“No Scrabble. More and more of his friends were playing it now, in a knowing ironic way, triple-word-score-craving freaks, but it seemed to him like a game designed expressly to make him feel stupid and bored.”

“Palindrome as well. My sister's name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times World Scrabble Champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score.”

“One night, bored and restless, I found a stack of dusty board games in a closet, and bullied Ash into learning Scrabble, checkers and Yahtzee. Surprisingly, Ash found that he enjoyed these “human” games, and was soon asking me to play more often than not. This filled some of the long, restless evenings and kept my mind off certain things. Unfortunately for me, once Ash learned the rules, he was nearly impossible to beat in strategy games like checkers, and his long life gave him a vast knowledge of lengthy, complicated words he staggered me with in Scrabble. Though sometimes we’d end up debating whether or not faery terms like Gwragedd Annwn and hobyahs were legal to use.”

“Wait,” he said. “That’s not a word.”I looked down to where, in a moment of desperation, I’d played zixic on a triple-word-score space.“Uh, sure it is.”“What’s it mean?”“It’s sort of like…quixotic, but with more…”“Bullshit?”I laughed out loud. I’d never heard him swear before.“More zeal. Hence the z.”“Uh-huh. Use it in a sentence.”“Um…’You are a zixic writer.’““I don’t believe this.”“That you’re zixic?”“That you’re trying to cheat at Scrabble.” He leaned back against my couch, shaking his head. “I mean, I was ready to accept the whole evil thing, but this is kind of extreme.”

“I trace the lines of his tattoos in a way that I know distracts him. I run my hands over his smooth, warm skin. I kiss him now, making him breathless. I lie there listening to his heart beat and I’m still so hungry for him. I feel more alive than ever.”

“More and more, he heard his spine playing stick games through his skin, singing old dusty words, the words of all his years.”