WILL PINHEY

Stungarten

The compartment door scrapes open and a lean man with a thin, splayed fringe shuffles his way inside, dropping a rucksack on the ground. We make eye contact from where I lie on the bunk above him, and he nods, shrugging off his jacket. 

“Apologies if I woke you,” he says, his voice slightly coarse, like his throat has been stretched and rubbed in gravel. 

“You didn’t,” I reply. “Does anyone actually sleep on night trains?” 

“Not me.” I can’t place his accent – vaguely eastern European maybe, but one that’s evolved over time to sound like a whole mix of different things.  

He takes a seat on the bottom bunk opposite and rummages in his bag. Gets out a beer can and holds it up to me. 

“You want one?” 

“Sure, thanks.” 

I reach down and take the can, raising it to him as he retrieves one for himself. We crack them, take a drink. 

“Where are you from?” I ask. 

“Norway,” he says, embarrassing my ear for accents. “North. A town you wouldn’t have heard of.” 

“Cool. Wouldn’t have guessed.” 

“You’re British.” 

“It’s obvious?” 

“I spent time in London. I know the accent.” 

“What were you doing in London?” 

“Work.” 

The way he says this without any elaboration gives me the sense that this isn’t something I’m invited to follow up on.

“Where you heading?” I ask instead. 

“Hamburg.” 

“Same. Just travelling, or…?” 

“Work.” 

“Ah. Right.” 

I focus on my beer then busy myself looking out the window as the landscape goes by. Only after a while do I realise he’s watching me. 

“You play cards?” 

I shrug. “Sure.” 

“Come on. I’ll give you a game.” 

He gestures to the table between our beds. I climb down and sit on the lower bunk opposite, while he fishes out a deck of cards. 

“What do you want to play?” I ask. 

He takes the cards out of the pack and then expertly fans them, cutting the deck and blending the two halves back together. 

“What do you know?” he replies.

“I know Durak.” 

“Ah, Durak. A game of conflict. Attack, defend.” 

“Yeah, well. I used to be a boxer.” 

He eyes my hand – the damaged one. I know the look. I don’t move it out of the way, and fix him with my gaze. 

“Fighting instinct,” he says, nodding slowly. “Hard to let go.” 

He introduces himself as Stefan as he deals the cards out. I can’t really explain it, but I get the feeling it isn’t his real name – it sounds wrong in his mouth, unfamiliar and ill-fitting.  

I was an unlikely boxer. Never the biggest kid, always more on the scrawny side than anything bulky, but I had a long reach, good reactions, and a sharp eye for predicting my opponent’s next move. Boxing is speed and precision as much as force, something I’d already picked up in my own time from brawling at school. That’s how I found I had the talent for it – sabotaging the opportunities my parents provided in place of any active care or attention. Since I can remember, they’ve always been three things – rich, divorced, and doing their best to forget I exist. 

Took a while to find a school that was willing to exploit my violence rather than dismiss it, but then I hadn’t been to one that had their own ring before. Soon I was being paraded, rather than avoided. They needed returns on their investment. They needed someone like me – anger and recklessness that wasn’t tempered or impeded by parental oversight. I took to it quickly. It made sense, all of it. The coordination, the impact, the drive and the pain and the focus. My grades were total shit but as long as I was bringing in silverware, I was useful. Talk of a career followed. An ambassador for the school, on a national stage. Maybe even, down the road, a global one. That’s the level of conversation we were having. 

At sixteen years old my hand collapsed into itself when I threw a punch wrong. Complete freak accident. No one really understood how the break was so bad, the damage so severe, considering I’d been gloved. My wrist looked like a crushed candlestick, bashed against a surface until it shrinks, folds, and flakes. It never healed properly, and I would never regain complete motor function in those fingers. To this day they look coiled and tense, the wrist stubby and bloated. Always drawing eyes. Questions. Assumptions and opinions. 

