“You descend the staircase and see a long, dark hallway. You have night vision, right?”

“Yeah, like twenty meters.”

“That’s what I thought.” Nick writes something down behind his divider. I can’t see what it is.

We’re in my house, in the basement, sitting at the table my dad uses for his weekly poker game. The rest of the time I can use it as long as I don’t spill anything on it. When I was twelve I was painting Warhammer figurines on it and I dripped white paint on the green felt. He reamed me out and I lost table privileges for a month. Now I just put down the newspaper first.

Nick always comes here to play D&D. My mom says she doesn’t like the idea of me going over to his house because his dad owns guns. I told her he keeps them locked in a safe, but she said she still prefers when Nick comes over here.

I don’t think it’s because of the guns, though. Not really. I think it’s because Nick’s family is poor and he lives in a neighbourhood she doesn’t like driving in. When Nick comes here his dad lets him use his car. It’s old and rusty and looks crazy different from all the Lexus’s and BMW’s in my neighbourhood. My mom says she likes Nick a lot, calls him “a polite young man with a bright future.” But she told me that when we hang out, it should be at home, not at his house.

“The hallway extends as far as you can see. Spaced evenly are large, wooden doors with heavy iron handles on them.” Nick moves his hair out of his eyes, which he has to do a lot because his hair is long and cut unevenly.

“I search around me, to see if there’s anything on the floor or the walls.”

“Roll for perception.”

I guess it’s better that we’re always at my house. We have the basement to ourselves, and there’s a TV down there, and enough room if other guys come over to hang out or play D&D or watch movies. My mom always stocks the fridge with sodas and snacks. The one time I went over to Nick’s house we drank tap water and ate stale pretzels and hung out in his room, which is really small. He asked me if I wanted to see his dad’s guns because he knows the combination to the safe. I said no thanks.

If there’s a D&D game, it’s always in my basement. And there’s a game almost every weekend. Sometimes, if Riley and Chris are free, we do a full game. But they don’t like D&D as much as Nick and I do. Plus, Chris has Model UN and fencing practice and Riley has oboe lessons and volunteers. My mom wants me to do Model UN or something else that’ll look good on college applications. But I guess she figures that sitting in the basement playing D&D or painting Warhammer models is better than going out and getting drunk and high like other kids at school.

I roll the D-20 and see what number comes up. The higher the number the better. Then I check my character sheet to see what my perception will be. “Plus my wisdom stat it’s a seventeen.”

Nick nods. He scratches his cheek, which has some stubble on it. His mustache looks like a caterpillar died on his lip. “You look underneath an old painting of an old ugly man. I mean, really fucking ugly, just hideous.” I laugh because I’m pretty sure I know who the painting is supposed to be. “You see a box,” he says. “It’s small and plain, clasped shut but not locked.”
“I check for any enchantments on the box. What’s in the box?” I say in my best Brad Pitt voice.

Nick rifles through the papers he has in a stack behind the divider. He’s the one who showed me Seven, which is one of his favourite movies. “No enchantments. It’s an ordinary box.”

“Great. I open it.”

I think Nick and I are friends because we don’t fit in. And because we both like D&D and nerd stuff. I’m the only one of his friends from school who’s been to his house. I’m also the only person in school who doesn’t call him Free Ride. Even Chris and Riley do sometimes, behind his back. The other kids, the jocks and the preppy kids, say it to his face. They make fun of him for being on scholarship, or wearing button-downs that don’t fit, or having ink stains on his pants.

I don’t really care about that stuff, though. Everyone makes fun of me too, but I don’t let it get to me like Nick does. Maybe it’s harder for him because he feels like he doesn’t belong, but I don’t even think of him that way. So he comes over a lot.

“Inside the box is a wand,” he says. “It is long and thin and you can feel how powerful it is.”

“Is it my dick?”

Nick doesn’t laugh. He looks serious, which is weird because it’s just a practice run he threw together, not part of the actual campaign we’ve been running for a couple of months. “Are you gonna cast identify?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say with a nod, looking through my inventory to see what other wands I have. There must be a reason he put this one right at the entrance. “I cast identify.”

