by Jake Nuttall
Brian Kemp kept rolling the die under his fingers against the top of the table, thinly covered vinyl card in his living room, the table that served as his dining, gaming, and joint-rolling table. He liked the sensation, the smooth, hard edges, not quite 90-degree angles bumping against the joints of his fingers. It grounded him, helped him think out the latest tirade of scenarios shouting through his mind, all illustrating for him why his death would be the best possible solution to all his problems.
His phone buzzed on the table. Pfvvvpt. Pfvvvpt. Pfvvvpt. The vibration bounced a few of the jigsaw pieces he was working on, glided them lightly across the vinyl. Brian picked it up, knowing what the screen would read before reading it.
Mom.
“Hello?”
“Buster, how you doing, buddy?”
“I’m just fine, mom. You know what we say: a Kemp is always fine.”
“That’s true, honey, but it doesn’t mean you haven’t been having a hard time lately.”
“I’ll find another job.”
“Oh, honey, of course you will. It’s not the job I’m concerned about. I think you’d find yourself a lot happier and healthier if you found yourself a girl, there. I was reading this article that said married people live approximately 10 years longer on average.”
“I don’t think it’s that high, mom.”
“I’m pretty sure the study said 10.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well anywho, you can’t keep moping over that Sadie girl. I’m not so sure she was big on you from the start, sweetie.”
Brian squeezed the die, a d6, hard in his fist. He pressed it against his palm so hard that his knuckles turned white and the pain became a throbbing center point on which he could focus.
“I’m not moping about her. I don’t even think about her anymore.” This was a bold-faced lie, one he knew his mother didn’t buy for a second. Sadie had been on his mind every day since the third grade; he didn’t think he’d ever stop thinking about her.
“Buster, sweetie, please tell me you’re dating.”
“I don’t think anyone’s interested in an unemployed nerd nearing thirty with a receding hairline, mom.”
“Oh, shush now. There are millions of girls that are dying to meet a nice guy like you.”
“Girls literally despise nice guys, mom. It’s a whole thing.
“Oh, that’s not true. Your father was a nice man, and I loved him for that.”
“He died trying to get his boss’s mistress’s underwear out of his house before his wife got home. I don’t think that’s the kind of nice most people respect. Especially women.”
“Well, I’m not like most women, then. So find a woman like me.”
“Mom.”
“What? You know you love me.”
“Of course, mom.”
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Haven’t decided yet.” Brian released the dice. His palm ached. Beneath the knuckles, a not quite 90-degree depression created a white crater in his hand.
“Well, you should try to get out there. Join a club!”
“Not a thing, mom.”
“Sure it is.”
“Look, I gotta go, I’m getting another call.”
“Oh, is it a girl?!”
“Love you, mom. Bye.”
Brian didn’t wait for her response. He was the youngest boy out of five. He’d received about as much attention as he had money or discipline, other than the relentless bullying of his brothers. She didn’t necessarily know him; still he wanted the last thing he said to her to be a statement of love depending on how things went tonight.
Dropping the phone back on the surface of the table, Brian picked up a pen and began to write on a loose piece of junk mail that had accumulated there. He had the idea for a little game, a game inspired loosely by the Dungeons & Dragons podcasts he listened to on his commutes home from work—no time for that on the call center floor. But this game would be much realer, much more adventurous, and potentially, much deadlier.
On the piece of junk mail, Brian wrote:
6) Get out of town. Travel. Go anywhere.
5) Message a girl on a dating app.
4) Join a club.
3) Learn an instrument.
2) Get a new job.
1) Kill yourself.
All of these items were personal aspirations. Number Five he’d done many times of course, but always awkwardly and with little to no response. The repetition of attempted conversations and subsequent ghostings were getting to be too much. Between the rejections and being spoken to all day over the phone as though he were the human trash discoloring the Yellowstone sulfur pools, Brian Kemp was reaching a breaking point with life.
He looked around the living room area of his studio apartment, the gaming and anime posters, the dying plants, the array of sci-fi and fantasy novels scattered everywhere among an explosion of discarded clothing. He paid nearly $1,500 a month for this apartment, in Alpharetta, Georgia, and couldn’t figure out why. He was miserable, defeated, and out of options.
This d6 roulette had become an obsession he’d nursed over hours and hours in his cubicle. Now he’d finally pull the trigger.
With the place in mind where he’d do the deed if he rolled a one, Brian tossed the die.
A moment of cold dread caused him to look away. He thought—for the briefest instant—that he didn’t want it to be a one and chalked that up to pussy cowardice. He was a man, wasn’t he? He could go out on his own terms.
