Death by Cliché

by Defendi, Bob

  “Stuff it, you shrew,” Jurkand shouted. “Did he touch you too?”

  Damico spun in fury just in time to see the throwing ax appear in Jurkand’s chest. Jurkand stumbled backward, blood flowing out of the wound in a sheet, his eyes wide with horror and agony. He batted at the weapon several times, spasmodically, then fell over dead.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” Damico said, facing Gorthander.

  “He was annoying,” Gorthander said.

  “You killed him because he was annoying?” Damico asked, not sure what to think.

  “No. I killed him because he insulted the lady’s honor. I enjoyed it because he was annoying.”

  Damico shook his head. This was just a game, after all. No, Hell. This was just Hell, after all. The things Jurkand said, they were sheer fantasy. No one was “coming alive.” This was just some sick trick of Carl’s. Satan’s. This was all just somebody’s trick.

  He wasn’t going to sit here and let his killer or his tormentor play mind games with him. He might be dead. He might be in Hell, but this might be a game, after all. Maybe he was still alive. Stranger things had happened.

  Either way, he had to keep fighting.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Just use the word ‘said’!”

  —Bob Defendi

  hey packed up and started down the road, heading toward the Swamp of Unending Toil. Damico didn’t know what to think any longer, but he could feel the ground crumbling away beneath him like the argument of a flat-earther. He stumbled and clawed and struggled to keep his head above proverbial water even as the sharks circled and checked their menus and bribed the Maître d’.

  Gorthander trudged along happily with his battle-ax over one shoulder, singing “Whistle While You Work.” Damico followed, trying to understand anything that was going on.

  But those eyes, the eyes of Barmaid Barbie, kept haunting him. Could Jurkand be right? Not about giving life, that was ridiculous, but could he have caused that poor girl’s distress somehow?

  He shook off those feelings. He needed to stay focused, to get back on his game, no pun intended.

  He moved up to where Lotianna marched at the head of the party.

  “Feeling any better?” he asked.

  “Was that a PMS question?” she retorted.

  Damico stopped and blinked a few times then quickened his pace to catch up. Evidently he’d missed part of a conversation. Damico glared accusingly at Omar. What had they said to her before he’d woken up?

  “No,” he replied. “I just thought you were feeling off this morning.”

  She scowled at him. “Keep it in your pants, Leisure Suit Larry,” she growled.

  “Good grief, woman, what’s your problem?” he exclaimed.

  “You’re my problem, asshole,” she spat.

  What the hell was going on?

  “Great, maybe I’ll just get out of your damn life then,” he insisted.

  “Fine!” she ejaculated.

  “Good riddance!” he asserted.

  This conversation was positively surreal.

  He stopped and let her stomp on ahead. Arithian walked by him, shaking his head. Omar walked by, whispering, “Smooth move, Ex-lax.”

  Who talked like that?

  Gorthander came up last, and Damico fell in next to him. Gorthander shook his head and chuckled to himself. “That not go well?” he inquired.

  Damico shook his head. “We were doing so well yesterday,” he bemoaned.

  And now, he hated her. She’d treated Omar like crap. She had yelled at Gorthander three times while packing. She had told Arithian to stick his mandolin up his ass (that one was kinda funny). But she was one of the only people here he could talk to, and now she’d become this loathsome person. It just didn’t make any sense. It was one thing to have a bad day but to treat everyone so terribly?

  Damico felt alone. He could still talk to Gorthander, but that wasn’t the same. He needed companionship, female companionship. He needed to feel like he had a real connection with someone, like someone out there cared.

  And now, he hated her. Worse. She hated him.

  Gorthander just patted him on the shoulder but didn’t say anything, which was probably a good thing.

  Because the Said Bookisms were getting old, I assumed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “How do you spell ‘of’?… No, really… You’re kidding… That just looks wrong.”

  —Bob Defendi

  is name was Longshad. Say it fast, and it sounds like something out of the 2000 Florida election.

  He was the noble of legend, the noble of stories. When he was young, he bested a dragon and saved a handful of simple (and ugly) village virgins. Selfless. When he took over for his father, he gave the village mill to the villagers, allowed them to charge themselves the mulchure. When he was thirty, he was the first noble to stand up against Hraldolf and win. Hraldolf denied him at every point, but the Overlord kept his mask on throughout the whole meeting, so it was a moral victory. That same meeting, Hraldolf fed his favorite ally to a cage full of rabid hamsters.

  But I digress.

  Longshad was a good and honorable man. I’d say that three times as well, but I sense your attention wandering.

  He stood on the balcony of his manor house and watched the village below. It was a good place, an honest place. The people there lived wholesome lives. Not even the pets had sex out of wedlock. It made the finest wool in the land, not to mention being the number one exporter of doggy-sized wedding tuxedos.

  He loved his people. They loved him. The town girls showed up at his door almost every day with bundles of flowers. His house smelled like the bathroom of your church organist. What the ass of a bee smelled like after a hard night of carousing.

  Even now, the girls walked from house to house, chatting and talking. The boys nodded at them politely and played organized little games. The women cooked industriously inside. The men performed a field ballet using oxen and plows. Really. I wish you could see it.

