Joy sat down at the picnic table and let his opponent, Lambo, talk.
“You see. Me and my friends know your type. We’ve seen you come and go over our little parts of Vena Cava. You are what we like to call a compulsive gambler. It’s a real condition and me and my friends started a support group to help those less fortunate than us with this problem.”
Joy cocked his head. This wasn’t quite what he was expecting, and he wasn’t sure if he appreciated the deep dive into his mental state.
Lambo started shuffling the cards. His fingers flowed like water over them; this was a man of the cards.
“Anyways, me and my buds we thought, ‘this guy is a real piece of work.’ Now, we had a thought, from the way you fought and the way that you acted we felt that you would agree to play any game because you are so sure of yourself. We were even sure that you would play the game even if you knew that your opponent was cheating.”
At the mention of cheating Joy’s eyes glowed with excitement, and Lambo flashed two different aces of spades.
“So, here’s my bet with you. You can either take the first steps towards recovery from your problem by admitting you have lost, because you will lose my rigged game, at which point I will forfeit this lousy arena fight. Or I continue to cheat and destroy your ego until you succumb to option one.”
“I would say that sounds like you’re giving me no options.” Joy smiled at the man as he wiped his nose onto his hand, then transferred the mucus onto his pant leg.
“You would be right. And that’s how bad your addiction is, you know all that and you’re still going to accept my offer.”
“Maybe you’re right. Well, what’s your game?” Joy looked melancholic, but Lambo wasn’t paying attention.
Lambo started dealing the cards out. He formed a pile of three, a pile of five, and a pile of seven. “The cards in these piles do not matter, and there are only two things you can do in this game. You can either pick up a pile or pick up a single card from a pile. Your goal is to not be the last person to pick up a card. That’s the game.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. Now pick up the first card.”
Joy considered his options and decided that he would pick up the entire pile of seven. Something about it just seemed fun.
Lambo picked up the pile of five. Joy realized he had lost. He could either pick up the pile of three, which would make him lose. Or he could pick up a single card, to which Lambo would pick up a single card, leaving Joy forced to grab the final card from the game.
The game continued in such fashion for a while. Joy would eventually lose after trying some new tactic out, but Lambo would unerringly counter Joy’s move in the game, leading to another loss by Joy. Again, and again.
After a while, Joy declared, “I cannot win.” There was finality to his words, there was something powerful and weak contained within them. Joy accepted that there was no hidden well of luck he could draw upon to bring himself victory in these circumstances. He had truly lost.
“That’s close. You have said you cannot win, there is a difference between being unable to win and having lost.” Lambo grinned, revealing many missing teeth and the remaining ones yellowed and crusty.
“Losing implies the ability to win. You cannot lose if that is your only option. I refuse to admit a loss unless we play a game that I could win.” Joy twiddled his fingers. He looked almost guilty, yet steadfast in his opinion.
Lambo laid down on the ground nearby and stared up at the beautiful blue sky. “I told you I was cheating, and you still thought that you had a chance to win. You are conceited and delusional.”
“Maybe so, and yet I refuse to lose here in this way. I have not lost. I am merely far away from winning.”
“Why is it so hard for you to admit that you have lost?” Lambo picked his nose as he said this.
“Because I will win, you just don’t know it yet.”
There was a brief pause, then Lambo doubled over laughing. “You just said ye’ weren’t going to be able to win.”
“That’s because I didn’t say we were going to be playing your game.” Joy’s eyes twinkled with a plan.
“But you can’t just challenge me to another game, that’s not how this works.” Lambo sneered at Joy.
“Wrong twice, Lambo. Don’t let your mouth get in front of your mind. We are going to play the game that we have always been playing. The ‘get-to-know-you-game.’”
With this, Joy started picking cards up from the three piles. Lambo cautiously moved against Joy. Calmly picking the cards that allowed him the assured victory.
After a few rounds of losing, Joy asked, “what do you see in other people Lambo?”
Lambo didn’t answer for a few rounds as they continued picking up cards and rearranging them. “I see their failures and their mistakes. Everyone else seems to be following the same set of mistakes at every turn.”
“Does that mean that you are beyond making mistakes?”
