Gloom fills my heart when I wake up from a sudden sleep only to find myself in a hallway of black. The black hallway is only lit by the dim light of the torches on the wall, their flames however are black at the core and release dark purple sparks and flickers off the flame falling to their fast demise on the floor that could only be felt, not seen. I try to remember what I did to find myself here in this place of darkness.
“I first left my house to go to work.” I say to myself, my voice echos slightly across the hallway and it feels like someone is listening., perhaps it is the walls.
“ I don’t remember what happened after I got on the road, however.”
“THAN COME, LET ME REMIND YOU!” A voice echos loudly across the hallway, I can’t tell if the voice is in front of me, behind me, or is coming from the eavesdropping walls of the hallway.
I squint to see what is in front of me in this hallway and, to my surprise, I see a white door with a flamboyant set of black carvings all around the rim of the door.

“IF YOU WANT TO REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE, YOUR LIFE, AND HOW YOU GOT HERE, THAN COME TO ME!” The godly voice echos once again down the hallway of darkness, taking whatever rationality and inner calm I had with it as the boom of its voice is absorbed into the ears of the walls. (good use of imagery)

“Who are you!” I yell with all the force I could muster, with all the air in my lungs, yet all that comes out of my mouth is a squeak so quiet that even the mouse would ask me to speak up.

No voice greets me this time, whatever was talking has already gave me its orders, “find them.” I walk with both a confident stride and jelly for the sticks below my waist I call legs. I was terrified of everything, the voice, the hallway, The white door that stood at the end of the hallway like an executioner waiting for the prisoner to be brought forth; yet I felt like I needed to have no fear. Nothing here had the aura of malice; ,even the walls felt like they were trying to welcome me home.

I reach the door after what felt like hours of walking, but really must have only been a couple of minutes., I stare at the door before I even lift my arm and hand to open it. The door stood what looked eight feet tall and three feet wide, There was no handle to push or hinges to be seen. The white of the door was pure, almost purer than the white of freshly falling snow., The only way to describe the whiteness of it was that it was the color of what must be that of a new angel’s wings. The black engravings on the door depict scenes that must of been out of mythology, a cloaked figure riding a white horse, leaving trails of men and women with blacked out bodies behind him., But one was different from all the others, the one on the very top of the rim of the door. It shows the cloaked figure no longer on a house but sitting in a chair, playing some sort of board game with another man. After staring at the door for a long time I slowly lift my arm and press my hand against the right side of the door, and push slowly.Took a long time to simply open the door, Mr Tolkien.

A light brighter than the sun first peeks out of the slowly open door, then soon envelopes me and the hallway. The light was so intense that I tried to close my eyes or look away but every fiber of my being tells me to look at the source of light. I squint my eyes and try to look at the light. At first I can not see anything but soon a silhouette of a cloaked figure, the one that must have been in the engravings on the rim of the white door. The cloaked figure slowly lifts up its long, bony hand like he was offering me to a dance or offering its hand to pull me out of the light. I lift my hand and reach out to the cloaked figure, trying to grab its hand, but the closer I get to him, the further away the figure gets. My hand is now no longer a part of my body, it’s still attached to my arm but it now longer does what I say, it just keeps going after the cloaked figure.
Suddenly I feel my hand grasp something, it is ice cold and feels like thin tubes of stone wrapping around my hand. The icy rock hand pulls me forward and out of the light with the strength of ten thousand men. My eyes adjust back to the cold dark of the hallway, although now it is more like a room, lit with more dark flame torches, however, these torches seem to produce more light than the ones in the hallway. I quickly scan the room and find out fast that nothing is here but a figure cloaked in black robes and hood, I look down to see that I had yet let go of its hand, that too was cloaked in the long black coat. I quickly let go of the cloaked figures hand and retreat it back so fast it nearly hit my ribs.
“ I am the pale horsemen, do you know what I am, what I do, or why you see me before you?” The cloaked figures voice talks to me again but now its voice sounds very flowing, cold and calm instead of the booming voice it had before.
“Do you know?” The figure asks again, but this time sounding more annoyed.
“Are you death, the pale horsemen of the bible?” I ask trying to sound confident, the sound that comes out however is nothing more than a whisper.
“Yes, and no, I am called death but I am more than that, much more. Do you know the next two questions?”
“No,” I say with a loader yet still timid voice, “I do not know what you do or why you are here.”
“Have you ever heard the term playing chess with death?” The cloaked figure asks; it is impossible to see it’s face under the hood but I get the feeling that it is smiling.
“ I want nothing more than your misery, I want you to pass on, leave your life filled with pain, but I am not unfair so I give you a challenge.”
The cloaked figure raises its hand, still cloaked in the black robes, and gestures towards the emptiness section of the room. From the ground a sprout raises from the floor and begins to grow at an incredible speed. The sprout turns into a small tree but continues to grow and bend until it morphs into a perfectly made chess board.
The cloaked figure doesn't walk but almost turns into the shadow of smoke and swiftly moved over to the board materializing in a chair that grow instantly beneath him. It’s puts the cloaks sleeves on the chessboard and out of the giant holes of darkness within the cloak march out bright white chess pieces. The pieces look like they were made out bone, they are dirty white but being one of the only bright colors in the room they stand out like a candle flame in the dead of the witching hour on a winter's night.
“I want to play you in a game of chess,” The figure speaks once again, “ If I win I will end your life and take the hopelessness that you feel in the last moments of death and savior in it.”
The white chess pieces shake and rattle like they are excited or laughing at me. The cloaked figure waves its covered hand over them and one by one they stand still again.
“If you win however,” The cloaked figure continues its monolog “I will let you leave this place, and give you something in your life that will alter it for the better, forever.”
The figure once again raises its hand towards the wall that once had a white door on it. A little hole appears in the wall, it grows bigger and bigger until it is the size of an old church door. A mix between black, blue, and green colors begin to cover the door top down. The colors look the are melting in front of the hole, blocking it off. The colors finally fall to the ground and stop melting, they do, however, form a perfect door.
“You could, however, take this door and walk away from this challenge, however, I in turn will take something important from you, something you could never live fully without.”
“And what if I choose to stand here and do none of the options you’ve given me?” I ask, thinking I have fooled the figure.
“Then we will wait here, as long as we need to, you cannot die here; Time,space, and matter is all paused in this realm, you and I have an eternity to wait for you to make a decision.”
I stand there baffled, I know which option to take, I knew the moment he said I could play chess with death the choice I was going to make, I just couldn’t understand why I was the one chosen for this.
“I choose,” I pause for a moment,”I choose to accept your challenge, I will play you in a game of chess.”
“Very good,” The cloaked figure speaks again with a smug tone, “ let us have a fair gentlemen's game of chess. sit on the other side of the board and begin the game of hope, sorrow and wit.”
A new chair grows upwards from the floor slowly as I walk towards it. As I sit in the chair I examine the chessboard in front of me, the black and white squares are visible clearly like they were made of different types of wood, but all of the squares on this metaphorical battle ground of wits has been worn down by what could only be guessed by multiple battles and wars waged upon it. The cloaked figure’s chess pieces all bone white still sit perfectly in a row, not even a centimeter off the middle of their assigned square. The only thing that is missing is my pieces, my means to fight on this battle of wits.
“If you want your pieces,” The cloaked figure interrupts my examination “ than simple make the pact that you agree to not leave this game until a king on this board has fallen to the wit of the other’s.”
The cloaked man reaches with its right hand into its left sleeve, and pulls out a glass-like knife. Still keeping its hands hidden underneath the sleeves of the hooded robe he hands me the knife. I grab the knife with my right hand and quickly try to look under its hood, trying to see the face of my challenger. Under its hood is blackness, nothing but the abyss of nothingness, it’s like someone cut out a shadow and filled it with ink.
“ It’s not very polite to stare, or to look where you are not allowed,” The hooded figure speaks again with annoyance, “after all, curiosity killed the cat. Now to make this pact simple cut the palm of one of your hands with the knife, do not fear however it will not bring pain to your flesh.”
I look at the knife, it looks and feels like glass tinted dark purple. Small engravings are all around the handle but not in any language or symbols I have ever seen. I raise the blade to my left palm and quickly push the blade on my hand and down to the floor. Blood stained black by the blade flow at an unnatural rate towards the board. Just as fast as the wound and blood came is as quickly as it went, before I could understand what has happened and panic the blood stopped and the wound cease to exist, yet a feeling of hopelessness, sadness enters my mind.
The black blood now boiled on the board as if it were made of molten lava. The blood separates from one giant pool to small individual pools, one on each square on my side of the board. The black, bubbling blood starts growing upwards slowly but surely taking the shape of chess pieces.
“Now let us play our game, I Shall move my piece first.”

