by Miriam Boersma

In a city, in a district, on a street, there is an abandoned arcade. It does not matter which city, which district, or which street; it is the same arcade no matter where it finds itself. It has no windows. On the outer walls there are posters for events long past and layers of graffiti old enough to drink, scrambling for space beneath a large red sign reading Arcade. There is no logo, no way of knowing who the building once belonged to. The small hanging sign, which would once have told hoards of excited children when the games were open, instead lies on the ground beneath the shattered glass of a door pushed slightly open by the wind.

Some say they remember the arcade in its prime. They do not. The only memories they have of the arcade are flashes of color, or the sound of stray laughter filtering through the door, or the pride of beating a game. No one can recall the names of the games they spent so much time playing. No quarters ever found their way into the slots of these machines.

There is a hole in the roof. Maybe a tree branch fell during a storm many years ago, or maybe a particularly nasty hailstorm broke the rafters, or maybe it simply caved in with time and water. Moonlight leaking in through the ceiling is all that illuminates the rows of lifeless machines that have waited too long for players. The carpet has faded to a dull grey-brown; the games’ bright colors are eternally covered in a thick layer of dust. The mold and mildew on the walls is more visible than any pattern there could have once been. Many of the machines are plugged in, but years of rainfall have left the carpet soggy and all the games inoperable. That is, almost all.

In the back, next to the door that now reads “E PLO EES O LY,” sits the lone functional machine. It is not plugged in to the wall; there are no marks on it to indicate screws, plates, or ports of any kind. The machine is a three-foot-high white brick, the sides of its square ends each a foot wide. Set in the player’s side, in a three-inch bevel, is a small screen showing a black and white message that scrolls across it on repeat. “SKIRO,” it proclaims. “ONE QUARTER TO PLAY.”

There is no slot for a coin. Two quarters lie on the blank white top beside a simple black helmet. The helmet is smooth, reminiscent of a biker’s. Like the machine itself, it bears no markings of any kind. The visor is opaque and immobile, but the inside holds an electric hum and glows with the dull gray of a screen attempting to display black. It displays the same message as the machine itself. If a third quarter is placed with the others, the machine pauses its scrolling message for a moment. Then, in the same simple text, the screen commands the user to put on the helmet. Those curious enough to surrender their coins to the machine are always curious enough to oblige. It is a shame their interest will not be remembered.

And there was never an abandoned arcade on this street. Perhaps there is a different arcade, one alive with patrons and light. More likely, though, it is a bustling storefront or a historic landmark, or there was never a space between those two buildings. No matter what this place becomes, the small blank box by the worn employee door was never there. In the next town over, curious teenagers test old games behind a strangely familiar set of blank white bricks. Eventually, someone will notice a strange machine that still works, alone at the back of the building. But the first explorers whose interests were piqued never existed; certainly, no one remembers them.