The "Risk" of Playing Board Games at Night
I looked out the window, the darkness was pressing hard against it, like it wanted to get inside. The old farm house was not what I would
call a welcoming place for me. I can remember being freaked out many nights when I had sleep overs with my cousins Jake and Dwayne. It didn't take much to
scare me back then.
"It's your turn Mike," my younger cousin Jake reminded me. I blinked my blurry eyes and turned my attention back onto the game of Risk we were playing. I kept
some attention on the window, just to make sure the blackness didn't creep inside. I made my moves, rolled the dice and took my card. The turn moved
onto Dwayne.
He looked tired too. We had decided it was an awesome opportunity to stay up to the extreme hours of the morning playing board games at the old kitchen table.
The rest of the house was silent, the occasional house creek would make us all glance at each other. We never spoke a word to each other, but we were all on edge.
I glanced at the clock on the stove. 3:30am. That must have been some kind of record for us, and I realized we were only about 1/2 way through the game of Risk.
I watched as Jake picked up the dice to make his attack on my armies, and at that moment the most gut wrenching SLAM hit the window I was just looking out of. Outside
something had hit the window so hard, it sent all of us up out of our seats and screaming like small children. We scattered from the kitchen table as fast as we could.
As we ran from the kitchen, all going through different doors, we ran into each other in the front living room. It was then we heard the hysterical laughter in the kitchen.
We glanced at each other, the laugh was familiar.
We came back into the kitchen, slowly, cautiously. There sat my Uncle, Jake and Dwayne's Dad, laughing so hard his face had turned red. He had gotten us good.
