Death by Cliché (10 page)

The room was fifty feet on a side because when Hraldolf enjoyed a good torture, he liked to stretch out. An assortment of racks made up the showcase with iron maidens positioned along the wall. Chairs and strapped tables allowed victims to be secured. Shelf after shelf of screws and saws and knives and hooks lined the walls.

There were ten victims in the room now, three being stretched and the rest strapped to chairs and tables. Most of them were unconscious, but one woman screamed and wailed on the rack closest the door.

“If I come here so often,” Hraldolf said, “why did I put this room at the farthest corner of my fortress?”

“My Liege?”

The Crooked Man glanced up from his work, a bit of drool creeping out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes alight with joy and satisfaction. The satisfaction was just a little too sexual for Hraldolf’s comfort.

The Crooked Man had wispy white hair like uncolored cotton candy. His eyes had turned milky green with age, his face drawn tight and withered with years of hate. He was practically a double blind case study proving the blood of virgins had no good effect on the skin.

Hraldolf shook his head. “Never mind. What are these people in here for?”

“You sent them here, Your Majesty.”

Hraldolf gestured impatiently. “Yes, yes, I know. Assume I’ve forgotten.”

“Well, this one, Your Majesty, wouldn’t have sex with you.”

Hraldolf stared down at the poor woman, drawn and pale on the rack and a strange thing happened. His stomach grew suddenly sick, twisting in his belly. He forced himself under control.

“Do you think spurning my advances is cause for torture?” he asked, trying to keep the quiver out of his voice.

“Your Majesty, I don’t think you actually asked. The way I understand it, she just didn’t offer—”

“Really?”

“—fast enough.”

Hraldolf closed his eyes. He was an evil man, he prided himself on it, but that was ridiculous. This was one of his subjects. He had a nation to run. Evil was one thing, but this was just insane.

“Thank you,” he said to the Crooked Man.

“Your Majesty.”

Hraldolf almost left but instead walked over to the poor woman. Blood encrusted her lips, and her dress was torn and soiled. Blood had dried on her legs too, and he didn’t want to think about what depredations the torturer had visited on her. He leaned down and whispered into her ear.

“I think it’s too late to save you, but if you have children, they will be dukes and duchesses.”

Then he straightened and considered the Crooked Man. “I don’t think I’ll be needing your services any longer.”

“For the whole day?” the man asked hopefully.

“Forever.” Hraldolf shielded the woman’s eyes with his hand and took off his mask.

Chapter
Fifteen

“Travelogues are boring.”

—Bob Defendi

ountrysides are inherently tedious. Sure, there are
bandits. Often, there are monsters and ninjas and farmers chasing traveling salesmen. Occasionally, there’s a tornado carrying off farmhouses, young girls, and small yapping dogs, but this is about all that ever happens in the countryside.

But this is a fantasy adventure, so they must travel overland to get to the Swamp of Incontinence (or whatever I called it). Maybe there will be a fight along the way. It depends on how Carl rolls on the Random Encounter Tables.

They walked down the road without wondering
why
a road led to the Swamp of Ill Luck. Roads go places. There doesn’t have to be a reason, and besides, Damico had long since stopped wondering about this stuff, although that collection of Star Wars Action Figure guns was still a bit of a conundrum.

Conundrum is a great word.

Anyway, they pushed down this road, and it was surrounded by trees and bushes. Occasionally, they wound through some hills. None of this was clear to Damico because Carl wasn’t giving out decent descriptions. Evidently, he didn’t spend a lot of time in the sun.

They camped that night, and when they woke up the next morning, Gorthander made breakfast. Damico came out of his tent and watched the dwarf in confusion.

“Anything wrong?” he asked.

“Not much,” the dwarf said.

“Lotianna said she was cooking this morning,” Damico said. “Is she all right?”

The dwarf shrugged. “She called me a sexist asshole when I reminded her and stormed off into the woods.”

Damico frowned. “Strange.”

“Yeah, well, what are ya gonna do?” The dwarf pulled bacon out of the pan, dropping it into one of the five tankards of beer he’d set out.

Damico had just started toward the woods when Lotianna came walking back toward her tent. She wore a foul expression, and somehow, inexplicably, a shock of her hair had turned white. She resembled Zoe McClellan a little less too. Less wide-eyed ingénue, more Catherine Zeta Jones.

“Are you all right?” Damico asked.

“Yeah,” she said, stopping and squinting at him like she expected him to kick a kitten.

