by Defendi, Bob
“What do you want?” he asked, holding up the ax to strike.
Damico threw up his hands. “I’m friendly. Don’t attack!”
The man’s expression fell with disappointment. He sulked off into the darkness. Damico called out after him, but he didn’t respond.
Strange.
Damico stared after the man for a while then took a step after him. A new person materialized into the light.
This one wore a pirate shirt and green tights. He carried a rapier on one hip and a mandolin over his shoulder. On his head perched a folded cap, like Errol Flynn.
“Um, hi,” Damico said.
“Prithee, good my lord! What brings thee to this dungeon of peril and dread?”
And suddenly he had it. LARPers.
Live Action Role-Playing, basically grown men playing dress up. Some would call them the pimple on the ass of the gaming world. Damico didn’t mind them much, except at conventions where they spread like a virus, annoyed like crotch rot, and generally brought the entire industry a bad name. They were drunken, obnoxious, and horny. Convention LARPers made Damico wish he could call in an airstrike on his own position.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Damico said. The guy seemed nice enough, despite the getup. “I think I’m lost.”
“Where did you come from?”
“The hospital, I think.”
“Ah, a temple of healing, the cool soothing touch of the gentle menstruations of the clerical arts—”
“I think you mean ministrations.”
“What is thy injury, sirrah?”
Damico blinked a few times, and the little man in his head gave up completely and decided to kick back in the back row, knock down a little popcorn, and wait for the realization to hit.
“I was shot in the face,” Damico said.
“Ah,” the bard—he must have been a bard—said. “A grievous wound. Seems healed, though.”
The last didn’t sound like Elizabethan English. The guy couldn’t keep character.
“I got better?” Damico ventured.
It was a test, and the man burst out laughing, slapping his knee and stroking his Van Dyke. So, he was a gamer. Or a Renaissance nut. Someone who watched a lot of Monty Python, regardless.
“Good sirrah, of course you did! So, are you here for adventure?”
“I’m trying to find my way out,” Damico said.
“Alas, there is but one door out. It seals behind, and it was guarded by a deadly slime.”
Damico glanced back toward the charred spot down the hall. “I think someone torched the slime,” he said.
“That would be us, good my lord!” the bard said. “We are a group of prowess and might, of bitter blades and boastful songs, of—”
“Give me the Cliff Notes, Bardykins,” Damico said.
“We kick ass.”
“I see,” Damico said. “Why are you all lurking there in the dark?”
“It isn’t dark!” a voice said from the darkness.
“No, it isn’t.” Another voice.
“I have a torch right here.” Fourth voice. How many people were there?
“Where?”
“It’s written on my character sheet.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Well I have a lantern.”
“Where?”
“On my sheet.”
“Well you don’t have it out.”
“Yes I do!”
“No you don’t.”
“I distinctly said I pulled it out!”
A light flared now, not thirty feet down the passage. It came from a lantern grasped in the hand of the big lug of a fighter. Next to him stood a woman in a long navy dress with some sort of gold and red embroidered surcoat down the front and back. Her hair was long, straight, and brown, her eyes pretty and penetrating. Actually, she looked a lot like a JAG-era Zoe McClellan.
Next to her stood a… dwarf. Odd. Damico’s brain kind of skirted over the image because it wasn’t a “little person” dwarf. It was a Tolkien dwarf, complete with a long red beard and a helm and four axes and a hauberk of chain armor. Damico blinked at the creature.
“Let me introduce everyone,” the bard said, “I am lord Arithian the Noble of the house Damocles, a bard and rascal of the highest caliber.”
“How can you be a rascal of the highest—”
“My hulking friend here is Omar, half-elven, warrior of might and terrible power.”
“He doesn’t look at all half—”
“The Lady is Lotianna, a mage of wisdom and subtlety.”
“She clearly isn’t old enough to—”
“And the dwarf is Gorthander the Delving, mighty in ax, reverent in faith, wise in the ways of the underworld.”
“Hi,” Damico said.
“Back atcha,” said the dwarf.
Damico nodded, vaguely wondering if these LARPers were dangerous. They were obviously crazy—they were LARPers after all—but were they the harmless cat-lady kind of crazy or the don’t-look-in-the-trunk kind of crazy?
“I’m Bob Damico.”
“Damico,” the dwarf said. “Funny.”
“Why is that funny?” Damico asked.
“You are obviously an adventurer of the highest caliber,” the bard said. Again with the calibers. “Shall we travel this day together?”
“Uh, sure,” Damico said. “I really just want out.”
“Before we leave, we must beard the master of this dungeon in his lair,” the bard said.
“You don’t say.”
“Join us, and I will weave a tale of heroism and noble deeds.”
Damico stared at them a while. “Fine.”
“We backtracked this way to determine if the door was indeed closed,” Arithian said. “Perhaps we should continue along.”
“You just said it was definitely closed,” Damico said.
“It is,” Arithian said with a sideways glance at Gorthander, “but some of us need to be sure.”
“It’s a stupid adventure,” Gorthander said. “I want out.”
