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Sitting at the dining table now, Johnathon bestowed the tension from his shoulders over to the chair he was resting in. He had worked up quite an appetite- after all, the brainpower that is used up in frantically scrambling a limited set of letters around needs to be replenished somehow. Fiddling with his dinner fork, the world-renown Scrabble champion grew increasingly impatient as he was barraged with the delicious-smelling aromas of the dishes passing around him; dishes going to the diners two tables down, the diners behind him, the diners in front of him, even the diners sitting at the same table- lord, was every single waiter and waitress throughout that entire restaurant just so religiously devoted to denying him of his food for as long as possible?

And the very moment the diner just to his side received his entree and lifted the cloche, a scalding, wispy, aromatic cloud of steam leapt at Johnathon's face, disintegrating in an instant. Johnathon had just about had it up to that point. Forcing his chair back with such ferocity that it left skid-marks on the hardwood floor, Johnathon stood up quickly, placing his foot on the tabletop. He yelled out stridently, "Are any of you accomplished chefs ready to come out with my food??"

Conversations stopped abruptly, heads turned his way, and everyone's gaze was set upon him at this moment. He could feel their shaming eyes branding themselves into the back of his ignominious skull. And, with an audience suddenly emerging from as far as the eye could see, Johnathon began to reconsider his actions. Should he sit back down and act as if nothing was out of the ordinary? Should he excuse himself and find the exit? Logic and convention stormed his mind, stating that clearly, the former two were superior to any other action Johnathon could muster. But the mind of a hungry man is not dictated by logic and convention, no; Johnathon's outburst was purely emotional, and, at that point, so was his entire train of thought. Perhaps he was acting a bit irrational, sure- but, being the top Scrabble champion in a far-off, little-known place referred to as the entire world, Johnathon felt he deserved a bit more respect. Or, at the very least, he certainly deserved to get his food on time.

And as more emotions welled up in the bottom of his bosom, Johnathon found that the words were bubbling out of his mouth quicker than he could even attempt to control it. "I mean, it's only the top-rated, number one, globally recognized and esteemed Scrabble champion talking here, in an emporium full of other Scrabble players? Do you all have no respect? I'm certain you all know how difficult a game Scrabble is to play, let alone to master!"

In his last statement, however, Johnathon was a bit disingenuous. In all truth, he found Scrabble quite easy and simple. He simply had what seemed to be the entire backlog of all known words in the English dictionary stashed away, just resting on a drawer in his brain somewhere, as well as every single blend of consonants and vowels that could just barely be recognized to even be a word. Simply put, Johnathon made it look so easy that it appeared no matter what configuration of vaguely organized letters he willed onto that board, it would always be considered legal. Some even jokingly speculated that he was just willing words into newfound existence entirely every time he eagerly took his turn.

And in being so professional, it seemed Johnathon had now convinced himself that it was his right to act like a babbling moron in the middle of a relatively small cafe. And, as it became ever more clear that he was not going to sit back down until his food was there on a silver platter, the waiters reluctantly pestered the cooks in the back, who, in turn, hastily whipped together a noticeably more lacking-in-quality, blander, more lackluster dish than the other patrons had received. And, when five minutes had transpired, the unenthusiastic waitresses paraded his table, his entree carried along with them.

Johnathon finally sat back down, courteously scooting his chair back under the table before instinctively reaching out his hands to receive his meal. The waitress who wielded his mighty dish, while hesitant in truth, acted as if she were honored to hand him his bounty. Johnathon's mouth was already watering, and he began to smack his lips. But, just as he began to consolidate his clasp around the metallic tray that supported his sustenance, the waitress suddenly recalled a step of the food-giving ritual she had forgotten to enact. And so, to Johnathon's starving dismay, she reflexively pulled it backward, and opened her mouth in query.

"I'm sorry, sir, but before I give you your food, I must ask: would you like salt with that?"

