Monopoly

© 1998 Steven Burgauer
All rights reserved.

Blackness hugged him on every side. He couldn't see a thing, not even his hands before his face.

The room in which he stood was dark, as dark as any place he'd ever been. The air, warm and still. Murky, like a stagnant marsh. Murky and devoid of life. The man felt like he was trapped inside a tightly closed box.

All rooms had walls, of course, but if this one did, he couldn't make them out. All people had names, of course, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember his.

Hands outstretched, he fumbled like a blind man through the ether. Surely there must be a wall here somewhere, or a door, or even a set of stairs!

But try as he might, the man couldn't make out a thing. Just meter after meter of open space.

Neurons firing, he sifted through his memories. Surely there must be a reason or an explanation; anything that might give meaning to his predicament.

But if there was one, the man couldn't figure it out. All he had were questions begging to be answered.

Presently, the darkness began to melt, if only just a little. Ahead of him, in the darkness, he spied a dim light, the only source of illumination. The naked bulb hung down over a card table in the center of the room. Around the table were folding chairs, four in all. The nearest one beckoned him to come closer, to sit. Unable to disobey, the man moved hesitantly in that direction.

With eyes drawn and weary, this man without a name peered through the haze. There were three other chairs at the table besides his own, all of them unoccupied, all of them poised to greet other players. A game board was set up on the table, a game board that said it all. Greed. Sloth. Avarice.

Squinting, the man bent over the table to take a closer look. The entire outer edge of the game board was ringed by a series of rectangles, one after the other, many with brightly colored bands running horizontally across them. In the center of the board were two stacks of cards, one labeled "Community Chest," the other "Chance." Instinctively, the man reached for a card, though in doing so, he accidentally knocked one of the playing pieces from the table.

The man watched it fall. He did so with veritable disinterest, unimpressed by the hollow sound the piece made when it hit the floor. Then, distracted by a fluttering rush of memories, he didn't even bother to bend over and pick it up.

The stale, warm air slowed his thought processes, like a hot August afternoon in Amarillo. The dim light became brighter and things ever more clear. From somewhere behind him the wind whispered his name—"Spenser"—and it all came rushing back: the fear, the joy, even the name of the game on the table. He said it—"Monopoly"—in a monotone.

Spenser turned to address the tepid darkness as if he had an audience. But only the empty sound of his pathetic little voice broke the tethered stillness.

"I have always enjoyed this game," he said.

His words were delivered without feeling or emotion.

"All my life I have been engaged in just such a game. From my earliest days, when I was still trying my hand at the stock market, all I have ever wanted was wealth. Wealth and power. Wealth, power, and respect. It was an obsession, and it burned brighter inside me with each passing day. Even after I'd become fabulously wealthy, even after I'd become a great success, still it continued to burn. My inner fire could not be extinguished; I never had enough.

"Yet, in spite of everything I had, everything I owned, I was lonely; horribly so. This was never my intention, mind you, never. But there was never any time. The game was afoot and I was always too damn busy. Great wealth, yes. Friends and lovers, no."

Spenser paused to gather his thoughts. Even with this emotional outpouring, hardly any inflection had entered his voice. The hot dry air had closed his throat, and he very much wished for something cold to drink.

Glancing around the table, now, he saw a full glass of water that he hadn't noticed before. Ecstatic, he reached for it, but like a fool, knocked it to the floor.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he swore, irritated by his clumsiness.

But it couldn't be helped. The water was gone, and there was no more. Spenser licked his dry lips with a tongue swollen with thirst and mentally tried to erase the image of the water-glass. He could not. It remained fixed in his mind—just one more thing that he could not have.

Irresistibly drawn on by an unseen force, Spenser resumed his story. "Even as a child, I had no friends. And how desperate I was not to grow old that way, not to grow old alone. When I first met John, I thought I had finally found someone. Oh, I liked him so very much. John never knew it, of course, but eventually I fell in love with him. He liked me well enough, but he was more interested in money. And women. Like Joan. Not men, and certainly not me. Which hurt me a great deal—at first. But I really wanted this man, so I schemed to win his heart another way: I suggested we become business partners.

