Rule #3: If a stranger on a train asks you to play a game, always let them win.

Daniel was 11 when a man sat across from him on the train and asked if he wanted to play a guessing game. His mother was asleep beside him. The train was crowded. It seemed safe.

The man said, "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10. Guess it and I'll give you $10. Get it wrong, and you give me something of mine that you don't know you have."

Daniel guessed seven.

The man smiled and said, "Wrong. But don't worry. I'll collect later."

His mother woke up. The man was gone. Daniel forgot about it. Kids do.

But strange things began happening. Small things at first. A sense of being watched. Dreams of a train car that went on forever. A feeling in crowds that someone was always just behind him.

When he was 19, he told his grandmother about the man on the train. She made him describe him exactly. When she finished, she was quiet for a long time.

"That was a very old game," she finally said. "And you were never supposed to guess. You were supposed to let him win. If you let them win, they take nothing. If you don't, they collect a debt. Slowly, over years. Something small at first, then something you notice... then something you love."

Daniel asked what the debt was. What it had taken.

His grandmother said, "Think about what you've lost in the last 8 years. Not the big things. The small ones. The ones that slipped away for no reason."

He sat there and counted. He stopped counting at 12.

He never played another game with a stranger again. He also never let his children ride a train alone. And when his daughter told him last year that a man on the subway asked her to guess a number, he grabbed her hand and they left at the next stop.

"Some rules," he told her, "You learn too late. We got lucky."

Author's Note: I run a small horror narration channel called The Shadow Codex. I recently narrated this story, along with a few other unsettling rules-based encounters, complete with dark ambient sound design.

If you prefer to put on your headphones and listen in the dark, you can check out the video here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULnKpCPTxQ0

Either way, thanks for reading. And remember... always let them win.