But the wave of white relief that flooded his body when he saw the number he’d landed made all these moot questions, because he’d rolled a two.
Brian wasted no time. Adrenaline-fueled and thrumming with energy, he rose from his table and strutted about the apartment, pacing, before picking up his phone and swiping through to his boss’s phone number.
Without any further thought—because thought might have kept him from doing it altogether—Brian pressed Call.
Mr. Prescott, said the phone, while below that the word “Connecting” was followed by a line of dots that grew and shrank, grew and shrank again. This was time Brian didn’t need. When “Connecting” was replaced with “Dialing” and the trilling, redolent rings followed in short, direct intervals, Brian was re-thinking this approach altogether.
What in God’s name would he say if the man actually answered?
Fortunately, the call went to voicemail.
“This is Mr. Jamie Prescott of Altrix Call Center, lead manager. Leave your name, number, and message after the beep.”
Brian had no idea what he was going to say. He wasn’t sure he wanted to say anything at all. And yet when that beep came, he answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Hey, Mr. Prescott! This is Brian Kemp, you know, from the Customer Satisfaction team. Anyways, I’m calling because I’m out. I’ve had enough, and frankly your demeaning treatment of myself and the rest of the staff had everything to do with it. I haven’t left anything in the office, and I will not return. Do not call this number. I quit…and fuck you!”
This final shouted expletive was further enunciated by Brain’s violent throwing of his phone across the room at the distant wall, an action he immediately regretted. He hadn’t opted for the phone insurance, and he’d just upgraded to a Pixel 9.
In jittery horror, Brian retrieved his phone and found the screen chipped in several places but intact. Good. He’d need it to browse for jobs.
But that could come later. Right now, he needed the solace of mindless entertainment, a distraction from the cold vice around his life now that he’d just cut off his only source of income. Brian told himself he had his savings, and that was enough. Going to his fridge for a Dr. Pepper, this repeated refrain became a comfort.
But maybe that was just the anticipation of a Dr. Pepper.
#
In the days that followed, Brian revised his resume, wrote a dozen cover letters, and spammed Indeed for any listing he could find in which the prospect of dealing with people directly seemed low. Thinking he could use the exercise and that it couldn’t hurt his weaselly physique, he targeted warehouses, laborer work, anything. He wanted to use his body, not his mind, and not his voice. Those things had done nothing but fail him.
The first interview he’d landed was with an iron-smithing factory about two miles out of town, off roads that shot up dense gravel beneath his front-wheel drive. A burley, dark-bearded man conducted the interview, and Brian could tell the man hated him from the moment he saw him. It was something in the eyes.
“Well, you worked in a place like this before, kid?” said the bearded shop owner.
“No,” said Brian, picking at his tie. “But I’m a quick learner and haven’t picked up any bad habits to unlearn.”
“I’ll give you a call,” said the interviewer.
Leaving, Brian knew he would not be getting a call from the ironworks, and thought this was probably for the best. Still, it depressed him, emasculated him, and in the darkening cloud of the financial uncertainty he’d created for himself, Brian felt the call of the die once again.
The die could give him an out. Spare him the humiliation of another interview like this.
Foot to the floor of his 10-year-old Kia Rio, Brian sped away from the industrial center with his thoughts on the die and the die alone.
#
Brian rolled a four.
“Shit!” he yelled, actually shouted, into the narrow confines of his studio.
When he’d written that option down, joining a club, he’d done it mostly out of facetiousness, spite for his mother’s catch-all nuggets of advice. Now the prospect was real and daunting.
What kind of fucking club could he join? He didn’t think he was particularly good at anything, and his interests were too pedestrian to warrant a club.
The four black dots on the beige face of the die stared out at him, daring him to defy his own little game. And if he defied one roll, how easy would it be to defy a one, when that roll inevitably came? No, better to stick to the script. Jamie Prescott had really beaten that number into his skull back at the call center. Stick to the script.
Script. Die. Brian thought of D&D, of the podcasts he liked to listen to, groups of friends on fantasy adventures. Escapism and socialization all in one.
It didn’t take him long to find a local group online, looking for new members.
He typed his first message and only reread it three times before hitting send.
Hi there! My name is Brian and I am interested in joining your group. I have no actual play experience but am a big fan of D20, Adventure Zone, and all the podcasts. I have a character made and ready to go!
Desperate? Maybe. But it was a D&D group. Where else was it safe to seem desperate?
He didn’t have to wait long for a response. Bethany Anderson was back to him in minutes, welcoming him to join the next mini-session.