“It’s a Wand of Magic Missiles, but-” he pauses, for dramatic effect I guess, “it’s been modified. Instead of holding seven charges, it holds thirty, and the missiles it fires are much more powerful than other wands of this type.”

“Cool.” A lot of these fake missions are based around some weird magic artifact I have to find or use, usually some in-joke that we laugh about while we’re playing. I think I know what the in-joke is this time, what Nick based this dungeon off of. The old painting of the ugly man gave it away. “How much more powerful?”

“You’ll have to use it to find out.”

“Okay, then I guess I go up to the first door and try to open it.”

I wasn’t sure Nick would come over this weekend. We had gym last period on Friday and had talked about going to see a movie afterward. But when we got back to the locker room Nick’s locker was open and his school clothes were gone. When I heard all the showers going I knew exactly where they were.

A bunch of guys from the football team had gotten to the locker room early. They were standing around the showers, this big open space with shower heads sticking out of the walls and no private stalls. In the middle, right by the drain, were Nick’s clothes. They were soaking wet.

Nick had to run through the shower to grab them. The guys on the football team watched and laughed. “We cleaned your clothes for you, Free Ride,” one of them shouted. “Somebody had to.” That got a lot of laughs too.

Nick ignored them. He grabbed his clothes and ran out of the shower, slipping a little bit, but catching himself before he wiped out completely. I watched, but I didn’t know what to do or how to help. He was shaking, maybe because he was wet from the shower, maybe because he was angry. He didn’t look at me. He just left.

“Your boyfriend looked mad at you,” one of the bigger football guys said to me. “He probably isn’t gonna let you suck his dick later.” I wanted to follow after Nick, but I didn’t. I went home and waited for him to text me about going to see a movie. I waited all Friday and Saturday. He didn’t reach out until today, asking if he could come over, saying he had a really cool quest for me.

“You pull the door open and step into a room full of chairs. On the walls are words in a strange language you don’t recognize. Sitting on the chairs are seven goblins, speaking to each other in what is, presumably, the same language.”

“Are they friendly?”

“Are you gonna risk waiting to find out? Roll for initiative.”

I roll the D-20. “Fifteen.”

“Not bad. You get the jump on them. Wanna reason with them? Your call.”

I wasn’t about to reason with them. Not that it wasn’t the right thing to do in a lot of situations, just not this one. When Nick makes up these fake quests there’s usually a puzzle component, maybe a riddle I need to solve, but mostly it’s a lot of killing. They tend to blur together.

“Okay,” I say, “let’s see what this bad boy can do. I fire the Wand of Magic Missiles at the nearest goblin.” I roll the D-20, curious to see what kind of damage the toy Nick created for me is capable of. “Plus intelligence, it’s fourteen.”

“Hit. Roll for damage.”

For damage, I roll the D-12. “Eight.” Not a great roll, but depending on how much HP the goblins have it might be enough to incapacitate one. I’m not excited about seven goblins coming at me.

Nick looks at one of the sheets he keeps hidden from me. “You fire at the nearest goblin and blast a hole through his chest, killing him.” I didn’t expect that. These little guys are easier to kill than I thought they’d be.

Nick looks up with a smirk and tells me to roll for dexterity. I’m a human wizard so my dexterity isn’t anything to write home about, but I roll. “Eleven.”

He nods, like everything is going to plan. “You have a jump on the goblins. They weren’t expecting you. You get two more shots.”

“Two?” Nick usually designs these one-off games to be crazy hard, but this seems different. It’s like he’s intentionally making it easy. But I go with it and roll two more times, killing two more goblins. Finally, it’s their turn.

Except they don’t attack me. Nick tells me that the four remaining goblins all try to run, either past me or out a window on the other side of the room.

“A window?” I ask. “I thought we were in a dungeon.”

“Don’t overthink it,” Nick answers. “Your turn.”

