In a Milwaukee Dorm...
Sid stepped into the dimly lit store and sneezed. The dust hanging in the air was redolent with the weight of age and decay. Perhaps he was in the wrong place ... this certainly wasn't the sort of building where he'd expect a functional store to be located.
Walking between the narrow aisles leading towards the back of the store, the young college student couldn't help but feel he was on the set of some bad, 60's "Devil" movie. Creepy dolls, archaic antiques and -yes- even jars filled with preserved-in-formaldehyde animals were all around him.
"Hell...hello...?" he managed to call out, weakly...
Watching, always watching, the old man smiled thinly to himself. The aura surrounding his latest customer was truly ... distinct. Quite imaginative; a perfect subject for a game he'd been trying to sell for some time, now...
"Chris! Grab the Fritos and get your lazy ass in here!"
Tyler had never been the most polite of Sid's friends and -truthfully- had the least number of O.G.T.'s, or "Obviously Gay Traits", of any of his friends in the dorm.
Dave just shook his head, chuckled and pulled up a chair to the card table the four of them had set up in Sid and his dorm room. "And don't forget the Diet Cherry Coke, either!" he shouted, adding to Tyler's demand.
"Hey, it's not my fault you two live like pigs," quipped the returning Chris. "I swear, if you guys would just coordinate a little..."
"Then we'd be both anal and anal-retentive..." interrupted Dave, still smirking.
Chris stuck out his tongue at his sometime lover and sat down, putting a 2-liter bottle of soda on the floor and tossing the bag of over-sized Frito's to Tyler. "Very funny..." he grimaced.
Sid chuckled. It was his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee, while nothing like the sun-drenched coast of Miami, had been good for his life. He'd come out to Tyler first of all, the bellicose and raucous Junior encouraging Sid in a series of steps that helped him get used to the fact that he was a member of a sexual minority in a fairly blue-collar town. "Ok, ok... Sheathe the egos, boys," he said, putting the old and slightly battered game box on the table. "It's my turn and I found a real doozy for 'game night'. It's called: "A Game of Change"."
"Uh, right. Someone remind me why Sid got to choose this week?" muttered Chris, looking with skepticism at the old, worn box. "I mean what ever happened to a night of "WereWolf" or "D-n-D"?"
"I thought you were the one sick of role-playing games," replied Tyler. "I think your exact words were something like 'Oh, those games are just too violent! Whatever happened to the good old says with Monopoly and Clue?'" Tyler put on an exaggerated, effeminate lisp, mimicking the way Chris naturally spoke.
"Besides," interrupted Dave, "it's not as if Clue is without violence. Isn't there a murder involved?"
"Speaking of anal-retentive..." joked Sid. "Enough of that, anyway... Look, next week, if you want, I'll put together a WereWolf adventure and we can go back to Sunday night RPGs. But, for now, let's just try this out. I found it at a little collectibles shop near the waterfront..."
Chris stuck his tongue out at Dave and Tyler before sitting down in his chair, kicking his legs up and crossing them over the arm to one side. "Ok, girls, let's get this travesty over with..."
Dave rolled his eyes.
"Allright," said Sid, opening the box and setting up the board. "It's sorta like Life but kinda set in a faerie tale world..."
"That should suit Chris just fine," taunted Tyler.
Sid and the others ignored him but for another stuck-out tongue from Chris. "Anyway, you move your pieces through the maze of passages, draw cards and ... and ... well, that's about it. First one to the 'End' space, wins."
"Sid," Dave said, picking up a piece idly, "I hate to say this, but it sounds about as complex as CandyLand."
"C'mon guys, give it a chance... It's old!"
"Yeah, so's my Mom," said Tyler, "but you don't see me wanting to 'play' with her..."
The three others winced and groaned aloud at the mental image.
"Ok, if I weren't already gay, that one would've pushed me over into homosexuality for sure..." Sid remarked.
"Yeah, for once I agree with Sid," said Chris with a dismissive wave of his hand and a look of disgust still on his face. "Let's just start playing so we can get this over with..."
"Sounds good t' me, boytoy."
Sid shook his head at the good-natured banter between Tyler and Chris. While Chris, as an 18 year old, slender, boytoy-ish blond with blue eyes and a surfer's build was definitely the gay stereotype -right down to the seashell necklace clasped tightly to his slender neck- he was certainly no one's "toy". Tyler, if rumors were true, swung more that way... Granted, in any of the times Sid had fooled around with any of the guys no real dominant or submissive behavior ever really manifested; around him, it seemed, everyone was rather into more vanilla recreations.
