The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [6]
About a hundred years before Beckett’s time, and a hundred years into the Architecture War, an architect from Sar-Sarpek named Irwin Arkady began buying up property on either side of St. Dunsinay’s Street, with the intention of walling off either end and expanding his houses into the middle of it. Because St. Dunsinay’s Street was a major thoroughfare, the Lord Mayor of Trowth flatly refused this plan; undeterred, Arkday simply built low, beautiful covered bridges between his properties, arching two storeys above the street. St. Dunsinay’s came to be called the Arcade instead, and a new front in the Architecture War was opened. Within a few years, every street for blocks around the Arcade found itself closed off from the sky with covered bridges, upon which more houses and towers were built. The city itself was ponderously sinking beneath its own weight, so new roads and walkways had to be built on top of the bridges and above the old streets, condemning five or six square miles of streets, squares, and alleys into darkness beneath the mass of the petrified battle of the Architects.
This was the Arcadium, and because the poor, weak sunlight that managed to break through the omnipresent cloud cover above the city always seemed to lack the strength to battle the rest of the way into the Arcadium, there was no way to tell what time it was. A wise gentleman always made sure to wind his watch, lest he lose track of time and inadvertently spend long hours lost beneath the stone mountain of the city of Trowth.
Skinner was in his dream, and she’d left behind the Coroner’s charcoal-colored dress and corset, left behind all her clothes, so that she was just pale skin and young, smooth limbs, and she’d wrapped her legs around his waist and her slender hands rested on his cheeks, and Beckett could see his face reflected in the shiny silver band that covered her eyes and framed by the waves of her dark, dark hair, and his face, his face was rotten, full of rotten holes where his cheeks and nose and lips should be, and Skinner opened her mouth and closed it and opened and closed it, so that her teeth made a clack-clack-clacking sound…
…which was really the sound of his old wind-up clock, insistently reminding him that half-past five in the morning was when he should be getting out of bed. A nauseating pain struck him behind the eyes and temples. The withdrawal headache had waited a fraction of a second after Beckett had fully gained consciousness, presumably to hit him with the full effect. The pain often did that; it would lurk somewhere out of the way for a while, only to jump back at him when he turned his head, or stood up suddenly, or when he really needed to be paying attention.
Long, deep, ragged breaths made Beckett feel more like he could resist the urge to take a shot of veneine immediately. He stumbled from bed, moving a little faster than his joints were ready for, in the hopes of encouraging his adrenaline to stimulate his mind awake. The pain in the sides of his knees made him wince, but it worked just as well. Beckett stood and staggered to his washbasin. He looked at his reflection and sighed with dismay.
Elijah Beckett examined in his mirror the bright red hole in his face that gaped between his eyes. He pressed the end of it with his fingers, the tips of which had suffered a similar fate, and was mildly pleased to discover that his nose was still in place. His nose had become completely transparent and, though the purpling skin on his cheeks, the bloody, gaping hole where his nose should have been and which now revealed red muscle and bits of bone all served to dishearten him immensely, at least the nose was still there. The end of his nose was numb, as were his almost-invisible fingertips, but he could still feel the pressure of their contact. It was possible to see just the outline of his nose where light diffused around its curve, giving it a kind of soft colorless edge.
Beckett stretched. His joints cracked alarmingly, and the dull ache that had settled perpetually in them spiked to excruciating levels