Death by Cliché

by Defendi, Bob

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to get up right now?”

  “If you’d like.”

  Damico shared a glance with Gorthander, who didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yes, get up right now.”

  There came several shifting sounds, then Lotianna crawled out of the tent, fully dressed. Her hair was messed up, but only in the back as if she had slept all-night without shifting. Strange.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” She stared off into space.

  And Damico figured it out.

  “Lotianna couldn’t come to the game today,” Damico said.

  Carl must have passed that on, because Gorthander said, “Yeah, that’s why I was going to have her hold the horses.”

  Damico was about to say something more but…

  First the fun Lotianna. Then the bitchy Lotianna. Then the shy Lotianna. Now the absentee Lotianna. It all made sense.

  Different people were playing the character.

  Damico stood there, shocked. He’d wondered before about women willing to play out love scenes with Carl. This was the answer. They couldn’t. They lasted one, maybe two sessions. It was a testimonial to his charm that Damico could get them to last that long.

  He would have to live here alone, after all. Have to live with no company but Jurkand. And let’s face it: Gorthander was killing him again in three, four chapters tops.

  Alone.

  Alone or destroy the world.

  What choices were those?

  He sighed. He took a drink of his beer. He was starting to get used to the bacony goodness.

  “This is pretty good,” he said, his mind already searching for his next move.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “I’m not writing any more chapters today.”

  —Bob Defendi

  hey marched along in silence because Damico didn’t start any conversations. He didn’t have the heart to detract from the other player’s fun. They would say something like, “We head off again that morning” hoping Carl would let time pass and say, “Okay. That night…”

  But Damico craved attention, and some days, he’d try to start conversations to pass the time. This passed the time for him but was boring to everyone at the game table who didn’t have to live through the tedium of walking all day.

  He exchanged a few words with Jurkand, but even those would get through to the party and bring them back into real time, he was sure. They answered at least. So he spent the rest of the time, as they walked along the dusty road, watching Lotianna.

  She wasn’t just an automaton, even her features had blurred. She no longer resembled some player’s favorite actress. Now she resembled a mannequin.

  And technically, he could probably do anything he wanted with her right now, but the thought of taking advantage of that sickened him. It sickened him more that the thought had even occurred to him. He was just so desperate for Human contact.

  When they got to the next town, he needed to find some barmaid who had come alive and take her to a backroom where it wouldn’t disrupt the game and just talk. Dear God, when had he come to need human interaction so much?

  The time slogged on. He counted the trees. He counted the villages and the bushes and his steps. He counted how many times Jurkand muttered to himself. He didn’t count them, but he was painfully aware of each swish of Lotianna’s skirts.

  None of this was real.

  But that wasn’t true, was it? It was real to Jurkand and Barmaid Barbie and all those people in that last tavern. To them, this was their lives, their world. And all he had to do to save his own mind was to destroy them.

  Eventually, the sun began to set. There were villages pretty much every mile along this road, so when they realized night was coming, they stopped at the next one.

  It consisted of a line of wattle and daub huts along a central road, their roofs bushy yellow thatch. A manor house stood at one end, squat and uninspired: a big frame house with some stonework and a wooden-shingle roof. There was an inn next to it, too big for this town.

  As they walked through the streets, people peered out of windows and doorways at them. Emaciated, desperate-looking people. They wore dirty, tattered tunics and haunted eyes bruised with hunger. There were dogs, but they didn’t seem willing to break the mood, so they just sulked.

  Damico led the group through all these people and to the inn, hoping beyond hope the place was alive. He needed alive. He could be happy just watching alive.

  They moved through the front door and into a place bustling with activity, full to the rafters with the sights and the sounds of people. They found their way to seats and waited while a barmaid maneuvered expertly though jostling patrons. She stopped and smiled down at them.

  “Hi, my name is Bunny, can I help you?”

  She was perfect, like all barmaids in Carl’s world. She was full of life, and she seemed ready to burst out of that dress and the stained apron and yet not in a sexual way. It was like clothing couldn’t contain her because skin couldn’t contain her. She was a comet, not a person.

  Or maybe it was just the loneliness talking.

  “You have a lot of people here,” Damico said.

  “It gets like this every night.”

  He stared out at the downtrodden village, then back at the fat happy people in here. “I don’t understand.”

  “We’re thirty miles down the road from the last town.”

  And then he got it. In the real world, everyone traveled a different distance each day, but the game transit tables said thirty miles on foot on a road. It didn’t matter if they started early or late. Thirty miles. Everyone stopped here. The rule book said so.

  “Why are those people so hungry if the inn is doing well?” Damico asked.

  “It was a bad crop this year,” Bunny said. “The Overlord’s tax collectors, you know how they are.”

  Damico faced the rest of them. “We have to do something for these people.”

  “Isn’t that nice,” Bunny said, laying a hand on his arm.

  Now he really needed to help these people.

  He considered her. “If you have a high customer volume, you must have all sorts of food.”

