One Night in Hommlet

"Originally planned for the "One Night in XXX" story event, time and real-life drama alas caught up with me and I had to postpone finishing the story. Which worked out alright it's now a much better tale for the extra time and work. Enjoy." MST

*

Walking into the kitchen I looked around. "Hey, Mom?"

"I'm right behind you, you don't have to yell."

Her voice coming from out of the walk-in pantry startled me so badly I about jumped out of my skin. After a second I poked my head into the large can-filled cubbard.

"Sorry." Be still my poor pounding heartbeat. "Umm... I need to ... um ... well ...."

Mom gave me a smile, amused at my flustered mumbling. "What do ya need?"

Okay, yeah, just spit it out and let the dice fall where they may. "Can we -- I mean Todd, Philip, John, Belinda and me -- use the dining room tonight?"

"For?" she dragged the word out a bit.

"Um, for D&D." I paused to see if she was going to ask what that was. "You see, Philip's basement flooded due to the rain last night. We need--"

"Sure." With a flounce, she disappeared past me into the kitchen. "I'll clear the table and make up a few snacks."

I followed after her, like a ghost. "You don't have to do that. I mean we all, generally, bring a few things to munch on."

Mom gave me a look. "Yeah, I bet. Sugar-filled Little Debbie cakes and some cheap-as-crap pizza?" She gave an odd chuckle. "How about some Cheetos and Mountain Dew?"

"What?" I asked, puzzled.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Never mind. I'll make some of the deli roll sandwiches, maybe some dip, and we'll go from there."

"Well sure, if you want to, I guess." I scratched at an itch on the back of my neck. "I'm pretty sure everyone will want pizza, though."

"Then I'll order pizza as well." Mom leaned into the fridge and made a quick visual survey of sandwich fixings. "So what is everyone playing?"

"What? Oh, well John is the DM, I mean the Dungeon Master -- that means he's --"

She placed cream cheese and frozen spinach on the counter. "I know what it means, Richie."

"Oh, well, umm ... I'm playing a ranger, Todd is a mage, Belinda is a barbarian, and Philip is playing a rogue." I rolled my eyes. "Of course."

Mom paused looking at me for a moment. "No one is playing a cleric?"

Surprised that she knew what a cleric was, I gave my head a puzzled shake."

"Well, okay." Going back into the pantry, Mom brought out a few more things. "Going to be a short game, huh?"

"Ah, no John said it would take several hours." I gave a shrug. "We're just starting this campaign. Philip was DM'ing for us, but he got tired and said he wanted to play, so John offered to run one for us."

Mom nodded and looked at everything she had laid out. "Well, let me see what I can whip up, right quick. When will they be here?"

"Well, I've still got to go call and let them all know we're playing here." I glanced at the clock on the stove. "Say by 8:00, give or take a few."

She nodded again. "I'll manage. Make your calls and then, if you would, please go clean off the dining room table. Oh, and make sure everyone knows -- they spill anything on my grandmother's table and I will flay them alive and use their skin as a lampshade. Understood?"

"Yeah, I'll make sure they all know."

"Good." She started stirring cream cheese. "Now scoot."

For a moment I couldn't help but watch Mom as she worked on making the snacks. Twenty years over my own nineteen and she was still as flawless as she looked in her wedding pictures. Or the divorce pictures too, for that matter. That brought to mind other thoughts that didn't need to be pondered over too closely. Like the fact its been five years since I last saw my dad.

The fuck-head.

A quick swipe of my finger across my phone and I was sending texts and calls out to the group.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"Thank you for allowing us to play here, Mrs. Colbert." Belinda placed her purple backpack beside her chair and fished herself one of the sandwich rolls off the tray in the middle of the table. "And, these look wonderful."

Mom smiled. "You're very welcome, Bela. Please, remind me to give you your mother's bundt cake pan when you leave tonight. I'm been meaning to get it back to her for a week now."

Belinda nodded, her many micro-braids rattling their wooden beads. "I'm under strict orders to ask if you were done with it."

"I am." Mom looked toward the front of the House. "Richie, could you get the door? Someone just pulled up."

By the time I got there, John was walking up onto the porch carrying enough crap to make his progress precarious. I quickly grabbed a few of the stacked Rubbermaids. He shifted the two canvas Publics tote bags with all his books to his other arm and then picked back up his old black leather briefcase.

