The War Game by Crystal Black

I didn’t think he was the religious type.
                  Then he asked me if I wanted to play hangman.
                  “Oh, okay. You’re not really giving me a choice, are you?” I asked back. I didn’t really want to play (my spelling is awful) but I didn’t want him to go away either.
                  “No, not really,” he smiled and started to draw dashes to hold the places for the letters.
                  I started with the vowels, of course, and then the most reoccurring letters such as “s” and “t.”
                  After about my fourteenth letter, I had barely filled out the board and my man was wearing all sorts of clothing and accessories. John had drew the body, the limbs, the facial features on the hangman after my first few guesses.              
                  Then he would draw an earring, a skirt, a necklace and said that my hangman was a cross-dressing hangman. I had the dashes almost completely filled with letters but I was stuck on what was to be the last word.
                  Then it hit me and I finally got the damn phrase he made up. “Beware of the Nomads,” I shouted.
                  He smiled, clapped his hands like a little kid and said, “Yay! You won the game!” He patted me on the head, which reminded me that I couldn’t even remember when I last ran my fingers through it. I prayed his fingers wouldn’t get caught in the nest.
                  “You let me win though.” I wanted him to admit it. I always hated playing board games with my mothers because they always let me win. But then again, I was a sore loser. I’d rip up the playing cards and toss the pieces around and pout all day. No wonder they always let me win.
                  He laughed, kissed me (frankly, it was long overdue), and said, “Maybe I did.”
                  I forgave him.
                  “Yeah, did you see the tree creature in there?” he asked me.
                  “She’s here?” I asked, completely shocked, actually. It was probably cruel but I had hoped to never see her again.
                  “Yeah, she was way in the back, in a corner. I bet she already chewed out a mouse hole in the wall,” he said.
                  So he took me to where she had been but she was nowhere to be seen. “She’s probably scavenging for food wrappers and sanitary napkins to line her nest with,” he said.
                  I hit him. “That’s so gross!”
                  Then we saw her. The little bit of hair that she had was matted to the back of her neck, which was covered in boils ready to explode, and her beady little eyes. She was looking at moldy books and magazines. There were well over 100 copies of some puppy-breeding magazine and some useless, ancient encyclopedias. She had a thin hardback of poetry tucked under her arm and appeared to be exchanging it with a girl about my age with the price of a wristwatch.
                  My wristwatch. It was silver (just the color, not the material) with rhinestones.  It was feminine. It looked antique but I don’t think it was. It was a fake silver, fake diamond-encrusted, fake antique watch. But it was mine.
                  “That’s my wristwatch!” I screamed at her.
                  “No, it isn’t,” she sprayed spit into my face. Nasty nomad. Probably can’t help but salivate at the sight of humans. She looked at me with her red, cracked eyes. “It doesn’t belong to you.”
                  “I doubt it belongs to you either,” John piped in. I was mad as hell but equally pleased he cared enough to stand up for me.
                  She had nothing to say to that. I grabbed it out of her cold, vein-wrapped hands.
                  The girl with blonde hair