Photo prompt by Jeff Arnold
Every move is a challenge.
How will the other react?
Fall back or rise to the bait?
They always rise. She hears the contrast in their voices, like black and white. One shrill, emotional, the other a flat monotone suppressing rage. Every night.
She pulls the pillow close, shutting out the voices downstairs. A door slams. Her mother weeps. A bottle clinks against a solitary glass. Another stalemate.
These are the sounds she will remember. The moves she will learn unknowingly, and repeat, step by step, in later years, when she plays the same game.
Checkmate. But nobody wins.
(99 words)
Written for Rochell Wisoff-Fields #FridayFictioneers Challenge – check out the details here
kirstwrites 
Yup. Repeating the same moves, again and again. Not a sure fire way to come out ahead.
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oh I got chills reading this. I fear it is a game that will never end well. Well told. A sad tale about how there are some experience we are doomed to repeat and also how impressionable young minds are.
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‘Nobody wins’
Great way to end it! 🙂
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‘When she plays the same game.’ Let’s hope she breaks out one day.
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You describe so telingly the way moves are learned unknowingly
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I was hoping she would leave all this behind, but no. The moves, once learned, will stay with her. Nice one!
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A depressing cycle that needs to be broken somehow. Well written.
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The moves will stay with her but there are ways to break out of the circle.
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it never changes, the cycle of life.
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Sad, thought provoking story. Nicely done.
Susan A Eames at
Travel, Fiction and Photos
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Nice job revealing how the unexamined life can lead to ruin.
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Nicely told. Well done!
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From one generation to another until one finally decides to no longer play that particular game.
Well done.
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Hard to break out of that cycle. Nicely told.
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She is learning how to play chess of life from a pro, her mother.
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A powerful, vividly written piece. Great use of the prompt.
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Oh.. so sad that she got caught in the same game without winners.
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