"Thank you." John looked past my shoulder into the living room. "So, how big is this table? I mean is it going to be big enough for us to game on?"

I chuckled. "It's a hundred years old, John. It's easily twice the size of the one in Philip's basement."

His eyes lit up like two LED lamps. "Oh, goody." He quickly set the two bags on the chair just inside the door. "Let me go get the bigger box."

After carrying the boxes to the dining room, I returned to the front door and watched as John proceeded to drag a Rubbermaid the size of a small footlocker out of the trunk of his car. Philip pulled up in his silver-gray van at that moment.

"Everyone can relax." Philip stopped just inside the front door and struck a dramatic pose. "Liam Von Sydow has arrived. Be wary of your purses and your virtue. Oh, hey there Mrs. C." He shot my mom what he thought was a flirty smile. "Can little Richie here stay up past his bedtime so we can play?"

Mom gave Philip a tolerant shake of her head. "He's nineteen -- unlike a certain high school senior, I know. Did you ask 'your' mom if you could stay out late?"

Not to be subdued by a parental figure, he grinned. "It's Saturday, and I aced my math test yesterday, so I can be out as late as I want to be." He looked at me, and in a whisper said. "So long as I'm here, anyway." Looking past my mom to the large table where John was making inroads into the sandwiches, Philip grinned. "Nothing like a beautiful woman who knows how to cook. Where can I put these, Mrs.C?"

Philip held up a plastic grocery bag with two large bottles of Soda. He slyly elbowed my side as he went past me, following Mom to the kitchen.

Todd arrived not long after, his rattle can flat-black Ford Tempo billowing a hazy fog of blue-ish smoke all the way down the road and into the driveway.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

John was still settling himself up at the end of the table a half hour later when Mom -- after taking away the now emptied tray of sandwiches -- returned. She pulled out a chair and sat down next to Belinda, across from me, and as far from Phip as possible. My jaw must have been on the floor when she sat a purple Crown Royal bag in front of her --that gave off a familiar dice rattle --and said she wanted to play too.

Blinking away his confusion, John adjusted his glasses. "Really?"

Mom nodded and began undoing the gold string ties. She looked up at me, "Is it still roll-four-keep-three for stats?"

"Um, um yeah. Or you can start with a base set of averaged stats." I gestured to Belinda who had the Player's handbook open before her.

"You've played Dungeons and Dragons before, Mrs. C?"

Mom looked up from the open book at Philip, eying him under her eyebrows. "Before you were born." She leaned into Belinda a bit and I overheard her whisper. "My first boyfriend was a huge gamer geek. So where do I look for the averaged stats?"

Belinda began to flip through the book quickly to the section on character creation.

"Page thirteen," chimed in Todd without looking.

With his nervous tick showing full speed, John adjusted his glasses again. "Do you have any idea what you might like to play? They have added quite a few class to the new Fifth Edition D&D."

"And races," chimed in Belinda. "I'm a Tiefling."

Mom gave her a slightly puzzled look, then looked back to John as he pulled a blank character sheet from his briefcase and passed it to her. "I always enjoyed playing a Half-elf? And, if I roll them, can I place my stats or is it how they roll is where they go?"

"You can place them," John answered, nodding.

"Then I would like to play a half-elven cleric." Mom fished four old and well-worn looking pale blue six-sided dice from her Crown Royal bag. "And her name will be ... Rowan Ellcry."

As she was penciling that in at the top of her sheet, Philip got to his feet and moved around the table to look over her shoulder. "My god, those dice belong in a museum."

Looking up, Mom batted her eyelashes at him. "You really know how to flatter a lady; I bought them new. Now go sit down, you're jinxing my rolls."

Belinda elbowed him in the gut. "Yeah, you're jinxing her rolls!"

Philip threw up his hands. "Sheesh, already. A guy can't even make a comment nowadays."

Todd looked up from his own battered copy of the Handbook. "A guy can, or a girl can. It's just you that can't." He looked over at my mom and grinned. "Rowan is it? Well, I must say it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Rowan. I am known as Vallejo--"

"-- the Mad," we all said in harmony.

Todd looked around at us and sniffed as if insulted. He was about to say something when Belinda chimed in.

"And I'm Willow."

My mom looked up from the page. "Willow?" she left the question unsaid but looked around at us all.

"Just Willow." I nodded.

Mom shrugged then looked across to me. "And you? You said you were playing a ranger?"

