Be My Undoing

Surprise

Ransom had always liked games.

Card games, specifically, or really anything with strategy.

Harlan had been the one to first introduce him to games such as that. Before he could even walk, Harlan had sat his grandson on his lap and made him watch as he played. Through this observation-method, his grandfather had educated him on both how to play, and why he should want to.

Ransom quickly learned the advantages of such games.

Games like the ones his grandfather liked were opportunities to better know the person he was playing them with. They exposed the person's strengths, their weaknesses, the lot of it. They were an opportunity to win not only the game that was being played, but to also learn how to win the next one.

Harlan, as part of Ransom's education, has also instilled in his grandson one key rule when playing:

Never reveal your full hand, and never play without a card hidden up your sleeve.

By the time Ransom was old enough to play, he never forgot it.

The kind of the games Ransom liked were one of the reasons why he didn't like the other kids at school. The games they chose to play didn't interest him. They were too straight-forward, too simple. There was a winner and there was a loser, and if the game lasted longer than the kids' appallingly short attention spans, the game ended before even that was determined.

That, paired with the lack of use Ransom saw in them, made for him not being friends with any of the kids at his school.

It wasn't a hidden fact that for how much Ransom disliked his classmates, they too disliked him just as much. Ransom was aware of this, and where he used to feel apathy towards that knowledge, he now saw use in it.

Because now he'd come up with a game he wanted to play, a game that would need the involvement of the other kids. And because they hated him, he was sure that they'd play the role he needed them too.

He launched the game one afternoon during recess.

The part he was to play was easy once he determined what his moves would be.

One: find your target.

Under a grey sky and the slats of monkey bars, there stood Henry H., both the tallest and most popular boy in his class.

Two: engage.

"Hey, Henry!" he called, drawing the boy's attention. The boy was tall, a good number of inches taller than Ransom, but like all the other kids in his class, easily riled. "Eat shit!"

Ransom then shoved him, and as Henry H. hadn't been expecting that, he stumbled back and into the mulch.

Three: let your target respond.

"What the heck, asshole!"

It had been Ransom's first time being called an asshole, and at the time, he found the name perfect.

Ransom had planned for what happened next to happen, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable.

Henry H. sprung forward in retaliation and knocked him down easily.

Ransom knew it was only a matter of time before a teacher came rushing over to check out what was causing such a fuss, and so he trusted in that knowledge despite not being able to hear any teacher's yells over the sound of his blood pounding in his ears and the chants of his classmates cheering Henry H. on.

Ransom's pawn was red in the face as he fought him. Ransom got a few sloppy hits in before getting pinned by Henry H. and then being unable to fight him off.