Death by Cliché

by Defendi, Bob

  After all, he lived there.

  He closed the panel quietly and shut the door to the dungeon of dungeons. There he sat, and he thought, and he puzzled, and there’s nothing blatantly symbolic about that. Oh no.

  Not at all.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Eternal life means never having to say you’re sorry.”

  —Bob Defendi

  he next morning Damico woke to the smell of bacon, not feeling half so morose. It was morning, and a new day meant a new chance. Maybe just a new chance to mock Carl but still.

  He rolled onto one side, seeing Gorthander preparing breakfast. He fell back and stared at the sky.

  “More beers?” he asked.

  “Alcoholism,” Gorthander said. “It’s not a disease. It’s a goal.”

  “Great.”

  Damico climbed out of his blanket and stumbled into the woods. He was the only one in the party that ever seemed to go to the bathroom—he sniffed himself and winced—or who needed to bathe. And don’t get me started on the toilet paper situation.

  He opened his codpiece behind a tree and took a piss. Soon he leaned toward the tree, one hand on the trunk, experiencing the limitless bliss of an emptying bladder.

  “Damico.”

  Damico glanced over his shoulder. Jurkand stood in the woods about thirty feet off. Damico shook off and fastened his codpiece.

  “Don’t you know the most important Guy Rule?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” Jurkand said.

  “Never talk to a man when he’s holding his penis.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Damico considered the man. Then he walked back toward camp. “Didn’t Gorthander kill you?”

  “One-shot resurrection charm,” Jurkand said dismissively. “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t feel like hearing anything you have to say.”

  From the sounds, Jurkand trudged along behind him. “I promise. No yelling.”

  Damico stopped. He always tried to be a reasonable person. He looked the man up and down. “Fine. Talk.”

  Jurkand stopped about twenty feet away and leaned against a tree. He wore the same clothes as before, but there was no tear from Gorthander’s ax and no blood. Evidently, his clothes healed too.

  “You know something is happening, don’t you?” Jurkand said.

  Damico wanted to hit him. Anything to not answer that question. Still, he forced himself to take a deep breath and nodded. “I saw her eyes.”

  Jurkand nodded. “I saw them too. What are you going to do about it?”

  Two days ago, Damico could have answered that question. But now… “I don’t know.”

  “What are you?” Jurkand said.

  “A damned soul.” Damico smiled wryly.

  Jurkand frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  Damico didn’t know what to think. He didn’t believe Carl was even involved anymore. “I’m in Hell. This is Hell.”

  “This isn’t Hell,” Jurkand said.

  “You aren’t living it.”

  “I am.”

  Damico started to walk away again. His tone might have been condescending. “You don’t understand.”

  “This isn’t what you expected, is it!” Jurkand shouted after him.

  Damico stopped again. He closed his eyes. “What?”

  “I don’t know where you came from or what you’ve done, but you’re disappointed.”

  Damico opened his eyes and stared off into the woods. “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t think you are the person you appear to be. Are you a god?” Jurkand asked, his eyes frank.

  “No.”

  “Do you come from someplace else?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you making people come to life?”

  Don’t answer that. Don’t answer that. “Yes.”

  Pause. “Thank you for being honest.”

  Damico looked down. “This is a game. I didn’t design it, but I’ve designed others like it.”

  “This isn’t a game,” Jurkand said.

  “Fine,” Damico said gently.

  “You misunderstand,” Jurkand said. “I believe you if you say this is a game. I don’t understand it, but I believe it. What I’m saying is this isn’t a game to me. This isn’t a game to the barmaid. Most of all, this isn’t a game to all of Hraldolf’s victims.”

  Maybe this man was right. Maybe this wasn’t Hell.

  But there were bigger issues. What if Jurkand was correct? He was the most real person Damico had met. Realer than the other Player Characters. Far realer than any of the Non-Player Characters. What if what he was saying was true?

  And Damico had been killed. This world, this Hell, this game, whatever it was, it was eating him alive, portioning his life out in tiny packets to everyone he met. It was destroying him piece by piece.

  But he couldn’t deny the reality of this anymore. He could try and try, but despite the ridiculousness of the world, it was real. He could feel it; he could taste it. He wasn’t crazy. He knew it with that same inner reserve that had kept him submitting ideas to companies for all those years, through all those rejections. He knew it with that same inner confidence that had made him try despite failure and bad reviews and internet flames. He didn’t get to where he was without a strong central core. He believed in himself. He believed in his mind, and he wasn’t mad. It didn’t matter if this was a Game, or Hell, or whatever. It wasn’t all in his head.

  Dear God, whatever it was, this was real.

  Carl had shot him in the head, and there was no way out. It was silly to even think there was a way out. How could he do it? He didn’t even know how he’d gotten in.

  Jurkand was right, he was affecting the people around him. Somehow, he brought life and free will to people, and if it was killing him, was that so bad? If this wasn’t a game, and he saw someone who needed his help, wouldn’t he want to help them? Even if it risked his life? How was this different? If he’d only given Jurkand and Barmaid Barbie free will, a real existence, wouldn’t that be enough to justify the risk?

