Chapter 4

  Matt awoke the next morning, not to his usual blasting of Linkin Park, but to the sound of Beth’s phone ringing. “No, I can’t cover tonight. It’s my boyfriend’s 20 year reunion. Ugh, you’re sure there’s no one else that may be able to come in? What about Linda?”

  Matt sighed, the idea of facing the reunion tonight without Beth wasn’t one that he wanted to think about.

  “Alright,” Beth said. “Let me see what I can figure out, and I’ll give you a call back within the next hour.”

  Beth gave Matt an apologetic look. “I don’t know if I can get out of this,” she said. “Nancy’s out of town, Linda’s sister is getting married today, and Jen, surprise surprise, isn’t answering.” Jen was Beth’s newest coworker. She had been a thorn in Beth’s eyes from the day she started. She had 15 years experience, but was rarely on time, never properly logged her charts, and would disappear for an hour at a time with no heads up about where she was going.

  “If you have to go, you have to go,” he told her, trying to sound more confident about this than what he actually felt. “I can handle being around these people for a couple of hours by myself, and if I can’t, I’ll just come home.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I want to be there for you.”

  “Positive,” he told her as he rolled over and gave her a kiss on the nose. “I’ll go make you some breakfast” He went ahead and got up from the bed worried that if he laid there any longer, she’d see the truth in his eyes.

  Beth laughed and said “You know, pouring me a bowl of Cheerios can hardly count as making me breakfast.”

  “Fine, what about some toast?” he laughed.

  “You’re getting closer.” she teased. “How about a couple of those chocolate chip pancakes you make?”

  “You mean the ones in the freezer?” he teased back.

  When she came through a few minutes later to start the coffee though, he was pouring chocolate chips into the batter that he had just mixed. A few minutes later he turned to her sitting at the table playing a game on her phone, and said “watch this!” He flicked the pan, and the half cooked pancake gave a half hearted flip, landed on the side of the pan, and fell to the floor.

  “Yea, that worked real well” she laughed as she got up and ripped off a couple of paper towels to clean the mess off the floor as he started a new pancake. “Are you sure you’ll be ok on your own this evening?” she asked.

  “Yea, I’ll make it work,” he answered, keeping his back to her as he said it. “I think I am going to play in that DnD game tonight. I wrote up some stuff last night that really brought me back and reminded me why I used to enjoy the game so much.”

  “Nerd!’ She laughed. “It’s a good thing I kinda like you. Seriously though, that sounds great. I hope you have fun with it.” When she finished eating, she got up to put her plate in the sink. “Guess I need to call them back and tell them I can come in,” she sighed.

  “Alright, I’m gonna hop back on the computer and go over some of the new rules they’ve made over the last 20 years.” Even though he enjoyed reading the new Player’s Handbook, the more time that passed, the more nervous he got and the faster it went.

  Around 3:30 that afternoon, Beth came to give him a kiss and to let him know she was going to lay down for a little while before work. Looking at the time, he realized just how long he had actually sat there reading and re-reading to make sure that he had an understanding of the rules that would apply most to his character.

  “Guess I should probably get things ready to hop in the shower soon, he thought. He figured he’d just read a little bit more and then start getting ready. Before he knew it another hour had passed. “Shit!” He said realizing this. He got up and went and grabbed a towel and a change of clothes.

  After he got out of the shower, Beth was up and getting ready herself. “I’m assuming you guys will have food at the school,” she said, “but I am probably going to have some DoorDash delivered. I really don’t want hospital food tonight.”

  “Sounds good,” he said absent-mindedly, not really hearing her as he focused on trying to keep himself calm. He wanted to listen, but the closer he got to the reunion start time at 6, the more he started to doubt if this was a good idea.

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  “It’s about that time” she said. “Figure you probably won’t be too far behind me.” She gave him a kiss goodbye. See you in the morning,” she said as she walked out the door.

  “See you in the morning” he said back. He stood in the doorway, and waved as she pulled away. “Guess it’s about that time for me too” he said to the empty apartment. So, grabbing his back story papers and his keys off the ring, he left the house, dreading how this would go.

  When Matt parked at the school 20 minutes later, he just sat there for a few minutes, trying to muster the courage to go inside. Finally he did.

  It felt so strange walking through these front doors again. The smell of teenagers, who apparently still thought Axe covered their BO, lingered in the hallway. It looked like one of their old school dances in here, from the cheesy decorations hanging on the walls, to the DJ in the corner playing Outkast's “Hey Ya”.

