Immortal Games

Just a random story about Immortals and UNO

A small girl with tan skin and sparkling, brown eyes skipped down the streets of Chicago. Her fiery red hair flowed behind her as she happily danced to her destination, package in tow. Although she appeared to be only ten years old, she was roughly ten thousand.

                The people of Chicago stared at the girl as she went by, but none dared bother her. Though they didn’t know she was immortal, it was obvious she was different. Her hair was cut in an outdated, razor-blade fashion. Her outfit was a simple, off-white dress but her accessories were considered inappropriate for American culture. She wore shiny bracelets of many different colors and different styles on both arms, but most unusual of all was the necklace she wore with a large, Egyptian ankh hanging from it. To top it all off, the girl wore no shoes and had a lanky, black cat on her heels.

                This little girl didn’t even seem to notice the resentment sent toward her by everyone she passed. She was intent on a goal. With the box in her hands and her cat at her feet, she soon made it to the small hut she was currently living in. She flung the door wide open, startling both men inside.

                “Ankha!” the first man gasped, “What the hell?”

                This man appeared to be in his early twenties, but he gave off the same strange aura as Ankha. His silver hair and eyes appeared to shimmer in the sunlight coming from the door. His facial expression was crude, though, as if he was thinking about harming the girl for scaring him.

                The second man’s amber eyes sparkled behind his glasses. He reached up and flicked a strand of white-blond hair out of his twenty-three year old face before asking, “What’s in the box?”

                Ankha approached the table the other two immortals were sitting at before opening the box. There was a deck of odd colored cards. Some had numbers on them, while others had strange pictures.

                “Grand, Odysseus,” Ankha said, addressing each man in turn, “I introduce to you: UNO!”

                The two men exchanged a glance before looking back at Ankha. They stared at the box she had dropped on the table. “So…” Grand said after a while, “What does it do?”

                “It doesn’t do anything, Grand!” Ankha replied in an annoyed tone, “You play it! It’s a card game!”

                Both men stared at the little girl in silence for a few moments. Then at the same time each spoke.

                “What are cards?” Odysseus asked, while Grand asked, “Where are the suits?”

                Each man stopped and glared at each other for speaking out of turn. Ankha just sighed and picked up one of the cards. It was red with the number two on it.

                “This is a card, Od,” she explained patiently, “And there aren’t suits on these cards. The cards are either red, green, blue, yellow, or black. Black are wild cards. You can play them on anything, and you can choose what color the deck is when you play them. Besides that, the deck is whatever color the top card on the pile is.”

                She took the whole deck and began to shuffle it. She then passed out seven cards to both boys, and another seven to herself. She set the deck down in the middle of the table, pulled a chair up to sit down, then flipped the first card on the deck over and set it down next to the deck. It was a blue seven.

                She continued, “Now, on that seven you can either play any other blue card, a seven of any color, or a black wild card. The point of the game is to get rid of all of the cards in your hand before everyone else. But when you only have one card left, you have to say UNO! If you don’t, then you have to draw two more cards.”

                “My turn?” Grand asked, more concerned about winning than anything else.

                “Nope!” Ankha replied, “Odysseus’ turn!”

                Od smirked at Grand before tossing a blue card with two twisted arrows on it on top of the blue seven.

                “That’s not a number, stupid,” Grand growled, “But, you’re from Greece, so I guess I see why you don’t know that.”

                Odysseus looked like he was about to reached across the table and punch Grand, so Ankha quickly chimed, “It’s alright. That’s a special card! It’s a reverse. That means instead of it being Grand’s turn, it’s mine again!”

                Grand growled at the play, but Ankha didn’t pay him any mind. She tossed down a blue three. Grand put a green three on the pile, and Odysseus followed up with a green five. Ankha tossed a black card with a multi-colored circle on the discard pile.

                “That’s the wild card I was talking about. I’m going to change the color to yellow, so Grand, you have to play a yellow card!” Ankha said.

                Grand grumbled and tossed a yellow four onto the pile. Odysseus frowned at his cards before putting a yellow card with +2 written on it and a drawing of two cards in the middle on the top of the pile.  

                “Oh, that’s a +2. The next person in line has to draw two card, but if they have another +2 of any color they can play it, then the next person has to draw four.” Ankha explained. She then tossed down a red +2 card on top of the pile and turned to look at Grand. Grand just smirked and threw down a green +2.