#
Post-interview, weary with adrenaline come-down, and wondering why he’d gotten himself into all this, Brian got into his Kia Rio and looked up the directions to the house of the D&D host, a man named Jesus Monaco, whom he had never met but who seemed quite friendly on the group chat. Brian had no idea what to expect.
Turned out, he had nothing to fear.
Bethany Anderson opened the door. She was a big woman with purple hair and Pokémon tattoos, and the warm handshake and smile with which she greeted him were all he needed to feel immediately more at ease. These people weren’t threats. They were friends, with similar interests.
They introduced themselves as she led him into the house, a pre-2008 cookie cutter unit, done up in so much color, plant-life, and nerd-culture art that it took on its own identity in this post-Recession era. It smelled of people and use, musk and warmth, not bad nor good, just an environment like the dozens he’d grown up in.
Bethany introduced him to Jesus at the end of her dining table, back of the main room in this open floor-plan. He was the DM and had a full setup of gridded maps and carboard trifold boards shielding his schools of brightly colored dice. The man himself was wiry, Hispanic, and soft-spoken. Brian tried not to notice his twitches, or the way one of his eyes didn’t quite sync up with the other.
Jesus quickly proved whip-smart, with an imagination to rival the fantasy authors whose works Brian had so often plundered. As the others arrived, he handled the introductions and ice-breakers, opening up Brian to a selection of his peers, men and women his age who wanted the same thing he did: to spend time playing a game with people that might become friends.
By the end of the night, that’s exactly he thought they were.
It went great. He’d had a blast, and his monk character had panned out just as splendidly as it had in his mental role-pole and daydream scenarios. The people were great—kind, friendly, maybe a bit odd—his kind of people. He loved it.
So when his depression hit like a tidal wave sometime in the third hour of trying to get his mind to sleep, it took Brian for a bit of a surprise.
You unemployed, waste of space, loser.
You worthless, incel dork.
You stupid piece of shit.
All the familiar narratives came hard and sharp to the forefront of his mind, zapping him with monotonous rapidity.
He got out of bed, paced, drank water, tried to breathe. He repeated all these things and more. He turned on a podcast, switched to an audiobook, and ended up in front of the TV until his eyes hurt and he realized he was weighing the fated d6 in his open palm, rolling it there.
Without thinking, without hesitation, Brian rolled the dice onto the vinyl dining table.
5. Message a girl on a dating app.
With a prolific sigh, Brian settled back into his sofa and closed his eyes. His task he would accomplish, but the prospect was too much for the night. He’d deleted all his dating apps, given up the prospect after so much failure. Setting up a profile was a chore that weighed down even his restless mind and finally, begrudgingly, drug him into sleep.
#
It went terribly, downloading the apps and trying to compose a profile. It always did, and Brian somehow always found the worst light in which to interpret himself. The pictures he had—astoundingly rare—were unflattering and revealed far too much of his receding hairline. His jokes, or lack of, on the main page were suspect or dull. His likes uninteresting. His life, uninteresting.
Still, Brian forced himself to send a message unprompted.
A girl, cute, his age, glasses, artsy skirt, reading a book with a caption – Guess what I’m reading? Heart emoji, winky emoji.
Feeling flirty, Brian wrote: A book on how to get off dating apps for good. Maybe I can borrow it sometime? Winky face.
Re-read six times over, Brian hit send and tried not to think about the message. This was easy to do, as he had three virtual job interviews over the course of the next day. All of them left him with sweat seeping clean through his shirtsleeves and a crushing sense like he wasn’t going to be getting a call back from any of them.
Fortunately, he had the prospect of his next D&D session to give him something to think about until the inevitable phone call came through.
“Yeah, it’s about an inventory and shipping supervisory position,” said the man on the phone. His voice was gruff, thick, intimidating. “You Brian?”
“Sure am, sir,” he answered.
A few minutes later, Brian was being offered a job—on a contingency basis, of course.
His debts to the die were now paid.
Almost.
#
The next time he rolled the die, he got a 4 again.
He’d thought of this, of course. On repeat rolls, he’d do nothing. He could only join so many clubs, after all (and he counted his new D&D group). What he hadn’t thought of was the immense sense of lethargy, relief, and exhaustion he’d feel upon a dead roll. His adrenaline was spent, the action done, now he just wanted to go to sleep.
In the morning, he would begin his new job. A supervisory role on the warehouse floor, mostly counting inventory, scanning boxes, and moving things around. They could get him fork-lift certified, and from there the world was his oyster. But first he’d have to prove himself.
