 I played tic-tac-toe with a gravestone, and I think I lost. Now, I know this sounds terrible, but I promise you that I didn't mean any offense when I did it. I was just out in my town's historical graveyard. It's been around since the 1800s, doing some grave rubbings in one of the less maintained sections when I found it. A grave, I presume, had been defaced. A long time ago, I thought, because the carvings were a little faded and weathered. I know how when a mark is fresh, it's got ragged edges, like a cut. But over time, the wind and rain smoothed down those rough patches, and it becomes smooth. This was like that. I would have thought it original to the tombstone if it weren't for the fact that it was on the back, and that it was a tic-tac-toe board. I have no idea when tic-tac-toe was invented, to be fair. I just assumed that it wasn't in the 1800s. The idea of it just amused me, an eternally unfinished antique game of tic-tac-toe. I wondered who had started the game, if they'd filled it out all on their own or if they'd had a partner, if the game had been left deliberately unfinished as some kind of macabre joke. Or if something had happened, to prevent them from finishing it. The longer I squatted there, my forearms resting on my knees. The funnier and more whimsical it seemed to me. There were already three Xs on the board, two in the top corners and one in the middle space. There were two O's on the board as well, one in each of the bottom corners. It looked like X was poised to win, so I reached up with my chalky hand and etched an O right in the middle of the top row. The residue on my hand was barely enough to leave an entire circle. It was gossamer and practically invisible in the afternoon gloom. A storm had been threatening all day, so I figured it was harmless. The rain would wash the mark away by nightfall anyway, and it wasn't like I defaced the tombstone. It had kind of broken my concentration though. I looked up after making my move and realized just how late it had gotten. I'd skipped lunch because I was so engrossed in the etchings. My stomach was pinched and sour feeling. Time to get something to eat. I got to my feet, joints popping and aching despite the fact I was only in my mid-twenties, spent too long hunched over. My back and knees hurt. I felt decrepit hobbling out of the graveyard and over to my trusty old Kia, about as old as those tombstones. But as I backed out of the parking lot, I couldn't shake the weirdest sense of unease like a shadow had rolled over me. It was probably my imagination, I told myself, on the way back to my apartment. Latest superstition from working in a graveyard all day, I figured as I gathered my sketches and trotted up the steps to my apartment. I even managed to forget about it while I cooked myself dinner and worked on entering the names and dates I'd recorded into the database for the local historical society. By the time I hopped in the shower, I was blissfully, woefully unprepared for the night ahead. I got my first inkling of what was coming. When I got out of the shower, whisking the curtain aside with a cheerful jangle of the rings, I was humming to myself as I snagged the towel off the rod and roughed my hair with it, almost walked right past the mirror without looking. But I did. I did look. And I stopped dead in my tracks. There, in fat finger-wide lines, was a tic-tac-toe board, two X's in the top corners, two O's in the bottom, one X in the center, one O in the center of the top line. And now, an X between the O's at the bottom. A chill ran down my spine. My heart rate went through the roof. I stared, uncomprehending, for at least three minutes before it sank in. Either I was imagining this or the alternatives were almost as frightening. Some psychopath had seen me in the graveyard, broke into my apartment, and scribbled a game on my mirror while I was in the shower. I had done it in some kind of fugue state or my mouth was dry. I turned toward the bathroom door, too scared to open it at first. But my phone was in there and my keys and my clothes and anything to defend myself with for that matter. If someone had broken in, they would have heard the shower stop by now, so I took a deep breath and bumped the door open with my foot, winding the towel up in my hands. No one was there. I dropped to my knees and checked under the bed, then scrambled up and got dressed as fast as I could. I'm a pretty big dude, but I have to say that my knees were knocking as I searched my apartment top to bottom for any sign of an intruder. All the windows were locked, the doors were still dead bolted. I lived on the third story so it's not like someone could just freaking repunzel the balcony. Which meant that either I had done that or a ghost had. And frankly, I was more ready to accept that I had. Eventually I chalked it up to exhaustion and some kind of weird muscle memory or something and decided to call it an early night. I was woken from a sound sleep by the creaking of the bedroom door. I was an alarmed, not at first, more just confused and sleepy. I didn't even open my eyes until I heard the first floorboard. By the second, I was wide awake. My eyes as wide as saucers, but it was already too late. There was a skull on my footboard attached to bony shoulders that I could only see the cusp of. It was crouched at the end of my bed, leering at me. You didn't play. It rasped at me. You have to play. It continued. Or you forfeit. But there was no way to win, either. The only way this game ended was with a draw. And frankly, I was too terrified to even move, frozen with terror, as the saying went. I've never really understood that saying, until then. Now I do, though. Now I do. I made a sound of fear. I think it must have taken that as an agreement, because it nodded once. Or move. I don't know if you've ever felt that kind of fear. That all-encompassing, jaw-clenching, cold-sweating terror. The kind that makes you feel like you might literally die of it right then and right there. I couldn't breathe, and there was a sour taste in the back of my throat. I watched as it reached up with one skeletal hand and drew a series of lines on my blanket in thin white, and then four Xs and three O's. My move. I closed my eyes and desperately wished for this thing to go away, to wake up from this terrible nightmare. But when I opened them, it was still there, grinning patiently at me with its yellowed teeth and empty eye sockets. I prayed. I've never been a religious man, but