"You're a wizard, Awsten."
The words reverberated around my brain like the vibration of my guitar strings as I strummed out a Gm, then Bb7, followed by Dm, and then a C.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I asked Travis, who was sitting at the table with Otto, Geoff, and Jawn as I sat on the couch, no longer playing the tune but choosing instead to grip the neck of the guitar, muting the strings.
"Aren't you going to play?" Travis asked hopefully, my player token firmly in his hand. "You'd get to be the level 1 gnome wizard."
"Aws never plays Dungeons and Dragons with us," Otto said with a sigh, pushing his long hair back into a ponytail. "And why aren't we creating our characters? I don't want to stick with the level 3 halfling."
"You always take too long choosing a your character and complain when you suck," Jawn answered easily.
"I'm too busy," I replied simultaneously with a roll of my eyes.
"Doing what?" Travis laughed.
Geoff snatched a grape from the bowl in the middle of the table. "Oh, you don't know? Obviously, he's busy with the band he's gonna start one day. Awsten's gonna be famous." Geoff bit into the grape, juice spraying from the tiny fruit and hitting Otto square in the nose.
"Oh, fuck off," I answered, hating Geoff's condescending tone. "There's nothing wrong with having a dream. You know? This is, like, America. So, yeah, I want to start a band. Because I have a crazy dream that, you know, maybe a few hundred thousand kids would be into it. And maybe we could sell out some shows and go on a worldwide tour. It'll take work, but it's gonna happen. It has to happen."
The room went silent. Then, as if on cue, the men at the table began laughing; loud, thunderous, raucous laughter that made the room shake.
"Yeah," Otto agreed sarcastically, "and I'm gonna get a fucking buzzcut." He wiped a tear from his eye in an exaggerated fashion. "Well, in the meantime, I think you can spare a few hours for this campaign."
"A few hours?" I asked incredulously. "How can you spend hours on this shit?"
"Pull up a chair, we'll show you," Jawn replied with a smirky half-smile.
"That was real smooth, man," Travis congratulated. His face contorted in disgust upon looking at Jawn's expression. "Don't make that face."
"What face?"
"That face. That ... half smile thing. That smirk. It's the most unsexy look imaginable."
"Really?" Jawn asked sadly. "I thought girls liked smug."
"Literally no one likes smug. The only thing less sexy that a smug facial expression is the word 'smug.'" Travis slid his chair to the side to make room for me. "So are you playing or not?"
I looked at the four guys sitting at the table, a pathetic amount of hope on their faces. What could it hurt? It might even be fun. "If it gets boring," I warned, grabbing a chair and setting it between Travis and Geoff, "I'm out of here."
"With me as your Dungeon Master?" Travis asked arrogantly. "Never gets boring."
"The fuck is a Dungeon Master?" I asked, brows furrowed.
"The narrator," Jawn explained. "Just keep up, you'll understand what's happening as we go along."
Travis cleared his throat, then looked across the table slowly, a playfully evil glint in his eyes. "Today begins your quest. You've all been living your lives in the shadows, serving the King as everyone else, but now it's time to prove that you're worth more. You journey together into the wilderness of Wakanda-"
"You've gotta be shitting me."
"Let me narrate!" Travis screeched, then cleared his throat once again to gain his composure. "You journey together into the wilderness of Wakanda in order to finally prove yourselves as men. The air is frigid and snow covers everything you see. The area is covered with dense trees, and the landscape is riddled with hills. There's a bridge over a frozen body of water that can lead you deeper into the wild about 30 meters to your left. To your right in the near distance, maybe a half a mile, there's a cabin."
"I want to go toward the bridge just to see how safe it is," Otto offered first. "I'll make an Intelligence check. D20." He grabbed a wonky looking die and rolled it across the table. "Well fuck me. Seven."
"Ottis thinks it looks fine," Travis responds.
"Okay, yeah, I'm lost again," I interject. "What is an Intelligence check? What is d20? Why is 7 bad? Who is Ottis?"
Geoff sighed, leaning forward and taking in an exasperated breath before ratting off the information that I was lacking. "Ottis is Otto's character, Ottis is Intelligence based so he needed to be the one to investigate the bridge, which is what an Intelligence check is, 7 is bad because it was an Easy task which means that he needed a ten or higher, and d20 is a 20 sided die."
The boys looked at me from around the table. As I looked into their dead eyes, I made a decision. I slid my chair back and stood up, then walked away from the table. "Yep. I'm out." I moved back to the couch and got my guitar again, strumming the familiar tune once again. The boys groaned in disappointment, but continued their game anyway. I could hear as Jawn decided to cross the bridge.
"Jawndoris," Travis says, "begins walking across the bridge as Ottis and Geoffidis linger back." I laugh to myself at the 'creativity' of their character's names. "Jawndoris hears a subtle cracking sound, followed by a louder one." All of a sudden, the sound of cracking wood filled the room.
"Guys, did you hear that?" I asked, slightly nervously.
"Shh, Aws, we're playing," Travis shushed. "Jawndoris turns back toward the rest of his clan, his ears twitching with realization as the bridge cracked one final time, dropping Jawndoris into the cold water below. He scrambles to his feet as the ice softened beneath him, then finally opened up, swallowing the elf and freezing over him once again."
Just as Travis had said, a loud cracking noise filled the room once again. This time, the entire room heard it. Jawn let out a choked breath. I looked over at him in shock. His body was a deep blue, his face bright red. At once, his face replicated the color of the rest of his body. Otto sprawled out of his chair, while the rest of us were glued to our seats.
"What the fuck?" Otto screeched, holding onto Jawn's rigid body. "He's ice cold, Travis. He's - what the fuck did you do?"
That evil look was back in Travis' eyes. It didn't look so playful this time. "Awsten, why don't you come play with us?"
My eyes spiked with tears, making my nose burn. "What are you doing?" I asked, my voice coming out a lot smaller than I had hoped.
"Just look at it as an incentive. Play the game well," Travis pointed at Jawn's body, which Otto left abandoned as he returned to his seat, "and maybe your outcome will be better."
I wanted to refuse. I wanted to scream, to run, to call for help. But my body didn't. My legs moved of their own initiative toward the chair that Jawn had just fallen out of. I sat, my eyes locked to the table that we sat around.
"Then let's play," I decided.