A white pawn moves by itself on the board, taking its spot on the middle of the board. I reach to grab one of my pawns to block it’s path, the black on the piece still burns from its sudden creation making a hissing sound when I touch it. The game has started, the moving and blocking of pawns is first, then comes the game of cloak and dagger.
The beginning battle is stressful, no piece is taken and every single one is protected in some way, neither I nor him dare make a risky move until suddenly he moves its knight in front of my queen. I move her to tip over the knight, but the moment my queen touches the knight the knight bursts into a thousand little bits of bone white dust.
“Death here is real, even for the poor chess pieces, they truly are fighting for a cause, the cause to live another day.” The cloaked figure speaks for the first time since the game began, “ It is unfortunate however, I expected more from you, check.”
The cloaked figure moves its bishop across the board and checks my king, I have no pieces to block it so I walk the king to a safer location. The cloaked figure continues to find ways to check me,he is now in control of where both its and my pieces go at this point, struggle to find a scapegoat as I may I already know, he has won this game.
A pitiful twenty moves moves or more of the game goes by until every single one of my pieces is dead and my king checkmated by a queen and a rook at its side of the board. I could feel the pain in my soul as my king is knocked over by the moving castle and melts into the board with a blood curdling screech.
“A deal is a deal, my delicious friend, I can’t wait to see the misery in your eyes when I reap the benefits of this battle.” The cloaked figure chuckles with delight
I feel my heart sink to my stomach, but my stomach has made an northern trip up to my throught. I fought with all the wits I could, I had never lost a game of chess in my life. The dark figure raises from its seat and waves its hand and, the surrounding room begins to melt away, not to the floor but into a absence of being.
We both now stand in an endless abyss void of anything, sound, color, smell, even the tasty of blood and air is gone. The cloaked figure walks up to me and puts both its cloaked hands on either of my shoulders. I look up only to see the dark abyss that is contained inside its hood.
“Let me see your sorrow!” The cloaked figure speaks with force as I feel that the eyes behind the shadows stare deep into mine.
All the things that have ever gone wrong, all the horrible feelings I have ever felt, all the pain and misery I have felt, seen or heard all come flashing before my eyes, I can feel my heart shrivel up at th
e sadness, the anger, the shattered hope. After what felt like hours pass as all the bad emotions and flashbacks of pain come back to life they are all flooded by a single emotion, despair. I embrace the cold darkness of melancholy, the feeling of loss and hopelessness makes all the emotions of sadness and broken dreams drown away. The last thing I hear as I embrace the darkness and let it take over my body is the cloaked figure speaking to something I could not see through the darkness of death.
“How foolish, never bet everything on a battle that no one has ever won. We are going to need a new cloak, we have a new partner to play games with”
The it all goes black, with wonderful,wonderful despair.