  As he watched, the butler butled about behind him.

  And then it hit. He didn’t know it, but at that exact moment, the invisible line between Damico and that Artifact crossed through him. It was like having someone walk over your grave. In golf shoes. No, scratch that. It was like having someone walk over your naked genitalia―in golf shoes.

  Longshad blinked.

  “Jeeves?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring Thelma to me.”

  After a few heartbeats, Jeeves showed up at his side with Thelma. He stopped, following his master’s gaze. Longshad watched the village below with a subtle smile on his lips.

  “How long have you been with me, Jeeves?”

  “Since you were nothing more than a bit of bad math in your father’s head.”

  “He never could count to twenty-eight.”

  “Yes, and how are your brothers?”

  Longshad ignored the question and watched the people below. “Am I a sporting man?”

  “You told the dragon you were coming, sir.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “Jeeves, I have a new sport. Hand me Thelma.”

  Jeeves slapped the heavy crossbow into his master’s hand. Longshad slowly cranked it up. Meanwhile Jeeves watched quietly, not judging. The butler’s easy stare.

  “How are your lungs?” Longshad asked.

  “Good, sir. Why do you ask?

  “Because I’m a sporting man. Yell ‘run.’”

  “Pardon me, sir?”

  “Yell it,” Longshad said, taking a bead on the first of the girls.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I stole a joke in this chapter from Night Court.”

  —Bob Defendi

  o then the proctologist says, ‘there’s my thermometer! Now where did I leave my pencil?’”

  They all stared at Gorthander. Then Damico groaned, and Arithian grunted. Lotianna didn’t deign to ans
wer.

  Omar frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  “You see a proctologist is the kind of doctor that that sticks things up your—”

  “Gorthander!” Damico shouted.

  In front of them, about one hundred feet down the road, a bear had appeared.

  “What is it?” Damico asked.

  “Wandering monster!” Gorthander shouted, drawing his ax.

  Omar charged, frothing at the mouth. Arithian started to strum a song about hibernation. The bear’s head nodded, but it continued approaching.

  “Watch out!” Arithian shouted and dropped the song. “He’s immune to sleep!”

  Damico circled, trying to figure out how to Back Stab a bear. Meanwhile Omar closed in, his ax in both hands, screaming a mighty battle cry. Well, “Tallyho,” but he tries.

  Omar’s ax crashed into the bear’s back, but bounced off. He must have rolled terrible damage. Gorthander swung in, and his ax bit home, spraying blood on the path and irritating the bear.

  “Do you sit in the woods?” Gorthander shouted. “Do you sit in the woods?”

  “It isn’t ‘sit,’ Gorthander,” Damico shouted as he circled.

  The dwarf needed some serious work on his trash talk.

  Omar attacked again, but the bear savaged him, claws tearing through armor. Omar stumbled away, favoring his belly as he fought two-handed, parrying like an extra in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac.

  Damico finally made it around back and jumped in, his sword high, aiming for that furry bit right in the middle of all those other furry bits. His sword cut deeply, but not deeply enough. The bear reared, tossing Damico clear.

  Omar downed a healing potion. Damico couldn’t make out how; obviously, Carl had forgotten Omar was fighting two-handed. Then he hacked down with that ax again. The bear reeled from the blow and stumbled. Omar hit it again, and it stumbled farther. Gorthander finished it with a final stroke.

  “The Dow-Jones finished up today, asshole,” Gorthander said.

  “Trash talk can’t be subtle, Gort,” Damico said, brushing himself off.

  Arithian let his mandolin fall limp, sweat glistening on his forehead, but Lotianna hadn’t done anything at all.

  Damico scowled. “You couldn’t have spared a spell there, princess?” He’d had enough of her attitude.

  “You all had it covered.” She said it haughtily, like a high school heiress.

  “That wasn’t exactly an easy fight,” Damico said. “The thing went right through Omar’s armor.”

  “It rolled a natural thirty,” Omar said. “I saw.”

  “I’m not wasting one of my spells on some random encounter,” she said, pushing past him and starting down the road.

  Damico scowled. How dare this woman talk to them all like they were some sort of servants? He stormed after her, shouting at her back, itching to throw a dagger at the fluttering cloth of her cloak.

  “I’m talking to you, honey.” Yeah. He said that to piss her off.

  “Don’t honey me,” she said, not even looking back at him. “I’m far too valuable a resource to be wasted on crap like that.”

  “But it’s okay for Omar to waste a potion?” Damico said, catching up and glaring at her from one side.

  “I can’t help it if he can’t tank worth a damn. I’m not even the healer. Not my problem.”

  Damico reached out and grabbed her arm. He wanted to throw her over one knee and cut that lock of hair off her head. “Listen, skunk girl. This is a team, get it?”

  She spun on him and her stare could cook a lobster. It seemed names were the way to get to her. He noted that for future arguments.

  “Get… away… from… me,” she said, teeth clenched, one hand raised, glowing with power.

  Damico thought about a parting shot, but this was mutually assured destruction now. He spun on the ball of one foot and stormed back toward Gorthander.

  “Dude,” Gorthander said. “It’s only a game.”