Nick is usually a stickler for logic in his campaigns, but I guess he wants to watch me mow down goblins. I get two more shots off, blasting two more goblins into eternity. The other two escape on their next turn. With the room empty, I go back into the main hallway.

As I walk towards the next room, I confirm to myself what this whole setup is. Or at least where I’m supposed to be. It’s school. That picture by the entrance was the school’s founder, who has a huge nose with warts on it and died like sixty years ago. The first room, with the foreign writing on the wall, must have been a Spanish class. I don’t know who the goblins are supposed to be. Or maybe, like Nick said, I’m overthinking it. Maybe they’re just goblins.

There are more of them in the next room. Some are hiding, so I flush them out. Nick gets more and more excited with every goblin I blast with the wand. In the room after that, I miss a couple of times and have to stop to wait for the wand to power up. It’s easy and quick and then I get right back to killing. I’ve lost track of how many goblins I’ve obliterated.

I don’t know what kind of guns Nick’s dad has. I wonder if he has access to an assault rifle that can hold thirty bullets.

I know where he’s leading me, but he’s drawing it out, savouring the slaughter. I go into what I guess is supposed to be the teachers’ lounge. Three trolls stand around a fire drinking sludge. I beat them on my initiative roll and take down two before the third has a chance to react.

“The third troll has a lazy eye and a big, droopy mustache,” he says. He’s not even trying to be subtle anymore. He’s talking about Mr. Sanderson. “He tries to intimidate you, to scare you into leaving.”

“Should I roll to see if I get intimidated?”

He shakes his head. “Why bother? You have the wand. There’s nothing a stupid troll can do to you.” His hair is in front of his eyes again, but he doesn’t move it. The way the basement lights bounce off it make his face look darker, almost scary. I roll to fire again and blast a hole through Mr. Trollerson’s chest.

When I get back into the hallway there’s only one door left. I go through it, not bothering to check for traps. Nick isn’t interested in making things harder. This door leads to a big cavern with banners on the wall. It’s the gym. That means that the small door on the opposite side of the cavern is the locker room. It’s not hard to imagine what’s waiting for me behind it.

“Ogres,” Nick says when I go into the small, musty room on the other side of the cavern. “Six big fucking ugly-as-shit ogres.” He’s gripping his papers tightly. “Roll for initiative.”

I roll and cringe at the sight. “Three.”

“Let’s hope these stupid ogres don’t kill you before you get a few shots off. Three of them lumber toward you, laughing, taunting you. One of them sticks his fingers up his ass and then takes a swing at you.”

He rolls a couple of D-20s, calculating how many of the ogres hit me and how much damage they do. “You got lucky,” he says, looking up. “They’re so fucking stupid that only one hits you, doing eight damage.” It’s the first time I’ve taken any damage during this quest. I write it down. I still have plenty of HP left.

I get off three shots on my turn, hitting one of the ogres in the chest and leaving another with a hole in his forehead. The third one I hit in the leg, taking him down but not killing him. Nick describes the deaths and wounds in detail: how a wisp of smoke comes out of the forehead I blew open; how one of the ogre’s shits himself.

After another round, I’ve taken some more damage, but there are only two ogres left: the one writhing around bleeding out on the floor and the biggest one, who makes a run for it.

“I shoot the one on the floor in the head,” I say, not bothering to roll.

Nick nods and writes something down. “Gonna chase down the last one now?”

There’s nowhere for him to run, so it won’t be hard. I catch him in the corner, right by a waterfall.

“You go into the room and see, um-” Nick stops. I look at him and his eyes are kind of out of focus. “You see, um-” he moves the hair out of his face and bites his lip. He looks kind of scared, kind of sad. “You see that the dumb asshole slipped and fell” Nick finally says. He scratches his neck and looks at his paper, even though we both know what’s about to happen. “But he’s getting ready to attack. What do you do?”

He looks focused again. I want to laugh, like it’s some big mystery what I’m about to do next. But I don’t. “I use the wand to fire at him.” I try to sound nonchalant, to hide how nervous I am.

