SpookiBooty

Ok, so, as I’ve mentioned occasionally, I used to also be in the school theater troupe, and for a role, I learned basic sleight of hand, the kind magicians use for such stunts like card tricks and ball tricks. Mind you, I wasn’t doing Criss Angel Mindfreak levels of shit or redefining the capital H in Houdini, but I knew how to do basic sleight of hand with small objects, which I used for party tricks and other such parlor tomfoolery.

But I realized I wasn’t using my newfound power to its full extent, so I got an idea one day. I arrived early to the chess clubroom and pocketed a few extra pieces from the other chessboards (which didn’t matter, the club never had enough members to actually use all of the chessboards at any one time), then I challenged the club prez to a game. Now, this guy already didn’t like me too much, dude was kind of a cunt and held a grudge against me because my cousin ended up with one of his crushes and then I ended up with his next crush, so he had bloodline beef with us. So he accepts to the match and we set up the board.

Now, this guy was pretty good at chess, objectively better than myself, but I wasn’t here to win, not at the game, at least. We start playing, it starts pretty even as we develop our units, he castles better and faster than I, and then starts putting pressure on me. It’s at this point, the midgame, where my Belmont to his Dracula would shine in full force: Whenever he looked away (to answer someone’s question about where to find something or about some chess rule), I would put One (1) pawn down from my sleeve. 

Initially he didn’t notice, but he did look twice at some placements. But as time went on, he started to visibly grow frustrated and confused, until it became so fucking ridiculous and obvious that he called a pause and counted a total of 14 black pawns on the board (you only have 8 pawns, for reference), at which point I couldn’t hold my laughter anymore. He starts insulting me, I look behind him, to the door, and pretend I’m addressing a teacher that had just come into the room, he turns around, sees no one had actually entered the room, and when he looks back at me and the board, there was suddenly a second black queen next to his king and I just fucking lose it when he makes one of the faces of all time and starts saying colorful things about mine mother.

On one of these days, he finds a farmhouse of a very jittery couple who agree to let him sleep in the barn, with the conditions that he sleeps in the barn loft and if he's found, they disavow all knowledge that he was there. He agrees, because he's exhausted and will sleep in a hay pile if he has to. My grandpa manages to fit all six foot three inches of himself into a feed trough stored upstairs and tries to get some sleep.

However, right when he's half-snoozing, he hears motors outside and sure enough, here are some very angry officers of mixed Nazi and Vichy make confronting the couple saying someone up the road spotted an American soldier walking this way. They wouldn't know anything about that, would they? No, of course not.

All the while, my grandpa—now trying to figure out how to either escape the barn unseen or how to fight off six? seven? eight? people at once—freezes up and waits for the inevitable. While he does, a HUGE spider crawls next to his head and onto the loft railing. For one second, he thinks about swatting it away, but that would risk him being seen and killed.

So, instead, he lays there and waits to either fight to the death or get executed in a feed trough. And while he lays there, the spider starts making a huge web on the railing. My grandpa's transfixed by this thing. He watches her go around and around, building a solid web before plopping herself off to one side and waiting for breakfast. At the same time, the officers finally go into the barn.

My grandpa can hear them searching around, turning over crates and checking animal pens. Then, he hears one say to check the loft.

And then another say, "Don't bother. Look at the spiderwebs up there. No one's been there in a while."

And they leave.

Because my grandpa didn't swat the spider away and let her build her web, the officers thought no one was there and left him alone. They drive off and my grandpa immediately thanks the farmer couple and hauls ass out of there as soon as he can.