"We pooled our considerable financial resources and soon adopted an aggressive business plan. The plan was simple: to acquire as many small coffee distributors as we could in order to control prices and monopolize the business. We were immediately successful. But, to my utter dismay, despite our success, John was still more interested in Joan than he was in me. And to think that the woman wouldn't even divorce Fred for him! I learned to despise that brainless tart," Spenser said in a poisoned tone. "In fact, I came to hate her enough to want her dead."

Spenser grew silent, his thoughts once again disturbed by the intense heat that bathed him. If only he could have something to drink!

John was walking along a dark narrow corridor. His legs were tired, as if he had been climbing a rugged mountain trail for a very long time. He was anxiously searching for a place where he might sit down and rest his weary soul. But none was to be found.

He passed several connecting passages along the way, but for some reason ignored them all. John was drawn like a bug towards the light in the distance up ahead.

After what seemed like an eternity, he reached the end of the corridor. It opened into an immense room. Here, John felt a wave of calm. He was relieved that his long journey was finally over. When he looked up, though, he was astonished to find that the room he was in was in fact quite dark. It was illuminated only by a single bulb. The bulb hung like a weight from the end of an electrical cord. Its light sprayed over a wooden card table like a fountain over a statue.

John approached the table and sat down beside it. A game board was laid out on the tabletop, though at first he couldn't make out its name. Straining his aged eyes to see, he found it curious that the word MONOPOLY should be printed diagonally across the center of the board. He knew of such a game, though playing by the rules had never been his cup of tea.

No sooner had John read the name from the game board than the darkness and warmth of the room began to bother him. It wasn't fear, really, but more of an irritation.

Being a cautious man by nature, John decided to get out of this terrible place right away. He rose to leave, staring hard in the direction from whence he'd come. But he couldn't make out a thing through the haze. The corridor through which he had first arrived seemed to have evaporated in the mist.

Frustrated, John sat back down again. He was not scared, only vexed. Even so, an unpleasant feeling of dread, of loneliness, descended upon him. It crept into his body; it made his stony soul shiver. John's frozen features did not reveal his discomfiture, however.

John began speaking aloud. "How strange it is that I should be here without Joan or any of my other witless playthings. Even Spenser, my fag partner, isn't hanging about. To think that the idiot was actually in love with me! He hated Joan; even thought I'd eventually drop her for him. What a laugh! She was married to Fred, that much is true—but deep down I could see that she was infatuated with me."

John droned on in a flat voice. "After Spenser and I succeeded in buying out the first of our competitors, I thought about terminating the little turd. And why didn't I? I don't seem to recall just now."

Abruptly, John ceased speaking. He scratched his head as if he were confused. His thoughts dimmed for a moment as he reflected on the 'why.' Then just as abruptly, he began speaking again. It was as if his memory had been suddenly renewed by an outside force.

"Yes, now I remember. Spenser was very shrewd, and without his business savvy there was no way for me to reach my financial goals. Spenser's plan was simple: Show our competitors no mercy, no mercy at all. Undercut their prices. Spread false rumors about their product. Steal their best employees. Drive them into our waiting arms—or else bankruptcy. The fun of it was that while I doing Joan in bed, I was also doing in her husband Fred. Hah, the irony of it all!

"By this time, Fred was our chief remaining competitor and queerboy Spence was beginning to have fun, too. Perhaps he reasoned that when Fred went bankrupt, the stigma would attach to Joan as well, and I would drop her for him. What a laugh! Drop her? Soon enough. But for him? No way. From the beginning, the only reason I had gone after the woman was to see if I couldn't learn more about the way Fred ran his company. The money had always been of more interest to me than she was, and Spenser was nothing but a repugnant fairy.

"Fred was a formidable businessman, but Spence and I were tougher. Thanks to Spenser's cunning—and my tenacity—we managed to hold our prices low enough—and for long enough—to ruin the man. Fred had to mortgage everything—the house, the car, the business—all in a fruitless bid to stay afloat. Yet, we persisted with the game. We drove his company from the marketplace and we drove him to the edge of despair. Fred was a broken man, and Spence and I celebrated our vicious success.

