the space between their chairs, by the Adversary’s lap, watching him side-eyed to see if he’d notice. Both of them facing towards the purple-golden sky. No words. No sound. Just an eternity of waiting.

            And as the sky turned black, and Dalton let go of his last bit of hope, the life that he’d always wanted fading away, he felt a hand on his knuckle. The Adversary’s fingers nestled gently in his own.

            So warm, so perfect. It was as wonderful as Dalton had always imagined.

            “I suppose,” said the Adversary, starting to smile, “we could play one more round? Before I have to go?”

            Dalton had never wanted anything more.