The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (24 page)

“Yes. We all feel that way. The
Empire herself feels that way. Look at all of her empty seats, lonely for the
company of those who once worshipped her. People watch the classics on TV as if
their tiny screens and squeaking speakers could do justice to stories meant for
the silver screen.”

The emergency exit doors next
to the stage rattled on their hinges until the mascara girl jogged down, hit
the crash bar and stepped back to let an unaccompanied television set bump its
way in. It thudded through the door and thumped its lonesome way up the
carpeted steps, trailing its cord like a disconsolate tail. When the television
set reached the top of the steps, it crashed through the swinging doors and
rolled into the lobby to sit with its vagrant brothers at the feet of
Terpsichore.

Len looked at the
pink-rain-slicker woman, at her face so caring and lovely. His eyes burned and
he coughed. “Are you a film director? Are you filming a movie right now?”

With a tender expression, she
took the camera from Jean Tom and blew across the lens. “Jean Tom’s ready for
his take, Len.”

Jean Tom stood on the stage,
nodding at the lounging crowd, winding and unwinding his dirty scarf until he’d
knotted it into an ascot with shabby chic. “Crank it up,
oui
? Roll
film.”

There was no viewfinder, so Len
framed the shot the best he could
over the
topline of the camera and turned the crank in the counterclockwise direction
the pink-rain-slicker woman was indicating with a whir
ling finger. He
expected friction, the sensation of gear teeth meshing and the sound of film
rolling, but the motion was smooth and soundless, like drawing a paddle through
oil. He cranked and cranked, and Jean Tom spoke.

“It was a crazy Irishman who
said it the best. ‘We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.’
It should have been a Frenchman who said this—” Jean Tom moved his age rounded
shoulders in an expressive, Gallic shrug “—but the Empire makes me forgive the
theft.” With a naked glance to the woman in the pink rain slicker Jean Tom
swept off his knit cap, moistened his wrinkled mouth and began to sing.

It was the voice of a wounded
man, a broken echo of what once must have been something fulsome and wondrous.
The chair-jumpers embraced one another, sniffling, and the girl with the
charcoal eyeliner took a stub of oil pastel from her coat pocket and drew a
remarkable V twined in power cords, like the leading letter in an illuminated
manuscript, but her grip was crippled, and the pastel crumbled. She bit her lip
until it bled.

As Jean Tom sang, the lines
around his eyes faded. His grey hair grew darker and richer in luster. The
crowd was agitated, ageless faces suffused with a frenzied light. They waited
as he moaned and choked through the tune, and when at last, the final note
faded, they leapt to their feet and swept him up onto their shoulders. They
paraded him around the shadowy, candlelit house in a victory lap, chanting.

Victim of the Digital
Age, Welcome to the Empire.

The rain-slicker woman touched
Len’s hand. “Welcome.”

Len turned to look at her and
wasn’t surprised to see that her skin had become smooth, opalescent as a
girl’s. She touched a hand to her hair, which rippled over her shoulders like
cream-colored silk. She slipped free of the pink plastic rain slicker and,
standing naked, lifted ivory arms to the ceiling. “Behold, Terpsichore.”

Len looked at her, and saw the
scream queens of the silver screen, the doe-eyed Erika Blanc, the luscious
Cinzia Monreale, the brooding Soleded Miranda. She was all of them, and she was
Lizzie too, but also entirely herself. Technicolor crept up the shabby stage
curtains behind her, washing the carpets, polishing the brass balcony railings
and the leering faces of the cherubs. “Thank you, oh thank you, angels!” She
clasped her hands. “And congratulations to Jean Tom.”

The new Jean Tom, no longer
turtle-faced, no longer reeking of disappointment and age, danced up the aisle
and out the lobby doors. He appeared in the high window of the projector booth,
and light washed across the silver screen.

The motley angels settled into
their velvet seats, sending an assortment of bottles and crinkling cellophane
packages down the rows. Without hesitation, flushed with the magic of it all,
Len took a handful of Red Vines and a deep swig of some horrible bathtub gin
that set his feet drumming on the theater floor.