  No more sulking. No more self-pity. Did it matter if he was dead? Did it matter to Jurkand? Did it matter to Barmaid Barbie?

  “Let’s go back to camp.” Damico smiled. “I’m sure Gorthander is dying to say hi.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “What do you mean that last chapter wasn’t funny either?”

  —Bob Defendi

  ack at camp, Gorthander looked up and saw Jurkand. “Didn’t I kill you?”

  “Yeah,” Jurkand said.

  “Well, let that be a lesson to you.”

  Damico was about to say something funny, honest, when he noticed Lotianna cooking breakfast. He frowned. “You’re cooking?”

  She shot him a shy glance, blushed, and looked back down. Damico gave Gorthander a questioning shrug.

  “She said beer wasn’t a breakfast food, no matter how much bacon I put in it.”

  “The monster,” Damico said.

  Lotianna blushed again. Damico opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She’d changed again. She didn’t resemble Catherine Zeta Jones anymore either. Now she looked more like Jennifer Love Hewitt. What was going on here?

  He’d worry about that later. “Jurkand, meet everyone. Everyone, meet Jurkand.”

  “Jurkand?” Lotianna said as if she hadn’t heard his name before.

  “Yeah. His mother wanted to make sure he was the toughest kid coming out of elementary school.”

  “Then why didn’t she name him Gaylord?” Omar asked.

  “Jurkand is going to travel with us a while.”

  “Why?” Omar asked.

  “Moth to a flame,” Damico said.

  “Because I want to stop Hraldolf too,” Jurkand said.

  “All right,” Omar said, “but you aren’t allowed to fight.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Jurkand aske
d.

  “No, I don’t, but more importantly, I ain’t dividing experience points six ways.”

  Lotianna served up a wonderful breakfast of eggs benedict and maple bacon, and they all devoured it.

  “You put ranks in Craft (Cooking)?” Omar asked as he took a second helping of bacon. “How does that help you level?”

  “Not everything is about going up experience levels, you git,” Gorthander said. “Some of us are role players, not roll players.” He made a die rolling hand movement.

  “You saying I jerk off?” Omar asked, misinterpreting the gesture.

  Damico rolled his eyes and smiled at Lotianna. “Are you feeling better?”

  “Better than what?” she mumbled.

  Her eyes darted up to him and back down. It didn’t sound surly. It sounded like a genuine question.

  “Better than yesterday,” Damico said.

  “I suppose,” she said, her eyes darting to him again.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, frowning.

  “I’m great.” She said it like a bashful child reporting about her day at school.

  She was back, at least in part, and his heart swelled. He’d missed talking to her. He needed to talk to her. He needed to talk to people. Real people. As much as Jurkand seemed realer than the rest, he still didn’t count. Maybe it was because part of Damico didn’t trust him or didn’t trust that he was actually real, or maybe it was that they had no shared experience. But he needed Lotianna.

  “So, we’re friends?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Friends,” he asked again.

  Her head dipped lower. She nodded.

  And it felt good, but there was still something wrong.

  Because this wasn’t the angry Lotianna, but it wasn’t the friendly, lovable one either. She’d changed, but she hadn’t changed back. She was a new, completely different person.

  What was going on here?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Puissant is a funny word. I think I’ll use it in this chapter.”

  —Bob Defendi

  raldolf stared at the ceiling, his eyes wide, his mind empty.

  Hraldolf wasn’t just an evil man, he was a man of the world. He conquered nations, he ruled, he collected fine art, and he made love to beautiful women. It was what an evil overlord did. It was in the job description and everything.

  He rolled over in the tremendous feather mattress, cozy under a great weight of furs, and looked at the woman sleeping next to him. She was beautiful. All his maids had to be beautiful, but there was something different about her, a glow of reflected light, the faint hint of movement as she breathed.

  He found a magnificent comfort here, a warmth, but more than that. The feeling of another body, a woman’s body, under the covers with him: it had a sensation all its own. A strange confluence of the flesh, the heart and, dear gods, the soul.

  Hraldolf stared at the ceiling. If he kept thinking like that, he’d lose all his evil overlord cred.

  No, he had to stay strong. He had to keep pushing ahead. The second Artifact, the destruction of the world, these were the things that meant something, not the affection of some nameless maid. Maids were nameless for a reason. It made it easier to call them things like “Honey” and “Sweet Cakes” and “Boom Boom.” One didn’t talk to a maid unless it was to tell her to take her clothes off. One certainly didn’t care for a maid. They didn’t have feelings. They were moving furniture.

  And yet, he wanted to take her in his arms and squeeze her. He wanted that so badly it made his heart hurt.

  No, there was something deeper here, something stranger. He avoided the main issue like he avoided adventurers and vengeful peasant children and the occasional old woman. Old women gave him the heeby jeebies. Maybe because his grandmother used to play with him using a cheese grater and ten yards of black nylon cord.

  But he avoided the issue again. The real issue was he’d just had sex.