"Joan was too stupid to realize that her lover—me—had had a hand in destroying her husband. Ever the cad, Spenser even fixed it so that the two of us looked like knights in shining armor, racing in at the last minute to save the damsel in distress. Spence proposed that we merge our company with Fred's.

"At first, when I heard his idea, I thought that Spenser had finally lost it. But ol' Spence had it all figured out. He sat me down one afternoon and explained to me how Fred's client list was among the very best in the business, and how we could use that, plus his equipment, to maximize our advantage in the marketplace. Then there were also mouth-watering tax-loss carryforwards to be had.

"Spence was right, of course, and eventually he convinced me. Then it was my turn. I had to win over Joan. I did it one night in bed, after we'd made love. The poor woman turned out to be more of a sap than I'd first realized. In the end, she actually helped us to persuade her dopey husband how sensible our bailout plan really was. The woman even suggested we come over to their house one night after dinner to sign the necessary paperwork. Spenser brought a peace offering with him for the occasion, a bouquet of beautiful orchids. He wouldn't let me smell them, though, saying Joan should have first pickings."

John swallowed hard now; his throat was parched. The heat had made him dizzy, and he blinked his eyes heavily in an attempt to defeat the nausea. His irritated sigh disturbed the silence of the dark room. Feeling faint, he leaned back against the table-edge for support.

He felt something in his hand. It was a game piece. He didn't remember picking it up. The piece was made of a base metal, lead, maybe. It was heavy and shaped like a top hat. He put it back on the table. Once again, his eyes fell upon the word MONOPOLY leaping out at him from the game board. The word was a tonic; it seemed to strengthen his weakened spirit. John straightened his shoulders, and, as the thoughts began making their way into his head again, he resumed speaking.

"When we arrived at Fred's house that night for the meeting, Joan wasn't there. Fred explained that she hadn't wanted to be in the way during our negotiations. She had decided at the last minute to roll a few frames with her bowling league instead. She'd be back in an hour or two.

"I didn't say anything at the time, but I knew it was an excuse. Joan and I had been lovers for a long, long time, and I'd never once known her to be the athletic type. Except in bed, of course!

"Spenser was no less disappointed than I that Joan wasn't there and, despondent, he put the carefully wrapped bouquet of exotic flowers on the kitchen counter for her to open later. It seemed important to him that she, and only she, open them.

"Though Joan herself wasn't home, she had been kind enough to leave us with a pot of hot coffee to drink and a selection of glazed donuts. Spenser, Fred, and I promptly got down to business. Fred's position was precarious, so we quickly arrived at an agreeable purchase contract that we signed on the spot.

"By then I was feeling a little sick to my stomach, though at the time I dismissed it as a case of the nerves brought on by our tense negotiations. When Joan returned home shortly thereafter, I put my discomfort completely out of my mind; the woman looked absolutely radiant! Which was strange because she seemed a bit overdressed for an evening of bowling out with the girls. I recall, though, how genuinely delighted she was with Spenser's gift of flowers. Joan sniffed them hungrily, then searched her cupboards for just the right vase to keep them in. That's the last thing I remember."

As Fred entered the dark place, his body relaxed. He understood intuitively that he had come to the end of a long journey. He approached the table cautiously. It was lit by a light suspended from a ceiling made invisible by the darkness. Fred stared at the playing board upon the table. The bold letters spelling MONOPOLY stared back at him, mocking him.

"I never could stand that game," he said.

Fred paused to gather himself. The heat pounded at his body, the hate at his senses.

"Monopoly. I came to despise that word. In time, I came to hate even money itself."

Fred spoke without emotion. Even the hate he expressed was delivered with apathy.

"Pursuit of that game cost me my business. It cost me my dignity. The damn thing ruined me. I was doing fine until those two bastards undercut my prices and drove me to the wall. They pushed me to the very brink of bankruptcy. Unfortunately, that lousy roll of life's dice wasn't the end of it. The murderous game went on. The two men who destroyed me then had the nerve to propose a merger. All they wanted was to get their hands on my client list—and my equipment. How could I not hate them for that?