He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Loti, I—”

“Hey. Don Juan DeGamer. No touchy!” She shrugged his hand off and continued her trudge back to her tent.

“But we—” He cut himself off.

Gorthander could hear anything he said, and Damico wasn’t the kind to kiss (or anything else) and tell.

She was probably in a bad mood. Maybe role-playing intimacy with Carl was too much for her. Damico shuddered. If he had to rely on people role-playing with Carl to get his genuine human contact, he had a very lonely time ahead.

But he wasn’t planning on staying long,
couldn’t
stay long. At any moment, he could slip away in the real world. He’d been shot in the head. He couldn’t expect to survive forever.

And he
missed
his late bills and his crappy car and his life. He missed the deadlines and the barrages of e-mail and all the things he’d hated about the real world. It had been
his
life. There might have been weeks when he nearly starved, but still his life.

He walked to Gorthander. Maybe he’d play with Carl a little. Make it seem like the man fished for compliments. “Are you enjoying this adventure?”

Gorthander blinked at him a few times. Since Damico was in the Game, Gorthander had to think he was a Non-Player Character and that meant Carl was playing him at the table.
That
question coming from Carl would seem desperate. Damico could only hope the boy had passed it on.

“Uh, yeah,” Gorthander said. “I guess.”

Gorthander let the conversation drop, and Damico smiled at him, not pressing things further. He hoped he’d caused a little awkwardness at the table. Even a feeble stab at Carl felt good.

He walked away.

“I mean,” Gorthander said, “I came back this week, didn’t I?”

Damico froze in place, his stomach plummeting, his limbs growing numb. He turned slowly to Gorthander and started to shiver, the implication of that statement roaring through his head. This week? This
week
?

He tried the question casually, hoping Carl would pass it, phrasing it so it would seem like a natural thing for the GM to say:

“This is the second week we’re playing, right?”

“Yeah,” Gorthander, Omar, and Arithian said, in perfect unison, though only one was outside their tents.

The second week. A full week had passed since he’d been shot in the head. A week of him bleeding to death? A week of him in the trunk? No.

By now, he had to be dead. Buried.

And Carl had gotten away with it.

Chapter
Sixte
en

“Death. Don’t talk to me about death.”

—
Douglas
Adams…
no
wait!
Bob Defendi

e was dead. He couldn’t be dead. He
had
to be dead.
No one survives for a whole week with a bullet in their head. No one.

Dead. The word screamed in him like a thousand upset Trekkies. Dead. It rang and tolled and vibrated in his braincase. Dead. They’d have to drill a hole in his fantasy head to get it out. Dead.

His legs collapsed underneath him, and he crashed ass-first into the grass. Dead, dead, dead. All dead.

He wanted to cry, wanted to scream, but he felt strangely hollow instead. In his mind, Laura San Giacomo, her hair white, screamed, “We… are… dead… and… this… is… Hell!”

And it was. This wasn’t a delusion. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t any earthly thing. This was his punishment.
No Exit
.

Someday, he’d meet the great horned one himself. Beelzebub. The Hoary Master of the Underworld. The Man in Sensible Hooves. He’d meet great Enemy’s eye, and Damico would ask what he’d done. He’d lived a good life. Helped those who needed it. Tried to make others laugh. Never taken advantage of a woman. Was nice to puppies and kittens, loved children and old people.

Maybe he’d been a little scathing in his criticism from time to time, but it had always been
funny
. All’s fair in love, war, and the cause of a good joke, right?

Wrong.

He was in Hell. This was his entire existence. Clock in, clock out. The Department of Ironic Punishments owns your sorry white ass now.

He scrambled to his feet, away from Gorthander. He thought the dwarf would follow him, but Damico saw someone standing in the woods about fifty feet away.

“Gorthander,” Damico said. “Company.”

Gorthander’s ax rattled behind Damico, as he reached for his new sword. The man in the woods started to withdraw, but stepped out of the woods instead.

It was Jurkand.

“You!” Damico shouted.

Jurkand moved out of the ambiguous underbrush. Damico walked over to meet him.

“You’re following us,” Damico said.

“I am,” Jurkand said.

Damico glanced over his shoulder at Gorthander who shrugged.

“At least he’s honest,” Gorthander said.

“I want to talk to you,” Jurkand said.

“All right,” Damico said.

“Alone.”

Gorthander frowned and shook his head. Damico nodded back, and Gorthander shook his head again. Damico nodded more vigorously, and Gorthander shrugged and walked back to his breakfast beer.

“What?” Damico asked. He’d rarely disliked another human being so much.