They all walked down past the charred deadly slime and past where Damico must have appeared. They marched until they came to a blank wall of unrelieved stone.
“Dammit!” the dwarf said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be able to check for moving walls and the like?” Arithian asked.
“Oh,” Gorthander said. “That’s right, I’m a dwarf.”
He didn’t say it sarcastically. He said it as if he’d genuinely forgotten.
“So, Mikey, we go back?”
Mikey must have been the dwarf’s real name, because after examining the wall he nodded and led them back down the hall. They trudged through the dead slime silhouette to the end. There they found a gnarled and swollen door. The thing should have taken all of them to open it, but Lotianna walked up by herself. With the touch of one gloved hand, the door opened for her.
Light shone through from the other side, casting a yellow, flickering glow across them all. One by one, the other four walked through. Damico stepped forward and froze.
He’d entered a room lit by flaming brassieres.
Chapter Three
“Having a character from our world go to a fantasy world was old when C.S. Lewis did it.”
—Bob Defendi
here are many kinds of nightmares.
There’s the nightmare where your teeth fall out but you just can’t stop chewing, can’t stop poking and pulling at them. You know the consequences, but you just love the pain.
There’s the dream where you show up at work, and for some inexplicable reason, you take your clothes off. Then you have to dart back and forth in front of your coworkers naked, but you still don’t put your clothes back on. You want to be embarrassed.
There’s the dream where you’re in a fight, but no matter how hard you try to hit the other person, you keep pulling your punches. It’s as if you’re fighting under
water. You make yourself powerless.
Dreams are not something that happen to us. Nightmares do not make us victims. These are things we bring on ourselves, things we know we deserve. We say the harsh word that will end the friendship. We commit the careless transgression that will destroy the love affair and push that last button that will alienate the family member. We take the wrong turn that will lead us into the bad neighborhood. We place that one last charge on the credit card. We do it to ourselves.
Which is why that moment hits so hard. Why those final words hurt so badly. Why that closing door sounds so final.
Because no matter how much we deny it, we know it was our fault.
Damico stared at the flaming brassieres, and he finally accepted it. He knew where he was. He knew he’d gone mad. He knew this was a final fate, or Hell itself, or a living delirium.
He was in Carl’s game.
Forced to live in the worst game ever. Forced to stand here and live out every terrible moment, to know the truth.
This couldn’t possibly be real. He’d gone mad. He’d slipped the surly bonds of sanity and touched the face of clod.
And because it couldn’t be real, he knew he had done it to himself. This is the way the world ends; this is the way the world ends; this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a gibber.
Insane.
To Sartre, Hell was other people. To the game designer, Hell was the game.
He had to find his way out. He had to claw his way out. He had to scream and fight and hack his way out. If necessary, he had to beg his way out. He had to, no matter what it would take. He had to get out if it was the last thing he did.
Because he lay somewhere bleeding and alone at the mercy of the man who’d shot him. Carl had used a silencer, and that meant no one was coming. He’d have had time to hide the body in that Texas-sized trunk and wash the blood into the gutters. No one would know. No one would help. He had to get out.
And there was nothing funny about that.
Chapter Four
“Inventing a clever quote for each chapter is difficult. I’m not going to do it anymore.”
—Bob Defendi
here are laws of the universe: Nature abhors a vacuum, but it abhors an atmosphere more, so check your suit seals.
There are laws of romance: You can ruin the most romantic mood by calling out the name of another woman. You can absolutely shatter it by calling out the name of another man.
There are laws of the land: Bullets fired at a cop will return to you sevenfold.
And there are rules of storytelling: Do not tell, show.
So let’s break that one and save us all the tritest scene in fiction. What I tell you three times is true. Hraldolf was a bad man; Hraldolf was a bad man; Hraldolf was a bad man. Believe me? No? All right, I’ll show you, but you brought this on yourself.
Hraldolf sat in a hall of immense power. Beneath him cowered a throne made of blackened bones. Behind rose a xylophone of glimmering ribs arching off a backbone that would make the most honest chiropractor start shopping for a boat. It culminated in a tail that snaked into the air. The seat was to vertebrates what the Bikini Atoll test was to firecrackers.
Hraldolf rested both elbows on the arm bones of the vanquished, and his hands rested on the skulls of two creatures that would make Roger Corman start sketching like mad. It had fangs to say the least. Smilodon people.
Hraldolf didn’t consider the throne. It was an extension of his body. He didn’t consider the room that should have belonged to a galactic overlord. He didn’t consider the priceless paintings on the wall. He didn’t notice the tasteful pillars or the majestic ceiling or the plastic carpet that was brown not because it was a tasteful color, but because eventually blood dried.
He certainly didn’t notice the guards. They were thoughtlessly loyal and built like Lou Ferrigno with anger management issues. They wore enough metal to give them even odds in a head-on with a Volvo.
No, he only noticed the two Henchmen.
These two are called the Henchmen for a reason. They aren’t going to be around long enough for you to learn their names.
“Tell me,” Hraldolf said.
“Lord Hraldolf,” Henchman A said. “We’ve searched the world over, but the Artifact is nowhere to be found.”
