The first rule of True American was that there were no rules.
The second rule was that anyone who claimed to know the rules was lying, but you had to pretend to believe them anyway.
The third rule was that the furniture was now lava, and anyone standing on the floor was either losing or about to start losing.
Robby stood on a dining chair, balancing a red Solo cup, watching the loft transform around him.
Schmidt was on the couch cushions, arranging them into an archipelago of safety.
Winston was on the coffee table, which had been declared a sovereign territory with its own laws.
Cece was on the armchair, which was apparently a neutral zone.
Nick was on the floor, which meant he was either very brave or very reckless.
Jess was beside Robby, sharing the dining chair, her hand on his arm for balance.
“You’ve never played this before,” she said.
“I’ve heard about it.”
“Knowing about it and surviving it are different things.”
“How do you survive?”
“You commit to the chaos.
Don’t question the rules.
Don’t ask for explanations.
Just move when everyone moves and drink when everyone drinks.”
“Got it.”
“You don’t got it.
But you’ll figure it out.”
“Is there a manual?”
“The manual is Schmidt’s face.
Watch it.
When it changes, something’s about to happen to you.”
Schmidt raised his cup.
“True American is now in session.
The floor is lava.
The furniture is sanctuary.
The rules are known only to those who have survived the game before.
New players learn by doing.”
Robby had watched this game on television once, years and a lifetime ago.
He knew the shape of it: the chants, the jumps, the invented rules that changed every round.
But knowing the shape and standing inside it were different sports entirely.
He had to pretend he’d never seen it before, had to feel out the rhythm the way any new player would, stumbling half a beat behind everyone else on purpose.
“We begin with the Pledge of Allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America,” Schmidt announced, “which in this version involves naming a state and a capital, and if you get it wrong, you drink.”
“That’s not the Pledge of Allegiance,” Cece said.
“It’s the True American Pledge of Allegiance.
Different document.
Same patriotism.”
“Patriotism requires a document?”
“Everything requires a document, Cece.
That’s how you know it’s serious.”
Winston went first.
“Alabama.
Montgomery.” He jumped to the next cushion clean.
“Alaska.
Juneau.” Schmidt moved with the precision of a man who’d rehearsed this in a mirror.
“Arkansas.
Little Rock.” Cece, dry, landing without a wobble.
Nick, from the floor: “I’m not playing the state game.”
“Everyone plays the state game.”
“I’m playing a different game.
My game is staying on the floor and drinking.”
“That’s not a game.
That’s refusal to participate.”
“It’s a protest game.
Very advanced.
You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand it fine.
It’s called losing with extra steps.”
“It’s called civil disobedience with a beer in my hand.”
Robby’s turn.
The room looked at him, Schmidt’s face doing the thing Jess had warned him about, some small tectonic shift he couldn’t read yet.
He felt the weight of being the new player, the one still being graded on a scale nobody would show him.
“California.
Sacramento.”
He jumped from the dining chair to an ottoman.
It wobbled, held, wobbled again, held for good.
“Correct,” Schmidt said.
“And he landed it.
Points.”
“There are points?”
“There are always points.
Winston tracks them.”
Winston’s phone was already out.
“Adding a True American category to the tracker with immediate effect.
Robby, opening score, provisional three.”
“Three feels generous.”
“It is generous.
Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Objection,” Nick said, from the floor, cup raised.
“Docking someone a point for being fast is punishing excellence.”
“Excellence has a cadence, Nicholas.
Cheyenne arrived off-cadence.”
“You made the cadence up four seconds ago.”
“I made the cadence up in the womb.
I was born knowing the cadence.”
“That explains a lot about you, actually.”
The game accelerated past anything Robby could keep pace with.
Round two was a chant about the Supreme Court that nobody in the loft knew all the words to, which didn’t stop a single person from shouting them at volume, filling in the gaps with syllables that weren’t words and weren’t meant to be.
Round three required naming all fifty state capitals in reverse alphabetical order while hopping on one foot — a rule Schmidt had clearly invented mid-sentence and that Winston enforced with total, terrifying sincerity, docking Cece a point for “Cheyenne” arriving four syllables too early.