Stefan plays Durak with an intensity and aggression that catches me off-guard. It’s been a while since I’ve played and I need time to warm back into it, but he’s on me with every card I drop. We don’t talk the whole time – from the moment the first card goes down, Stefan doesn’t seem interested in anything else. It’s obvious he’s not playing to bond, but to win. 

He burns through me quickly enough, and sits back with an undeniable smugness once he’s emptied his hand. 

“Durak,” he says, pointing at me. “You are the fool.” 

“Guess so. Well played.”

He fishes into his bag, gets out another pair of beers. I take one, nodding thanks. 

“Another hand?” he asks, opening his can. 

“I think you’re quite a lot better than me.” 

“You’d rather play with someone bad? Learn nothing that way.” 

“You were trying to teach me something?” 

“You do not need to be taught to learn.” 

I sigh, take a sip of my beer. “Sure, let’s go again.” 

Stefan scoops the cards up in one fluid motion, starts to run them between his fingers. 

“You don’t box anymore?” he asks me. 

I lift up my injured hand. “Not really up to me.” 

“What do you do now?” 

“I run fights. Only thing I could do, if I’m not gonna be in them. Dried up in London, thought I’d try Europe instead.”  

“How’s that going?” 

I purse my lips. “We’ll see what happens in a new city.” 

“You’re moving around?” 

“As much as I can.” 

Stefan nods, the cards still in his hands, almost like he’s absorbed this information into the deck and that’s what he’s now passing from left to right, processing as he does. 

“Our work is not so different,” he says, after some time. 

“You wanna tell me what you do?” 

“I run games.” He starts to deal.

“Card games?” 

He nods. 

“Makes sense. Might have scared me off if I’d known I was sitting down with a pro.” 

“You have fights lined up in Hamburg?” 

“Not yet. I have a lead, but that’s it.” 

“Who’s your lead?”

“Not a person – a place. Stungarten.”

“I know it.” Stefan picks his hand up, starts to arrange his cards. “It’s where I’m hosting my next game.”

“For real?” 

He gestures for me to begin. I haven’t been paying attention to the cards at all, and they now just feel obstructive to the interesting turn our conversation’s taken. I play, not really thinking. Stefan doesn’t miss a beat, counters straight away. 

“You should come. You can see the place, meet the people.” 

“That would be great, yeah.”  

“I’ll warn you that we do not play Durak.” 

“What do you play?” 

Stefan wins the current trick and can’t help but curl the edge of his lip into a smile as he watches me collect the cards. He takes a sip of his beer, and I glance up in time to see something flicker between his eyes – some charged, fleeting glimmer that seems almost excitable, but it passes as soon as it appears. 

“The event is tomorrow. Come, and I’ll show you. Learn better that way.”

He doesn’t divulge anything else, and our conversation closes. We play several more hands of Durak, none that I win, until we move to each recline on our bed, both of us aware, I’m sure, that the other person remains awake the whole time. 

*

Stungarten is in an industrial district on the far side of town from where I’m staying. Everything is grey – grey skies, grey sheets of rusted metal, grey canal water that seems to run with melted wire and mercury. My day leading up to the event is a disaster, attempts to finalise a fight in Amsterdam falling through and a venue in Utrecht backing out from a previous deal. I head to Stungarten alert and tense, trying and failing not to exude the urgency I’m sure I reek with. 

I arrive at a wide and visibly crumbling wooden pub carved into the side of a block of flats that look abandoned. All the windows are boarded, a chain over the block’s metal gate.  The walls are hidden beneath anarchist stickers and a mess of conflicting graffiti tags, the ground layered with broken glass bottles and the concrete or metal remains of building sites long past. 

The door to the pub catches but I force it open. Inside, it’s misleadingly full from how sparse the surroundings are, and the décor surprisingly quaint considering the industrial exterior. Rickety vintage wooden chairs and tables, frayed kaleidoscopic rugs, upholstered sofas and frilled (often stained) white tablecloths. I get some looks, but most people are uninterested. The crowd doesn’t seem hostile, nothing like the mass of thugs at the last place I ran a fight. It doesn’t skew as old as I was expecting either, plenty of younger faces visible, nothing too hipster-y but a few goths, some artsy types, the others a general mix of old school grunge and flea market retro. 

