Death by Cliché by Bob Defendi

a close friend, a brother, just a little to the left of one you’d give a man you were picking up at a bar. Then he walked away.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Damico said.
    “We haven’t had our drinks yet,” Omar whined.
    “Yeah,” Gorthander said. “Why leave so soon? You know Carl’s giving us a job in this bar.”
    “Because that ,” Damico said, “was creepy.”
     

Chapter Twelve
    “If you can read this, you’re too close.”
    —Bob Defendi
     
    he tavern smelled like a urine-soaked gym sock after it had passed through the digestive tract of a water buffalo. Damico hadn’t noticed it at first; it sort of snuck up on you like a squad of Navy SEALS, or worse, normal seals, the kind carrying clubs and out to prove Humans aren’t the only creatures on the planet that like to wear a coat once in a while.
    Lotianna, on the other hand, smelled like lilacs.
    The tavern rented bedrooms, conveniently enough. Omar had refused to leave and went to sleep first. Then Gorthander gave Damico and Lotianna a knowing glance and followed. For about five minutes Damico and Lotianna sat in silence, sipping their drinks.
    And he felt comfortable. Normally silences like this between a man and a woman became awkward, but Damico felt nothing like that. He enjoyed sitting with her. He enjoyed the smell of her, the way she regularly tucked an errant hair behind one ear. The presence of her filled the table with a sweet, easy feeling, and he found himself wishing he was wounded again so he’d have to put his arm around her.
    The patrons had mostly cleared out. Only a couple of drunks remained. The owner stood behind the bar, staring vacantly into space, and Barmaid Barbie flounced about, bending over again and again to pick up imaginary pieces of litter.
    Damico rolled his eyes and took another drink.
    “Not your type?” Lotianna asked.
    He glanced at her, catching her sly expression, then over at Barmaid Barbie. At first, he could only see the horror in that poor woman’s eyes, then he shook it off and tried to make the movement into a shudder.
    “That would be too much like masturbation.” And rape, but he didn’t say that.
    Lotianna smiled and sipped her wine. He’d passed some kind of a test. He made it a strict rule never to allow women to play games (except for the fun kind). In fact, he always made certain he failed tests and made sure the woman knew it was on purpose, but Lotianna had caught him off guard with that one.
    And this wasn’t time to be on his game, no pun intended.
    “What’s your back story?” she asked after a time.
    Damico almost rerouted his drink through his nose. After swallowing, he chuckled.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “Ah,” she said sagely. “You’re the one.” Her eyes held deeper meaning.
    “Excuse me?” Damico asked, not sure if he’d heard correctly.
    She appraised him, and he felt a delicious tension draw out in the silence. “Mysterious parentage. You’re the man with no past.”
    Damico was about to tell her he had a past, but it had been snuffed out by the actions of a madman, but he didn’t. He was the man with mysterious parentage. Carl had obviously designed the NPC he now inhabited, either as a mockery or as a homage to Damico’s real self. But whatever backstory Carl had invented for Damico’s in-game character, Damico didn’t know it, and so he could only play coy. That made him the heart of the cliché, and he wondered if that had been Carl’s plan all along or if things spiraled out of control for all of them.
    “You?” he asked.
    “Oh, the usual sordid details,” she said. “Good home, mage school at ten…”
    “Hogwarts?” he asked.
    She smiled. “Of course.”
    “And then you decided to become an adventurer?”
    “Oh, you don’t find adventure,” she said. “Adventure finds you.” She had a wry smile. She was playing to the old, hackneyed lines on purpose.
    “But how could adventure possibly find you?” he asked. “You don’t seem