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Games
Jan 9, 2008 11:42:37 GMT
Post by sean on Jan 9, 2008 11:42:37 GMT
Horror stories linked in some way to games, anyone? I'm sure that there are a whole bunch of them out there.
I'll start with 'The Dreams of Albert Moreland' by Fritz Leiber, and 'Let's Play Poison' by Ray Bradbury.
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Games
Jan 9, 2008 12:25:02 GMT
Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2008 12:25:02 GMT
That's games as opposed to sports, right?
Just cribbed these off the Vault site. I think some may be just too similar to run in the same book but they're great stories.
Mary Danby - Party Pieces: Maggie and George throw one of their famous New Years Eve parties, and they will insist on treating their unlovely guests to a divertissement. Last year it was the “ghost” in the spare bedroom (dry ice and a tape recorder), this time, something altogether more complex for “Tonight is the night when the Bogeyman dies”. What follows is a variation on A. N. L. Munby’s A Christmas Game via Bradbury’s The October Game with just enough Danby to give it a further ghastly twist.
John Burke - Party Games: Ronnie Jarman's birthday party and his mum Alice is struggling to control twenty over-excited children. The bright, impeccably well mannered eight year old Simon Potter has turned up uninvited and Alice is wondering if she did the right thing by welcoming him in to enjoy the fun. Simon lost his father some years ago and you'd hope the children would be kind instead of continually bullying him. She wishes her husband would hurry home from work. By the end of the story she bitterly wishes he hasn't.
‘Ex-Private X’ (A. M. Burrage) - ‘Smee’: At the Simpson’s Christmas party the twelve guests decide on a game of Smee (a superior variation of hide and seek) as the evening’s diversion. Mr. Simpson warns them to avoid the door leading to the back staircase as the descent is all but a sheer drop and eight years earlier young Brenda Ford broke her neck when she fell through in the dark. As the game gets underway it becomes clear that the group have been joined by an extra player …
Actually, playing hide and seek is lethal in any horror story.
Reginald Rose - Parlor Game: Munn's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He calls at a remote shack only to be threatened with a rifle and tied to a chair by its occupants, three waxen octogenarians. Their leader explains that he and his brothers have a real a downer on young 'uns on account of them being healthy and not caring about their elders and betters. But it's OK, they only want to play a game.
"We only answer 'yes' or 'no'. Three questions each and then you have to guess who's the oldest. If you do then you win the game. If you don't then we'll shoot you and bury you down in the cellar with the others ....."
Charles Birkin - The Lesson: Oscar Landmore gets drunk at Rupert and Gina's party. Their son, little Milo, is fond of his uncle Oscar because he always plays games with him, and tonight is no exception. Milo ties 'the Martian leader' to a chair and goes off to bed. Rupert finds him but decides to leave him there as a lesson while he and his wife go out to pick up a takeaway. It's only on the way back that Rupert remembers that Oscar has a plastic bag tied over his head. Frantic, he puts his foot down, and ...
Ray Bradbury - The October Game: Mich, the disgruntled and deeply disturbed husband, determines that wife Louis is going to pay for ‘depriving’ him of a son. He isn’t going to shoot her, though - he wants her to really suffer, and he reckons the only way he can get back at her is through their one daughter, eight year old Marion. The Halloween party provides him with his opportunity. Deliciously horrible.
A. N. L. Munby - A Christmas Game: Dorchester, 1880’s. Father invites Fenton, an old school friend, to spend Christmas with his family after a chance meeting in Exeter. The man has an aversion to anybody mentioning his years as an administrator in New Zealand.
Despite this, things are fine until the family settle down to play ‘dead man’ (as made infamous by Ray Bradbury in The October Game) and Fenton is handed two squishy grapes in the dark. He screams and suffers a stroke. Shortly after, the narrator, a young medical student sees the ghost of a blind Aborigine stumbling about the yard and it’s obvious who he’s come for.
Depending on whether you consider chess a game or a sport ....
H. R. Wakefield - Professor Pownall's Oversight: "Morrison and you are the most brilliant undergraduates who have been at Oxford in my time. I am not quite sure why, but I am convinced of two things; firstly, that he will always above you, and secondly, that you have the better brain."
So it proves, save for at games of chess, Pownall showing himself to be the greatest player in Britain ... until a slip up at Bournemouth in the Masters final - versus Morrison - decides him to murder his life-long rival. Pownall goes on to represent his country at the World Championship in Budapesth, but Morrison's ghost is waiting for him, guiding the pieces of his bewildered opponents. Exasperated, the Professor can only see one way out.
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