There are rules of fantasy too. There is always an Artifact. Blame Tolkien.
“I need it,” Hraldolf said.
“We know, my lord,” Henchman Two said.
“But we can’t find it,” said Henchman Prime.
Hraldolf heaved a fatherly sigh. The kind of sigh a man releases before he tells one of his twins the boy came with a convenient spare. It’s the kind of sigh a man lets loose right before saying, “It puts the lotion in the basket.” There are sighs that punctuate sentences. This is the kind of sigh that punctuates people.
He rose with far more dignity than a man with his name had any right to possess. He moved with the grace of a ballerina. His feet caressed the stairs down from his throne as they crossed one in front of the other, in dainty slippers. Finally they stopped, and Henchman the Junior stared up at stockinged legs that would have made Louis the XVI bitch-slap a nun.
Hraldolf saw fear as the man stared at sagging tights hugging those gymnast’s legs. Slowly the Henchman’s eyes rose.
“Don’t look at me,” Hraldolf said. He smiled.
The beauty of that smile flashed through the Henchman’s eyes, popping them like Lawrence Welk bubbles. The sweet eye juices dribbled down the man’s cheeks even as his smile fixed in a rigor of ecstasy.
Then he fell over dead.
Henchman the Wiser kept his eyes on the ground.
“You may leave, but find the Artifact, or I’ll blow you a kiss,” Hraldolf said.
The henchman withdrew, weeping hysterical thanks.
Hraldolf smiled and strolled back up his dais to his throne, and picked up a delicate feathered mask from the seat. Carefully, he put it on.
“You may look,” he said.
As one, the guards lifted their sealed visors, and their gazes swept the throne room. Then one of them walked forward and hooked the dead body under one arm. Already, it oozed blood from every pore as the guard dragged it down the plastic carpet and out the door at the far end.
Hraldolf sat on his throne and never once wondered about his own motivations. He did what he did, and no one, not even the great Carl above, knew why. He was simply the villain.
Hraldolf stroked the feathers of his mask and studied the paintings around him, admiring art that wasn’t half as exquisite as his own face. Admiring with the vacuous expression of the hollow. Admiring because he couldn’t admire himself. Or rather he could, but a full-faced look in the mirror would be his last.
And that might have been the greatest cliché of all.
Chapter Five
“See, no quote… wait. Dammit!”
—Bob Defendi
amico!”
Damico snapped out of his reverie and faced Arithian, standing in the light of the blazing “C” cups. The room was wide and perfectly square. Damico was willing to bet it reached exactly thirty feet by thirty feet. A single, perfectly proportioned passage led out the other side.
“Damico,” Arithian said again.
“Huh?” Damico said.
There had to be a better explanation for all this, an explanation that didn’t involve him hugging himself in a rubber room for the rest of his life. Or worse, lost in a coma, adrift in a sea of his own mental chemicals.
“Prithee, art thou all right?” Arithian asked.
Damico shook his head. He was insane. Cuckoo. He couldn’t even convince himself this was all some trick. He’d been shot in the head. That kid couldn’t have missed.
“I’m… uh… fine.”
“Your name is Damico?” Lotianna asked.
“Yeah.”
“Funny,” she said.
He still didn�
�t know why that was funny.
But he knew what wasn’t. If he was still alive, if this wasn’t Hell, then he was bleeding to death in the real world. Soon his heart would beat its last. The final ounce of blood would dribble into Carl’s trunk. Soon.
“Are we to push ahead, good my lord?” Arithian asked.
Damico stared at the man, trying to parse those words into meaning. Slowly, his brain caught up. He nodded. What could happen to him in his own dream? Could he die, and if he did, would he die in real life? If he didn’t, did he have to look forward to the life of Prometheus? The endless pain of death over and over every day for the rest of eternity? What horrors did this world hold?
“Come on, Buddy,” Gorthander said, gesturing to the far hall and trudging one hobnailed boot at a time.
Madness.
No, he was right the first time. He had to get out, and since standing here and throwing a temper tantrum wasn’t likely to accomplish that, he’d probably better follow the dwarf.
They walked down the hallway, and Damico tried to keep his eyes peeled. If this was Hell, there was probably something extremely nasty at the end. If this was a game, there’d be something worse.
They came to a door like the last, swollen, and obviously all but sealed by grime. Omar reached for the large copper ring, green and scaly with age.
“Wait!” Damico said.
“Huh?” Omar asked.
“You said the door we came through was the only way in or out?” Damico said.
“Aye,” said Arithian.
“Then how come all the doors are all warped like they’ve never been used?”
“So, you’re saying it might be a trap?” Gorthander asked.
“I’m saying this doesn’t seem right.”
“You know how to disarm a trap?” Omar asked.
“Well,” Damico said, “no.”
“I do,” Omar said, and yanked the door open.
There came a gentle whooshing sound, and a speck of fire flew out of the center of the doorway. Damico was vaguely aware of everyone scattering around him as the speck grew closer and closer, a malevolent orange flicker of doom. He didn’t have time to swallow his tongue before the thing hit him in the center of the chest and detonated. Son of a b—