Death by Cliché

by Defendi, Bob

  “That was pretty amazing,” she said.

  Damico smiled at her. She met his eyes for the first time since the “evil Lotianna,” as he thought of her, had shown up. They were lovely eyes. Expressive.

  “What was?” he asked.

  “The whole escape-from-the-dungeon thing.”

  He shrugged. “It was pretty old fare.”

  “Now you’re just being humble.”

  “Omar did most of it,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She smiled slyly. “That’s how I remember it.”

  She was talking to Carl in the real world. Was she buttering him up, or was this really in character? Maybe she wanted a new staff.

  The silence drew out between them, and Damico decided it was too early to tell. Instead, he watched the barmaids and the tavern patrons, and marveled at how alive they were. He wanted to talk to Lotianna about it, wanted to talk to anyone about it. But the only one with whom he could have a real conversation without Carl interfering had been Jurkand. He felt alone. His chest tightened until his heart ached.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  He held her gaze until she broke it. “I don’t know what to do next,” he said. “I mean, ask around, yes, but beyond that, I have no idea.”

  “You’ll figure something out,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  They sat there in silence for a time longer.

  Lotianna stood. “I’m going to bed.” She cast one smile at him over her shoulder and walked away from the table.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She stopped. She didn’t face him. Damico stood behind her and approached. She swayed back toward him slightly, and he turned her around. She stared up into his eyes, her own full of implied promises.

  He leaned over and kissed her.

  He pulled away reluctantly then reached up and cupped her face with both hands. When she looked away, he turned her back and gave her a gentle nudge. She walked up the stairs to her room.

  He didn’t follow her.

  Instead, he went back to the table and sipped at his ale. He wouldn’t follow her tonight. He didn’t know what happened last time, but he was afraid he’d pushed her too fast, that the abrupt mood changes were his fault. He would move slowly this time. Back to the kiss and no further. Give her time to get used to it, make sure she didn’t regret each step along the way.

  The fact she was willing to role-play this with Carl was amazing enough as it was. He still hadn’t figured out quite how that worked. Did this scene play out at the table like Gorthander had hinted at earlier with his comment about Carl being charming, or did Carl just say something like “Damico makes a pass at you,” and she replied with, “Okay. I catch it.” Was this all just a game reflection of an abstract conversation, or was this something more?

  Would he ever really know?

  He watched the tavern patrons, three men played a game with bones, laughing and slapping the table with every throw. Two barmaids giggled by the door, leaning in and pointing at a big, grizzled man who drank in silence, until one of them pushed the other toward him. A dog worried a rat in one corner. These people were alive, and it was because of him. In the face of that, did he really need anything more?

  He still felt weaker, but was it so much to sacrifice for this? He had Lotianna, in her own way, and Gorthander and Arithian. God help him, he even had Omar.

  He might have died in the real world. He might be in ICU at the U of U hospital. He might even have been in some hole in Carl’s basement. At least he couldn’t put the lotion in the basket. That would show the bastard.

  No. None of that mattered. He was here, and for the first time since he’d come here, he was happy. Too happy to worry that he was probably killing himself with every person he brought to life.

  He watched them, and he smiled.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “This chapter contains 5 percent post-consumer recycled material.”

  —Bob Defendi

  amico and the party left the inn the next morning, walking out onto streets of earth and straw. A four year old girl in a dirty brown smock led an ox down the road, forcing them to stand to one side. They pressed against the splintering lumber of one of the houses, and when the ox passed, stepped out into the throngs of people and beasts. They headed toward the edge of the city until they passed the last house.

  “Where are we going?” Omar asked.

  “I’ll figure something out,” Damico said, smiling at Lotianna.

  “Damico!” a voice shouted in the distance.

  Damico stared down the road, and Gorthander groaned. Damico shared a glance with Lotianna then raised his voice and said, “Jurkand.”

  Jurkand carried a sword that didn’t fit his scabbard, balancing it on one shoulder as he traipsed down the road like Andy of Mayberry. If you whistle while he walks, it might take you back.

  “Damico!” Jurkand cried again and jogged until he met them, his middle-aged brow sweating with the effort.

  Damico smiled despite himself.

  “You died. Again.”

  “One-shot resurrection charm,” Jurkand said, holding up a bauble on a leather thong.

  “I thought you already used that.”

  “I had more than one,” Jurkand said dismissively.

  “Greetings, aged master.” Arithian bowed. “It is good to see you escaped from the depredations of the foul dungeon. What’s up?”

  “He probably came for his sword,” Damico said to Omar.

  “Oh,” Omar said, pulling it from where he’d strapped it to his pack.

  He tossed it to Jurkand who caught and sheathed it before tossing the other sword to Omar, who unslung his pack and strapped the sword in place. That made five major weapons by a cursory count.

  “There’s another thing, of course,” Jurkand said.

  Damico nodded. “Hraldolf.”

  “He was gone when I came around.”

  “You knew he had come to the cell?” Arithian asked.

