“That’s not going to be weird with family, is it…?”
“I don’t think so, it’s not like truth or dare, nobody gets kissed or eaten or anything…” Leah answers, as you look at her over the side of the couch. Her stomach is still flat and you no longer hear anything other than the occasional gurgle. Taryn hadn’t bothered to compress her stomach, but her meal also seemed to have passed beyond the point of being able to speak. Or move. Or breathe.
“How does it work?” Miranda asks, looking over the couch beside you. “I’ve only heard about it.”
“There’s a deck of cards with questions on them, and you go in turns drawing cards and answering the questions until everyone has answered six. Each player reads the question out loud, and then answers, and everyone else marks down whether they think they’re lying or telling the truth. And each player is only allowed to lie three times, and you don’t have to use all three.”
“And if you get caught lying over three times, you get eaten…” Taryn interjects, giving you a hard stare that you felt was entirely undeserved. Carrie was the only one caught cheating recently, after all, and she wasn’t even in the room anymore.
“Well, usually…” Leah adds “… but let’s just stick to the rules; we don’t want to ruin anybody’s week, right?” Leah gives a sharp look towards Taryn as she talks. Some quiet rebuke you don’t quite understand, but you’re grateful one of your alpha pred cousins isn’t so gluttonous.
“How do you win…?” Miranda asks, looking between the three of you.
“At the end, you go around the circle again, and one person will listen while everyone else says whether they thought that person was lying or telling the truth to each question. That person gets a point for each question where the majority of players are wrong, and they don’t have to say which questions they were lying about or telling the truth about. BUT, if anyone gets all six correct, that person has to tell them they were right on all counts, and the other person gets three bonus points. Most points wins.”
“Ok, that sounds easy enough…” Miranda says, looking at you and back to the rest of your group.
“Sure,” you offer, “let’s give it a try.”
“That sounds like fun, but kitty needs her dinner, and I’m not up for long nights as much these days…” Your aunt murmurs as she rises to her feet, walking backwards to the stairs as she pulls James along by the hand. “I’ll see you all in the morning,~.”
“Wow, your mom is thirsty, Leah. Do you and Terry go at it like that?” Madelyn asks, as Aunt Kari fades from sight and Taryn settles into Carrie’s vacated spot.
“You know, I can’t quite remember. Do we go at it like that, Terry?” Leah asks sweetly, as she settles down beside him where Kari and James had been sitting, pulling open a box and setting a deck of cards and a spinner down on the middle ottoman.
“N-no! I’m just a p-pet, that’s all!”
“Well, there you have it Maddie; no, we do not go at it like that.”
“Hmmm, so what are you keeping him around for? Because if men are useful for something besides sex, I’d love to know. Ben needs to be good for something…”
“He’s just here to do whatever I don’t want to. Homework, laundry, plunging the toilet, et cetera. Are you all ready to start?”
“What’s the spinner for?” you ask.
“Some cards are blank. You draw one and you spin to see who gets to ask you a question.”
Reddening a bit at that, you hesitate before responding “ok, I’m ready…” but at least you notice the rest of the group aside from Maddie and Taryn seem nervous as well.
“I think we’re going to skip this one…” Wyatt speaks up, getting up and heading for the hallway past the kitchen with Amanda.
“Coward!” Madelyn mock-shouts as they leave, answered only with silence and her younger sister sticking her tongue out at her over her shoulder before she disappeared around the corner.
