Heavily inspired by Lemon Demon's song Cabinet Man. Originally posted on tumblr for POTO 13 Nights of Halloween, hosted by a-partofthenarrative.


It started on the day that Meg's arcade became a crime scene.

Perhaps it had started before then, and she'd just failed to notice. Glossed over any warning signs, and dismissed oddities as the quirks of an arcade. It had seemed like a magical place to her growing up, a world built of buttons and screens and flashing lights, where death was temporary and mastery was inevitable as long as you had the time.

Today the arcade had lost all that charm. The broken window was a jagged mouth, glass shards littering the ground. The yellow of the police tape was wrapped around the silver and red and blue painted door, strangling the machines inside. A couple lay on their side, screens smashed and wires littering the floor like broken limbs. And the worst of it was the blood.

Joseph Buquet had been taken to the hospital in critical condition, his heart stuttering and one hand burned from the current that had run through him. His friends were in shock and had been taken in for treatment, cuts bandaged and glass removed from the wounds, but they'd been released soon after to make their statements to the police. They'd talked about a monster.

"We don't usually have someone here overnight," Meg told them. We, like her mother still operated the arcade, like it was a decision they made together instead of one cobbled together by Meg, desperately trying to make ends meet as the medical bills stacked up on their kitchen counter and more of their customers vanished into malls with their new handheld gaming consoles.

But usually the security cameras were enough of a deterrent to thieves and vandals. They had signs in the window, about how the money was off site and they were all under surveillance, and something like this hadn't happened in years. She relayed this all to the officer, her hands clammy and her heart stuttering, and he jotted down a few notes before advising her to stay in town and be ready to come in for further questioning.

"They were the ones who broke in," Raoul insisted. He was driving her home, Christine having come immediately when she'd heard the news. They'd found Meg on the sidewalk, arms wrapped around her knees and staring blankly at the police cars in the parking lot. Christine had leapt out of the front and ushered her into the back seat, and Meg hadn't realized she was shaking until Christine had wrapped her into a hug and refused to let go.

Raoul was still talking, something about getting them a lawyer and due compensation for lost business, but Meg couldn't do anything but hold on to Christine and try to figure out how she was going to explain everything to her mother.


Antoinette Giry was the strongest woman Meg knew. How could she not be, a single mother who'd run a music shop and been one of the first to take a chance on arcade games, and when rumors had started about hauntings had rebranded the place as Phantasma. She didn't back down from challenges, but instead faced them head on.

"I'll handle it," was all she said when Meg finally told her, and Meg looked at her mother's gaunt cheeks and the bags under her eyes and nodded.

Trying to change her mind would be like trying to move a mountain. She'd learned long ago that it was easier to lie, and then apologize later. So she ended up going to the arcade herself, after the police had cleared them to begin cleaning up, with rubber gloves and steel toed boots and a flashlight, and began sweeping up the broken glass.

Her mother had always been protective of the arcade. Although she'd employed a few people they'd been kept to staffing the music store half of the building, or doing tasks no more complex than sweeping. It was a point of pride that Meg had been allowed to collect the money herself, or help her mother wheel in a new machine. She'd learned how to repair them, how to troubleshoot electronics, how to spot problems and report them back. But the majority of the work was done by her mother, and a few contractors she kept an eye on. But Meg didn't have those contacts, and she wouldn't be able to convince her mother to let her handle it, to rest and give Meg the reins of the situation, so she'd just have to figure it out herself.

"Would have been nice to have some company," she muttered under her breath, knees bent and arms straining to turn one of the cabinets over onto the dolly, which would make it actually possible for her to lift it. Christine, who was usually so eager to help, had gone pale and stammered some excuse when asked. Raoul had offered, only for Christine to insist that she needed his help with something.

It was difficult to not begrudge Christine for her new relationship. They'd been as close as sisters, and then she started dating Raoul and stopped wanting to visit the arcade. The worst of it was how frustratingly happy they were together, how sweet and kind Raoul was to Christine, and how they always tried to include Meg whenever they did end up hanging out together. A disgustingly perfect couple, making Meg feel childish and petty for how often she ended up alone. Just her and the arcade.

"At least you're not going anywhere," she said, finally having righted the machine, and she fondly patted the side before turning her attention to the wiring behind it. Some of the casing had been mangled, and she'd need to repair it before restoring power.

Funnily enough, despite her frustration she didn't feel lonely. Just her and the machines, rows and rows of blank screens staring up at her, but the feeling of company was there nonetheless. The spirit of the arcade, patiently waiting for her to repair it. "Soon we'll be back to normal," she promised, pulling out an orange "needs maintenance" sign and taping it on the screen before turning her attention to the next cabinet. The vandals had been determined, wielding spraypaint and hammers vengefully, but most of the machines were salvageable, with only cosmetic damage. A few poor cabinets had been gutted and would need to be replaced, but she could already see their successors standing tall in those empty places. They'd receive some insurance money, and there was nothing like new games to draw a crowd.

