Mating Net

15 min · January 26th, 2025 · Fiction

This story was featured on the Voice of Dog Podcast, who work hard to bring furry fiction to your ears. You can find that episode here.

Grandmaster Arun Ramachandran sits in the center of the hall. I watch him from behind the curtain of the player’s entrance. The caracal’s tail snaps from side to side restlessly, a bolt of burnt terracotta against the vivid chrome blue of the hall’s carpet. My team have watched tape of every single one of his matches from the previous 6 months. One thing my coaches observed was that he fidgets when he’s agitated. Knowing that, I’m content to let him stew for as long as possible before the game begins.

“Mister Petrov, if you could please take the stage, we’d like to get the game underway by 3pm.”

I ignore the official and check my watch. 02:58:36. The second hand slides precisely along its orbit around the ivory face of my Omega Seamaster.

02:58:37

02:58:38

Once, long ago, I would have felt some anticipation for games. At this point though, I have played over 1000 official games. A few of them stand out to me. My first international final, where I beat the fox, Peirre-Antoine Denis, to earn my International Master title. My first world championship, where I nearly edged out fellow wolf and world champion at the time, Mikhail Yaroslavsky, in the first round. Then, there was excitement and fear walking onto the stage. Now, walking on stage is as routine as brushing my teeth.

I watch until the time reaches precisely 02:59:30 before stepping out from behind the curtain. I feel Ramachandran’s head snap to watch me enter but I do not look. That I have his attention is good. If he’s thinking about me, he’s not thinking about chess. I place my feet evenly. If you were to count my steps, you would observe that I take precisely one hundred of them per minute. My lupine tail ticks behind me from side to side like a metronome, counterbalancing each footfall.

As I follow the path up to the player’s podium, camera shutters chatter in the press pool. As the world champion, my matches always garner attention. But young Ramachandran’s hot streak entering this match has ratcheted up the media excitement from buzzing to feverish. No matter. In my forty years of professional chess, I have made a career of strangling fiery young talent into submission. Three games into this match, Arun seems to be poised to join them: down a draw and two losses he is fighting for his life in this match.

I bear down on him, drawing myself up to my full six foot three and fix my grey eyes on his amber ones. I see with each step his ears drop lower. We may still be in the pre-game pleasantries, but for me the game has already begun. Ramachandran knows my storied history as one of the greatest control players alive. I am certain he has also watched all my games in the lead-up to this match. In those tapes he will have seen me drop a mere twelve percent of games and win every match. Three of those games were ones he lost in. In this moment, I want to remind him of the smothering weight of my career. I want him to fear me. If he fears me, he’ll second guess himself. For a creative strategic player like himself, being unwilling to take risks will cede the game to me.

In our last three games, Ramachandran had shrunk away from me as I reached the table. Something is different today though. His ears had lowered with every click of my patent leather derbies on the wooden steps of the podium. But today, he leans forward to look at me rather than sinking deeper into his chair. I think back to when I was a student in Moscow, how I had resented being talked down to by my coaches, how I had glowered at them. I stop behind my seat and frown down at him, sweeping my eyes up and down in an effort to read what he’s thinking.

It occurs to me then that Arun’s a pretty little thing. twenty-something, wiry and lean. The curves of his face are ridged with black fur and his eyes are highlighted by ashen white rings. These striking lines are set against a mask of fierce ochre fur. He truly is wildfire manifest, full of a youthful energy that he struggles to keep contained in his player’s chair. I see the passion within him, something I have seen in other men but never felt myself. I have never needed it, and by all accounts it never got the others particularly far. At least, it never got them past me. But I do wonder then, what it would be like to feel that way.

I draw out my own chair and slide into the seat, unbuttoning the jacket of my charcoal Brioni suit and loosening my taupe slub silk tie. As in our previous games, I think I notice that Arun’s eyes fixate on the tuft of chest fur that emerges from under my collar, but once again the moment is too brief for me to interrogate it. Still, my hands slow and I return to observing Ramachandran. He’s avoiding my gaze, obsessively turning his knights so they face perfectly dead ahead. I pull out a silver Montblanc pen from my chest pocket and sign off the competition scorecard before laying the pen parallel to the paper’s edge.

Ramachandran is now shifting his pawns around so that each one sits in the exact center of their respective squares. I let him finish; interrupting his ritual would unbalance him further, but it would also be underhand and rude. I don’t need cheap tricks to win here. So instead, I watch him and slow my breathing: four second inhale, four second hold, six second exhale, two second hold. I feel my heartrate slow to fifty beats per minute. Ramachandran stops his fiddling and stares directly at my chest. I know his large, predator ears can hear the slowing of my heartbeat. I hope the knowledge of my control over my body unsettles him further. Finally, he looks up and meets my gaze. I’m ready. He’s ready. I lean across the board with an extended paw. He meets me there, small, delicate, fire-red fingers enveloped in my long, clawed, snow-white digits.

