Free Close to Hugh by Marina Endicott

the Hall of Gruul: single-target damage 7,000 crushing with Improved Demoralizing Shout-up; Arcing Smash, 5,000-6,000 damage on plate; when debuffed, cleaves.
    The pickup raid is a clusterfuck, too many of them cratered already, this probably won’t work, but still, this boss is not a serious threat and— O my beautiful blood elf, take him down! Because Burton doesn’t have enough money or enough power to be a serious threat. To what? To my integrity? (Alone in the basement, Orion laughs.)
    People have to look out for themselves. What’s the problem with having a champion?
    People need real love too, that’s the problem.
    Kill kill kill kill kill , Lanjasa Elfkine grappling, moving, jerky slip-sliding and whacking, fingers flashing in the apex the acme the epitome of deathdealing killkilling …
    Dead enough? Oh, back for more. Die, feisty-ferocious mallrat Maulgar.
    Look at my mom, at how she is: a detached retina, dangling, and she’s roaming semi-blank/semi-hysterical through the landscape, hands fluttering at the end of her long, long arms. Eye mask and earplugs as she sleeps.
    Here’s the real problem with Burton: he’s not good enough. Neither is Newell, because he has Burton hanging around his psychic neck. I want to be better.
    Maulgar dies. Orion throws the controller against the basement wall.
    He reaches for his phone and texts:
    > one kiss
    A pause.
    < ?
    > I want to kiss you just once, softly and sweetly on your mouth.
    A pause.
    < … x

2. HUGH CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN
    Here’s Gerald Felker, the bereaved, climbing the steps of FairGrounds, his usual stop before heading to the Saab dealership. Hugh knows that office coffee: bitter and prolonged, like death. Opening the gallery door he hears Gerald ask for “an extra shot in the morning jolt!” Sounding manic.
    As Hugh finishes sweeping the steps and flips the gallery sign to Open , Gerald comes out again onto the FairGrounds veranda and sees him. Bulging muffin sack in one hand, Gerald raises his cup in a salute, a toast. Hugh lifts an imaginary cup back. “Good to see you yesterday,” he says, before he can pull back the words. Gerald’s face crashes from cheer to painful shame, caught having fun behind his dead wife’s back. It’s just habit, Hugh wants to tell him, to comfort him. You don’t mean it, I didn’t mean it. You didn’t mean it even in the old days, the ol’ glad hand, it’s just Chamber of Commerce, just business sense.
    Off goes Gerald down the street, around the corner. Hugh is suddenly afraid that he won’t make it, will park himself in his garage and die there one day soon. He can see Gerald’s office window—it will spring into light in a moment. Hugh stands in the shadow of the gallery’s porch, waiting for the light to come on. Willing Gerald to get there, to live.
    When she arrives (ten minutes late, because he told her to take the morning off), Ruth starts right in. She’s in a mood. It’s age or something, calcifying her mind, Hugh tells himself. She’s the most sane and helpful person, except for this crazy awful stuff.
    “Dave’s got a new person working for him, moonlighting from the hospice. Dave lets him drive the truck! I didn’t like the look of him. I always think he seems lazy, at the hospice. You can’t be too careful. Everywhere you look these days—well, you can see the difference. In the faces. At the hospital, too. Many, many more dark faces these days, you see it.”
    Oh, you do. Hugh sees it. One thing about his mother: never any of this, even on her worst days. Bile rises in his throat but he looks away, studies the place where he will hang the big Mighton.
    “It wasn’t like this before, that’s all I have to say,” Ruth says. Liar. She has much more to say. “In my days in this town, you knew everybody and they didn’t have the kind of strange ideas that you find now.”
    And what can you say to that? Anything Hugh could say would be politically correct and practically