‘One… two…’
‘That’s correct. Well done!’ She added another two. ‘How many pies now?’
Daisy counted them, out loud. ‘One… two… three… four…Four pies?’ she answered.
‘That’s right. Two pies add two pies, makes four pies.’
‘This is all that adding up is?’ asked Daisy. Nobody had ever explained it to her before.
‘Isn’t it easy,’ said her father, disgusted.
Daisy’s journey began.
Play to win
Domino time! And even as the theme song played away, there came the usual knock upon Daisy’s door. Jazir Malik. Daisy’s only friend. He brought with him another stolen take-out. ‘Here’s your dinner,’ he said.
A meagre offering. Mostly rice, no naan, a few particles of meat.
‘Cheers, Jaz.’ Daisy dug deep, looking for flavour.
‘Hope I haven’t missed anything, love. Cookie hasn’t come on yet?’
‘It’s just beginning. You want some of this?’ Daisy shoved a forkful of rice under Jaz’s nose.
‘Fuck off, Daze. I’m concentrating.’
Play to win! Play to win! As bumptious Tommy Tumbler came, lover-dancing, all the way from the House of Chances.
‘Hello, Tommy Tumbler!’ shouted Jaz at the screen. ‘Oh please won’t you let Cookie Luck deliver me a winner this week? Oh pretty, pretty please!’
Daisy Love kept her chanting to herself, as usual. ‘Why do we have to do the exact same thing every week?’ she asked. ‘You know we’re only going to lose.’
‘Will you leave off, girl! The game’s about to start.’
‘OK punters!’ cried Tommy Tumbler. ‘Clack those bones together. Here she comes, the Queen of All Fortune. Lady Cookie Luck!’
Play to win
Cookie Luck! Good Lady Cookie Luck! Almost nine o’clock, Manchester. Once again, in a swirl of rain on a road called Claremont, in the rundown district called Moss Side; three men sitting in a parked car, keyed into the radio.
‘Lick my dotties, sweet Lady!’ DJ Dopejack cried.
‘I’m starving!’ cried Sweet Benny Fenton. ‘Can we get a curry after this?’
‘Shut the fuck up, I’m trying to win!’ cried Joe Crocus.
‘Dot shit!’ cried Benny. ‘I just got a Joker Bone come up! That’s the second time in two weeks.’
‘You’re OK then,’ replied Dopejack. ‘It’s gone already.’
‘Sorted,’ said Joe. ‘You never get a double-blank more than once a week, Benny. I told you that already, didn’t I?’
‘You think that makes it easy?’ Sweet Benny’s voice, fading into doubt, as a blurbfly bounced off the windscreen, buzzing out loud.
‘Play to win!’ echoed Dopejack. ‘Play to fucking win!’
‘I hope so,’ murmured Benny, losing himself.
‘I am just a fractal,’ cried Joe, ‘split for action and a million chances. Let the bones come down!’
Play the shapes
There are dots and lines and squares and circles and cubes and spheres and fourth- dimensional hyperglobes and from these things the world and its players are made and there are stranger shapes yet scarcely imagined such as the fractal curves which exist between the dimensions for instance the coastline of Britain gets longer the closer you look at it forever hovering between a curve and a surface and the closer you look the more information it contains so that an infinitely branching pathway has an infinite potential for capturing knowledge and a game of fractal dominoes would have more permutations than the spots can show which tells us that meaning falls in the cracks and that everyday life is an infinite branching mazeway set in the multiverse where every choice leads to another life another game won another lost highway.
Wish to win
A young girl calling herself Little Miss Celia, amid a sodden crowd of cheap down-market gamblers, outside yet another all-night luxury store. Moved on by the cops since last week, their latest window had a measly nine and a quarter televisions for sale. All of them tuned into AnnoDomino, of course. Lady Luck, forever dancing.
It was Celia’s second personal bone, only. Thanks again to the generous girl who worked on Saturdays in the bookshop. Once again, enough to spare for a flutter. Allowing Celia, perched on Big Eddie’s shoulders, once again to call out to the dancing dots, ‘Just deliver me away, Cookie! Somewhere beautiful, please.’
As the blurbs flew in orbit around her head.
PLAY THE RULES
4a. AnnoDomino will allow every player an equal chance at winning.
4b. Every player will have an equal chance at winning, if they correctly follow the rules of the game.