  They all thought that. None of them understood. None of them could understand. It was only a game to them. That meant he was all alone.

  And did Damico even have a plan to get out anymore? He followed some vague hope that if he got to the end of the adventure, he’d somehow find a way out. How? Through the power of awesome? Still, he didn’t have a better plan. Maybe there was no better plan. Go along and see what opportunities present themselves.

  Could he stop playing? Maybe, but when the story moved away from him, did the world just stop? He was an NPC in this game. If the Player Characters couldn’t see a Non-Player Character, he might not even exist. Maybe.

  No, he had to keep going. Get to the end. Win.

  But that was the real problem. The flaw in his plan. You couldn’t win a role-playing game. The very concept was thrown as an insult at people who didn’t understand the point of cooperative story telling. There was no end. It kept going until people stopped playing or they started something new.

  What would happen if all the players stopped coming? If Mikey and Brian stopped being Gorthander and Omar, did everything stop? Did Damico go into stasis, or did he cease to exist entirely?

  No. He had to stay with them. He had to keep the players coming back despite Carl. It was his only hope.

  But things weren’t improving. They got worse. Now even his dialog sounded hackneyed. The fights felt contrived. The emotions shallow and without real motivation. And that scene where they fought the first time? Terrible. Was the world slowly unraveling around him?

  Or was he becoming more like it? Was he less and less real with every moment? Was he fading? Would he, soon, just be one more NPC in this terrible game?

  Was the world sucking the life out of him?

  Because that’s what it felt like, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing except get out. But that was pointless. All of this planning and theorizing was pointless. Because he must have died by now.

  So there was nowhere to get out to.

  Chapter Twenty

  “My God. It’s full of ‘r’s.”

  —Bob Defendi

  raldolf sat inside his dungeon of dungeons next to the torture room, above the bladed oubliette. Just down the hall from the monster pens. Behind the batting cages. Right next to the bathroom.

  He sat, and he tried to figure out what was happening to him.

  He was evil. Yes, wait, let me check. Nope, still evil. In fact, he was even more evil. Now he had movement and style and a splash of pah-na-chee. Evil on the go. A sporty, no-nonsense kind of evil. The kind of evil that catches a quick cup o’ joe and a nibble of sushi on the way to the endowment of the latest Republican candidate. Not that I’m saying Republican candidates are evil. That’s what backers are for.

  So evil but to what purpose?

  He still had one of the two Artifacts. Still that. Still, there were minions, agents, provocateurs, even the occasional henchman in the field. All searching for the second—more deadly—Artifact. Searching and searching.

  And when he found it. When he had it. Then he would show them.

  Evil. Yes, he was still dedicated to evil. Don’t get me wrong, still 100 percent behind the whole evil agenda. “Ooo, rah, rah, go our team” and all that. “Love, love, love the evil.” Give him an evil flag, and he’d wave it.

  Evil.

  You see here was the thing, the real point, the absolute crux of the matter. You see, he wasn’t actually sure, if you put it to him in so many questions… you know… why.

  This wasn’t a loss of faith or anything like that. Oh no, Hell forbid. He wasn’t losing his will to be evil. He just wasn’t exactly gaining it either.

  See, now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember becoming evil. He’d never sat down and made a list or anything practical like that, say with all the pros on the left side like, “get to sleep until noon,” and “sex with horrified partners,” and “a face so beautiful it can strip the c off of cat.” He was sur
e the other column had very interesting points like, “torch wielding villagers,” “constant assassination attempts,” and “no Christmas cards from Mother.” Actually, that first should probably go in the other column. Torch wielding villagers made a reassuring popping sound when he took off his mask. He looked devastating by torchlight.

  He walked through the dungeon of dungeons and was amazed by how boring the room was. No furniture, no torture devices. Just a pair of manacles strapped to the wall.

  You see, the point of prison, the real point, is boredom. That is the worst punishment of all. Actual torture nicely breaks up a day. No, the real enemies got to spend time here where they were attended by magically appearing food and the air absorbed the sound of their screams. Just unrelieved stone and poor lighting. Forever. The strong ones lasted a month.

  But Hraldolf didn’t use this room to shatter men’s minds any longer. He realized its reputation was far more powerful than its intended purpose. You see, not even his most insane guards would come near this place without orders.

  He touched a knob in the wall and a panel made of five stones swung to the side. All dungeons had to have a secret door, after all. It was in the Evil Manual and everything.

  Inside, he found the greatest of his treasures. A remote control, seventy-four pennies, five receipts, twelve women’s phone numbers, a cat with a c (because an ‘at’ wasn’t any use at all), and a cell phone headset. And of course the other Artifact, the one I’m not allowed to mention.

  The greatest treasures of civilization. He could keep collecting them, always collecting them. Eventually he might even find one of every type of sock.

  But the Artifact was the main missing item. There was even a little pedestal in there with a beam of light shining down dramatically. That would be its home.

  With it, he could destroy the world.

  Hmm.

  It was just occurring to him—and sorry ever so much, but this didn’t detract at all from the evil thing—it was just occurring to him he couldn’t figure out why he intended to destroy the world.