“Far from it. I mean look at me, I am dirty and disgusting, poorer than a hen without eggs, and crabbier than a lobster.”
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“That’s the beautiful thing about people, Lambo. Is that the only thing we can control about other people is the way that they can perceive us. So, you must have decided that this is the way you wish to be perceived.”
“No, this is just the way that I am. Don’t misconstrue character for some elaborate scheme.”
“But that’s the thing. Character is always a choice. If you want to be a happier and kinder person, all you have to do is act kinder and happier.”
“If that was true then everyone would be happier. There are some things that no one is capable of overcoming. Poverty and pain, you wouldn’t tell me that someone who has been tortured their entire life could just be happy because they will it into existence.”
“That’s exactly what I am telling you, Lambo. I have met the poor, I have met the destroyed, I have met the strong, and I have met the unbowed victors of this world. Can I tell you the greatest thing I have seen about them?” Joy paused for a moment to revel in his words. “The worse off someone is, the more willing they are to find happiness in their situations. It takes someone falling from grace to be truly unhappy. They always want and want for what they had before, for what they dream they deserve. But no one deserves anything in this world, we all simply get what we get, and we don’t throw a fit.”
“Now that’s just childish. The better off people are the happier they are, and the worse off people are the unhappier they are. That’s the way of the world, or else everyone would simply throw away all their possession and money to become destitute but happy.” Lambo seemed unsettled by this entire conversation.
“You, Lambo, are a perfect example of this. You seem to be a truly miserable specimen.”
“That’s just plain rude.”
“But let me explain, it all makes sense, I swear.” Joy took a pause to lose another game of picking up cards. “You hide behind these affectations that you are some poor, miserable, crass cretin. However, behind that thin veil is the mind of an intellectual. You were educated by private tutors but maybe never made it to the top of the noble’s totem pole. Then some great catastrophes hit your life, my assumption is that it was gambling. You gambled away your family’s entire fortune leaving you destitute and without any employable skills.”
Joy took a moment to grin at Lambo, but all humor had left Lambo’s face. “You tried to act up the nobleman who was down on his luck in the sewers you were left in, but that got you nowhere. And you started to despise the way people looked at you for it. So, you decided that the nobleman you could’ve been should stay an unsullied character and that Lambo of now would be born. The nobleman you were before could never be injured by the insults that Lambo must take. You have hidden yourself behind a mask of insecurities that are not your own in order to hide from the world.”
“Stop!” Lambo bellowed. His face was a beautiful mix of ashen grey and beet red, swirling to create a scene quite like the ashes of a burning town, or maybe the dying embers of a life.
“You don’t get to criticize me. You haven’t lived my life; you know nothing of who I am and what I have struggled through. Damn you, Joy, don’t say things just to hurt.”
“I do get to criticize you. Everyone has lived, and you decided that you couldn’t live with yourself. So, you made caricature of yourself to live for you. Wasting away your days hiding behind the guise of a disgusting man who could take the pain.”
“Maybe I needed that.” Lambo turned his face down as a single tear streamed down his grimy face.
“Your pain is one of the only things in this world that is truly yours. I met a child on the frozen continent who had lived through more pain than you could imagine, and he decided that he could love his life despite the pain it caused him, that there was some small hope in the world worth living for.”
“Yes, and so even some child is a stronger person than I, isn’t that depressing?”
“You look at me and declare that I am an addict and a fool, but that’s not what this is. You look at me and only see yourself. Everyone only sees themselves in the world around them. The weak see weakness and the strong see strength.”
“And I am so very weak?”
“Yes, I think you are.”
There was a long pause. Lambo didn’t move. The games of picking up cards had stopped mattering so long ago, yet he still moved with impeccable accuracy to constantly refute Joy’s attempts to win. But now he waited silently, reflecting on the words that had been spoken.
When was the last time he had tried to be alive instead of just existing?
When had he last enjoyed a day?
What did he love in this world?
Was his life even worth living?
Sitting in front of the two players was one pile containing three cards and a pile with five. To force Joy to lose all Lambo had to do was pick one of them up in its entirety.
“Why do you get to decide what the ideal version of my life should look like?” Lambo’s red rimmed eyes bored into Joy, seeking an answer.
