"Four, five, six," I said, a dull mixture of dread and relief gathering in my gut. "Well, that's game."
Twilight blinked at me. "Why?"
"Park Place," I said. "Hotel. That's fifteen hundred." I rubbed the two little goldenrod rectangles together between my fingers. "One thousand left. That's game over." I shove my remaining bills across the board to her.
Twilight's mouth formed a hard line. "No," she said. "I'm giving your seamstress—"
"It's a thimble, not a seamstress."
"Well, excuse me for expending a scrap of brain effort on hippomorphizing them. It makes the game a lot easier to understand. Anyway. When it comes time for your seamstress to make rent, and she can't pay it, my laundress recognizes her financial plight and gives her an extension."
"That isn't how this works," I said. "You can't voluntarily choose not to charge rent when someone lands on your space."
"I absolutely can and am," said Twilight, shoving the money back across the board with her hoof. "We come from similar backgrounds, after all."
"Twilight," I said, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice, "This game already goes on for an eternity. Do you seriously want to risk missing the leyline confluence over a game of Monopoly?"
"I want to end my time here on a positive note, Jeff. I finally think I found a tiny little piece of your world I can actually understand, and I don't want it to be over yet."
I yawned. "Okay. You get one exception to the rules, and in return, it is officially your fault if we oversleep on this thing."
"Deal," she said. "Thank you for indulging me."
"You're close to winning anyway," I said. "Shouldn't take too much longer."
"That's kind of you to say, Jeff. I personally feel like there's a long way to go, but maybe it'll turn around." She smiled, flushing bashfully. "It's just...I really don't want to lose this one."
A moment of silence passed as I frowned at her.
"Um," I said, eventually. "If that was your major concern, why didn't you choose to win?"
"Pardon me?"
"You could have won. Right there. Victory was within your grasp. But you just gave me this money back."
"Well, yes, of course," she said. "If you'd been reduced to zero money, we would have lost."
I felt a tic in my left lower eyelid. My jaw clenched. I spasmodically stood up from the board and stalked over to the mirror by the sink, nearly tripping over the luggage rack.
"Jeff?"
"No wonder this game's been taking forever!" I exclaimed. "You're not even trying to win!"
"Yes I am!" Twilight protested. "And we're close! I can feel it!"
"Close to what, exactly?"
"To setting up a mutually-amicable harmonic economic rhythm where the random dice rolls average out into perfect cash flow back and forth between my laundress and your seamstress," she said. "And we were really close there for a while, before your string of bad luck."
"That's not the point of the game! The point of the game is to acquire all your opponent's money!"
Twilight frowned. "But...how will she afford the upkeep on all these houses she's built?"
"She won't!" I exclaimed, throwing my arms wide. "She's broke!"
"So how exactly is that winning?" Twilight said, her voice raising to match mine. "You won't be able to afford to stay at any of my hotels ever again!"
"Yes!"
She shook her head. "But...you're my best customer!"
I sank to the bed.
"Damn it," I said. "I knew I should've bought Pandemic."