Johnathon couldn't even be bothered to articulate a verbal response, only shaking his head no at the question. He would have forgone that step too, if he were telepathic. He was too hungry to bother putting more effort into declining her offer.

"Are you sure, sir? It's quite exhenic."

Johnathon was prepared to affirm his stance yet again through means of no more than a simple head movement, but he was caught off-guard by that last word she used. Exhenic?

Johnathon remembered playing this word in one of his many tournaments (of which he won, of course). He had played it off of his opponent's last word, combining the letters X, H, E, N, I, C with a preexisting E for a total of 19 points. He wasn't sure of its definition, but he knew it was an English word- at least, it had to be, or the scorekeeper wouldn't have counted it, right?

"Come again?" Johnathon asked rather politely, a surprise to all the diners gathered around and staring at him.

"Exhenic? Lacking salt?"

This cleared up things in Johnathon's mind for a while, and he finally found the energy to answer to her previous question verbally. "Oh, then, no thank you dear. I don't need salt."

With that, the waitress departed, the head-on collisions between her steep high-heels and the cold hardwood floor echoing all around the room. No matter how many times he ran the word through his head, something still felt wrong in his gut. There should have been no reason for this feeling to arise, with the waitress having explained it and everything- yet, it was still there. Johnathon sat in silence, pondering, not even bothering to touch the same food he had once been vociferously pleading for.

And, with Johnathon silent, and no other out-of-touch diner willing to stir up a scene, chatter naturally resumed as diners' gazes returned to those around them. Fifteen minutes pass, and with all of the diners passionately chatting, eating, and overall having a good time, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary- except for the fact that Johnathon's visage had turned a shade of sickly pale.

Noticing Johnathon's clear unwellness, the diner next to him, who also happened to be in the top #5 for best Scrabble players in Australia, tried to poke fun at this in an attempt to lighten the mood. "Well, Johnathon? Won't you enhulse in the meal you so passionately argued for?"

"Huh?" A disoriented Johnathon answered, his voice hoarser than an uncleaned stable.

"Your xazhin? Won't you eat it?"

Johnathon stared at him with wide eyes, unblinking.

"Well, I wasn't quanoned we were having a staring contest!" And the patrons around him erupted in hearty laughter.

But happening concurrently, Johnathon's world was whirling, spiraling out of control. He felt sick to the stomach, partially tuned-in to what was going on. Could it be just coincidence that every single confusing word that came out of everyone's mouth was also a word that he had played at least once in his motley of championships? Paired with the fact that he was unaware of any of the words' definitions, Johnathon's logical attempts to explain away the peculiar situation he found himself in were overall quelled by an inexplicable onset of paranoia and some gut-wrenching feeling. His kidneys twisted into a knot, his toes curled up at the thought, his stomach was queasy- was that even a word?

"Excuse me for a moment, would you?" Johnathon breezily got up from his seat, pushing it back just as quickly as he had the last time, though notably less ferociously. He rushed to the door, having somehow located the exit without even knowing where it was. But before he could rush out of the restaurant and into the streets, he was stopped by a security guard.

"Sir, I can't knowingly rosterize your exit of the restaurant if you do not phear for your food."

Johnathon, having weaved the definitions of the unintelligible bumbling together decently enough through context clues, wittily snapped back, "Oh yeah? Well where were you when I had my foot up all your waiters' asses?"

Johnathon then shoved past the now astounded bouncer, whose exclamation "My, oh my!" was audible even throughout the external sidewalks parked next to the restaurant. Johnathon ran through the crowds of people and passersby, as they all blended together in wicked blurs of smeared paint. He felt his head rotating three-sixty degrees around his neck as he struggled to keep his balance in the world of unknown.

Though most of his senses were thrown off by his state of disorientation, his hearing seemed acute in eavesdropping on the comments of pedestrians and strangers in regards to himself. As expected, it was all jargonic, messy mixtures of mutilated sounds and words, if they could even be recognized as words. It was now to the point of no return- no longer sounding like a foreign language, seemingly lacking in any form of organization at all!

