Death by Cliché Read Free Page A

hand of the big lug of a fighter. Next to him stood a woman in a long navy dress with some sort of gold and red embroidered surcoat down the front and back. Her hair was long, straight, and brown, her eyes pretty and penetrating. Actually, she looked a lot like a JAG-era Zoe McClellan.
    Next to her stood a… dwarf. Odd. Damico’s brain kind of skirted over the image because it wasn’t a “little person” dwarf. It was a Tolkien dwarf, complete with a long red beard and a helm and four axes and a hauberk of chain armor. Damico blinked at the creature.
    “Let me introduce everyone,” the bard said, “I am lord Arithian the Noble of the house Damocles, a bard and rascal of the highest caliber.”
    “How can you be a rascal of the highest—”
    “My hulking friend here is Omar, half-elven, warrior of might and terrible power.”
    “He doesn’t look at all half—”
    “The Lady is Lotianna, a mage of wisdom and subtlety.”
    “She clearly isn’t old enough to—”
    “And the dwarf is Gorthander the Delving, mighty in ax, reverent in faith, wise in the ways of the underworld.”
    “Hi,” Damico said.
    “Back atcha,” said the dwarf.
    Damico nodded, vaguely wondering if these LARPers were dangerous. They were obviously crazy—they were LARPers after all—but were they the harmless cat-lady kind of crazy or the don’t-look-in-the-trunk kind of crazy?
    “I’m Bob Damico.”
    “Damico,” the dwarf said. “Funny.”
    “Why is that funny?” Damico asked.
    “You are obviously an adventurer of the highest caliber,” the bard said. Again with the calibers. “Shall we travel this day together?”
    “Uh, sure,” Damico said. “I really just want out.”
    “Before we leave, we must beard the master of this dungeon in his lair,” the bard said.
    “You don’t say.”
    “Join us, and I will weave a tale of heroism and noble deeds.”
    Damico stared at them a while. “Fine.”
    “We backtracked this way to determine if the door was indeed closed,” Arithian said. “Perhaps we should continue along.”
    “You just said it was definitely closed,” Damico said.
    “It is,” Arithian said with a sideways glance at Gorthander, “but some of us need to be sure.”
    “It’s a stupid adventure,” Gorthander said. “I want out.”
    They all walked down past the charred deadly slime and past where Damico must have appeared. They marched until they came to a blank wall of unrelieved stone.
    “Dammit!” the dwarf said.
    “Aren’t you supposed to be able to check for moving walls and the like?” Arithian asked.
    “Oh,” Gorthander said. “That’s right, I’m a dwarf.”
    He didn’t say it sarcastically. He said it as if he’d genuinely forgotten.
    “So, Mikey, we go back?”
    Mikey must have been the dwarf’s real name, because after examining the wall he nodded and led them back down the hall. They trudged through the dead slime silhouette to the end. There they found a gnarled and swollen door. The thing should have taken all of them to open it, but Lotianna walked up by herself. With the touch of one gloved hand, the door opened for her.
    Light shone through from the other side, casting a yellow, flickering glow across them all. One by one, the other four walked through. Damico stepped forward and froze.
    He’d entered a room lit by flaming brassieres.
     

Chapter Three
    “ Having a character from our world go to a fantasy world was old when C.S. Lewis did it.”
    —Bob Defendi
     
    here are many kinds of nightmares.
    There’s the nightmare where your teeth fall out but you just can’t stop chewing, can’t stop poking and pulling at them. You know the consequences, but you just love the pain .
    There’s the dream where you show up at work, and for some inexplicable reason, you take your clothes off. Then you have to dart back and forth in front of your coworkers naked, but you still don’t put your clothes back on. You want to be embarrassed.
    There’s the dream where you’re in