Free Arachnodactyl by Danny Knestaut

backdoor. No matches were near it. Ikey squinted into the shadows around him. No matchboxes or cups sat in the open. He looked back to the workshop door. It remained shut and gave no hint of when Cross intended to come inside.
    Ikey turned around. He grasped the brass doorknob of the dining parlor and twisted it until the latch clicked. He pulled the door back. Hinges squeaked in protest. No light spilled out across his face. He might as well have opened a closet door if not for the familiar odor of boiling chicken, an odor which sat atop the musty smell of old air in enclosed spaces.
    The floor creaked as he stepped inside. The wraith of light drifting through the scullery evaporated in the dining room. Darkness curled around him. Ikey pulled the door shut. The latch clicked back into place. As his hand left the knob, the door disintegrated into nothingness. For a moment, he blinked into the black and waited for dim shapes of furniture to surface into vision. They did not come. The dark remained thick, impenetrable, a large and slow beast that took up the room with its shaggy fur. No one could see in such conditions.
    Stairs creaked. Ikey looked in their direction. No glow pulsed or surged with the footsteps of whomever approached. Ikey’s breath slowed. He peered into the dark until his eyes watered and showed him the little flits and flicks of white that streaked his vision whenever he stood in pitch blackness.
    Footsteps reached the top of the stairs and tracked across the wooden floor. Chimes tinkled and murmured between the snaps of heels from a pair of women’s boots. The spaces between heel clicks spooled out into long, quiet seconds in which the dark music boxes settled to the cusp of sleep before the next strike of heel stirred them into murmurs anew. No other woman stood so tall. A skirt whispered as it approached.
    Ikey closed his eyes and recalled the floor’s layout as Cross had rushed him to the workshop. A dining table sat nearby. But if Rose approached him, how could she see him? Did she see him? He opened his mouth to call out. The smack of his lips parting, the snap of his tongue dropping from the roof of his mouth sounded as loud as her boot heels. But the words never came. He held on to them, ready to take the brunt of her in exchange for a chance to feel the force behind her momentum. Maybe even fling his arms out in surprise and clutch at her arm, prod at her for a clue of what lay underneath.
    Rose’s path shifted. Her skirt brushed past his leg. He gasped in surprise. His arms reached out to touch her, to trail the tips of his fingers over the satin sleeve. His fingers brushed the cheek of darkness.
    “Did Cross send you in here for something?” Rose asked. Her footsteps stopped near the end of the room. An item was placed on a wooden surface. Something with a little weight to it, but not much. The scent of potatoes and parsley wrapped around him.
    “To wash up,” Ikey said.
    “He’ll be in soon, then?”
    “Yes, ma’am. I suppose so.”
    Her skirt rustled and her heels clicked as she approached again. “Take a seat, then.”
    Ikey concentrated on the snaps of her heels and the creaks of the floorboards to locate her position. Each sound pinged in his head. In his mind he imagined her in a particular spot, only to hear another footstep several feet beyond. It sparked disorientation. Yet Rose moved through the room as if it brimmed with daylight. It left Ikey grappling with impairment, as if a color existed, or a whole set of colors, that others could see and he could not, and it left part of the world invisible to him.
    The stairs crackled with Rose’s descent.
    Ikey stood in the dark, unsure of his position or where the dining table sat. The world was blackness, and he was adrift in it. Back home, the darkness had always welcomed him. After his dad had settled in for the night in the back room, and Uncle Michael had settled into sleeping in a chair in the front room, Ikey relished the