  “We have a lot,” she said.

  “How much to feed the whole village a meal?”

  “Five hundred gold,” she said. “Give or take.”

  “I think we have that,” Damico said. “Everyone, how much do you have?”

  “Nine hundred,” Gorthander said.

  “Nine hundred,” Arithian said.

  “Forty-two hundred,” Omar said.

  Damico paused. He blinked. He examined Omar, as if he might have missed the giant bag of money. “Do you know how much that weighs?” he asked.

  Gorthander looked over into Omar’s pouch. “Yep, it’s right there on his character sheet.”

  “That’s eighty-four pounds of gold,” Damico said.

  “I’ve played this character in other games,” Omar said.

  “And Brian never spends any money,” Gorthander said.

  Damico shook his head and turned back to Bunny. “We’re buying the village dinner.”

  “That’s so sweet,” she said, touching his arm electrically.

  “Get the chef cooking,” he said. “And what time do you get off work?”

  “I’m not that kind of girl,” she said, skeptically.

  “You don’t have to be. I only want you for your mind.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “Must… make… deadline.”

  —Bob Defendi

  hey came in one by one. Barmaid Bunny told first one then another who had fed them this evening. They came to Damico, and they touched him, and they thanked him. Mothers wept as their children laughed and ate. Damico took up another collection and ordered seconds for everyone.

  They came into the room as automatons, but as they touched him, they lit up one by one. With
each touch, he felt himself getting weaker.

  He was fading. He had to stop this. The food would have to be enough. He called Bunny over.

  “Yes,” she said, bouncing over to stand next to him.

  “I have to leave.”

  “The people want to thank you.” She beamed at the villagers, crowding the inn, spilling out onto the streets.

  “It’s taking a lot out of me.”

  It’s killing me.

  “You’ve given them a meal,” she said, confused. “You don’t want to give them this?”

  “I can’t.”

  Too much.

  He felt a tug on the back of his pants. He turned to two children. One had black hair and one had blonde. A boy and a girl, in identical dirty smocks. They gazed at him with dead eyes.

  “Thank you, sir,” they said in a hollow unison.

  “Aren’t they cute,” Barmaid Bunny said.

  Dead eyes in dead faces. Dead souls in dead bodies. It was as if someone had ripped everything good and pure out of these children. They had no hope, no dreams, no drive. They were nothing but vague, embodied want.

  Damico went to one knee. He gathered both children into his arms, and he shuddered. The sound that came out of his mouth was wet, thick. Wordless.

  He pulled back and looked into brilliant, inquisitive eyes. “Eat as much as you can. Then go play.”

  And they did.

  He stood and watched these people. He swayed slightly as he compensated for the lost life force. How many people had he brought to life so far? This village. Would he die if he kept it up?

  He had done enough. It would have to be enough.

  “See,” Barmaid Bunny said.

  He grabbed her arm, pulling her close. Then he kissed her chastely on the cheek.

  “Tell them all they have to come shake my hand,” Damico said. “Find any who already left.”

  “Shake your hand?”

  “I’m Italian. I can’t break bread with someone I haven’t met.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Tell them it’s payment for dinner.”

  Barmaid Bunny smiled and moved away. Damico watched her go.

  He turned back to the people and continued to dole his life to them in measured sips.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “If the effects of this chapter last more than four hours, please consult a physician.”

  —Bob Defendi

  ne by one, the party members went to bed, and Damico felt a twinge when Lotianna left. Not because of her sudden absence but because he felt vaguely like his attentions on the barmaid were a sort of infidelity. But it wasn’t; he knew that. He’d forged a relationship with two different women, and both had left him. The fact they’d left the body behind was no matter. He was alone, uncommitted, without even implied promises to hold him down.

  Finally he sat alone, smiling as he watched one small boy work his way through the food line for the third time. He could tell by the wry expression on Bunny’s face she noticed too. She smiled.

  Eventually the crowd dissipated, and the cook collapsed face first onto one of the tables. Bunny came over and did the same on the bench next to Damico. He shook with the loss of life, diminished, half a man. Still, it didn’t matter how sick and weak the drain left him. In spite of it all, he felt so damn good.

  “Good work,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She leaned against him slightly.

  He smiled and inhaled the scent of her. He’d never seen anyone bathe in this world, and yet they didn’t stink. She smelled sweaty like she might after a workout or lovemaking, but no more. Maybe bacteria didn’t exist in Carl’s world. For anyone other than him, that is.

  “I just want to go to sleep,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” Damico said.

  He basked in the warmth of her. They eased their backs to the wall, and her head fell against his shoulder.

  “It’s inappropriate,” she mumbled. “I need to get up. The cook will talk.”

  Damico nodded and caught the eye of the big, matronly cook, now the only other person in the room. He smiled at her and said in a loud voice, “Bunny thinks you’ll start spreading rumors about us.”

  The cook nodded as if that were an instruction. “Honey, Bunny’s sleeping with that new guy!”

