D&D Glory Hole

The trouble started with a folded piece of paper tucked between the character sheets of a battered D&D binder in the university library. Riley Mercer had been the first to notice it, mostly because he’d been looking for his campaign notes and instead found something written in suspiciously elaborate handwriting.

Where Baldur’s Gate hangs upon the wall, look behind for what you desire most of all.

“What the fuck is this?” Riley demanded, holding the note between two ring-covered fingers. The twenty-two-year-old redhead was sprawled across his chair, one scuffed Converse propped against the table leg. Messy copper hair stuck out around his round glasses, and a faded black graphic tee hung loosely over a long-sleeved white shirt. His usual shit-eating grin had already begun creeping across his freckled face. “Freddy, you little freak. Did you write me a love letter?”

Freddy Whitmore nearly choked on his iced coffee. At twenty, the blond biomedical engineering major still had the unfortunate habit of looking guilty whenever someone addressed him too loudly. His oversized forest-green hoodie practically swallowed his slender frame, sleeves pulled over his knuckles as he leaned forward to inspect the parchment through his wire-framed glasses. Fluffy blond hair fell into his honey-brown eyes. “W-what? No! Why would I—Riley, I don’t even write like that!”

“That’s exactly what someone who writes like that would say.”

“That’s not even an argument!”

Across the table, Grayson Valance didn’t bother looking up from the miniature paladin he’d been carefully painting. The twenty-three-year-old architecture major was an imposing six-foot-four, with broad shoulders that strained against his black-and-gold jersey and messy black waves falling around his dark-framed glasses. Silver gauges decorated his ears, and his perpetually unimpressed expression made him look considerably less approachable than the two idiots he’d somehow agreed to live with. “It’s probably one of your stupid campaign puzzles, Riley.”

Riley’s grin faltered. “Why would I put a puzzle in my own binder and then act surprised?”

“Because you’re an attention whore.”

“Wow. Okay. Hurtful.”

They spent the next fifteen minutes accusing each other of increasingly elaborate romantic sabotage. Riley insisted Grayson had finally developed a sense of humor. Grayson suggested Riley had forgotten writing his own campaign material again. Freddy quietly wondered whether someone from their tabletop club was messing with them, although the possibility that the note might be genuine made his stomach do something deeply uncomfortable.

It wasn’t until they returned to their cramped half of the duplex that evening that Freddy finally made the connection.

“Wait.” He stopped halfway through taking off his backpack, staring across their cluttered living room. “Baldur’s Gate. The poster.”

Three pairs of eyes turned toward the enormous, slightly crooked Baldur’s Gate poster hanging above their gaming table.

Riley blinked. Then his face split into a delighted grin. “Holy shit. The nerd cracked the code.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“We’re literally in a D&D campaign right now, Frederick. Embrace your heritage.”

Grayson set his keys on the counter, surveying the poster with narrowed dark eyes. The room smelled faintly of instant ramen, old books, and Riley’s aggressively cinnamon-scented candle. Miniatures crowded the shelves, dice littered the coffee table, and someone’s abandoned character sheet was stuck beneath an empty energy drink. “It’s a poster, Riley. What’s supposed to be behind it?”

“Treasure. True love. A portal to another dimension. Maybe a really enthusiastic goblin.”

“Please don’t say that,” Freddy muttered.

Riley was already moving across the basement with exaggerated ceremony, Riley peeled back one corner of the glossy paper.

Then he stopped.

His grin disappeared.

“Uh. Guys?”

Grayson glanced up. “What?”

“There’s a fucking hole in our wall.”

“What?” Freddy squeaked.

Riley pulled the poster farther aside, revealing a neatly cut, mouth-height opening framed by duct tape laid over the edge of the rough plaster, making it smooth. All three had seen this before, on websites in the dark. A Glory Hole. Beyond it hung a little black curtain, completely obscuring whatever, or whoever, might be on the other side. A small handwritten sign had been taped just beneath the opening.

THE PLEASURE PORTAL. ONLY FOR MY BRAVE ADVENTURERS.

For several seconds, the living room fell completely silent.

Riley stared at the opening with his mouth hanging slightly open. His freckled cheeks had gone suspiciously pink, and the hand holding the poster trembled just enough to make the paper rustle. “No fucking way,” he breathed, before looking over his shoulder with an expression somewhere between horror and Christmas-morning excitement. “NO FUCKING WAY. WE HAVE A GLORY HOLE.”

“Stop calling it that!” Freddy hissed, his entire face turning scarlet. He’d pulled his hoodie sleeves over his hands again, nervously twisting the fabric as his eyes darted between the curtain and his roommates. “Oh my God. Is someone actually supposed to be behind that? Like, a real person? What if this is some kind of prank?”

Grayson had already stepped closer, his towering frame casting a shadow across the wall. He inspected the edges of the opening, then the black curtain, his expression growing increasingly incredulous. “Someone cut through the wall,” he said flatly. “Our actual fucking wall.”

“Yeah, Gray, I’m getting that part. I’m more interested in the part where someone wants to fuck us us through it.”

“Nobody said they wanted to fuck you, specifically.”

Riley clutched his chest. “Why are you always trying to destroy my happiness?”

Freddy barely heard them. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat. Someone lived on the other side of that wall. Someone whose laughter occasionally drifted through the plaster during their late-night campaigns. Grayson seemed to have reached a similarly troubling conclusion. His jaw tightened as he glanced toward the adjoining wall.

Riley, meanwhile, had recovered just enough to start grinning again, although his hazel-green eyes kept flicking nervously toward the curtain. “Okay, but hypothetically,” he began, rubbing his palms against his jeans, “if there is someone behind there, and they’re actually offering to—”

“Riley,” Grayson warned.

“—it would be rude not to investigate, right?”

Freddy made a strangled noise. “You cannot seriously be considering this!”

“Dude, a mysterious person has apparently built a romance portal into our basemen. What do you want me to do? Ignore the side quest?”

Grayson folded his arms, staring at the little black curtain. “We don’t even know who’s behind it.”

“That’s literally the point, dumbass.”

“And we don’t know if it’s a joke.”

That shut Riley up.

For a brief moment, all three boys stood staring at the opening, each privately imagining the same humiliating possibility: leaning forward, believing for one stupid second that someone genuinely wanted to kiss them, only to hear laughter from the other side.

Riley swallowed, his usual grin returning a little too quickly. “Well,” he muttered, adjusting his glasses with an uncharacteristically nervous hand, “guess there’s only one way to find out.”

He leaned toward the black curtain, stopping just short of the opening.

“...Hello? Uh, is somebody actually there?”