                “Suck that, Odysseus,” he growled. Odysseus just smirked in return though and tossed a red +2 on the pile. Grand frowned and glared at Od, who just stuck his tongue out at the other man.

                Ankha cried, “Od! I don’t have another +2! Why did you do that?”

                “It was Grand’s fault!” Odysseus cried, pointing at the silver haired man. He knew that the girl had a worse temper than his own and Grand’s put together, so he refused to have her wrath targeted at him.

                “What!?” Grand growled, narrowing his eyes at Odysseus. It looked as if the two immortal men were about to have a brawl in the middle of the game, but Ankha ended up calmly sighing and drawing six more cards.

                “Your turn, Grand,” was all she ended up saying. Since she wasn’t upset, both of the men just turned back to their cards to continue the game.

                Grand put down a red card that had a picture of a circle with a line crossing through it.

                With a sigh, Ankha explained, “That’s a skip card. It skips the next person in line, which is Od, and then it would go to me.”

                “HA!” Grand exclaimed, pointing a finger at Odysseus, “Take that!”

                Odysseus grumbled and put his cards down on the table in defeat. He didn’t want to mess with Grand right now. Although he was both older and stronger, Odysseus had no intention of getting into a fight with Grand when Ankha was around. Unlike Grand, Odysseus had common sense. He wasn’t going to do something that might upset the little girl. Since Ankha was years older than they were, she was naturally stronger thanks to the immortality that ran through their blood.

                Ankha tossed down red nine. Grand followed by putting a black wild card with a +4 on it at the top of the pile.

                “Yellow!” Grand said, feeling proud of himself for knowing what the black card did.

                Odysseus was about to put a card down when Ankha reached out to cover the pile, stopping him from making a move. “Wait,” she said, “See that +4 at the top?”

                She removed her hand from the pile so both men could get a good look at it. “That’s a special type of wild card. It works like both the regular wild card and the +2 card. That means Od has to take four more cards, and then it’s my turn.”

                “What if I have another one of those?” Odysseus asked, pulling a similar card out of his hand and showing it to Ankha.

                Ankha sighed, “You can play it then.” She had purposefully been trying to keep that a secret, since she was already losing and didn’t have a card of that type. She reached out and grabbed eight cards from the pile when Odysseus put his own +4 card down and called, “Blue.”

                Grand made a growling sound deep in his throat when Odysseus called out the color. “What if I don’t have it?” he asked, sounding rather annoyed.

                “Then you have to draw. You can play the card if you get one you can play, but if you can’t, then it’s Od’s turn.” Ankha explained.

                Grand picked up a card from the top of the draw pile and stared at it. He smirked when he realized he could play it, and he set the blue +2 card down on the top of the pile. He looked as if he was about to say something rude to Odysseus, but he stopped when the other man quickly tossed down a card of the same type: another blue +2.

                “You’re kidding me, right?” Ankha asked rudely, glaring at both Grand and Odysseus in turn. When she didn’t get a response she picked up four cards from the draw pile. Grand then tossed down a yellow +2 card and called out, “Uno!”

                Odysseus sighed and picked up two cards from the pile. Ankha placed down a yellow reverse card which Odysseus followed up with a yellow skip card.

                “Damnit!” Grand cursed, slamming his hand down on the table. Ankha just smiled and played a green seven. Odysseus played a green skip card, causing Grand to curse once again. Ankha just laughed and put a green four on the pile. Odysseus played a green reverse, causing Ankha to play a red reverse. Odysseus then played a red skip and said, “Uno.”

                At this, both Grand and Ankha looked upset. Odysseus felt as if death was coming his way, which was an unusual feeling since he was immortal. Ankha ended up sighing and playing a blue +2 card though. Odysseus tossed down his last card, a green +2 card. Grand growled before playing a yellow +2. Not only did this leave Ankha to draw six more cards, but the game was now over and Ankha was the loser.

                Ankha calmly grabbed six more cards before slowly counting up all of the cards in her hand. When she realized she had twenty-two cards when the two boys both went out, she was upset. She glared at both of the other immortals before tossing her cards down on the table. She stood up and flipped the table over angrily before storming out of the house they shared, her black cat following on her heels once again, undisturbed by her anger.

