Queen of the Chess Cult and Other Stories

This baker’s dozen presents the game of chess, its stage and actors, as symbols of an incomprehensible world, a means of communication beyond language, an unreachable ideal, a trap, a disease, a salvation. These stories are literary, hallucinatory, and mystifying, resisting easy conclusions or explanations.

Contents

Foreword
Notes on writing short stories and the ideas behind this chess-themed collection.

Queen of the Chess Cult
The search for a beautiful queen who presides over a cult with a sacred book listing the moves of the perfect chess game.

Pawn Storm
Falling from the sky are snowflakes like chess pieces.

A Wasted Life
A man gives up chess but is continually reminded of it to his chagrin.

Klooster
A sunny day at a lake house reclining in beach chairs with chess, sandwiches, beer, and a pretty girl.

The Chess Plague
A mysterious plague devastates a town and especially its chess players.

A Bowl of Stew
A man and woman enter a cafe and discuss their personal interests while waiting for their dishes to arrive.

City of a Thousand Chess Clubs
A town with many unusual chess clubs unlike anywhere else.

A Dimly-Lighted Cafe
An old man waits vainly for chess opponents at a cafe.

A Legacy for Jim Zorn
A chess player from the 1970s dies in a small Ohio town and the locals recollect what they knew about him.

The Prisoner’s Tale
Terrorists capture a prisoner who explains his life story to his cellmate using chess pieces instead of words.

The Screaming Cry of the Chessbird
A giant bird terrorizes a metropolis.

The Unwrapping
Friends unwrap gifts at a Christmas dinner.

The Infinite Chessboard
This world is a chessboard whose squares change in size, number, and color.