Jacob was exhausted. Surely there had to be another way. Even another road, or a quicker route. Anything. All Jacob knew was that he had to get there first.

All in one night; his car had run out of petrol, the bike he’d been lent had got a flat tire, and even while walking that damned road he’d managed to roll an ankle. He was no closer to the jetty than he had been an hour ago when he’d started this journey.

Well, that and the fact that he didn’t have enough money for another round of drinks. He had spent all he had the last couple of times he’d lost. There was no way in hell he’d go into debt with Kayla again. “Not today.”

“Just roll the bloody dice!” Andy cried out, staring wildly at Jacob. “A quick game is a good game!”

Jacob let out a strangled scream of frustration and rolled the dice. “C’mon, c’mon, roll a fix or a booster. A fix or a booster!”

This stupid game had taken over their lives every Friday night for the past month. The group had found it on the shelf at their local pub. None of them had ever thought to ask why it was there, but they’d read through the rules, thought ‘why not?’, then started to play.

First to the jetty won – but to get there you had to make it through multiple rounds of an absolutely insane game. The only tools at your disposal: cards, dice, and a whole lot of luck (though with the number of times he’d lost Jacob thought the game was possibly rigged).

“Took you long enough.” Kayla snapped.

The dice slowed to a stop on the symbol of a small question mark.

“Nooo!” Jacob shuffled the vehicle cards he had and then picked one at random to put in the vehicle discard pile.

“You really should work on your poker face Jacob,” Andy laughed, “it doesn’t take much you just managed to put your best card on the discard pile.” He rolled the dice, then grinned as it rested on the side with the small fire detailed on it.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Kayla groaned. She was only doing slightly better than Jacob, even though she’d nabbed the airplane early on. Only three turns later she’d rolled a hazard and that plane had lost an engine.

A picked up a shiny new vehicle card and slammed it down on the table narrowly missing her half full beer. “Yes!” The new limo with the high-speed points got her across the last few squares to pass Kayla and join Lou at the jetty. Moments later Kayla managed to use her broken plane to make it to jetty in one piece.

Jacob lost all hope for his bank account as his four friends cried out in unison.

“YOU MISSED THE BOAT JACOB!”

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This was the criteria for Furious Fiction this month:

Each story’s first and last words had to begin with J.
Each story had to include a game being played.
Each story had to include the phrase MISS/MISSED THE BOAT.

Loved the criteria this month, it was a lot of fun to play around with.