My imaginary friend is a misunderstood genius.

  Or maybe she is just insane, in which case I understand her perfectly.

  Regardless of which option is correct, the imaginary woman is currently arguing with her queen because the monarch hesitated in following her orders, and showing complete disregard to the fact that I was the one who failed to move her piece.

  “I said B-12, it’s for the good of our kingdom so do your job and attack.”

  But in my defense, the board only goes up to eight and it took me a while to figure out that she is sending royalty to attack my foot.

  I grab the queen with two fingers and tilt it slightly on the side, before rushing its spikey crown straight into my foot.

  “Yes, charge my queen, you will be remembered as the hero of our nation!”

  Ami says it with such passion, with such flourish and exaggerated movement, that her imaginary hair ends up covering her face and sticking in her mouth.

  She slams her fist straight into the board, which does nothing, and laughs maniacally while her queen jabs into the sole of my foot.

  I’m feeling more and more doubtful about her being a misunderstood genius.

  “Ahhhhh, noooooo.”

  My lackluster screams of agony only make her laugh harder.

  “Okay Mai, now you go sit over there with the dead pieces.”

  Fine, but I’m taking your queen with me.

  Our attempt to reverse engineer the rules of chess is probably not going well, but there is no way to tell for sure since the internet no longer exists in this post apocalyptic world.

  I move to the side of the board, while still holding her queen, and observe it from a much less intuitive position.

  Attacking me was a suicidal decision for the monarch, but it gave her kingdom a great tactical advantage.

  Was the insane behavior all some elaborate distraction to allow for this outcome?

  “B-brilliant.”

  Maybe she is a genius after all.

  “Your turn, but my grand plan is already in motion, there is no escape Mai HAHAHA.”

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  A big maybe…

  I mount my pawn on top of my horse and it gallops around the board happily, boosting the morale of the troops.

  We haven’t been able to figure out what it does exactly yet, but Ami is absolutely certain that is how this piece plays, since “there is no other way to use a horse”.

  Ami looks at the spectacle with annoyed expression.

  “I still don’t get why you won’t allow me to be the one riding the horse.”

  I’m not moving it around while she sits on my hand, imaginary or not, I’m not comfortable with that.

  Not to mention making Ami jealous of the pieces has been my most effective strategy so far.

  She is willing to go to any length to make the pawn pay for making her feel like that.

  “Ahhh, this is so annoying, when will your mom give us back the internet already…”

  This poor deluded girl, she thinks the super villain that ended this world will fix it back up for some reason.

  My mom, or Doomamio as she should now be called, is at work and has completely forgotten I even exist.

  Even if by some miracle she somehow remembers, it won’t matter one bit since this is all part of her grand plan to lead me to my doom, or school as she calls it.

  She even went as far as taking away all my games and my laptop to make sure I have absolutely nothing to do in this house.

  “T-this is our life now.”

  “Lets check if the TV works, she has to break sometime. She hasn’t even come home the last three days so it's clearly hard on her too.”

  That only means that it doesn’t even affect her, she just found somewhere else to be so she doesn’t have to share in the suffering.

  I turn on the TV to show Ami it isn’t working, and whatever sanity she had left seems to be breaking in her eyes.

  “Ok, I’ll just put on a wig and go to school instead of you, that way everyone wins.”

  It would solve the awkward questions of where I’ve been, since everyone will simply assume I underwent plastic surgery, since no one can naturally look that perfect.

  I actually like that plan, but I need to hear her solution to the obvious problem of her being imaginary and all before I can sign off on it.

  “Y-you’re imaginary.”

  “How do we know you aren’t imaginary?”

  Why would SHE ever imagine someone like me?

  “W-why?”

  “You are cute, it makes sense I’ll imagine you, but considering your art skills it doesn’t make much sense you will be able to imagine someone like me.”

  So much for my hopes that she is some kind of misunderstood genius, I wonder what it means about me that my imaginary friend ended up going insane though.

  I’m against that plan after all, let’s just continue the game.

  “Y-you’re turn.”

  “You just don’t want to face the truth.”

  Honestly it sounds kind of appealing to be the imaginary one, but I’m just not lucky enough for that to be true.

  “M-move it.”

  I point to one of the pieces in my attempt to bring her back to her senses.

  “The board is imaginary too…”

  At this rate, we are only three days away from Ami trying to eat me alive.

  For now, all I can do is make the ultimate sacrifice.

  I grab the white horse on the board and gestures for Ami to get on, making her eyes light up.

  She starts laughing and gives her turn to one of the pawns.

  I don’t think we’ll figure out how to play chess properly anytime soon, but our version is interesting as well.