Arcade Lives

by Rudi Dornemann

Everyone in the arcades knew Suskind. He was the one who made sure everything worked and fixed whatever didn’t. He unclogged the gas jets when the lighting in the panoramas grew dim. He fixed the broken panes in the cabinets of the curiosity shops and wonder-museums. On damp mornings, he directed the flaneurs and other artistic idlers toward the café tables closest to the grates where warm air welled up from the steamworks.

The Landlords’ Association paid his salary and, although they were even more despised as a collective than they were individually, this animosity wasn’t transferred in Suskind’s direction. Everyone regarded him as a friend. Even the poet, as bitter as he was brilliant, would occasionally share a drink with him (absinthe leached from other peoples’ second-hand sugar cubes was the best he could afford).

Everyone mourned Suskind when he was found dead; everyone wondered what had happened. Only the poet did anything to find out — Suskind’s ghost visited him nightly until he began tracing the repairman’s rounds, asking questions. Had anyone noticed anything in the repairman’s manner that suggested he feared some danger? Had anyone been following him?

The poet learned nothing, but pressed on, week after week. If he re-created the routine of Suskind’s visits, perhaps someone would remember an anomaly in his last days.

In the third week, when the panorama managers asked, he cleaned the gaslights, and the vistas of distant sea battles and blue-towered cities shone vivid again as life. He oiled the pulleys in the reputable theaters and found lime for the lights of the disreputable ones.

He became, as Suskind had been, an arranger of matches between chessplayers in disparate cafes who would otherwise never have met. He gave the secret of the table by the warm grate to a particularly rumpled playwright.

When he finally discovered that it was mere bad luck that killed Suskind, the coincidence of living upstairs from a family of necromancers who’d summoned one malign spirit too many, it was almost an anticlimax.

The poet began accepting the checks mailed by the Landlords’ Association. Although he could afford his own absinthe now, he’d lost his taste for the distraction it offered. He was writing again, every bit as bitter as before, but no longer weighed down by the nagging fear his brilliance was exhausted. It might be, but, poems or lights: his hands got things done.

THE ROC GRAVEYARD

by Daniel Braum

This entry is third in a series. Feel free to revisit Basilisk Tracks and Bats on Fire before or after reading.

#

Michaela wondered how they knew to come here to die. Was it something like how sea turtles always found the same beach they were born to lay their eggs?

No one had ever photographed one of the great birds actually coming here to die. It happened so infrequently. Still, gatherings like this, with great numbers of the aggressive, territorial birds were rare. Her group was in luck.

François would have loved it.

She fingered the Phoenix feather he had bought her. He had given it to her before their first kiss. He had been that sure. Even now, she still carried it with her.

#

The island mountaintop was littered with giant bones. One by one the giant birds dropped from the sky and perched on the macabre roost of bleached rib cages, beaks and skulls. The group’s transport lifted from the waves, hovering high into the air for a better vantage. This was as close as they dare come.

Something bumped the transport. A young Roc. Defenses fired. Flares. Water. Directed blasts of sound. The bird held on.

Michaela composed a frantic message to François on her PDA. “Dearest One. I am sorry. I do not know how to untie this knot we got in, but there is still so much love…”

The boat lurched. A big flare exploded and the Roc let go. The rest of the group scrambled for their cameras as if this were routine.

#

The Rocs sang. Their mourning vibrating with the flickers of the endless stars above. What worlds, what sights had the departed bird seen? Scientists said they flew between worlds. In the quantum spaces between realities. They saw possibility. They lived in worlds that could be and that never would be.

Michaela held the phoenix feather up. Rich orange shimmered through the stringy fiery red veins. It was perfect. And for a while there she and Francois had been so perfect. She brought the message up on her PDA. She stared at the little glowing screen, counting each bell she wished they hadn’t rung, then hit delete.

The transport hovered above the waves. The stars lit the deck. The Roc song was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard and she couldn’t hold her tears back much longer. Oh, Francois, she thought. She released the feather and let the night wind take it.