“I don’t. I’m just telling you what I see and reminding you that it is and always has been your choice. This sad squalor was your choice. The endless pessimism and weakness was your choice. Why make your life miserable when you could be happy, Lambo?”
“Well, I choose something else. I choose to prove you wrong.” Lambo grabbed the pile with three cards. Then he threw them into Joy’s face, Joy recoiled from the flying cards then was suddenly hit in the nose by a blazing right hook.
Joy’s nose made a horrible crack as it was struck, and blood started gushing out onto the floor of the stadium. A few picnic blankets that used to be red and white checkered squares slowly were stained a deep crimson.
Lambo stood tall and proud. His knobby nose, his wobbling knees, and the beer bottle stuck down his pants created a haunted image. He hawked a loogy down at Joy’s feet as he stood up.
“You are the weak one, Joy. Brought low by your own happiness. Only by suffering can we be made stronger, and I have suffered. My suffering meant something; it wasn’t a choice made to make myself miserable. It was a choice to make me strong.”
Lambo had a gift to make everyone around him equal in strength. It was given by Fairness and Lambo won his entry coin to this competition with it.
The gift wasn’t flashy, it just took away everyone’s powers and made them equal to Lambo. The Lambo with his weak knees. The Lambo who started gasping for breath with even the slightest bit of exercise. The Lambo whose gut stuck out beyond his nose. It made everyone as weak as Lambo had become.
He had gotten many people off balance with it. Powerful people got used to the power within themselves and were taken by surprise when Lambo stole it all from them.
The only thing his gift couldn’t take away was a person’s mentality and strength of will.
The audience’s boos had not subsided since the beginning of the match. So, no one heard the conversation between the two, however once they saw fists start flying a cheer resounded from the audience.
Joy’s and Lambo’s wills clashed in the middle of the arena.
Both men ran at each other, and their fists found each other’s faces. Both collapsed to the ground after the decisive blow. Joy cried out in extreme pain as his broken nose was broken even further. Lambo’s legs went out from under him, and he fell to his back.
Both were profoundly tired from the minor amount of physical effort. Both felt their bones ache beneath their flesh, unused to having their strength tested so thoroughly.
Despite their bodies’ crying for rest, both men stood up. Joy spat blood on the ground as his heaving chest took in a great lungful of air. Lambo screamed the cry of the unbroken as he raised his fists and beat on his chest.
The crowd had been excited about the battle. But their anger that had turned to fervor, slowly shifted to boredom as the two heaving men punched each other and fell over repeatedly. Neither would fall to the ground, yet neither had the physical capacity to seize the initiative and finish the fight. It became a silence only interrupted by fists hitting flesh occasionally and the panting of men unused to exercise.
Flesh and blood spilled in a ritual to someone unseen god, the world watched as two men hit each other, hoping the other would give up.
Joy couldn’t breathe anymore. He had given up on putting any flash into his movements. He had lost his mind. All that was left was the conflict between him and Lambo.
Lambo pulled the beer bottle out of his pants. He knew that pure physicality wouldn’t win this battle. The only thing left to distinguish the two fighters was cruelty and cunning.
The beer bottle slammed down into Joy’s skull, and it shattered.
Shards embedded themselves in Joy’s head as he lolled to the side.
Lambo felt it in his bones that he had won. He had shown the world, the gods, that his misery meant something.
He turned to face his adoring audience.
But all he saw were hands covering his face.
As Joy fell forward, he flung himself into one final embrace with Lambo. His arms raised to hold the man in a hug. No one deserved to suffer alone.
Joy’s arms closed around him and brought both of them to the ground in a final heap.
One particularly large piece of glass that had embedded itself into Joy’s head had pierced Lambo’s neck. In a cruel twist of Fate, Lambo lay on the arena floor bleeding out.
Neither of the competitors could move, and the match was finally called a victory in Joy’s favor because he had no major injuries, while Lambo would eventually bleed out from the puncture in his neck.
It was a victory that was accompanied by no fanfare. The audience paid little attention to it as more beer and snacks were consumed. All in all, the entire battle seemed empty and meaningless.
There was never any point to it in the first place.