Round four had no rules Robby could locate at all.
It consisted of everyone shouting and pointing at each other while Schmidt tried to explain a concept involving the electoral college and a shot glass, a lecture that dissolved twice into an argument about whether Wyoming counted as a real place.
“Wyoming is a rumor,” Winston said, with total confidence.
“I’ve never met anyone from Wyoming.
Have you met anyone from Wyoming?”
“I’ve met a man who said he was from Wyoming.”
“That’s exactly what someone lying about Wyoming would say.”
Robby let the momentum carry him.
He jumped when everyone jumped.
He shouted when everyone shouted, half the words invented, half borrowed off whoever was loudest.
He drank when everyone drank.
The chaos was total, and surrendering to it was the only way through.
No strategy could touch a game built to punish strategy.
Somewhere in round five, he landed on the same cushion as Nick, both of them reaching for the same six inches of couch.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second.
Not hostile.
Not warm.
Just two guys in a game that didn’t care about their personal dynamics.
“You want it?” Nick asked, already shifting his weight.
“I can find another one.”
“Take it.
I’ve got a better angle on the ottoman anyway.”
Nick gave up the cushion without a fight and jumped to the next one, landing with the ease of a man who’d done this a hundred times and would do it a hundred more.
Robby took the cushion.
The game moved on, indifferent, already three beats past the handoff.
At the end of the night, the living room was a disaster of displaced furniture and empty cups.
Schmidt was declaring victory to no one contesting it.
Winston was entering data with the focus of a man closing out a fiscal quarter.
Cece was already back on the couch, scrolling her phone, having extracted herself from the chaos at exactly the right moment, the way she always did.
Robby sat on the arm of the couch, catching his breath, a smile spreading across his face that he hadn’t planned on and couldn’t have stopped if he’d tried.
“That’s the dumbest game I’ve ever played,” he said.
“It’s the best game,” Jess said, dropping beside him.
“And you survived it.”
“Did I win?”
“Nobody wins True American.
You just stop playing.”
“Then I stopped at exactly the right time.”
“You jumped when the room jumped.
You shouted when the room shouted.
That’s the entire curriculum.”
“I still don’t know what happened in round four.”
“Nobody knows what happened in round four.
It’s a mystery every generation of players has to solve on their own, and every generation fails.”
“Comforting.”
“It’s supposed to be.”
“Did I do okay?
For a debut.”
“You didn’t overthink it.
That’s the whole test, and most people fail it in the first round because they try to be clever.
You weren’t clever.
You were just in it.”
“I was trying very hard not to be clever.”
“I know.
I could tell.
It looked like work.”
“It was work.
Committing to nonsense on purpose is exhausting.”
“Welcome to the loft.”
“Is there a graduation ceremony?
A certificate?”
“The certificate is surviving to play again next time.
That’s the whole prize.”
“Modest prize.”
“Modest game, modest prize.
Big prize is reserved for round four survivors, and nobody’s ever claimed it.”
Across the room, Nick was collecting empty cups with the quiet efficiency of someone who’d cleaned up after this exact game more times than he could count.
He wasn’t looking at anyone.
His shoulders were loose, his movements unhurried, and when he passed Robby’s end of the couch he flicked a cup off the arm without breaking stride.
“You didn’t die,” Nick said.
Not a question.
Barely even a comment.
“Close a couple times.”
“Round four’ll do that.”
He kept walking, cups stacked two-deep in one hand, and didn’t look back to see if Robby had anything to add.
He didn’t need to.
Winston called out a final tally from the couch — “Robby closes at a five, respectable for a debut” — and Schmidt immediately demanded a recount on the grounds that fives were for people who hadn’t truly committed.
hey — quick one before you close the tab.
if the cliffhanger is killing you, the future already exists.
you just need a ticket through.
every chapter the second i finish writing it.
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P.S.
— in a parallel timeline, the rest of this story runs completely free on unwrittenrealm.com.
just saying.
that timeline also has more chapters.