Ficlets

Athena's Station Part 4

She removed the padlock from the front doors and threw them wide open for him. She bade him inside, and as she followed him into the gloom of the silent space, she reached over to the bank of lightswitches she knew by heart.

One by one, the beams and pyramids of light sparked into existance. The overhead tubes and cones. The neon frames around the mirrors in the back, by the bar and the jukebox. The floodlights skewed to bathe the chrome poles on the raised stage and runway. And then the footlights of the runway itself.

To him, it was like seeing a town—a city—of light and shadow suddenly construct itself from the nothingness.

When he looked back at her, she said, “Look again” and flipped the last switch.

Suddenly there were four balloons wafting over the stage. And then a fifth flitted up, and he could see the trap door in the stage, through which the balloons had risen.

“That’s where my place is. Through there.”

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