The Back Room: Memo #3

As sure as Death and Tarot

Welcome to The Back Room, where the lights are glitchy, the music is haunting, and the plans are still half-written on the tablet. This is where I think out loud, try things before they’re ready, and invite you to watch the Ph'nglui mess take shape.
Thanks for sliding back here with me, I appreciate it.

CW: Death.

I’ll be the first to say Huxley wasn’t my dog. He came with my son when he moved in full-time with me a few years ago. Sure, I trained him as a pup. Worked through his food aggression, taught him a few tricks. But “he’s not my dog. That’s Max’s dog.” I was the first to cry when he died this week—organ failure. We thought we had one more day before we’d take him to the vet’s and say goodbye. But, at the end, it was me, old man Hux — eleven years all told and Death — together on the back deck, I’ve been here before, it’s always a sad hurt. My son couldn’t do it—all too much. Later, we had an after-care moment over takeout Chinese and Minecraft, co-opt, on the Xbox like 2014. Them old feel-good staples.

My favorite auntie — nutty, zany, loud, fierce — has been moved to hospice. She puts on a tough front for the family. But when it’s just the two of us, she’s scared. Vulnerable. I wish I had comforting answers. All I’ve got is prison dominoes, a game she taught me, and hasn't won in ages!

“Nephew,” she says, “don’t let me get to heaven with no wins. I won’t be able to vouch for your ass!” I don’t know how many rounds we play, and I might need someone to vet me at the gates!

Games are are my love language, or at least how I share it. I’m okay. Me and death — we’re on awkward terms. Always have been since my military days. Death is a special event, an oddity in my games, that’s me. I've opened Urban Shadow games with funeral processions in the French Quarter. Coriolis had a secret meetings in a morgue. Chases through cemeteries in Blades in the Dark. I games it can be more strange oddity, less sad hurts.

Old Man Hux