  He’d had sex almost every night of his life since he’d become the evil overlord. Evil had its privileges. The problem was this was the first time he remembered having sex. He could remember the before and the after of every other sex act he’d ever performed, but this was different. This time he could remember the during.

  It was like—and he couldn’t understand this—he’d just lost his virginity.

  But that was crazy. He’d lost his virginity at the age of thirteen. With his father’s girlfriend, but that was beside the point.

  The point was he couldn’t remember that either.

  And so he had to fight all these strange emotions as if he’d never experienced a woman before. Even though he knew that wasn’t the case.

  He didn’t know the reason, couldn’t even guess the reason. There was no way for him to know this was because he was becoming real, feeling things for himself for the first time. He didn’t know Carl was a virgin, and that was why this was the first time he felt like he’d had sex. This was the first time he’d had sex.

  Really.

  And… uh… puissant.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Good Morning Starshine.”

  —Bob Defendi (Not singing, as that would be a violation of US Copyright Law.)

  here are clichés, and there are .

  comforts. The father going nuts over your little league game is a cliché. The father holding you when you are hurt and crying is a comfort. The snotty cheerleader is a cliché. The snotty cheerleader floundering in math class while you get every answer correct is a comfort. Let’s face it. We’re people, not saints.

  So, while it is a cliché that adventurers hang out in taverns, actually hanging out in a tavern is a comfort.

  It was a mid-sized village, like a Viennese mountain town with large Tudor houses, roads that climbed and twisted through the buildings and the smell of hickory smoke.

  A two-wheeled hay cart blocked the road in front of them as a fat man with a leather apron beat a donkey with a whip. The donkey seemed more concerned with showing the man the power of a disobedient labor force than the whip itself. Damico expected a bunch of strike breakers wearing pinstriped suits and spats to appear wielding clubs.

  Evidently Jimmy Hoffa had reincarnated as an ass.

  They squeezed by the donkey and down the street, up a steep, cobbled alley with hay and rushes littering the stones. Over the last doorway on the right hung a sign featuring an improbable act between a cow and a naked man.

  “You think that’s where minotaurs come from?” Damico asked.

  Lotianna blushed and bowed her head, but the other party members laughed.

  “Hey, Brandon,” Gorthander said. He must have been talking to Carl in the real world. “How come you’re only charming when you role-play Damico?”

  Damico stopped and stared at him. Then he looked at Lotianna. No wonder he was able to have real conversations with her. When Carl passed on what Damico said, it must sound like it came from an actual Human being and not, well, Carl. Charm was all about lines and line delivery, after all. Carl must be able to pass on what he said exactly.

  He’d have to think about the implications of that.

  They pushed in through the heavy oaken door.

  There are some universal truths about taverns. They all smell slightly damp, every one of them has at least one forehead-shaped dent in the bar, and when the front door opens, every patron cringes away from the light and squints.

  There wasn’t a free table in the corner. Damico stopped suddenly, and the rest of the party crashed into him.

  “Where are we going to sit?” Omar asked, his voice sounding lost.

  Damico took charge and sauntered over to a table in the middle of the room. He sat down and gestured for the rest to follow. One by one, they did.

  There was something different about this bar. The people laughed and talked. A barmaid dodged a playful pass from one of the patrons, balancing a tray full of mugs in one hand
. Two kids, dressed in dirty smocks of unbleached wool, played something like jacks in the corner.

  “This is strange,” Damico said.

  “What is?” Gorthander asked, scanning the room.

  Damico didn’t know how to explain to Gorthander that the people here were coming alive. Carl wouldn’t pass the information along. He tried anyway, and two frustrating minutes later Jurkand shrugged.

  “I don’t know why he doesn’t understand,” Jurkand said.

  “It has to do with game logistics,” Damico said.

  “I don’t understand that either,” Jurkand said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Damico said.

  The barmaid was coming.

  “Hi!” she said, approaching the table. “My name is Bolzig, and I’ll be your barmaid tonight. Welcome to the Happy Cow!”

  “Bolzig?” Omar asked.

  “I created it with a computer name generator,” Damico said, casually, hoping that Carl would repeat it without thinking.

  Omar and Gorthander both laughed. Arithian chuckled, and even Lotianna smiled. Carl was passing things on in the same tone and delivery as Damico. When he bothered to pass them on at all, at least.

  “I don’t get it,” Jurkand said.

  “I’m taking shots at Carl,” Damico said. Only then did he remember he didn’t know if he believed this was Carl’s game anymore. He didn’t know what he believed.

  “Who’s Carl?”

  Damico didn’t know how to explain that without saying Carl was God, so he smiled at Barmaid Bolzig. She was far too pretty to be named Bolzig. She had the nicest blonde hair with dark roots.

  “We’ll all have ales except for the lady. She’ll have wine.”

  “Lemonade,” Lotianna said.

  “Lemonade.”

  “Ok,” Barmaid Bolzig said. “I’ll be right back.” She bounced off into the crowd.

  Damico frowned at Jurkand. “What do you make of this?”

  “You’ve affected these people.”