I head to the bar at the end, a skinny counter that seems to have been cut out of a knocked-down wall. I’m about to ask for Stefan, when he suddenly appears at my side. 

“Just came to find you,” he says, taking my arm. His grip is surprisingly gentle. “We’re starting – come on.” 

I try to protest that I was going to get a drink, but he steers me to the other side of the room towards a roped-off wooden staircase. He moves the rope and leads me upstairs. It’s a narrow corridor, no decoration, very lean and stripped-back compared to the characterful clutter of the main bar. At the end, we come to a door – metal, almost like that of a bomb shelter. It opens, and we emerge onto a spiral staircase that must be part of the neighbouring apartment building. I can hear voices – faint, but energetic. I walk to the edge, peer down to the bottom, trying to see where they’re coming from. 

“This way,” Stefan says, starting to descend. 

We walk down and cross the atrium, littered with cigarette butts, to another door, this one paned with cracked, fogged glass. The voices ring clearly now – the unmistakeable commotion of a crowd on the other side. 

When we head through, we emerge into a vast, indoor courtyard. A bouncer, flat-faced and sharp-eyed, intercepts me, letting Stefan past but patting me down before permitting me to follow. The crowd is loose and spread around in overlapping clusters. The demographic has unmistakably shifted, but still remains broad – there’s a bizarre mix of hardened, life-worn drifter types, and sleek, visibly moneyed businesspeople. Smoke fills the air from cigarettes and cigars, and coolers of drinks are informally sold by vendors. In the centre of the room, a solitary table takes up focus. Two people, who I assume to be the players, sit on either side. They’re both shirtless. A host, wiry and bald with deep violet eyes, marks Stefan’s arrival with a dip of his head as he starts to deal a set of cards. The crowd tightens, drawing in closer, their attention aligning. As they move in, I notice in the corner some kind of workstation. A bucket of water sits on the floor, rags and needles on an elevated tray. Small, dark puddles around the feet of a single chair – blood. 

“What is this?” I say to Stefan, leaning in so he can hear. At the table, the two opponents pick up a hand of five cards each, a single draw deck between them. They’re both men – maybe late thirties, early forties. Neither of them looks particularly tough, but they share the measured ferocity in their eyes of fighters. As I look closer, I can see scars on their bodies – fine, innocuous lines, but plenty on each of them. Some seem fresh, reddened and raw looking. 

Stefan points to the first man, patchy dark hair and rounded, spaced-out teeth. “That’s Jensen.” He points to the other, who I would say noticeably carries more fresh wounds, with a stubby nose and long, matted ponytail. “And Plotnev.”

“And the game?”

“You’re about to see.”  

Jensen and Plotnev examine their hands, then each draw a card from the deck, showing them to the host. The host gestures to Jensen – he’ll start. The two cards are inserted back into the deck.

“Suits do not matter,” Stefan tells me. “There is only colour – red or black.” 

“What about numbers?” 

“Numbers do matter.” 

Jensen plays his first card. I lean in – five of clubs.  Plotnev replies with a seven of spades. They each draw from the deck after playing, so their hands do not drop below five cards. Jensen follows up with a red – seven of hearts. The crowd seems to draw a breath. I look to Stefan. 

“The game is based on tricks,” Stefan tells me. “It is not dissimilar to Durak in this way. To continue a trick, play a card matching or higher in value, of the same colour, to the other player’s card. When one player can go no higher, in the same colour, the trick is lost. A trick is ended instantly by the playing of another colour.” 

As he says this, Plotnev picks up the two black cards and places them, one on top of the other, in front of him. 

“A black trick is defensive,” Stefan continues, his voice becoming increasingly hushed as the room seems to tense around us. “You can use a black trick as a pass, in place of a red card during a red trick, making the other player react to their own card instead.” 

