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The choice is incredibly important. It may very well decide whether we are both alive when today ends.
What to do on a rainy day?
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Uno is a death wish.
We don't have enough undamaged Nintendo controllers left to risk Mario Kart.
Mario Party was a mistake.
Monopoly causes long-term grudges and near-deadly retribution.
Scrabble was incinerated a month ago.
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Sure, we both have reasonable things to do. I have a book to finish and a calendar of stargazing nights to plan, Dark has at least nine ongoing projects at any given moment, and there's always chores.
But there's something special about rainy days, something that demands sitting near a window and listening to the rain hit the roof.
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And so we always end up in the living room, playing old video games or beat-up stolen board games.
Do we hate each other by the end? Yes. Am I still finding melted Scrabble letters in increasingly concerning places? Also yes.
But it's always worth it, and I'm not entirely sure why.
Maybe because no matter how gruesome a death an opponent is promised, there is an understanding that it comes from a place of love and comedy.
Maybe because we look back on it laugh like psychopaths, terrifying any and everyone around us.
Maybe because there's fun hidden in there, beneath the threats and rage and property damage.
Maybe because the only way we ever want to spend these days is with each other.
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Dark slams the canister of cards onto the living room table. The metal scrape-screeches altogether too loudly against the plastic table. I flinch at the sudden sound, and they offer an apologetic look in my direction.
"This one looked fun."
"Spot-it?"
When did we find this one? I can't remember, Dark must have stolen it and not told me.
"Yeah. The cards have a bunch of symbols on them, and every card shares a symbol with another card. You have to find the match as quickly as possible."
"Are we sure this isn't Uno 2.0?"
"Not at all."
This should be interesting. I open the canister, pull out and start to shuffle the circular cards.
"So I put the whole deck face down in the middle of the table?"
"Yep! And then we take two cards from the top, flip them over, and whoever calls the matching symbol first takes the cards."
I can already see this going wrong in so many ways. So, like any rational person, I flip over the first two cards.
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We already have three new rules ten minutes later.
1. If it is not immediately clear who called a symbol first, each party gets one of the two cards.
2. Substitute phrases (e. g. cold water square instead of ice cube) count as calling a symbol.
2b. 'The [adjective] thingy' and its variations do not.
3. If a person calls the wrong symbol, the other one wins the cards by default.
It's a good game for us because we are each skilled at different aspects. Dark has a remarkable reaction time, but their words can't catch up quickly enough. I have never missed a symbol, but I'm too slow to call it.
Two games in, we are tied.
Dark flips over the two cards, and-
Hands are not the symbol, the moon is not the symbol, hurry up they are going to notice one any moment now, the exclamation mark is not the symbol-
We stare at the cards for almost thirty seconds, boiling like frogs under the stress.
cheese is not the symbol, paint splatter is not the symbol, wait a minute, is that-
"Broccoli!"
Dark collapses theatrically onto the table.
"Lies! You’re cheating. I don't know how but you have to be cheating somehow!"
"No, I'm just better at this than you are."
"You wish."
"you wish."
Fun times.
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Miraculously we are both alive by the end of the day. The scorch marks on the cards aren't even that noticeable!
The rain begins to let up, so the game is packed away.
"I'm telling you I won."
"You 'miscounted' on three separate occasions."
"4-6 is still a victory."
"For me."
They grumble a bit more about not being trusted to count their own cards, then leave to make dinner.
The day ends like any other. Dinner, evening, lights out. The rainy-day time-and-logic warping and the comfort it brings is gone, replaced by routine.
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We wake up the next morning to the sound of raindrops.
Another rainy day, another game. Another day I don't have to do tedious normal things. Another day with my favorite person and their ridiculousness.
No one understands how we don’t hate each other. But the death threats are as sure a sign of care as a hug, because they are creative and specific and funny.
‘I’m going to move each item in your fidget collection one to two inches to the left and stab you while you try to fix it if you play that +4’ shows how well you pay attention to the subject in a way that physical affection can’t.
‘I will hide your book, read it, beat you up and tie you to a tree, and spoil the ending VERY LOUDLY while you bleed out if you throw that red shell’ takes at least five minutes to come up with.
I don’t understand why it alarms people. Death threats and rainy days are the best things in life.