“We were having a party, and Harry Warden started killing everybody!”

—Tommy Whitcomb, My Bloody Valentine

Here we are, with mere hours to go in the LDBC (actually, players in Krakow and Limerick have already finished, even if they don’t know it), and already I know exactly how poor Tommy feels. See, I joke. I kid. I make light-hearted fun of those who are eliminated early on, even if they’re people who are dear to me. Especially if they’re people who are dear to me. But as the weeks pass, and the lucky manage to stay in the game without getting puh-rum-pum-pum-pummed, I begin to silently root for them harder than ever.

They’re like my children. OK, so I don’t want want any legal responsibility for them. But they’re like my hamsters. Or an ant colony I enjoy watching for an intense number of weeks once a year. So when someone or something comes along and scorches them with a magnifying glass, it’s like they burned a tiny but painful hole in me, too.

So imagine Wednesday night, when the bodies began to pile high (well, three deep) within minutes of one another as a trio of my beloved LDBCers were snuffed out by the finale of … American Horror Story? I’ve never even watched the damn show, but I cannot imagine it’s good enough to make it worth that. Noah Richard. Jill Cimorelli. Libby White. Just names to you, but to me, they’re names with little square icons next to them.

Anyway, it’s 8:15 pm here on the Third Coast. Hang in there, my long-sufferin’ LDBCers. We’re almost ho-ho-home.

And it ain’t pretty …