“And what do red tricks do?” 

In Stefan’s eyes now, that same charged rush – in the low light here, amidst the smoke and whispers, it looks like a hunger. “See for yourself.” 

The room is now rapt, its focus total and unified. Words exchanged are quick and dripping with the thrill of anticipation. 

Plotnev plays a nine of hearts to Jensen’s seven. Jensen replies with a jack of diamonds. A pause. Plotnev fingers the black trick in front of him, then pushes it into the middle of the table. Jensen smiles. Plays a queen of hearts. The crowd rumbles, a mixture of support and derision. And then, Plotnev plays the queen of diamonds. An eruption – stomping and shouting and frenzied, furious uproar. Jensen wrinkles his nose, plays a three of clubs. The host indicates Plotnev, and he collects the cards that make up the red trick. Jeers sound around the room. Yells. I see money and stubs changing hands, bets hurriedly taken on the spot. 

“There are five cards in that trick. Plotnev gets to use each of them now, once.” 

“Use them how?”

Stefan grins, his thin lips stretching over narrow, uneven teeth, and his eyes guide me back to the players. 

Jensen stands, pushing his chair back, planting his feet firmly and bracing himself, as if about to be hit. Plotnev takes a moment, turning the red trick between his fingers, looking him up and down. Sizing him up. Deciding something. 

Plotnev stands, and the crowd seems to rise with him. He holds up the first card – the seven of hearts, showing it to the room. 

“Number cards are body shots,” Stefan says to me, leaning in close, his breath smoky and fast in my ear. “Face cards – well. That’s obvious, right?” 

The card flies from Plotnev’s hand before I’d even realised he was taking aim. It’s a blur in the air, as if his fingers were the barrel of a silent gun. It lashes across Jensen’s left breast, and I can see the blood start to well around the neat, narrow incision it’s torn in his skin. The impact sends the crowd reeling, incensed with a new frenzy, a wild animal moving and roaring in unison. Stefan grips my arm. 

“One hundred Euros,” he says. “Plotnev lands four out of five.”

I turn to him. His fingers tighten. He’s as enthralled as the rest of them, despite his status here. 

“How does he throw the card like that?” is all I can manage to reply dumbly, still in shock. 

“Four out of five,” he repeats. “What do you think?” 

Plotnev strikes again. The next card takes Jensen’s right arm. It looks like more of a glancing blow, but blood melts from the wound instantly, more than the last one. 

“Fifty Euros,” Stefan says. 

“He’s going to land all of them,” I reply, watching as Plotnev raises the jack of diamonds to the crowd, turning on the spot, owning the moment with the flair of a showman. “I’ve never seen – how does he do that?” 

“So you think five, I think four. Fifty Euros. It’s a bet.” 

Stefan finds my hand, shakes it. I’m only half paying attention. I can’t take my eyes off Plotnev, the way the card sits loosely between his index and middle finger, how delicate it seems, how harmless, and yet when he moves to give it life it takes flight with a precision and deadliness that make me feel foolish for ever seeing a card in his hands as anything other than a weapon. 

His first face card of the trick opens Jensen’s left cheek. It’s a smaller cut but seems deeper, looks rawer. I can see Jensen internalising every hit, banking them, turning the pain into motivation, the humiliation into momentum. He has to take hits in order to be able to give them back out – it’s something I’ve seen so often in boxing but here, in this strange, unfamiliar context, it seems bold, even revelatory. 

The queen of hearts rakes its way across Jensen’s forehead. The blood is slow this time, barely more than a few skinny drops, but when they appear they melt down into his eyebrow, through to his eye. 

Four out of four, with one to go. Stefan and I catch eyes. I can tell he sees something in my face – something he recognises, or perhaps was hoping for. I don’t imagine I’m the first person he’s introduced to this game. It’s the same thing I do, when I look for fighters or spectators. You learn the type of person. Anticipate them. Snare them when you find them. I can’t fault him – he was right with me. 