Terpsichore, she of the golden
hair and the pinup breasts tucked herself under the curve of Len’s arm, and
showed him how to bite his red licorice into a straw for a more serious drink
of gin. “
Stolen by Mr. Sergei, my rascal angel
,” she whispered. “Isn’t
this wonderful?”

Something fluttered, terribly,
in Len’s stomach, and it was clear to him now, what Lizzie had been browsing
for, what he had not given her. It was this feeling, a feeling of being
embraced and understood. “Oh yes,” he said. “Wonderful.”

They watched the triple
feature, Argento’s
Suspiria
, Mario Bava’s
Kill, Baby Kill
,
Bismee’s
Devil’s Nightmare
. A flock of angels at play watched demons at
work. The gin went to work on Len’s heart, easing his sorrows, obliterating his
worry, focusing the totality of his happiness on the sweet progress of the
scream queens—their hands over their mouths, eyes shocked, yet subtly
complicit. Terpsichore’s hand on his leg was sweetly erotic, but Len found
himself sinking into the velvet seat as if drowning, his arms and legs so
heavy, so slow. He heard a spate of laughter, felt the sweet camaraderie of
horror fans taking in a midnight showing of a cult classic—and as he rested his
head against the red velvet chair, he felt the lips of Empire on his forehead,
and thought,
I belong here. I’m an angel, oh yes.

He understood, finally, what
Lizzie had been searching for.

Len woke in a drift of snow
outside the Empire Theater. Startled by the rising wail of a passing ambulance,
Len fumbled something cold and heavy to his shrunken chest. A slimy residue of
gin and Red Vines had glued his lips together. His clothing agleam with frost,
he had a movie-marathon headache, a backache, and a profound sense of loss.
Loss of warmth, loss of love. As the ambulance screamed by, the EMTs didn’t
turn to consider him, although he sat trembling and in serious danger of
hypothermia.

Between the end credits of the
last film and him awakening in the snowdrift, Len had dreamed of love for a
hundred years. In his dream, it wasn’t Terpsichore who sat with her hand on his
leg, but his wife—Lizzie, as she had dressed in college, with her earth shoes,
and her marijuana cigarettes—back before she had permanently jammed the cell
phone into her ear so she could chat with her lover while her hands spidered
across a keyboard missing the zero key.

He blinked at his wrinkled,
liver-spotted hands, then up at the marquee. DATE WITH AN ANGEL! ANGEL
SANCTUARY! RUN, ANGEL, RUN! With a cry, Len hurled himself against the doors,
pounding with palsied, ancient fists. How had he become so old so fast?
“Terpsichore!”

He expected no answer, and he
got none. Across the street, a small crowd was gathering at the post office.
Keith, glued to his palm device, stood just inside the glass doors, ignoring an
old woman’s plea to get in. She waved a newspaper, shouted, and pounded on the
glass.

Watching her from deep in the
snow drift in the lee of the Empire, Len wondered if Jean Tom, and Mr. Sergei,
and Lizzie had sat there in this same drift of snow, watching the morning post
office drama unfold, wondering how to re-enter the Empire.

Had they, too, waited in the
cold on Washington Street, like angels yearning for Heaven?

Starter House

Jason Palmer

Dale looked up through the
ribbed Lucite dome of Asteroid Cintas II, his eyes lit from within by thoughts
of a bright future. “I never imagined,” he said, “I’d own a purebred house.”

Pam locked her eyes on his. “I
knew you would. I knew we would. This makes it all worth it.”

They kissed.

A forklift driver smiled at
them as he passed, trundling a giant spool of wire through corridors of stacked
feedbags. He disappeared into the high dark bay of the feedlot.

Dale and Pam shivered with
excitement when a giant discomfited
humph
came from the bay. They smiled
into each other’s eyes. “Do you think they’re working on ours?” she said.

Dale waited a loaded moment to
answer, slowly, “I think so. I think so.”

Someone said, “Y’all got that
male?”

A salesman.