The pressure this idea represented for Brian drove out all ability to rationally think. This caused his mind to spiral as he lay awake, prisoner to cyclical madness.
Join a club.
Humph.
The next day kicked his ass. The hours were rough, the anxiety high, the sleep minimal, but he made it through his first day of work and came away thinking he’d left the right impressions, that he’d shown himself to be at least somewhat competent. Perhaps that’s all that mattered.
He was too tired to even think about the die, too tired, almost, to check the dating apps he’d installed the day before. But the notification hung over the icon, and his heart did a little jump-start, knee-jerk reaction. It left him sweaty and gut-sick, but he was also excited.
The girl had messaged back.
Ikr 😛 any book recommendations?
Brian was on his feet. Without realizing it, he was on his feet and pacing, inventorying and analyzing every book he’d ever read in his mind for an appropriate answer. It seemed to him in that moment that he’d read no books whatsoever, and his mind was as blank a slate as a kindergartner’s with neglectful parents.
He would think about books until he passed out, and the next day began a similar, chaotic cycle.
By the end of his second day, he’d drafted his response.
#
“Kemp! Main office in five!”
The voice came out of the receiving bay back office, a meandering honeycomb that led to the main office and the central entrance to FastEx Shipping Services, where Brian was humbly employed. He had been busy entering inventory totals on a hand scanner with barely functioning buttons before this command from on high. Immediately, his anxiety flared up and his brain became a storm of possibilities for the call. In this cacophony, Brian wished for the quiet of the grave.
When he arrived at the main office to find his boss and the chief technical officer—both gray-haired balding men with bronze skin and gold chains round their leathern necks—Brian found none of his anxieties become flesh. Instead, he found an opportunity.
“Brian, just the man I wanted to see!” said his boss. “Tell us: you have a fondness for technology, that right?”
Brian looked from one man to the other. Their hungry eyes appraised him.
“Yes, sir. I’ve been building computers since I was a kid.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Brian. You’ve proven smart and competent, which you won’t believe how rare that is. That means we feel comfortable having you look at this new system we bought.”
“New system?” Brian asked.
“Right, this newfangled product management and logistics system. It’s supposed to take in all our data and give us insights and shit. Only none of us has time or the expertise to get the damn thing working how we want it. Do you think you could help with that?”
Brian nodded, eager, hungry.
“Oh, definitely I can,” he said.
His bosses liked that.
They set him up on the new system and within minutes he was pouring over the user guides and terms of service to understand what had been placed in front of him. Within hours, he was making the thing dance.
His bosses liked that even more.
#
They’d scheduled a date, Brian and the girl. The third of October. 7 pm.
He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, even though they hadn’t spoken a whole lot behind the intermittent text passed back and forth, timed, spaced, not too needy, not too desperate. In his head, he knew everything about her. He’d created a whole persona and backstory for her, a future too, shared with him of course. All silly daydreams, fancies, scenarios that might be. Unlikely, he knew. But maybe.
In his excitement, he didn’t think about the die. He did think about dying, but those were mere escapist fantasies, less actionable.
Brian found himself hoping he didn’t roll a one.
He took his Kia Rio out, got it cleaned at the local drive-thru car wash, spent nine whole dollars doing it and got to use the vacuums free in the process. By the end of his little excursion, he and his ride were looking as spick and span as they ever had, hair and fiberglass slicked and polished.
The hour that followed was perhaps one of the worst of his life.
After arriving at a popular local spot—Sugarman’s—he waited at the outside tables, where he had a view of the parking lot and the inside of the restaurant. He reassured himself the dark bob and glasses pictured in the app weren’t already there.
Fran. He read her messages over and over in his time waiting outside that diner, in his nice shirt with his meticulously quaffed hair. 7 pm. Now 7:27, and it was getting dark.
Brian sent her a message.
Five minutes passed.
No response.
Brian’s gut flipped and danced and pulled at him. He wanted to pace. He started to pace. His head screamed and he wanted to run.
What was he even doing here? What was he thinking that someone had wanted to go out with him? He wasn’t a guy who got dates….
He decided to give her ten minutes more, see if she responded. Only those ten minutes came and went and he still waited, checking his phone over and over again, watching the parking lot.
Finally, he resigned himself to a full hour. At that point, if she didn’t show, no one could blame him.
He watched those final few minutes with hawk’s eyes on the parking lot, the street, the distant tree line. In his pocket, he rolled his chosen die in his fingers, squeezed it between his knuckles, fidgeted.
Fran didn’t come.