  He hated this. “Why am I here?” he asked himself. After 15 minutes of no one even noticing his existence, he decided “fuck this”. He made his way back across the room, out the front doors, and back to his car. As soon as he started the car though, he suddenly felt tired. Too tired. His eyelids started to droop. He tried blinking a few times and shook his head trying to throw this sudden drowsiness. “What’s going on,” he asked aloud. He felt off, like something just wasn’t right. “I need to shake this off. I need to get home before I fall asleep at the wheel.” And then, he was asleep before he ever even shifted the car into drive.

  When he woke up a little bit later, he looked down at the clock and realized he had slept there for over two hours. It was now 8:30. “What the hell,” he wondered. When he was about to decide to just go ahead and call it a night, he saw the paper under his windshield wiper flapping in the wind. He got out, and grabbed the little paper and was about to ball it up, when the name Ye Olde Game Room caught his eye.

  Matt stopped, took a breath and looked back down to the paper. It read:

  If you’re ready, head on over to Ye Olde Game Room

  Located at 4240 E Main St

  Got that killer backstory ready?

  Everything else is ready for you

  See you soon…

  Matt was so thrown off from the sudden drowsiness he had felt, and then waking up feeling fine again a couple hours later that it took him a minute to comprehend what he had read. “Did I miss this mysterious DM coming to drop this off? If they were done with the reunion, and ready to play, why didn’t they just wake me up? Eyes still a little heavy, Matt contemplated just going home. He blinked, “yea, that’s probably the better idea.

  He got back in his car planning to just go call it a night. He’d lay in bed and rest until Beth would get home. Cranking the radio to help keep himself awake, he pulled out of the school parking lot. Getting lost in the music, Matt went into auto-pilot mode. It wasn’t until several minutes later that he looked around and realized wherever he was going, it wasn’t the direction of home.

  As if a magnet had brought him here, he turned onto Main St. realizing “this looks like one of the areas I could have found myself sleeping at any point over the last several years.” The area was run down, the buildings dilapidated. He started looking for address numbers. On his right he saw 4234, a little alleyway, and then 4242. “Huh, that’s weird,” he thought. He drove to the next street up, and flipped a U-turn. Looking again, he saw the same thing. There was no 4240. He parked, and looked at the little piece of paper again. Sure enough it said the address was 4240 Main.

  He got out of his car and walked up squinting at 4242 thinking maybe he was misreading it in the fading light. It definitely said 4242. He was getting ready to say “fucking bullshit waste of time” and turn around to leave when he noticed a door down the alleyway on the side of 4242. There was an old wooden sign sticking out from the side of the building. He could barely read the chipped golden letters, but walking towards it upon closer inspection, it did indeed say Ye Olde Game Room.

  Matt opened the door and coughed. The air was thick with mildew. Shelves lined the walls, empty and covered with dust. As he turned, he noticed the floor. The dust was so thick, his footprints were carved clearly into it.

  Matt sighed, “this is fucking ridiculous. Clearly someone thought this would be a great prank to fuck with me.” He turned to leave, and realized that there was more than one fresh set of footprints in the dust covered floor. He looked confused, had those been there before? They had to be. He knew no one had come in in the 2 minutes he had been standing there. Then he saw a faint light coming from under a doorway down the hall.

  Looking back, he wasn’t sure why, but he grabbed the pages containing his backstory from one pocket, and his phone from the other. He turned his flashlight on and made his way down the hallway. When he reached the end, the door was slightly ajar.

  He paused. This was it. He took a long, deep breath. Thoughts racing through his head, “am I sure I want to do this?” “I haven’t rolled a dice in 20 years, this was stupid. I don’t do this anymore” “would Jimmy have wanted me to pick the game back up?” He wanted to run, just as he had been drawn to this building, he was drawn to see what was behind the door

  He slowly, hesitantly pushed the door open, and looked into the room with the light, he saw a table set up. There was an old dusty leather DM screen set up on one side of the square table and a chair set up on each of the other three sides. Two of those chairs already had people sitting in them. One, a man had his back to him. The other, looked over at him.

  While Matt knew he looked like he had aged 40 years over the last 20 years, Kelly didn’t look like she had aged five. She met his eyes, and fear crashed over her face as her eyes darted over to Dustin and back to Matt. Dustin spun around. “What the fuck are you doing here?”