Rabble

I never like playing Scrabble. And now? I am not too sure. They say that with great power comes great responsibility. They also say to be careful what you wish for. All I can say is do not repurpose a Ouja board and rune tiles. To explain: my weirdo friend, who likes to known as 'Eglantyne', had a Ouija board, with a back that had been marked out in a grid, and several bags of Futhark rune tiles, from her days of teaching rune casting. I knew her from well before those days, when she still used her birth name, Katie.

'Elephantine?' I felt my eyebrows crawling up through my hairline when she had announced her next new personality.

'Eglantyne.' She sniffed. 'After Eglantyne Jebb who founded UNICEF.' A noble name, I agreed, guardedly. 'It sounds elegant and sophisticated. Just right for my pupils.' My eyebrows scaled the Matterhorn. She went on to explain her new venture, teaching fortune telling, specifically, throwing rune tiles on a board and... I think I must have nodded off about then. The rune casting did not work and the classes petered out. In the meantime, she stuck stars and numbers on the grid on the back of the Ouija and made a sort of Scrabble board. She stuck her tongue out at me when I called it a Rabble board, then challenged me to a game. Being three glasses of red down, I agreed.

It was complicated. The rune tiles had no numbers in them but she had scribbled out values on a sheet of pink paper torn from one of her notebooks. Then she had to add normal alphabet letters to each one. I topped up my glass and let my eyes swim over the sheet. There are only twenty four Futhark runes and one is 'th' and another is 'ng'. We started off with the standard seven tiles each and Katie, nope, sorry, Elephantine, ooops, Eglantyne, went first.

'Berkanan, othila, double tiwaz, laguz, eiwaz.' Smug-face said. 'B. O. T. T. L. E. Bottle.' She started to work out her score, so didn't notice my bottle of wine drift upwards, tip over and refill my glass. Then wobble back to its place. I gulped down the contents and said nowt. It took me ages to work out that berkanen, raido, eiwaz, ansuz, dagaz spelled bread. The rune tiles were off-white, slightly slippery and the runes themselves were a sort of rusty red. As if they were made of bone and engraved with blood. That thought was shattered as the lid of the breadbox clattered down and a crusty bloomer rolled out. I stared. Katie, or what's-her-face, squeaked.

'I'll have some butter with that.' I mumbled. All I got was The Look.

'Sōwilō, othilo, berkanan, eiwaz, raido.' She slid them into place. On a double. 'Sober.' Again, with The Look. Ghastliness filled every cell of my body. I was being blasted internally with icy, high pressure water. I passed out. It was exactly two minutes and thirty six seconds before I woke up. Stone cold sober. With a clock ticking in my head. And a brain working at double speed. The leading 's' had made 'bottle' plural. Now there were two, almost empty, wine bottles on the table. Katie's hand shook as she reached for one, raised it to her lips and gurgled the contents down her throat. 'Your go.' It was an order.

There was just enough room to add raido, ūruz, naudiz and kaunan to the dagaz at the end of bread. It made drunk. Trust me. It is not nice to go from well pickled to double sober back to pleasantly tipsy. Unfortunately, it also affected Katie the Elephant. That is the only explanation I have for her putting an eiwaz between the k of 'drunk' and the trailing r of 'sober'. Drunker. At which point it all became pointless and, giggling helplessly, we collapsed on the sofa.

'Gawd.' From the groan it was obvious that Eggy, or whatever, had the same trip hammer in her head as I did. The light was too bright. My mouth closely resembled the inside of a jockstrap wrestlers armpit. Two tablets of Resolve followed by a bucket of tea made it slightly bearable. 'Gaaawwwwddddd.' Or maybe not so bearable. The memory was both fuzzy and sharp but neither focus was believable. I looked at Thingy, she refused to meet my gaze. As one, we lurched over to the Rabble board. It was empty. The bag of runes sitting neatly, dead centre.

'Just because we could...'

'...doesn't mean we should.'

Silence.

'You go first this time.'

I studied what had come out of the bag. Gebō, othila, laguz, dagaz, eiwaz, naudiz. Golden. Nothing happened. As I sighed, I dug into the bag of runes, to replace my play. They felt odd. Heavy. Metallic. My mouth did a rerun of its earlier nastiness. Six golden runes lay in my hand.

'O.M.G.' Katie whispered. Her hand reached to her line of glinting tiles. 'I have to go.' It was almost inaudible. After lagaz she added eiwaz, ansuz, dagaz.

'Is that lead or lead?' I asked. The metal or the strap?

'Lead.' The metal. All the runes went a dull grey. 'Again' made them gold again. 'Leaden'. made every movement heavy and sluggish. 'Bend' made it impossible to straighten my back. Katie made it better with 'unbend'. Stupidly, I made 'gaunt' and felt my cheeks and eyes sink in. Katie made it into gauntlet, the glove. Nothing happened. Until she drew out her replacement runes. Each had a picture of an iron fist on it. I stared my rack as my heart thudded downwards. The shapes were morphing. Naudiz, eiwaz. Perfect. 'End.'

The tiles, one by one, plopped into their bag and the drawstring drew tight. Katie and I were frozen solid.

'End the game?' She murmured. She turned to stare out of the window. 'Is the sun getting darker?'

999 words.