Driving home, Brian tried to calm the giddy, angry heat emanating from his gut. It twisted his insides, compressed and squeezed him. The sensation pulled Brian taut as a bowstring, and he was ready to go off. He pressed the accelerator to the floor as he up-shifted in his little car.
He was home in minutes, die in his hand.
I wanna die. I wanna die, repeated the voice in his head. He was not unaware of the unintentional pun he’d created in the act, the linguistic perfection of the little game he’d made of his life.
But did he want to die? Did he really? He had a D&D session the following day and he’d promised to bring the veggies and dip. It would be a real bummer for him to just up and kill himself and leave his party both saddened and without promised health snacks. Brian had to ask himself another question: was he really that selfish?
The die traded palms. Passing it back and forth in his fingers, Brian twisted the rounded-edges, the white face with its myriad eyes set in strange geometric patterns. Any direction he turned it, those eyes looked out on him, an alien creature hungry at the promise of blood.
Brian threw the die across the room in a single sudden act of violence. It cracked and bounced off the wall.
Heart hammering, breath coming in shallow spurts, Brian lifted himself from his chair and walked across the living room to where the die had landed on the carpet, perfectly aligned with one of its faces level with the world above, as though awaiting the read of a gentle, casual roll for a gentle, casual game. But Brian could see from the moment it landed that the die’s face offered only a single, watchful eye, a knowing dark hole as insouciant as it was damning.
Whether he’d wanted to or not, Brian had rolled a one.
Approaching the die, Brian sat. He didn’t touch it, only sat beside it on the carpet, staring into that dark eye. There was no intelligence there, of course, no awareness. Only cold, factual odds. But Brian had committed to the game.
He thought of his mother, whose calls he’d been ignoring. He thought of his siblings scattered across states. He thought about seeing his father again. He thought about not seeing his father again, if things didn’t work out that way, and in the end all one gets is the solace of nothing. Either way was good with Brian. He was tired. He was tired deep down into his bones.
The rope didn’t take long to find. It was in a drawer in his closet, already tied into a practiced noose from a rather depressing YouTube session that taught Brian the needed knots. He’d thought endlessly about giving it a go. Now it appeared to be the time.
With a calm and quiet-mindedness Brian hadn’t felt in years, he found the step ladder and got the noose set up in his bedroom on a hook intended for hanging plants or something—Brian didn’t know, but it seemed the perfect set up for a suicide. It was easy to do, didn’t take long, and in the end, Brian stepped back admiring the professionalism of the scene. In the white light, cut in jagged shadows where the noose and ladder created sculpturesque shapes in abstract, the room looked like a still from a movie set. This pleased Brian, who felt he couldn’t do anything with such a level of polish.
Only he couldn’t seem to think about using it.
He thought about D&D, about Bethany and the rest of the group, about Fran, about his mother, about his siblings, about his father. He thought about the veggies and dip he was going to get tomorrow and about the work he was doing setting up his new job with the software they’d purchased. He’d figured out how to get them all user roles and logins. He was almost ready to have them try out the inventory procedures, and they were excited about the work he was doing. Brian thought about how this tomorrow lay ahead, or a different one, a tomorrow that was either as black and empty as the void or a bright and happy homecoming. It would be a risk, a gamble, to choose that path. It would be a roll of the die.
Brian stared at his noose and thought until sleep overtook him.
#
He carried the die in his pocket as he walked the driveway path up to the front door of Bethany’s house. In his left hand, he hoisted a veggie tray, but with his right, he fidgeted with that die in his pocket until he got to the flowerbeds in front of the patio.
He’d only remembered the die was still in his pocket when his managers had called him in after his demo of the software and told him they’d like to make him the full-time system IT supervisor, with a pay raise and everything. He’d been fidgeting with the die then, out of nerves that became elation.
Now he was ready with snacks to play a game with people who were quickly becoming friends, and Brian decided perhaps, he had come to an end with his d6 roulette experiment.
Sure, he’d failed his last roll. He hadn’t done the action, but did that matter? He’d changed things, and maybe in the process, he really had killed his old self.
Brian tossed the D6 into Bethany’s bushes, where it rolled out of sight and out of mind. Then he knocked cheerily on the door and waited.
Bethany pulled him into a warm embrace when she answered, and Brian felt the first wave of mental calm he’d experienced since rolling the one.
About the Author: By day, Jake Nuttall is a technical writer; by night, he’s a creative writer. After his daughter is tucked in, he writes fiction in an attempt to mimic the masters that inspire him—from Robin Hobb to John Steinbeck to Stephen King. His short fiction has been featured in The Arcanist: Literary Fantasy Magazine and other online literary journals. Jake lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and daughter.