Or replace bad memories, she thought, and she shivered, eyes irresistibly drawn to the row of machines along the back wall. They stood behind their own caution tape, and she couldn't help but feel that she was being watched. Despite the machines being perfectly sound, the assault having been… interrupted before sustaining any damage, they'd likely have to go as well. At least Magic Lasso, the charming game with cowboys rounding up pixelated livestock, and the game that had nearly killed Joseph. The offending wires still dangled out of their socket, where he'd ripped up the joystick and come into contact with them; as if in defiance of its crimes the screen stared blankly back at her, unassuming and uncaring.

A buzz made Meg jump, and it took a moment for her to realize it was just one of the game screens, a hopeful chirrup calling for a new player to start. She sighed with relief, leaning against one of the games and hand going up to her chest, feeling her heartrate begin to settle. And then she frowned. None of the machines should have power yet; they hadn't inspected the wiring yet, and only had the emergency lights connected to the grid.

She walked around the row of machines, eyes narrowing as she found the culprit. A massive cabinet, far larger than any of the others, imposing and sculpted with bones and skulls. Triumphant was undoubtedly the crown of their arcade, a game unlike any other, created by a local genius Meg's mother had somehow managed to contract. Every few months they'd receive a delivery, new parts to upgrade it with, and the lineup to play the new features would always stretch out the door.

It sat now, red eyes glowing as its skulls stared back at her, and screen blinking. She hadn't played it in a while; the line was long enough that she preferred to focus on mastering other games, but she was still able to recognize the demo screen. A tiny figure making its way through dark caverns, fighting off skeletons and ghouls, interspersed with the flashing "insert coins to start". And then the high score screen, playing in an innocuous loop that should be impossible.

"Who plugged you in?" Meg asked, ducking down in front of it and trying to look behind. Her mother was more protective over this machine than any other, and Meg had never actually had the chance to work on it. Despite the supposed genius of its construction the plug was not easily accessible like any of their other machines, and nor was there a control panel. She frowned and pulled out her flashlight, but no matter how she craned the plug was still hidden.

"Is there a switch somewhere else?" she mused, turning her attention to the other side of the cabinet, and then eyeing the skeleton ornamentation and wondering if she was supposed to climb it. The machine sat fully flush against the back wall and even the floor, not a crack in place, meaning it would be impossible to use the dolly to lever it back. The screen flickered, catching her attention, and she lifted an eyebrow.

"Changing your mind about being on?" she asked, making sure her gloves were properly on before reaching out to the joystick and control buttons. "Maybe you just have some kind of backup power or something." The other games were all still off, and as far as she knew they were all on the same grid. Perhaps it was designed to keep the scores even during a power outage? The game was notoriously difficult, with nobody having reached the rumored final level, and many viewed passing three levels as a significant achievement. As if mirroring her thoughts the high score screen flashed again, with the first place score highlighted with a flashing crown next to the name.

Christine Daaé, it proclaimed proudly, her name writ in pixelated white against the black background. Meg gave a low whistle. "I had no idea she was that good," she admitted. Christine usually just stuck on the music side of the store, browsing cassettes and watching music videos, and when she did play video games it was nothing more complicated than a simple puzzle game. It seemed incongruous for her to enjoy Triumphant, with its macabre aesthetic and scaling difficulty, but the score didn't lie.

"I'll have to ask her if she's noticed anything weird," Meg said, bending back down again and pressing her ear against the cabinet. If it had an internal power source she should be able to hear it, some kind of fan or buzz, and she frowned.

The sounds of the arcade were familiar ones. The various chimes and clicks, the clatter of change in its slots, the hum of static from the screens. But where she'd expected to her those sounds, the internal workings of a machine, all she could hear was a deep and steady thudding.

A heartbeat, she thought, against all reason, and she scrabbled back only to hear a grinding and a metallic clash. She looked up to see the screen, somehow having started gameplay, and a tiny character being torn apart by skeletons, having stood idle through the startup.

On any other day she might have laughed. She might have questioned how the game could start itself. But now, even the tinny noises of the game over music set her nerves on edge. Unable to escape the feeling of being watched, of eyes boring into the back of her head, she grabbed her flashlight and decided that she'd had enough cleaning for the day.

Meg stumbled out the front door, the sunlight blinding after squinting in the dark for so long, chest heaving as she caught her breath and risked a look back through the darkened windows. But even as her hands shook and her knees felt weak, as she stared into the arcade and felt that uncanny presence staring back, she knew that she'd return and find her answers.


The name Christine was still blinking on the lonely screen, one light amid an ocean of shuttered eyes, the only machine awake in the haunted arcade. The wires of the cabinet were still humming with power, winding their way through the cabinet and down through the floor. In the darkness below, a single generator was whirring, its rattled breathing the only sound echoing in the darkness. A nest of wires and computers stretched out beneath the floor, cords winding their way into every part of the arcade. And in the darkness, something shifted.

Things had not gone according to plan. She was refusing to return, afraid of the power that was meant to subdue her. But this was far from over.

On a darkened terminal, code began to scroll across a screen. The years of planning had been generous, and the ghost was far from powerless. If Christine would not return, then she would simply need to be persuaded. Perhaps a reminder of all they'd shared, and the work they'd begun? It would work. It needed to.

The ghost shifted again, a barely discernible shape in the dark, and above the screen of Triumphant flickered back to the scorecard. Christine blinked once before going dark, the power finally being diverted away from the screen. But the machine still lived, the only sound in the silence being a single, steady heartbeat.