Book of Dead Names

The Book of Dead Names was a shambles from the outside. It was a in a seedy neighborhood that butted up against the ritzy neighborhood where the stars, tycoons, and politicos let down their hair for the weekend. They rolled up in their limos and strolled down red carpets and didn’t see, halfway down the nearest alley, a simple wooden door.

The wood was old and dark with age, an anachronism against the city concrete, and the brick walls were riddled with old bullet holes. Just inside the door was a cramped hallway lined with hooks from which hung a dazzling array of coats, jackets, cloaks, cardigans, and more. Beyond the maze of coats, too reminiscent of a wardrobe leading to another world, was the Book of Dead Names itself.

It looked like an ancient library in a manor house, only there was a bar along the back wall, long and straight and staffed by a trio of forgettable but strangely identical young men in suits. The walls were lined with books and paneled with velvet. The carpet was deep red, plush, and thick velvet drapes separated a single room into intimate nooks and crannies where tables for two and three nestled. Each table was antique and different, as if the proprietors of the place had hit up a multitude of estate sales from the seventeenth century onward. Some tables had games on them - chess, checkers, go - and others had tall, thin glass vases overflowing with artfully arranged corpses of flowers. The light - from overhead, in a creaking chandelier; from the walls in sconces; from the tables, in lamps - was all candles, all soft and warm and golden.

It was the perfect place to escape every day world, and a perfect excuse to never go back.

(296 words)