Sid looked up as Dave muttered a surprised sound and dropped the piece he'd been holding to the board. "What th'...?"
All eyes turned to where Dave was pointing, surprised, at the piece he'd dropped. There, still carved in black-stained wood, was his playing piece but it no longer appeared as a smooth, featureless pawn. Now, as they looked, it had the appearance of a man. In fact, it looked remarkably like Dave, himself.
"Dave, where'd you get that?"
"The box, stupid; where'd'ya think, Sid?"
Tyler shook his head. "No way, it looks too much like you, man..." he said, picking up one of the remaining, featureless pieces. "C'mon, you smuggled in a small miniature to play some kinda joke."
"My jokes aren't that lame," he replied, still looking at the piece on the board.
"Speak for yourself, hon," replied Chris, also picking up one of the remaining pieces. However, just as he was turning it over and over in his hands, Tyler started and dropped his piece.
"It moved!" he yelled out, pointing. "I swear to God, it moved!"
Again, all eyes went to the board, but this time there could be no mistake. As they watched, the small, wooden pawn metamorphosed and shifted it's form until it turned into a miniature replica of Tyler. The group stared, stunned and was almost unsurprised when the piece Chris was holding also changed shape.
"This is too weird..." Dave muttered, picking up his piece again. "Where'd you get this game, Sid?"
"Uh, some shop ... down by the lakeshore."
"Well, it sure ain't normal," said Tyler, nudging his with a fingertip towards the opposite side of the board.
Silence fell on the room. Outside, the four students could hear the average, Sunday night noise coming from other rooms of the dorm. Parties, music, happy shouts and general hubbub was muffled beyond their door as their fellow students went about making the most of the last day of the weekend.
Minutes passed.
Finally, Sid picked up the last piece and put it in the starting box on the board. Tyler started to interrupt but Sid raised his hand and watched. Sure enough, now the last piece shifted into a miniature replica of Sid.
"Let's play..." he said in a hoarse-sounding whisper.
"Play? Are you crazy?" asked Dave, looking at the other two. "This is definitely not normal! This is Salvador-Dali-surreal, man! I say we pack it up and you take it back to where you bought it, tomorrow!"
A slow smile spread across Sid's face as he cocked his head and looked sidelong at Dave. "What's the matter, hag; chicken?" With that, he reached out and placed each of the other pieces in the starting square.
"Look," said Tyler, "it's probably nothing. It's probably just some weird ...well... coincidence or something."
Chris rolled his eyes. "Right, Tyler... And coincidences can make wood shape-shift into little voodoo dolls..."
"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm gonna try. It's weird, but pretty cool..." With those words, and before any of his friends could voice further dissent, Sid picked up the pair of dice that came with the boxed game and tossed them onto the board.
"Wait! Don't..."
Dave's words were too late. The small, white dice bounced several times across the board before finally stopping on a 5 and a 4.
"Nine spaces," Sid observed and reached for his piece.
However, before his fingers could even touch the smooth, polished surface, the tiny Sid-replica slid, of it's own volition, along the track on the board until it came to the first intersection, four spaces away. There, it stopped, the two possible directions blinking as if the squares were back-lit under the board by little light bulbs.
The boys stared.
"I ... I think it wants you to choose," said Chris, his lisp accentuated by his nervousness.
"Ya think?" retorted Sid with a nervous laugh. He looked in both directions. To the left, the remainder of his roll would take him to an empty green square. To the right was a white square with the rainbow-colored word "CHANGE" written on it. There was a deck of "CHANGE" cards that came with the boxed game, so he figured that was what he'd have to do ... draw a card. However, given how unnatural this game was starting to look, he was now concerned that doing such a thing would be a bad idea.
Still, as he looked at the board, the direction of the "CHANGE" space was the shortest route across the board...
"Which way you gonna go, Sid?" asked Tyler, sounding serious.
What do you do now?
Title suggestions for new chapters. Please feel free to use them or create your own below.
Legend: Nudity, Self pleasure male, M/M Sex, M/F Sex, F/F Sex, Self pleasure female, Sex beyond any of the above, Violence