“You don’t wanna say something first?” he asks. “Really savour the moment? This is the last one you have to kill.” He cracks a little bit of a smile.

My throat is dry. I take a sip of diet coke, trying to think of what to say that will appease Nick. “This is what you deserve, you big ugly asshole,” I tell the ogre. “Think I’m gonna miss this shot? Think you’re gonna get lucky? Do ya, punk?”

Nick’s eyes are almost glowing with excitement, but I think that’s just the lights. I roll the D-20, look and see a 20 staring up at me.

“Natural twenty,” I tell him. “Critical success.”

“Oh!” Nick shouts, banging a fist on the table. “You fire five shots at the ogre, hitting him in the head, the chest, blowing his fucking dick off. He stumbles backwards, falls over, shits himself, he’s fucking dead.”

I know I’m supposed to celebrate, but I can’t. I don’t like this game anymore. I’m ready for Nick to leave.

*****

That night I’m lying in bed, thinking about dinner, eating meatloaf and green beans with my mom and dad. Mom asked me how my day was. I said it was fine. I asked her why she didn’t like Nick’s dad and she kind of choked on the water she was drinking.

“I don’t dislike Mr. Rhodes,” she answered, overenunciating like she does sometimes. “I just don’t like the idea of you being at his house.” She looked over at my dad, who wasn’t paying attention.

I changed the subject. I asked about a woman who works in her office who she complains about a lot.

“Now her I dislike,” Mom said.

“But, like, do you ever think about doing anything bad to her?”

She put her fork down. “What do you mean?”

“Like…” I didn’t know how to say it right. “Like something you wouldn’t actually do. Because it’s too mean, too bad. Like, planting drugs on her so she gets fired or something. You wouldn’t do it, but do you ever imagine doing it?”

Mom laughed. “Of course not. I wouldn’t even imagine doing something like that.”

“You come up with the craziest ideas,” Dad said, putting his phone down. “Let’s hope you put that imagination to good use and become the next George R.R. Martin.”

I get out of bed and go to my desk. D&D is just a game. It doesn’t mean anything. Nick makes stuff for us to kill all the time. So why do I think this is different? When Nick left, he said he’d see me in school on Monday. “I have Spanish first period.” He said it like a warning.

I try to think if I’ve ever imagined doing something really bad. I guess punching somebody, one of the bigger guys at school when they make fun of me. Except then they’d beat me up a lot worse. But what if they couldn’t? What if I was stronger than them? Or had something that could hurt them so they couldn’t hurt me? Is that what Nick was thinking about when he designed the game? Was he imagining himself going through the dungeon, using the wand, killing goblins and trolls and ogres?

I open my desk drawer and take out my favourite D-20. It’s dark red with white numbers, and it’s heavier than the others. I guess it’s my good luck charm. When I need to make a big roll, that’s the one I use. I wonder if I should tell my mom what I think might happen in the morning. Or text Nick and ask him about it. But what if it really was just a fantasy, a silly game? Would he hate me for what I think he might do?

The D-20 is warm in my hand. I don’t know why I’m holding it. Sometimes it’s easier to make decisions in a game than in real life. It’s simpler. You know what you’re supposed to do, and the roll decides whether or not you can. A lot of the decisions are made for you.

I roll, just for fun, just to see what happens. Like I’m rolling for initiative. It’s dark, so I can’t see too clearly. I don’t want to turn the light on. I lean over and look at the number staring up at me.

“One,” I say quietly. I say it out loud to make it feel more real, like I’m not imagining things. “Critical failure.”

I put the D-20 back in my drawer, with the 1 still facing up. I get back into bed, and after an hour I finally fall asleep. I have weird dreams. People I know turn into goblins and trolls and ogres. They die and tell me it’s my fault.

When my mom comes in to wake me up the next morning, I tell her I’m not feeling good. I ask if I can stay home. She says I should stay in bed and get some sleep. I tell her I will, but I know I’m not going to be able to fall asleep. I’m going to wait and see what Nick does with his turn.