  “It took me a long time to die.”

  “Sorry about that,” Gorthander muttered, looking away.

  Damico squinted suspiciously. Jurkand hadn’t moved or gurgled during the visit. If he was still alive, had he been playing dead on purpose? That whole scene still seemed contrived.

  “Anyway, I think he’s still trying to get the Artifact,” Jurkand said. “He doubled his searchers, he’s scouring the countryside.”

  “So, he hasn’t found it yet,” Damico said. “Don’t know why we were supposed to look in his fortress for something he hadn’t found.”

  “I told you,” Gorthander said. “It’s a stupid adventure.”

  “But now that he’s got more men looking, he’ll find it sooner,” Damico said.

  “And destroy the world,” Jurkand said.

  “What exactly does this Artifact do?” Arithian asked. “Prithee,” he added as an afterthought.

  “It allows the wielder to change reality,” Jurkand said. “With it, he could unravel this world.”

  Damico went cold. The pieces fell into place. The Artifact… it could change reality. It could destroy the world. A world he had once hated. A world in which he’d found peace and filled with people he’d given life.

  A world in which he’d been trapped.

  He hadn’t seen it before because it was such a well-worn trope. Of course the villain was going to destroy the world. That’s what villains did. It was one of the oldest plots in gaming. The world is going to be destroyed, the ultimate threat. An easy way for the GM to make it seem like there was a lot at stake. No trouble for him. If the bad guy won, you just started a new game next week.

  The Artifact. The world. It all came together now.

  Damico’s legs grew shaky, and he stumbled, falling to the dusty road. Lotianna rushed to his side, Jurkand watched him, confused.

  But Damico’s head swam, his gut plummeted. The angels of his bett
er nature gave up and flew off to have a good lie-down somewhere. His hands shook. He vomited into the ditch.

  “Damico.” Lotianna’s voice filled with concern. “Are you all right?”

  Better to ask if a grieving widow was all right. Better to ask if the orphaned child was all right. All right. He was so far beyond all right the light from all right dopplered into deep maroon. All right.

  “I’m fine,” he wheezed.

  How could he be all right? He’d figured it out. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. He knew with the same certainty one knows his spouse is cheating on him. He knew. He understood. It all made perfect sense.

  All he had to do to escape this world was let Hraldolf win. He could get out of here, escape this place, if only he were willing to destroy it. It and all those people he’d somehow brought to life.

  He was still alive out there, he could feel that now. His soul would return to his body. He would regain strength. He hadn’t died yet. He’d get out of here. He’d recover from the coma. He’d get his life back.

  And all he had to do was let everyone die.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Not for internal consumption.”

  —Bob Defendi

  er name was Grovalon. You should be used to it by now.

  “Honey,” her husband shouted. “I’m home.”

  It’s the type of line we hear every day… if we watch Nick at Night or TV Land. The kind of ‘50s home life that only exists if you’re a TV actor. Or stoned on Quaaludes. Or a TV actor stoned on Quaaludes.

  She walked out of the kitchen and into the house’s main room. Benches and ladder-backed chairs surrounded the main floor, the entire place decorated in suitably pseudo-medieval style. This was a fantasy world, after all.

  Dust covered every surface because Grovalon’s method of cleaning house was to sweep the room with a glance. She didn’t even leave the shutters open.

  Her husband probably had a name, but she’d replaced it long ago with terms of endearment. Her favorite was “worm.”

  “Worm,” she said.

  “We did well at the smithy today,” he said brightly.

  She couldn’t stand him. He was like that little piece of popcorn stuck between tooth and gum. He was the person that speeds up the moment you switch on your blinker. The ingrown hair in the anus of Humanity.

  “I’m sure you did your putrid little best, you son of a bitch,” she said. “Now, make me dinner.”

  He looked like he was going to try to argue with her, the pusillanimous little bug. She would have to make him pay tonight.

  And she didn’t feel the line between Damico and the Artifact. She didn’t feel it because it didn’t pass over her. It passed over her husband.

  “What did you say?” His eyes lit up in a way she’d never seen before.

  “I said ‘make me dinner, you son of a bitch.’”

  And he smiled. That was strange.

  “Yes, dear,” he said.

  “And then clean the house.”

  “Yes, dear.” Stranger still.

  “And then do the laundry.”

  His voice quivered with pleasure. “Yes dear.”

  What was going on with him?

  And then a thought hit her. “Come here. Worm.”

  He stepped in close.

  “On your knees.”

  He fell to his knees.

  And she smiled too.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “This quote was brought to you by the emergency broadcast system. If this had been an actual quote—wait! What?”

  —Bob Defendi

  he new mask didn’t fit like a glove, but it fit like a mask.

  Hraldolf stood at the top of a hill, watching one of his villages. The peasants swarmed out of the place like cockroaches in your college apartment. Well, maybe they didn’t swarm. They trudged. But the whips helped.

