On "The Game" by Michael Boylan (2729 words) ***

It's a friendly game of football between friends. Enter the stranger. The stranger has this strange effect on all of them, this commanding presence. He doesn't play the way the friends usually play, and he won't let them play that way either. Soon, he's changed the rules, and the friends are doing whatever Henry says, and they're all terrified of one another. Boylan's story seems like something a little unrealistic and impossible, but he makes you believe that perhaps it could happen. And of course, it does. There's the obvious metaphor here to societies at large, the way that dictators control whole nations, getting people to hate one another and to fear the man at the top. Just one charismatic leader and . . . Read the story here at 580 Split.