For Dennis (1964 – May 18th, 1992)
We were gods in the attic,
cradling dice like bones of old saints,
teenage prophets in borrowed basements,
each with our own heresies to carry.Dennis—
you rolled low on every chart that mattered:
skin like milk and freckles burned red,
thick glasses fogged by anxiety and breath,
coordination like a cursed marionette,
voice high, shrill, impossible to ignore—
and so we mocked you, because we were cruel,
and you stayed, because you were real.You were the glitch in the party,
the wrong note in the chord
we didn’t know we’d miss
until silence replaced it.You bled into our narratives
like spilled ink we never cleaned up.
You played the characters no one else dared to imagine:
the elf who cut to feel,
the jester who cried offstage,
the lover who didn’t know how to be touched
except in stat blocks and initiative rolls.You were a mess.
So was I.
And we knew it.
And we knew each other through it.I exiled you once.
You deserved it,
and you didn’t.
And when we found our way back,
we made stories that shouldn’t have worked—
nymphomaniac elves with veiny fold-in body cocks,
blood rites in moonlit glades,
clitoral tissue in the wrong place on purpose.We made it work.
Gods, we made it glorious.And then came Orlane.
A Green Dragon in a swamp.
Fog like ruined lace.
The party gatheredWe were meant to play that Saturday.
You died that Monday.
May 18th.
The calendar folded inward.
No saving throw.
No DM screen.
Just cold real-world game over.They moved on.
Of course they did.
Boys with drying acne and parents who never hugged them.
They shut the book, changed the music, stopped mentioning your name.But I didn’t.
I broke.Vieux and silence.
Visions and collapse.
The kind of grief that feels like falling forever
in a dream that doesn’t wake.They buried you.
I kept writing.They forgot you.
I retconned you into the bloodline of elves.
I gave you magic.
I gave you death with meaning.
I made sure Laena fell before the dragon,
just as you did before the world.And the dragon?
Still there.
Still waiting in the Orlane swamp.
I’ve never run that module.
I never will.Because that’s where I keep you.
Unfought.
Unfinished.
Unforgotten.