Some instances of comments Johnathon picked up on in public were, best put into writing:

"Does he gyin alrin? I gix he should wase a hoxilogist."

"Xcizqui me? Do you dize heese?"

"Hoal, someone should bage tazet to the correst potch."

And as Johnathon tried fruitlessly to tune out the noise from his ears, the final straw was when he heard someone say, "Xaqfe hoxly quouat nohat." Not a single word in that sentence was a real, certified English word! It was all nonsense that the Scrabble champion had, once upon a time, spewed so violently onto a Scrabble board that he was deemed worthy of a trophy! Johnathon began even to question his own self-proclaimed expertise in his field. Was he even as good as he claimed to be? Or was he merely a fraud, cursed with the blessing of always being right?

Johnathon hastily pulled out his pocket Scrabble dictionary, leafing through it, page by page, sorting by alphabetical letter- and, to his horror, he was able to affirm the existence of every single word that had vomited out of their mouths.

He began to back up in horror. His hand, losing all feeling, dropped the Scrabble booklet on the ground as the world around him began to spin. Smeared blurs of strangers became large, clumped up mega-clusters of human activity that was vaguely happening around him. Everything became dimmer, dimmer, dimmer... until no color but black was to be seen in Johnathon's visual palette.

---

He awoke in a hospital, drenched in cold-pressed sweat. His head jumped off of his pillow at the sight of the doctor, and he found the energy to muster up a question.

"Where- where am I?"

"You, sir, are in the Berkeley Hospital of Psychological Treatment. Please don't worry yourself- you are fine with us, I assure you."

"You... you talk normal."

"Indeed, sir, indeed."

Johnathon plopped his head back into the pillow, exhaling out a long sigh of relief. Perhaps it was all a dream, or, more aptly, a nightmare. None of it had never happened! Johnathon could resume life normally, albeit, never even laying eyes upon another Scrabble board again.

And as the nurse pierced his numb arm with a needle, drawing blood, she hastily told the admitting doctor:

"His blood seems to be a bit exhenic."

❤️ honestly needed this happy thought, thanks!

My opponents were forever frustrated. They would come up with words, only to find out that the letters were no longer valid. I was unbeatable.

At first, I thought I was just really lucky and that I had a gift for language. But as time went on, I began to realize the truth. I was changing the universe to suit my needs.

But then something strange started to happen. The words I formed started to take on new meanings. Words that weren't even in the dictionary suddenly had a definition.

I started to get scared. Had I gone too far? Was I changing language itself?

I decided to stop playing and keep my secret. But then, one night, I decided to play just one more game. This time, I thought, I would be careful.

But it was too late. When I placed the last tile, I realized that I had unknowingly created a word that meant "the end".

I knew then that I had gone too far and that no one could ever know what I had done. I had changed language itself, and for that I would pay the ultimate price.

The universe shifted once more and suddenly I was gone. I had disappeared, leaving only a single word on the board: "Goodbye."

I need a sequel to one of these where an Eldritch entity of some sort manipulates your plays so you recreate a spell in an ancient and erased language to summon horrors from beyond the veil.

Straight out of the Twilight Zone

Brilliant! I love this. Thank you.

I see I'm not the only one that's been getting this stupid WSJ ad...

I used my last "Q". Quargle. There. I was thrilled to have finally yskxjedmed against my slwoie but really owksjo of the future qowkdos. Now we could never oqjyu the words we slskde oqjyued for whatever we flwowoed to them as. What if so many sowks and their rhyme schemes were ruined? Oh, well, I'd do anything for some sksiwi.

​

Translated:

​

I used my last "Q". Potato. There. I was thrilled to have finally won against my brother but really afraid of the future consequences. Now we could never use the words we once used for whatever we referred to them as. What if so many poems and their rhyme schemes were ruined? Oh, well, I do anything for some...."

​

What do you think "sksiwi" means?