                Grand and Odysseus shared a look before watching Ankha leave. They both knew she was most likely off to find a new game that she could beat them at. This happened quite often. 

 Must be published 

Sep 22, 2011

• Operation Action and Adventure
• Immortal Games

Author's Note

Well I was forming Ankha in my mind, and I decided I needed to use her. So here she is. I hope she was an enjoyable character, especially for her first experience. This didn't come out fully how I had planned it, but whatever. It was supposed to just be a random story so I could try to use Ankha. Plus I have been addicted to UNO recently.

Well, if it makes anything any easier to understand, and if you didn't pick up on it, they were all immortals. Ankha is the oldest, being from Ancient Egypt. Odysseus would be in the middle since he's from Ancient Greece, and yes Ankha calls him 'Od', and the Grand is the youngest from [pre]WWII Germany. So if you were to do rounding, Ankha is roughly 10,000. Odysseus 1,000. And Grand 100. Keep in mind, that's rounding. Ankha and Grand were both rounded up, when Odysseus was rounded down.

I don't think I have anything else to add, besides the fact that this was completely random. The only thing bad in this is a bit of cussing. Thanks for reading it, and please feel free to leave a review! I want to know what you think! Picture is Od, made by my friend Tiny.

Reviews

[Sakib]

I didn't know how to play UNO. I have learned quite a few things reading this about the game. Besides Ankha, other two characters are also interesting. The immortal thing is very interesting. I think you are trying to form characters for your book. This is a good way to do that. I like the story as it has some interesting characters. I was also interested to read the whole story because of the UNO game. This is an enjoyable story. You have great ability to form any kind of story from a random situation. Great job. I liked it. :)

[StillShorterThanYou]

i really liked this story, and found it very entertaining. It gives a new light to UNO in my opinion :)

[Miss Marie Riorden.]

That was quite funny. To watch 2 people who have never heard of UNO before play the game.
I didn't see any mistakes, but the only problem I have is the beginning doesn't really grab your attention. Maybe you could work on that?
Afterwards it was good. You get a lot of character development within this tiny story (:

-Marie-

[Sarah McConnaughey]

This was a really cute story and I enjoyed it very much! The characters are so likable, especially Ankha, and the story was so well written it kept my attention from beginning to end! You're definitely, and without a doubt, a better writer than I could ever be! And great game choice (I love UNO). ;p - Well done!

[Calypso]

I was addicted to Uno at one time...
Good game, good game.
I love how you make this short stories where all you do is introduce a character. I've been thinking of doing that and seeing the response.
I like the characters too.
Wow they're old!

[madmocha]

Interesting story. Two things stuck out to me early on. You are a good writer. Yeah, people say that a lot; but your writing shows a maturity of ability that is ahead of what I would guess your age is. :) That sentence came out more complicated then I meant it to. I just meant you write well. That includes normal narrative stuff like sentence structure, word choice, smoothness, dialogue... etc.
The second paragraph was a little puzzling. It indicated people she passed were disturbed by her appearance. But the description you gave wasn't one that would seem disturbing. Considering the weird diversity of people you find in a city the size of Chicago, she seemed fairly normal. ;)
Keep up your writing. You've got talent.

[Trinity]

This story was very interesting and fun to read. I loved the way you portrayed the immortals, especially Odysseus and Ankha. Since I've always been infatuated with Ancient Greek and, well, really all kinds of mythology then this was a very fun reading for me. Plus the fact that you made immortals play cards gave the story a great twist. I would love to read some more about them. I loved it! :)

[Dearantlers]

I liked it. And I really like how almost dramatic it seemed when Ankha said "I give you: UNO" I like Ankha a lot, and would love to see her in another story. I also think it's kinda funny that you'd write a story about UNO, but it is a really good game, and I would love to know what other game she shows up with.

[Bard Constantine]

Immortals stumped by the game of UNO... classic. I liked the humor of this piece, and enjoyed the rapport between the characters. Thanks for entering this piece into the Mind of the Immortal Contest...

[Tina Kline]

Great story, very enjoyable. I've played UNO quite often in the past. The characters are all fun and likeable. You can tell they like each other, yet have a healthy fear of each other and are very competitive.