Checkmate

Checkmate

 

Look at your chessboard. The proudest pieces stand the tallest, and the strongest stand protected. In a game of chess, you are the puppeteer of your army, and you send your Queen out to the most perilous regions to undertake the most dangerous of tasks.

 

Why?

 

Oh, because she’s your strongest piece. She’s your secret weapon. Yet… she’s the one thing you do not want to lose under any circumstances. If you do, it may be difficult to recover.

 

In a game of chess, the Queen protects her King.

 

The King… ahh, what an interesting fellow. A ruler of lands and an alleged conqueror of kingdoms… so strong and yet… so weak? In a game of chess, the King can’t protect himself.

 

He needs his strongest warrior to protect him. He needs a woman. She performs dangerous maneuvers to protect what is her own. She is willing, just like the rest, to stand in the face of the enemy and knock them off one by one, often with no one to protect her… because we think she doesn’t need it.

 

The King is allowed what? One move in either direction? The Queen is allowed almost all of them. Yet the foolish player won’t think twice to use her as much as he can. The foolish player won’t protect her, the most important player, because he is blinded by the need to protect the King, the main objective of the game.

 

Yet they are both in the very last row.

 

So what am I getting at here? What sort of drivel is this? Am I an advocate of an inanimate Queen or am I a critic of the foolish chess player? What sort of thing does this have to do with life?

 

Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Do this: take a look to the Queens in your life, your strengths. Know not to sacrifice them too quickly, for they are the secret weapons to your game of life. Then look at your Kings, your weaknesses. Know that you are trying to protect them, mend them… but who will win that fight?

 

You may think that you will always be the King and Queen of your own chessboard, and that may be true, but don’t be surprised when your opponent has the same pieces and turns as you do.

 

They may well be the one to whisper ‘checkmate’, and win.

 

Would you sacrifice your strongest weapon early in the game?

Author's Note

I love chess, and I love to play it... so naturally I had to write a story about it. Hope you like! :)
Reviews=motivation! <3

-Mila

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

I love the game of chess also.
"They may well be the one to whisper ‘checkmate’, and win.
Would you sacrifice your strongest weapon early in the game?"
The game of chess is a game of future moves. Don't kill your defense. A good player will take advantage. Thank you Mila for sharing the excellent poetry.
Coyote

[Mila]

Thank you!!

[Coyote Poetry]

You are welcome.

[𝐋.𝐂.]

Love this story~ ♥♥
My little brother plays chess a lot and he likes to talk about it~
I know the queen is very important in the game,
but I had never heard someone descibe it this way. :)

[Mila]

Thank you!!

[&#119819;.&#119810;.]

You're welcome~

[SuspectGray]

J'adoube - Means 'I adjust'; said before adjusting a piece on the board during a game. Usually occurs when a player has made a move, and carelessly left the piece overlapping the square.

That's where I usually am....overlapping the square

[Mila]

Haha nice!

[Lyric]

Lol awesome to know I'm not the only girl who loves chess! Awesome story, and cool use of metaphor, and your right about players using the queen to much, use the queen, the queen gets taken and then where are you?

[Mila]

Thank you! :)

[jse]

I am an avid Chess player. So naturally, the title of this piece drew me to it. Your writing has a great flow throughout the piece and is very well written.

One quick suggestion for improvement. I think this would make for outstanding dialogue between two young lovers playing Chess in the park. It would create an interesting tension between the two of them.

Great work, Mila!

[Mila]

Thank you!!!

[Ignacious Lamont Crowle..]

this feels more like an "essay" (maybe the right word) than a story. Not that I am saying that is a bad thing. very well written and engaging. Keep it up :)

[Mila]

Thank you!

[Rene Salinas]

What an interesting piece. I did play a lot of Chess mainly driven by my Dad but then I developed a liking and got pretty far. However, I did not read Chess into the piece at all.
In terms of Structure it seems at 407 it would easily go under the umbrella of flash fiction probably even freeze - frame fiction. I would put the 2pt spacing though it always offers more space for the words to breathe.

In terms of Theme this came to me as a view into femininity and how the female of the species is indeed more versatile and malleable than the male counterpart. The association of the one square at the time for the slow progress to the multi - directional approach of the queen is cute if not accurate. A bit of an old image as now the metamorphosis is based on the couple of the castle no longer the King as a supreme figure.

Dialogue is clear with words that are easy to relate to the metaphors apt and clear. Although judging by how most reviewers saw a chess story unravelling maybe I’m wrong in my assessment.

Grammar and typos:

“Chessboard” for chess board, “maneuvers” for manoeuvre, “”the man” for the main, “secret weapons to” secret weapons in. Nothing too significant really.

An interesting view through the metaphors of Chess.

Thank you.

[Mila]

Thank you very much for your insightful review!

[MomzillaNC]

Well said. :)

[Mila]

Thank you! :)

[MomzillaNC]

yw :)

[NoelHC]

I am not surprised to find out you are a chess player Mila, I also enjoy it a great deal, but have nobody to play against. Usually, I have to resort to solving chess puzzles on the computer, or on my board, with a book of hundreds of set pieces I own.
Maybe you and I should play a game sending moves over Twitter! : )
Chess can and does serve as an analogy for life, and you have conveyed this well here. I could see this work expanded to cover the other pieces as well. I have a Russian book, translated to English written for pre-teens. It tells the story of the pieces, as it explains how they move and what they can do. Your piece reminded me of that.
The only thing I noticed:
need to protect the King, the ma(i)n objective of the game.

[Mila]

Thank you!! Thanks for pointing out that typo! I'll fix that.

[Devanshu Rajput]

I am novice at chess, as I am novice at writing. But, I know the paramount importance of a Queen on the chess board. She is the most fierce protector of king. You are absolutely correct. King, being the most powerful, but also the most impotent warrior.

I can easily get the message that you want to convey in this philosophical write.

Thanks, for sharing the excellent piece of write.

Devanshu

[Mila]

Thank you!!

[Devanshu Rajput]

You are welcome....