  “That’s nice, dear!” a voice called from the back.

  Bunny hit him. She didn’t lift her head, but she did feel awake now.

  “See,” Damico said. “Taken care of.”

  She chuckled, and Damico couldn’t see her eyes, but from the cook’s expression, the two women shared a look. Then the cook rose to her feet, grabbed the huge pot, and waddled out of the common room.

  Damico stared down at Bunny and found her staring back up at him. He leaned over and kissed her. She kissed him back, then in a breath between that and what he hoped were more kisses, she said, “I thought you only wanted me for my mind.”

  “Aren’t I kissing your mind?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “I better try harder,” he said, kissing her again, passionately.

  “Still not there,” she murmured.

  “Let me try one more time,” he said, kissing her so deeply it should require a license to practice medicine.

  “Oh, that was it,” she said between gasps.

  They kissed for the next ten minutes, one thing leading to another, then he rose and led her to his room. Still kissing, he fumbled his way over to the big bed. They fell in together.

  “I can’t do this,” she murmured between kisses.

  “I beg to differ with you,” he said. “You’re pretty good.”

  They kissed some more and somehow they seemed to lose clothing. Evaporation.

  “No really,” she said. “We need to stop.”

  “You’re on top,” he said. “You have to stop first.”

  “I can’t have sex with you,” she said.

  “I didn’t offer it,” he said.

  She stopped, pulling back and giving him a look as if she couldn’t decide if he were for real. Her expression was one of puzzlement, confusion, and just a little bit of hurt as if she wasn’t sure whether he rejected her.

  “I’m not that kind of a boy,” he said with a straight face.

  A smile blossomed on her face. “I only want you for your mind.”

  “Oh, well. That’s okay, then,” he said.

  They fell back into the kissing. This was what he meant by fun games.

  Damico woke to the light of dawn slanting through the window. Bunny was gone, but his lips tingled as if she’d kissed him good morning. For a time, he stared at the ceiling, feeling good and whole for the first time since he’d come to this world, despite the loss and the spent life.

  He’d needed it so badly. The sex had almost been an afterthought. He’d needed that emotional connection, and he’d gotten it.

  As he dressed, he felt a strange sensation, not as if someone had walked over his grave. More like someone had crumpled his character sheet. A moment later he felt a great noise—he didn’t hear it. It felt like someone was rubbing a cat against a big pile of laundry. In his genitals. He reached out and caught a ladder-backed chair while he waited for the nausea to pass.

  He’d gotten as far as putting on his pants so he rushed out the door, through the common room and out into the street. Omar came out in his small clothes and Arithian in a long shirt with a village woman on each arm (dressed in more of his shirts). Jurkand exited bootless and cloakless but otherwise dressed, and Gorthander came out in full kit. Lotianna wandered out probably homing in automatically on the largest concentration of party members.

  “Did you feel that?” Jurkand asked.

  “What was it?” Gorthander asked.

  “I can’t describe it,” Jurkand said.

  “You keep saying that!” Gorthander said, probably talking to Carl, not Jurkand.

  “As I dressed,” Damic
o said, “I felt a strange sensation, not as if someone had walked over my grave. More like someone had crumpled my character sheet. A moment later I felt a great noise—I didn’t hear it. It felt like someone was rubbing a cat against a big pile of laundry. In my genitals.”

  Gorthander just stared at him woodenly. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “It felt like a foreshock,” Damico said.

  “A foreshock of what?” Gorthander asked.

  “The end of the world,” Damico said. “I think Hraldolf found the Artifact.”

  Chapter Forty

  “Uh oh. They’re in trouble now!”

  —Bob Defendi

  amico found the village reeve. At least he assumed the man was the reeve. Everyone else kept asking him questions like: “What the hell was that?” and “Are we all going to die?” and “Have you thought about that little problem I brought up last week?”

  The man looked harried, as if his car horn had stuck behind a pack of Hell’s Angels. He looked like a grown man who just discovered that to get into Heaven, he needs to have a Bris.

  “Sir?” Damico asked, walking up to him.

  “Yeah?” The man looked as if he expected assassins, or more likely the Women’s Auxiliary Committee, to jump out at him at any moment.

  “We need to find Hraldolf.”

  The reeve went white past his forehead. That was quite the achievement considering the forehead in question reached all the way to the back of his head.

  “The Overlord is everywhere. He sees all. He hears all. He is the guiding hand at the whipstaff, the motive in the Heavens. He is the nightlight in our darkened room, the blankie in our arms. He is the mind that guides the universe.”

  Damico blinked a few times. “I need to know where he is.”

  “The Overlord is everywhere. He sees all. He hears all. He is the guiding hand at the whipstaff, the motive in the Heavens. He is the nightlight in our darkened room, the blankie in our arms. He is the mind that guides the universe.”

  “What’s a whipstaff?” Omar asked.

  “You use it to steer a ship,” Gorthander said.