“Yes,”
said Dale, cradling Pam’s waist. “We want a little independence.”

The salesman came around a
stack of grain bags. “Can’t say I blame you. People buy females, they know the
payoff for breeding is good, but some don’t realize it’s a long road. These
ain’t chickens.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Stu Armstrong.”

They
shook. Armstrong tipped his hat at Pam, and then another massive
humph
beyond the lighted part of the warehouse made him look up. “Uh-oh,” he said,
grinning, “I think they’ve started on your
boy.”

They all looked at each other
in suspense.

Armstrong said, “What say we go
and watch them wire him up?”

Pam clapped her hands in
excitement, and they crossed the warehouse to stand in the entrance to the vast
dim bay. Beyond the boundary of the bonecrete floor and overhead lights, the
soaring dome gave perspective to the universe.

There was a vast hiss from
pressurization and a thickening of the hair smell of B vitamins.

Dale and Pam held hands while a
gantry with bubble tires entered from the vacuum plains outside. Upon it stood
something pink, bipedal, and male, forty feet tall. A humanoid, mongoloid
mountain that looked one quarter armadillo.

Armstrong waved to some of the
workmen, signaling
Customer here!
and a few waved back.

The giant standing on the
gantry didn’t move except to chew, rolling cud lazily in its mouth. It had a
hayseed sort of look except for the bulging forehead. The workmen used long
gaff hooks to bring it baying down into a painful crouch, then held the hooks
firmly until it adjusted. It began chewing again, although its big human eyes
looked wild.

Dale and Pam watched in
fascination. Armstrong observed them. “Yep,” he said, “purebred, perfect
health, and one hundred percent aye-daptated. One big atmosphere suit for the
family.”

The slow workmen barked at one
another, throwing loops of wire over the creature and catching them on the
other side. A steel cable went over the back of the neck, keeping it bowed
down. Tight loops bound the ankles to the thighs and the arms to the wrists
like chicken wings, and it made Dale vaguely hungry. He glanced at Pam
wondering if she shared the thought, but her face was that of a little girl
filled with wonder and happiness.

The creature’s stomach was
brought between its knees, the chin to rest on the stomach. A faux Georgian
porch was hung on a steel band over the eyes and secured with a giant padlock
at the back of the head.

“Is it all done?” asked Pam.

“Oh, no ma’am,” said Armstrong.
“We still have to gouge and cauter and clean. I just thought you might like to
see this part. I imagine, if it was my first house, I’d want to see everything
having to do with it, top to bottom, except the gouging. All the moaning and
baying and the mess, kind of turns people off. That’s why we’re full service.
‘We Do The Dirty Work’, that’s our motto.”

“We’ll remember you, Mr.
Armstrong,” said Pam, her hand over Dale’s heart, “the man who sold us our
first house.”

–Two
Months Later–

Dale left work and piloted his
cruiser across the Valley of the Shadow with two fingers on the stick. His
breath turned to ferns of ice on the front glass, and he listened to the treads
popping icy pebbles along the floor of the impact crater. The coolers burped to
life, as the temperature topped 220 Fahrenheit in the sun that peeked into the
valley.

Then he was home.

Home puffed and sweated in the
heat.

Dale bounced across a short
patch of asteroidal plane and then stepped through the wet membrane of the
belly door. Setting down his helmet, he stood a moment in the entryway. The
white and red Christmas tree lights in the living room soothed him.

Pam called from another room,
“Honey?”

He sighed. “Yes?”

“The house was very shifty.
Just a minute ago. Will you do something?”

Relieved. “Oh, okay.” This he
could handle. He set the helmet on a peg near the door and shuffled down the
hall to an unadorned closet. Opening the door, he turned on a naked fluorescent
light by pulling a chain, and picked up his worn cricket bat.

He crunched his fingers against
the electrical tape on the handle.

Dale closed the door and rolled
his shoulders, then took a first cursory whack at the loose, hanging scrotum
that took up most of the closet. The yielding bulk was flaccid, and the
exertion felt good. He hit it again, much harder, and an angry rumble ran
through the walls.