  A vast swamp lay to the north of the village, and the peasants moved into it now. They carried shovels and baskets. They searched amid bugs that sounded like a fleet of Zeros swarming in on Pearl.

  “They seem lethargic, Not Beaver,” Hraldolf said. He didn’t bother checking if Not Beaver was there.

  “They are, Your Majesty,” Not Beaver said, magically at his elbow.

  Not Beaver was everywhere, like grass. Or opinions. Or reality shows.

  “Why do you think they’re like that?”

  “I don’t know, Your Majesty.”

  “Do you think they’re trying to foil my evil plan?”

  “You haven’t told them your evil plan, Your Majesty.”

  “You have a point there.”

  “You haven’t told me either.”

  “We must be careful.”

  “That’s right, Your Majesty. You can trust me about as far as you can roll me.”

  Hraldolf smiled. Not Beaver was the perfect Yes-Man. He hadn’t disagreed with Hraldolf, but with a one-percent slope and a stern word, you could roll Not Beaver for miles. At least until the fat ablated off his body.

  “They say they haven’t eaten, Your Majesty.”

  Hraldolf nodded. That was the type of thing peasants would say.

  But then again…

  “We have the army here, right?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Call the peasants in. Feed them.”

  “That might make them soft, Your Majesty.”

  “Bones are hard, but they don’t dig very fast.”

  “Unless you make them into a shovel, Your Majesty.”

  “Don’t get cute.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible, Your Majesty.”

  Not Beaver had him there. The man was ugly enough to scare the stink off sheep.

  “Just do it.”

  Not Beaver gave the order to whatever sycophants kissed his ass, and they passed the orders and so forth. Soon, the people were eating. An hour later, the peasants moved back out into the swamp, if not vigorously, then with a bit more spring in their step.

  “Brilliant, Your Majesty,” Not Beaver said.

  “Not Beaver?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  Now he’d find it that much sooner.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Please. Not another chapter quote.”

  —Bob Defendi

  attlesnakes can be comfy, once they’ve settled into your bedroll with you. The trick is getting up without disturbing them. They can be grumpy too.

  Damico slid out of his tent, freezing when he heard the telltale rattle. “Shh.” He started moving again. The snake slithered over into the warm spot and curled up. “Hmm.” Damico stood naked in the middle of camp.

  “You airing out your unmentionables?” Gorthander asked, lounging by the fire.

  “I usually change in my bedroll,” Damico said.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I didn’t want to change into a corpse.”

  Gorthander grunted as if it were a joke.

  They had camped in a lovely little clearing. The trees had been dark and solid, rustling like flowing water and swaying in the wind. The sky was so clear, and the stars so bright it had resembled a slightly fake green-screen effect. The grass was soft and inviting.

  Today it looked like a Boy Scout camp after the entire troop had gotten poison oak pissing in the brush.

  Gorthander shrugged and went back to making bacon for the breakfast beers. Damico realized what the dwarf was doing.

  “Something wrong with Lotianna? I thought she hated your cooking.”

  “She hasn’t gotten up yet.”

  “Hmm,” he said.

  He considered going over to her tent and then thought better of waking her up in his birthday suit. He was about to suggest to Gorthander that they switch, but then he considered the implications of cooking bacon au naturel. Finally, he decided t
o fetch a burlap sack and a stick to take care of the snake.

  Even with the sack, it wasn’t as easy as it looked.

  “Hey, Gorthander, I just got bit by a rattlesnake,” he said a moment later.

  “This isn’t one of those friendship tests is it?” Gorthander asked dubiously.

  Damico held the angry snake up in one hand.

  Gorthander shrugged and stood. He seemed to think again, and picked up the pan. He poured the hot grease over the snake’s head―and Damico’s hand.

  “Son of a bitch!” Damico yelled, leaping away and dropping the stunned snake.

  Gorthander stepped on its head.

  “Quit your whining.” Gorthander grabbed his hand. “It was like one hit point of damage.”

  “This isn’t some fricken game!” Damico said.

  “Sure it is,” Gorthander said, healing the hand.

  The spell hit like a fresh breeze on a hot day. If you were naked. Falling out of a plane.

  “Now for the poison,” Gorthander said and cast a second spell.

  This one had no tangible effect.

  Damico grumbled and headed back into his tent. He pulled on his small clothes, while cursing Gorthander, then his breeches while he cursed the dwarf’s ancestors. When he was fully dressed, he’d gotten to several broad and masterful profanities about the entire Dwarven race. He stomped back out.

  “Feel better?”

  “You know that word I was using…?”

  “My father was a gunnery sergeant.”

  “Did you know you can use it as almost every part of the Human language?”

  “Yeah. You’re a regular Ernest Hemingway,” Gorthander said. “Now drink your breakfast beer.”

  Damico pulled a strip of bacon out of the beer as Gorthander swilled a swig and started chewing. Damico went over to Lotianna’s tent.

  “Lotianna?”

  “Yes.” Her voice sounded distant.

  “Are going to get up?”