I prayed and lifted a shaking finger to etch one last O in the far position. The ghoul filled the last spot with an X and then nodded, hmm, draw. It said, I nearly wilted in relief, but didn't relax, especially after I watched it slump to the floor with a rattle and then shoot backwards into my closet. I moved out of that apartment the next morning, didn't say anything to my landlord, just pack the important stuff and went to sleep on my best friend's couch. I thought I'd be safe there. I thought it was over. But that night, after Ben had gone to bed, I heard a tapping from the window and turned my head to find it had become inexplicably foggy and a new set of lines with a single X marked neatly in the center. I wept. I'm not ashamed to say it. I already knew what happened if I didn't play. I forced myself off the couch and dragged my feet all the way over to the window, barely breathing the whole way and lifted my finger to the glass, scrolling a new O in the top corner. Somehow I wasn't surprised at all to find that the condensation existed on both sides of the glass. I was more upset that the next move didn't come right away. I just, I just wanted to get it over with my palms were sweating my chest tight. I wanted to just do it and handle whatever the consequences were. But no, it made me wait. I didn't bother going back to bed. What was the point? I wasn't going to sleep. That was when Ben found me the next morning slumped next to the wall looking defeated. I couldn't explain to him why he'd think I was insane. I just told him I'd been having some rough dreams. He seemed sympathetic, offered me a lot of homeopathic cures that I pretended to consider. I don't know if they would have worked for a real nightmare or not, but they certainly weren't going to solve my problem. We had breakfast, which I barely touched, and then I went home. Didn't seem to be a reason not to. I knew now that it would find me if I left. I considered visiting a church, but given that the tombstone itself had been adjacent to one, I figured whatever this was didn't give two shits about consecrated ground. I tried to force myself to eat lunch, but everything felt like wet sand in my mouth. I didn't have much of an appetite for anything. I felt like a patient waiting for a diagnosis I knew was going to be bad. Every minute felt like an hour, but time seemed to fly by somehow. I found myself wrapped in a constant cloak of dread, imagining what was going to happen to me if I lost. On 930, I picked up a pad of paper and made the grid, then closed my eyes and waited. I heard the scratching of marks being made and waited until the chill dissipated before opening my eyes again. I couldn't stand to look at that thing even one more time. Another X in the bottom left corner. I exhaled and marked an O at the end of that would be line. It went on like this for weeks. I had to go on personal leave from my job. I lost weight because I'd stopped eating. Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw it. The grid of our never ending game superimposed over my increasingly gaunt reflection. Every game ended in a draw as I got increasingly numb and exhausted. I wasn't sleeping well. I'd stopped leaving my house. Eventually, I messed up. It was probably inevitable. I didn't even realize I'd done it until I climbed into bed that night, too tired to think and felt the jolt and rustle of something moving between the wall and my nightstand. I panicked and squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that it would just make its move and go away. But it didn't. It tapped and clattered all the way around the bed, stopping by the footboard. Three in a row. It hissed. I felt the bony hands wrapping around my ankles in a cold, moist breath rush across my foot. With one small jerk, it hauled me down so that my toes were just barely hanging over the edge. I yelled. I tried to sit up and pull away, but what had been an active choice to lay still a moment ago had become involuntary. I couldn't move, not even as I watched it delicately catch my pinky toe between its teeth. The pop. I can't describe it to you. I would have thought it would crunch, but it didn't. It was a pop and then just a red tide of agony. And I was free to roll around in bed and scream and clutch at my foot for all the good it did me. The toe was still gone. And when I got back from the ER, the game was still there, waiting for me on the mirror a brand new slate with a single X in the center. I nearly gave up then and there, the despair, the utter defeat. I didn't think I could go on, but I also didn't know if I could lose again. Not if it was going to kill me in pieces like that. Slowly. What happened the next time? Would it be another toe? Or would it take the whole foot? The leg? I held myself up on the edge of the sink and made my mark in one of the corners again, then sat down next to the tub and waited day in, day out. I rarely even left the bathroom anymore, didn't bother with the lights. Eventually I ran out of food, but by then I didn't care anymore. I almost made up my mind to end it myself a time or two. But then, at the very end of the week, I realized something. We'd been playing the same game, every week. We made all the same marks each time, except for the week I slipped up. Sometimes we changed up the order we put them in, but they were always in the same places. I don't know why I hadn't noticed before, but it hit me all at once. Like a bolt of lightning, I knew what moves it would make, theoretically. I took a chance. This time I deliberately, anxiously, made my mark in one of their boxes. And to my delight, the next night it had placed its mark in one of mine, which left me with three O's in different corners, and it with three X's clustered adjacent to one another. This was it. I was going to win. I made my mark with grinning savagery, cackling and shortling to myself until I ran out of breath. Three in a row, I giggled at the mirror. I win. I win, I win. I win. The lights flickered. All at once the condensation was swept from the mirror, and for the first time in nearly three months I had a good look at myself. Unwashed, unshaven, crazed dark eyes peering back at me from sunken sockets, hands shaking, mouth agape. I saw the stack of unpaid bills sitting on the table out of the corner of my eye and the red light of the answering machine blinking slowly, full of un-listened-to messages from friends, family, and work. And suddenly I wondered, had I really won? After all.