The queen of diamonds looks directly at me, raised high in Plotnev’s fingers. I know in that moment, seeing her, seeing him, the two of them in perfect collusion, that I’ve won the bet. Plotnev isn’t missing. When the card strikes Jensen’s chin, I can’t help but throw my fist up, joining the chorus that swells in admiration. Stefan blows out his cheeks, shakes his head, grinning, taking out his wallet. He hands the money over. I’ve never been a gambler, always enabling rather than participating, and it feels strange to be on this side of it, to not be in control, to feel the stimulation rather than implement it.  But I do feel it – strongly, too. There’s something here. A tension, a dynamism, that I haven’t felt in any of my own events for some time. 

The game passes in a haze of blurred, glinting cards, of red and black, smoke and uproar. I start to get a sense of how they play – Jensen is bullish and quick, trying to rush Plotnev and provoke him into mistakes. Plotnev is measured and hesitant, more cautious and less fun to watch while they sit at the table, but when they stand, Plotnev’s cards move with the purpose of a predator. They seem living, and though Jensen’s may still be razored and swift, they don’t seek out their targets like Plotnev’s do, they don’t thirst for blood and dive on flesh like his. Not all the cards land – sometimes they’ll glance off without making a mark, floating harmlessly, dully, to the ground, seeming so obviously benign that the whole thing appears, for a moment, completely absurd and defanged. 

“The card has to cut for it to count,” Stefan tells me, and I realise we’d gone some time without speaking. “If it makes no impact, it means nothing.”

“How do you win?” I ask, realising that I still don’t know. 

Stefan points to his cheek, his forehead, his chest. 

“You count them,” he says. “You count the cuts.”

Sure enough, when the last card has flown, an ace of hearts that opens the skin under Plotnev’s left eye, a chant of, “Count the cuts,” is taken up around the room. Jensen and Plotnev both stand, and the host comes over, starting with Jensen, moving around his body and tallying up the fresh marks as he goes. The crowd falls silent as the host announces the scores – twelve on Jensen. Eleven on Plotnev. 

Plotnev raises a single card in the air on the declaration of his victory – a blood-stained queen of hearts, that conducts a sensational clamour around the room. A queen – twelve. The number of cuts he landed on Jensen. 

Three more games with different sets of players follow, which increase in brutality but fail to match Plotnev and Jensen for grace, tension, and skill. I get the chance to speak to both of them before the night is up, where I learn that neither of them have ever played combat sports. Jensen was a child chess prodigy, Plotnev a card-counting casino scammer. There seems to be no direct pipeline into this game – it’s indiscriminate, alive with hungry underground momentum. 

Stefan introduces me to the woman who runs the space, but I don’t bother mentioning my own fights to her. I ask only questions about what I’ve seen tonight. 

I go home with Stefan to the place he’s staying at – a converted warehouse, open-planned and high-ceilinged. The night we spend together is excitable, adventurous. It doesn’t feel like we’re alone together – it’s almost like we’ve carried the heat, musk, and commotion of the crowd in here with us. 

As we lie awake on the bed beside each other, Stefan hands me one of the decks that was played with at Stungarten. I take a card and feel it in my fingers, let it sit in my palm. It has a certain weight to it, subtle but heavier than your typical deck, the edges reinforced with some kind of coating or glaze. I draw my wrist back and fling the card. It doesn’t fly true, veering off to the left far more than I meant it to, but it soars faster and further than I thought I would manage on a first attempt. 

Stefan props himself up and looks at me. I hold the deck out to him. 

“Come on, then,” I say. “Deal them.” 

Will Pinhey is a UK-based writer across film, theatre, and prose fiction. His debut folk horror feature film ‘Mother Maker Lover Taker’ premiered at Unrestricted View Film Festival in 2024, winning the Festival Director’s Choice Award, and was released to streaming platforms internationally in 2025. His short stories can be found published with Idle Ink, Crow & Cross Keys, The Horizon, Literally Stories, Bristol Noir, and Scribbled.