The Card Game

This digital artwork, a companion to my flash fiction piece “The Card Game,” explores the tension between life and death through a surreal, abstract lens. The image depicts fragmented figures engaged in an eerie card game, their forms dissolving into darkness as glowing neon greens and oranges cut through the composition. The interplay of a grid-like structure and splattered light adds a modern, almost digital aesthetic, while the rough, textured outlines evoke an unsettling mood. The piece complements the grim, mysterious narrative of a small-town sheriff and hangman grappling with guilt, justice, and the supernatural—an homage to the power struggles and moral ambiguity that drive the story.

Credits: This artwork incorporates public domain photographs from the Library of Congress, which were modified and integrated to enhance the themes of the story.

• (1860) Two Unidentified Men Playing Cards. , 1860. [Between ? and 1890?] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2015650795/.
• (1936) Two hangman's nooses hang as a grim warning to prospective bidders on this foreclosed farm. In this way many farms sold for only a few cents until the Farm Debt Adjustment Committee came into being. United States, 1936. May. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017760141/.