The Book of Apex: Vol 1 by Jason Sizemore

Author:Jason Sizemore [Sizemore, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Apex Publications
Published: 2009-12-01T06:00:00+00:00

The audience had lost its collective mind. Snapping at one another with bedraggled scarves, stamping across puddles of snow with scuffed galoshes mended with duct tape, they danced through the aisles of red velvet seats—dozens of shabby villains, all touching one another and laughing. The Empire rose over them in decaying splendor, moth-eaten velvet, peeling gilt wallpaper and leering cherubs. The silver screen was ripped at the edges, but still good in the middle.

The woman in the pink slicker popped the corn over a camp stove, which gave a flame when she turned a crank. A tall girl in charcoal eyeliner cranked on a gramophone, which spat baroque melodies from a porcelain disk. The man with the micro-cassette recorder cranked away at a tiny handle in its side, interviewing an ancient silver poodle while a middle-aged man in Ben Franklin spectacles knelt in the aisle, winding up a toy robot.

Len wiped his eyes. Red candles burned in the empty light bulb sockets, runnels of wax trailing down the flaky wallpaper, and the smoke burned. “This is...what? A homeless shelter?”

Jean Tom grunted, and shifted the leather camera bag slung over his shoulder. “The Empire is a shelter, Mr. Len.” The old man peeled off his beret, his hair salt and pepper waves spilling on the loops of his scarf. He grimaced as a woman in her seventies pattered by in a red flannel nightgown, blowing bubbles. “She is our refuge, the Empire, but not the kind you mean.”

“Angels!” said the woman in the slicker. “It’s Mr. Len.”

The people scrambled from the stage like puppies. A dozen-or-so leaped across the theater seats to congregate—wriggling—in the aisle. The pink rain-slicker woman shooed them from the gas burner, protecting the huge foil mushroom of freshly popped corn. The seat jumpers were a motley bunch, dressed in bits of business attire, message t-shirts, and taffeta skirts, and they crept forward to touch Len, beaming at him with ageless smiles.

Angels of the movie theater. Kindred spirits.

That they were illegal squatters was a certainty. From the moment he’d stepped into the theater, he’d known it wasn’t right for them to be there capering in the candlelight like children. Despite his minor vandalism of Keith’s computer workstation, Len was nothing if not law-abiding, and just being in the abandoned theater was enough to turn amusement into dread, especially when Jean Tom opened the leather case and Len had a look at the black machine lying inside. “Hey, Jean Tom, look. I know what I said about the Polaroid and all that, but I pretty much hate anything that needs batteries.” Home electronics took Lizzie away. They steal your soul, is what he wanted to say. But he couldn’t ever say such a crazy thing. Not even in a madhouse.

Jean Tom brought out the camera. It was the size of a tin lunchbox with a lens at one end and a hand-crank, like the wire crank of a jack-in-the-box, on the side. “Touch her, Mr. Len.” Jean Tom put the camera in Len’s hands.

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