"Joan was the only one I cared about, the only one I never learned to hate. I would do practically anything for that woman. Not only was my wife brilliant, she was good-looking, too. Joan devised a wonderful plan to get even with those two. Her plan was to invite them both over to our house after dinner one night to conclude the merger, then to serve the two of them poisoned coffee and donuts once they'd signed the papers. A tasty and fitting end for a pair of distasteful people!

"Joan felt it best not to be present during the negotiations, so we excused her absence with a bowling outing. In fact, she hated the sport, but it didn't matter. All I had to do was follow her instructions to a T, which I did. When she returned home, it was done. Both men were close to death and sinking fast. I could see by the look on her face that she was pleased with what I had done. Come to think of it, Joan always liked how I handled things. I guess that just goes to prove it—the woman adored me."

Fred's face was devoid of emotion, his intonation flat. He paused now, his mind distracted by the increasing heat of the room. The light over the table seemed to get dimmer, the stale air thicker. He coughed, then continued speaking as if prodded on by an unseen force.

"Joan was satisfied with what we had accomplished, but seemed uncertain how to dispose of the bodies. I suggested we take a moment, sit down, and talk about it. I asked her to fix us both a fresh pot of coffee, untainted, if you please. Joan laughed. She loved my jokes, just as much as she loved me.

"Joan prepared the coffee, then stopped to admire and again smell the flowers Spenser had brought us. She rejoined me in the other room.

"While I savored my coffee, drop by drop, she held her cup untouched and we talked. After a spell, though, I wasn't listening closely anymore; I had developed a splitting headache. That and a feeling of nausea. I was angry about feeling sick, especially after everything had gone so well. I asked Joan to fetch me a Pepto-Bismol, but for some reason she totally ignored me. She knelt down to address one of the corpses instead.

"I heard her say: 'John, I thought I loved you once, but you were really only a means to an end. I have the signed merger papers in hand now, and since I'm Fred's only beneficiary, I got what I was after in the first place—the money!'"

Fred continued. "It seemed odd to me that Joan should be addressing a corpse that way, as if they were old friends, but by then I really couldn't think clearly anymore. My headache and cramps had become unbearable. All I wanted to do was to go upstairs and lie down. All I wanted to do was lie down and get some sleep.

"I moved forward, toward the stairs. Then something peculiar happened. I was on the verge of passing out when I'm sure I saw Joan clutch at her throat as if she were choking. I distinctly remember the sound of her coffee cup shattering on the floor as it fell from her hand."

Fred stared blankly at the dim light now. It shone like a beacon upon the MONOPOLY board. Suddenly, the light became very bright. Fred had to shield his eyes from being blinded. It was as if he were in a giant box and the lid had been suddenly and briefly lifted, allowing the darkness to escape. As his eyes struggled to adjust, Fred sensed that he was no longer alone. Although he didn't immediately recognize the newcomers, there were now two other people sitting at the table with him. Each held a game piece in his hand. Fred looked down at his—it was a pawn.

Seconds passed while three pairs of eyes stared with dawning recognition. The lights dimmed once again and the heat—more intense than before—started to bathe them with hate.

Yet, unperturbed, their pale faces disclosed no emotion. They were stiff—immobile like cardboard cutouts, like plastic playing pieces on a game board.

A door opened behind them. In unison the three men twisted in their seats to see a woman entering the room from a side hallway. It was Joan. She was carrying a tray piled high with glazed donuts. Beside them, also on the tray, was a pot of steaming hot coffee and a fancy flower vase filled with a beautiful arrangement of orchids.

Joan walked over to the table and calmly sat down, the tray still in her hand. Her eyes met those of Spenser first. Then she turned to face John. And finally her husband Fred. Without displaying even the slightest hint of emotion, she spoke.

"Well, boys, let's get to it. We have a long night ahead of us. You know the rules. We each throw the dice. Player with the highest total starts the play."

She paused.

"Coffee, anyone?"

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