"Kyle Umber of Lost Haven." I shrugged. "Human ranger."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Your party is now approaching the Village of Hommlet, having ridden...

The swampy reek, a hint of which had first touched my nose a day before, was now all but overpowering. A pungent scent that told of rotting vegetation adrift in long-stagnant pools. Standing up in my stirrups, I looked past the small hamlet that spread out before us to hang like a tattered funeral cloth about the crossroad. The red of approaching sunset glowed its burning reflection upon those not too distant marshland. Reed-filled shallows that edged the mangrove and cypress trees around deeper ponds. Large herons flew in the distance, their wings dark silhouettes against the last light of the day.

I had to wonder at the sanity of these people that chose to live here so close to so great a marshland.

"They must be mad," said Vallejo, with a shake of his bald head. His black beard pendulum-ed in time. "To court illness from the vapors and mists that must rise from such feted lands? Madness."

"Well, you above all would know about madness, right Velly?" Liam Von Sydow's gentle teasing was all but innocent.

"Don't call me Velly!" Vallejo the Mad gave our party's resident 'trap-finder' as nasty a look as I had ever seen. Pointing at the shorter and younger man, he was about to deliver what I'm sure would have been a long and blistering retort when our cleric, Rowan Ellcry, held up a hand.

"Peace gentlemen. It's been a long road and we are all tired. Sniping at each other..." She looked to Liam. "... is beneath the dignity of this group. We agreed to be professionals if you recall. Now... " She looked in my direction. "Umber could you ride ahead and see about rooms for us at the Inn? And remember, our purse is light."

"Light? It's all but nonexistent," complained Liam. "If you lot had allowed me to pay a nighttime visit to that colorful caravan we passed two days ago, well, we might be able to sleep in comfort."

"Or we could all be hanging from a tree somewhere two days back down the road." Willow leaned her head back against the hilt of the hand and a half bastard sword on her back. She used the metal bar to scratch at her head right behind one of her curled horns. "I told you I smelt witchery about that caravan. You would have been caught, and then -- under even the lightest of torture -- betrayed us all to the hangman's noose."

"Nonsense!" Liam waved off her insult to his character. "That was nothing more than your primitive superstitions getting the better of your imagination." He turned in his saddle, staring down out back trail as if he could look all the back to where we passed those dozen wagons. "They were a rich caravan that would have never missed what I planned to take for days. If then. I could have fleeced them like sheep."

"Well, were it not for your weasel-ish countenance and pickpocket demeanor, I might have traded some small healing art and earned ..." Rowan put heavy stress on the word. "... us a goodly sum or, at the least, some provisions." Turning back toward the village, she shifted in her saddle, wincing. "Or perchance a horse with a smoother gate." Rowan looked at me and smiled. "The Lord doth test his faithful in the harshest of ways at times. Umber, please be sure to ask for a hot bath as well."

"Yes, my lady."

Liam laughed. "Oh yes, my lady. At once, my lady. Shall I have the servants unpack the good silverware and the fine linen napkins, my lady?" He laughed at his own humor, tossed a leg around the saddle horn and leaned back in the saddle. The worn leathery creaked dangerously, but he ignored it. "So this is Hommlet? Can't say I'm terribly impressed. I believe I shall have to accompany Kyle here into town. He's such a woodsy, non-rural type he might mistake a stable for an inn."

"I would rather you didn't, Liam." Rowan, her pale blue eyes had never stopped their relentless scanning of the town before us. "Remember that weasel-ish countenance I just mentioned? Well, it would be prudent for us to approach this with care and an honest face. You, Liam, have neither." She held up a hand. "If you wish to spend all night cheating drunks at dice in the taproom, feel free. Umbra, why are you still here?"

I was a dozen yards down the trail when I heard Rowan continuing her moral lecture of Liam. "However, when those men that you 'fleece' decide to show their displeasure in your cheating them, don't come pounding on my door looking for my healing touch."

Liam snickered. "Don't worry, my dear, if I'm pounding on your door I will be looking for a different kind of touch."

"Well, you won't get that either."

With a chuckle, I clicked the reins and rode down into the town.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

A knock on the front door interrupted John's detailed description of Hommlet.

Mom got to her feet. "Knowing teenagers as I do; I ordered several pizzas."

"Sounds great." Todd slid back his chair. "Besides I need to take a pee break."

Belinda jumped up. "Me first!"

The two raced each other for the hallway.

