hwango

“I hate it here.”

“Max, don’t be ridiculous. We haven’t been here long enough for you to even get to know the place.”

“It’s freaky! The fire hydrants are purple! The school has dry-erase boards instead of chalkboards. The kid trying to suck up to the teacher left her a banana instead of an apple. Where did you find this stupid town, anyway?” Max complained bitterly.

“Are you even trying to make friends?” Max’s mother asked.

“The kids are all weird!”

“Then make some weird friends. We were lucky I got to keep my job at all, and moving here was the only way that was going to happen. So you’ll just have to make this work. You understand me, little man?”

“Fine.”

This was not the first time they’d been forced to move. Max wasn’t even sure he wanted to make friends just to have to leave them all behind again. That, and he thought the kids here were kind of creepy. Rather than ostracize and mock him for the being the new kid, everyone seemed genuinely interested in getting to know him. It was eerie.

Still, unless he wanted to spend the rest of school a tormented recluse (still a tempting idea), he supposed he’d better give them a chance.

In no time at all he found himself scheduled to meet after school at the home of some kid named Uthgar. He and some other kids were going to play games, apparently, and they could use a fourth. Sure, whatever.

Uthgar’s house was weird. Max didn’t know enough about architecture or interior decorating to put his finger on what it was exactly that made it weird, but something about the place just felt foreign. Uthgar introduced him to the other two kids – Eloise and Aramis. They both greeted him with what seemed like actual enthusiasm. It was unnerving.

“How about we start with Monopoly?” Aramis suggested. Everyone looked expectantly at Max, who found himself torn on the issue. On the one hand, he was no great fan of Monopoly –he found it tedious and kind of stupid. On the other hand, it felt like a lifeline of familiar normality in a sea of strangeness.

“Uh, sure. Can I be the car?” he said. This prompted looks of mild bewilderment all around.

“Sure,” said Uthgar, “I get the Mobius strip!”

“I’m the ziggurat!” proclaimed Eloise.

“I guess I’ll take the piano,” said Aramis, clearly mourning the loss of some other preferred choice.

Max thought maybe this meant it was some other edition of Monopoly than the basic one with which he was familiar. There certainly seemed to be special sets for every imaginable movie franchise or tourist location. But the box looked like the normal box, and all the rest of the components looked normal. Well, the other metal playing pieces turned out to be a fish and a hammer and other such oddities, but the properties all looked ordinary enough.

And, indeed, everything seemed fine for several turns. Property was purchased. Trivial amounts of rent were collected. Then Max landed on Chance, and drew his card. He read what it said. Then he read it again.

Disaster! The city is showered with ferrous meteorites! Marvin Gardens and Baltic Avenue are destroyed by fire. Martial Law imposed.

“What the heck is this?” he asked. Aramis held out his hand for the card, and Max handed it to him.

“Oh, Martial Law already!” Aramis said after a quick glance. Uthgar groaned, but Eloise appeared delighted. “I don’t think we’ve ever had that come up so early.”

Seeing Max’s confusion, Eloise snatched the rulebook from the box and read the rules changes that went into effect under martial law. Among other things, her playing piece gained special powers, which is why she’d been so happy at the news.

This turned out to be the tip of the iceberg, though. A few turns later the imaginary military commandeered several properties to house soldiers. Money and houses were carefully rationed, and certain taxes were suspended. And then, of course, someone else drew a Chance card. It too proved to be something Max didn’t recognize.

In fact, Max had never seen any of the bizarre things they pulled from the deck. The cards brought invasions of strange creatures, bizarre weather phenomena, or sweeping changes to the laws of physics. The rules or even goals of the game changed for some players multiple times. Max suddenly found himself working to shut down the railroads in order to gain a stranglehold on transportation options within the city. Aramis started traveling around the board in the opposite direction. A Godzilla-like monster was added to the board, which devoured houses and hotels wherever it landed.

In the end, Eloise won the game by building a shrine to Quetzalcoatl on one property of each remaining color (the green properties having been erased from history by Aramis sometime near the middle of the game). Max was praised for his very near victory on the previous turn, having been thwarted by an unlucky roll of the dice, which by that point had been replaced by a set with arcane runes in place of the odd numbers. He went home that evening with a somewhat baffled smile on his face, but a smile nonetheless.

“So, did you make any friends?” his mother asked.

“I think so,” he said, somewhat surprised to find that this was true.

“So, they’re not as weird as you thought, huh?”

“No,” Max said. “They’re even weirder.” He was quiet for a moment while he seemed to consider something. “But I think weird is starting to grow on me.”