My ring finger rests on the inside of his wrist and I feel the throb of his pulse against my pawpad. His flesh is hot and his heart rate fast, easily one hundred beats per minute. Good. I stare deep into his eyes and squeeze until his hand begins to tremble. He looks back with rapt attention. Something I’ve not noticed before flickers in his eyes, but before I can grasp onto it, it disappears. In that moment though, before a move has even been played, I’m confident I have him in my net. Now all I need to do is draw the strings closed. I release his hand and make my first move with white.

I open with a flanking pawn on c4, setting up for an English. I like English openings; they let me build up some central pawn structure without committing to early battles in the middle of the board. Ramachandran is used to this by now and starts a King’s Indian defense. I see he’s hoping to get aggressive on the king’s side, so I opt in with a fianchetto; positioning my king-side Bishop so that it simultaneously covers the back rank while providing cross-board counterplay. It’s all very slow, all very book, all very polite – exactly how I like it. I feel myself relaxing into the game, breathing steadying without having to think about it.

I look up from the board and watch Arun. Something I’ve noticed in our games is that he bites his lower lip pensively when he’s running calculations. It’s the kind of thing that never gets picked up on film. It’s something personal you learn when you play across the board with someone. I watch as moisture beads at the point where his canine and his lips meet. Normally, I would attend to such a tell, file it away, and return to the game. But today, I can’t help but linger on it, as if it were an intimate moment meant just for me.

Returning to the board, I’m pleased with the nice, tidy position I’ve set up for myself. Strong pawns control the center, with plenty of room for my high material pieces to maneuver in. The king is nestled in a well-protected corner. This is where I’m in my element, building a strong king-side position that allows me to roll over my opposition like a glacier. Ramachandran is expecting this of course; he prefers to lurk in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to pounce on a mistake. But it’s a big ask to expect me to make a mistake here.

We exchange a few pawns on his side of the board, but it only improves my position. Eventually, his king-side knight gets pressed to the edge of the board and rendered inert. He is pinned back against my slowly advancing position, with little room to maneuver. I sit calmly in my seat, only moving to position my pieces and hit the clock.

But inside me a dull ache returns. The dull ache of watching another person in a long line of people crashing against my walls and leaving me unscathed and untouched. Sat across from the caracal, I wonder whether my legacy will simply be stifling the fires of more hopeful, more artful players. When I began playing that didn’t matter. I wanted to be the best, so I found a way to play that most consistently brought me victory. Now, as I smother the air out of Arun’s position, I cannot help but wonder whether I had completely smothered my love for the game.

Ramachandran changes tack, moving to double up his rooks on the queens-side. It’s a reactive play; he’s hoping to use them as a battering ram to punch a hole in my weak side. It’s a move I would have agonized over for minutes. Was it optimal? What attacks would this move provide? What was I risking by making it? Arun, on the other hand, seems to be comfortable following his instincts on what should come next – as if he was exploring the body of a new lover, rather than planning a grand strategy.

I respond by shifting my king-side rook over to the queens-side and developing my second bishop into the center file. Now I can keep his attack in check while my bishops give me a lot of flexibility to address problems across the board.

It’s only then that I notice something has changed about Arun. He is sitting perfectly still, both hands resting on his knees and leaning slightly into the game. His eyes aren’t on the board – they’re fixed on me, on my face. The look I saw earlier has returned to his eyes. I see it for what it is now, a wild, desperate look. A fiery, defiant look. It catches me off-guard, fixing me in place mid-move. I stare back at him and feel my heart flutter slightly out of pace. Blood rushes through my ears as the quickening of my heart creates turbulence in my arteries. I place my rook down on a1, protecting it from Arun’s newly activated bishop, sit back, and wait.

He lets out a long slow chuff and steeples his fingers in front of his lips. I watch as his pupils dilate and his eyes unfocus. His fang glints as it bites down on his lip again. To a casual observer, it might seem like Arun is drifting into a daydream. I see it for what it is though: Arun is examining the position across the whole board, rather than focusing on individual pieces. He’s spotted something and is now projecting the results of that move two, three, five, perhaps ten moves ahead in his mind. Seconds tick by. Then minutes. Then finally, he makes his move.

Arun leans forward and grips the knight I isolated on the edge of the board. I feel my eyes widen in surprise, matched with a sinking feeling as a move I had not considered comes into play. He lifts it and places it on f4, attacking three pieces but offering it up in sacrifice to the bulwark protecting my king.

I stare down at the board, barely registering the gasps that ripple out through the hall. Arun leans back and undoes the top two buttons of his cornflower blue silk shirt. My eyes dart up to see the fine, downy fur that adorns his throat and chest pulsing with his heartbeat. In this moment, I hear the message he’s projecting to me as if he were speaking across the board: “Come, take a bite. Let me prove to you who I really am.”

