A Royal Rally: Marcus' Quest For Redemption

The first match of the day was drawing to an end. A young boy with a hooked nose and a bird's nest on his head had just beaten an old woman with a wooden leg who played tennis without one of her shoes.

The audience cheered or booed according to who they thought should win, but it didn't really matter, because their opinions were all subjective, and so everyone was right, in their own way. Marcus didn't care either way; he tried to avoid paying too much attention to the contest at hand. He needed to be focused for his own match, which would kick off in half an hour, and that wasn't going to happen if he got distracted by some other people playing a game.

He never understood why people enjoyed watching other people play games. It was like watching someone else have sex: you could imagine what was happening from your own experiences and try to enjoy it vicariously, but you'd always feel somewhat disappointed that you weren't in control of the action yourself. And it was even worse when there were more people involved than just two lovers doing the nasty: then it felt like being in the middle of a crowd of strangers at the train station during rush hour, except that you were still surrounded by them when you wanted to get away as well. No privacy whatsoever.

Fortunately, Marcus had been able to find a spot at the back of the arena where he would be far away from everyone else, yet still able to see the matches unfold on the green court below him.

He took another sip from his hipflask and looked around him. The back wall behind him was covered with thousands upon thousands of names written in brown ink on yellowish parchment paper.

"What are these?" Marcus asked himself out loud, although no one was there to answer him.

He leaned forward and scanned through them for half an hour until he found his own name amongst them somewhere near the top of the list: "Marcus Meusel". He wondered whether anyone else would ever read his name there if he lost his match today. He imagined how nobody would know what "Meusel" meant or how to pronounce it correctly when reading his name out loud, and laughed quietly. He took another sip from his flask and thought about what he had done to deserve this fate - why he had been sent here for punishment in the first place? He couldn't remember anymore. It had happened so long ago...