Going to the kitchen, I found the paper plates, napkins, and dug the Parmesan cheese out from behind the pickles. By the time I was back in the dining room, Mom had pulled out one of our sideboard tables and there were three boxes -- lids open, and the food smelled incredible.

It was almost like the hunger of my character was influencing me.

I passed out the plates.

With his mouth full of blisteringly hot cheese, Philip tried to ask a question of my mom. I grabbed pieces from the supreme box and managed to chew a bite slowly before he managed to clear his mouth enough to talk.

"You're being a bit rough on me, Mrs.C," He waved the empty hand. "What's up with that?"

Mom shrugged. "You're playing a thief. Rowan, as a cleric, would see it as a life goal to try and reform you into a more decent man. Well, before you're finally caught and hanged." She gave a smirk. "That is the fate of all thieves, after all."

With a sassy flaunt of her hair, she vanished toward the back of the house, where her bedroom and bathroom are.

"Dude, your mom is a serious gamer." John had piled about five slices of pizza on his plate. "This is a blast to run with her."

Philip waved that off. "Yeah, yeah. Well, no cleric survives contact with the enemy unscathed. We'll see how she does when we find something that fights back. Speaking of which, when is the action gonna start?"

John gave a shrug, then moved out of the way as Todd came back in and made a beeline for the pepperoni pizza.

"You're only level one and you just got to town." With a shift of his glasses, John pointed to the miniature filled boxes he had brought with him. "Those aren't here because I like to lift heavy things."

Belinda came storming back in about the same time Mom did.

"These boys apparently have never heard of 'ladies' first!" She punched Todd in the arm as she moved to get her some food.

Todd mumbled under his breath as he moved past me. "She plays a barbarian for a reason."

Mom shook her head. "How rude of them. You can use my bathroom if the others are occupied, Belinda." She looked at me, then the other guys, then back to Belinda. "Consider it the ladies room."

"Thank you."

For a few minutes, the room fell into a silence broken only by the munching of pizza or the slurping of soda. Slowly we filled in the empty places in our stomachs and -- with a few belches -- began to move back to looking over our character sheets. Then we were fiddling with dice and covertly watching John finishing his last two pieces.

"Alright," He wiped his mouth, took a moment to clean his glasses and looked up at us blinking." ...everybody ready?"

"Just waiting on you, buddy," said Philip. He absently spun a black ten-sided, sending it spinning like a top toward me.

I thumped it back to him.

More or less.

John shuffled some papers. "Alright then. Richie, you ride into town."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Large walled building with a square wooden sign showing a buxom and smiling girl holding ...

Sitting on the stone-rimmed edge of an old well -- just across from the Welcome Wench Inn -- I slowly sipped icy water taken by the ladle full from the wooden bucket beside me. My horse slurped happily at the nearby trough. Absently rubbing my good luck charm across my bottom lip -- a simple worthless coin, from some distant land, that a peddler gave me as a child -- I drop the chain back into my shirt as my companion's appeared. With a sigh, I rose and waved at their approach.

My silence must be telling tales, I saw puzzled looks exchanged.

When they stepped down from their mounts I reached down, opened a bag that had been sitting beside me, and begin to toss out small rolls of hard bread to each of them. As they caught them I saw Liam and Vallejo give their rolls odd looks and weight the bread in their hands.

"There is mincemeat baked in the center," I explained with a shrug. "The inn has a good baker." I gave them a few seconds to take a couple of bites and allowed them to enjoy the brief meal before I delivered the bad news. "Those rolls were ten copper."

I swear a few of them nearly choked.

"TEN!" Liam looked at me aghast and shook his head. "See this is exactly what I meant. He comes to town with no bargaining skills and he spends a fortune on some simple rolls. Did you buy any magic beans while you were at it?"

"Ten copper isn't a fortune, and I haggled her down from fifteen." Taking an apple from the bag, I split it with my knife and offered Willow half. I didn't tell them that I had saved the largest rolls for them, having eaten only the smallest one. But then I had also raided a local half-dead apple tree for a few tart, wrinkly orbs, so I wasn't starving. I offered up the metal ladle to Rowan. "Water is free. Not much else is though. A private room is a gold piece a night." I nodded at her lifted eyebrows. "The large barracks room is a silver a night ... per person. Dinner is five silver, but I'm told you can eat your fill. Well, so long as it lasts." I shrugged again. "I was promised that there was always plenty."