I try to examine the position again but by this point I have completely lost control of my heart. It thunders well over the one hundred beats per minute upper limit I consider appropriate for a game. I suppress a desire to swipe the board off the table in fury; fury at myself for becoming inflexible with age, for missing a natural if unconventional move. And underneath that I feel something else. Jealousy of Arun, of his wild abandon, and a desire to have that for myself. I slow my breathing again and close my eyes, taking a minute to calm myself. When I feel back in control, I open them again and read the board.

On the face of it, it’s not a good move. His knight now threatens my pawn, my king-side bishop, and my queen. I can ward that off by capturing the knight with my pawn, but something about the position still unsettles me. Then I see it; Arun’s second bishop stands menacingly on the second rank. In the exchange of pieces after I take his knight, not only will my pawn structure have weakened around my king, but that bishop will be in striking distance of check.

I search for solutions, but the more I search the more I see the cracks in my position. The bishops I thought were flexible have very few places to go where they won’t come under threat a turn later. My rooks are now behind the tempo of the game and won’t have time to reposition before Arun’s rooks crash into them. My queen languishes in the center of the second file, hemmed in by my own pieces. My eyes flick up to Arun again. He’s clutching the edge of the table, barely containing his excitement. It emanates from him with such force that the fur on the back of his hands stands on end. The corners of his lips are perked in a stifled smile.

When our eyes lock, the electricity between us tingles down my optic nerve and makes my spine shiver. I see the effect it has on him too, the rippling across his fur as the hairs stand and fall in sequence. I refocus my breathing to calm myself. 4 in, 4 hold, 6 out, 2 hold. But my long inhales draw his rich scent across my sensitive wolfish nose as it wafts up from his open shirt. It’s peppery and sweet, with notes of honeysuckle and jasmine. It leaves a deep warmth within me, a warmth I can’t recall ever feeling in empty hotel rooms, in empty whiskey tumblers, in my empty bed. And I can’t recall ever feeling this alive sitting across the board from someone.

I lean forward and take the knight, pawn to f4. I feel the ground under the position shifting, destabilizing, sliding away from my control. I have stepped off the comfortable roads I know, onto the shaded path carved out by Arun’s chaotic fire. I walk without fear, for the path is beautiful, and I am a grandmaster after all. I may prefer suffocation, but I can go blow for blow like the best of them.

Pieces cascade into the center of the board, releasing the tension held in the position. Me and Arun alternate writing the losses of material onto our scorecards. Three to four moves later I take stock of the situation and grimace; Arun is up a pawn and we’re moving into an endgame. Being down material here is problematic – each remaining piece can lead to massive advantages down the line.

Arun retakes f4 with his own pawn. It leaves my bishop under attack. Later, my coach would chew me out for my next move. I slide the bishop back in retreat without really considering the board. I had an opportunity to attack Arun’s queen on the left flank and knock him off tempo, but I never even considered it. Hasty, rash, and completely unlike me. I feel like the path Arun has led me down has walked me into a forest fire. I feel the heat of the flames at my back and know that I’m no longer walking at my own pace, but dancing recklessly to Arun’s beat. I reach up to my tie and loosen the knot so it hangs loosely between my pecs. I undo the buttons too. I see Arun watching openly now, and I don’t believe the hunger in his eyes is simply for the victory he can taste on the board.

Without hesitation, he pushes the pawn from f4 to f3, landing a potential attack on both my queen and my king-side bishop. I feel my walls crack and crumble around me, the last bricks of the fortress I had built collapsing in on themselves, collapsing into Arun’s hungry flame. It leaves his queen hanging, but puts him one move away from regaining the material through promotion anyway. It’s so brash and fearless it’s almost insulting. At my age though, there have been too many games to feel insulted. I see it for what it is: beauty manifest in ebony and ivory.

I look up to see Arun smiling openly. It stretches the lines of charcoal and snow around his eyes into long arcs, like the edges of flames flickering across wood. The smile emanates a warm joy, an infectious joy, a joy that stirs the chill in my heart. I see now my legacy; not as a destroyer of beauty but as its necessary canvas. Few flames survive in the cold vacuum of my play, but those that do burn so bright they demand attention. Arun has laid himself bare before me here and now that I have seen what burns within him, I feel myself longing for more. He weaves his mating net around my king and I settle into it without fear. Check. Checkmate.

After shaking hands and post-game pleasantries, we sit together in the press room. I focus on the questions, answering in the clipped, professional style I am known for. Unlike all my interviews previously, however, I am aware of the warmth of the body beside me, the warmth of Arun’s body.

It occurs to me that I haven’t felt this happy after losing a game in a long time. The press notice and ask about it, so I give them the partial truth and explain how much I enjoyed Arun’s creative play and dynamic decision making. The caracal beams at me. A reporter asks him what this game means to him.

“I’ve admired Mister Petrov’s play all my life. Watching him inspired me to play chess. I wanted to show him what he had done for me.”

My heart flutters and I look down at Arun. His eyes are wide and happy, like dual sunrises cresting the horizon.

“Oh, little caracal,” I think. “I hope I can show you what you’ve done for me.”