Excerpts fantasy Read an Excerpt From Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo In an alternate-Brazil, brutal flesh-hungering Guls stalk the night streets and manipulate the government from their glittering cabaret… By Hache Pueyo | Published on February 12, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Cabaret in Flames, a brand new dark fantasy novella by Hache Pueyo, out from Tordotcom Publishing on March 10. Guls can be brutal. Few know this better than Ariadne, who lost half her body to their appetites, but their brutality is a predictable constant amid Brazil’s political chaos. Now, she treats them in the specialized clinic she inherited from Erik Yurkov—the mentor who rescued her as a child, trained her in medicine, built her prostheses, and disappeared without a trace.Ariadne’s routine is disturbed when Quaint knocks on her door: a charming, tattooed gul claiming to be Erik’s oldest friend. Quaint suspects foul play in Erik’s disappearance, and they soon discover Erik sought asylum at Cabaré, an infamous club in Rio de Janeiro frequented by the gul elite.Together, Ariadne and Quaint will unravel the conspiracy behind their friend’s disappearance, navigate the labyrinthine world of Ariadne’s memories, and discover what Erik means to them—and what they are starting to mean to each other. Ariadne’s Thread Fireworks crackled outside when he appeared at her door. The neighbors set them off during football matches and to show whether or not they agreed with the news, but the noise that night was louder, thundering above the buildings like lost bullets. The visitor introduced himself as Quaint, no surname, following the tradition of his kind. My sobriquet since the nineteenth century, he would later say, coined by my late wife. In age, Quaint looked like he could be anywhere in that nebulous period of adult life that ranged from thirty to fifty, but it was more, much more. “Hello, gul doctor,” he said through the speaker of the intercom. Only his lower jaw and a fragment of his black umbrella appeared on the screen. “It’s been a long time.” Ariadne never allowed anyone in her house after curfew, let alone a man, but something in his words made her press the button that unlocked the front door. Perhaps it had been the certainty with which Quaint had spoken, hinting at an intimacy they did not share, or perhaps she was intrigued by the fact that he was a healthy adult male. Most of her patients were elderly, disabled, or pregnant, harmless save for a few exceptions, so his presence in the clinic sparked her curiosity, making her wonder what a mature gul could want with her. After climbing the last step, Quaint stood in the stairwell, just the silhouette of a tall man in the penumbra. It was like seeing a panther lurking in the darkness, well-built and alluring, waiting until the prey would walk into the trap. “Are you Miss Yurkova, I wonder?” Quaint shook the umbrella, sprinkling water on the floor. His words echoed through the corridor, sending an unpleasant chill down every vertebra of her spine: wonder, wonder, wonder. Ariadne frowned, staring at the metallic sign on the door that announced Erik Yurkov, MD right under number 201. “In a way, yes.” “Erik, living with another person? That’s an achievement I didn’t expect of him.” He stepped forward and his shadow stretched from the stairs to the door of her apartment. “Are you his girlfriend? Daughter, perhaps?” Ariadne moved aside to let him in. We’re nothing anymore, she thought, but her mouth answered: “Apprentice.” “Oh! Another gul doctor?” Under the light, Quaint became somebody else: black hair slicked back with an undercut, golden-ocher skin, a long flat nose, and a pair of round sunglasses that hid his expression, but still she felt his eyes on her, analyzing every hint of movement. He wore a mustard-yellow shirt, suspenders, black pants, and there were raindrops on the leather of his shoes. What surprised Ariadne most, however, were not his fine clothes or the heavy rings covering his fingers, but the tattoos on his hands, neck, and the part of his chest exposed by the open collar. Ariadne bristled like a cornered cat. “Are you human?” “I’m fascinated by this question.” Quaint smiled, and the tips of his canines appeared between his lips. Adult guls could have as many as eleven pairs of sharp fangs, mirroring human premolars and cuspids, and every additional tooth increased their bite force. “I’ve never seen a tattooed gul before. How…?” Ariadne glanced at the sideboard. Inside the drawer was a dose of carfentanil strong enough to take down an elephant. Quaint was twice her size and she should have never been alone with him, but one shot of the tranquilizer and he would be as inoffensive as a child. It was not necessary; after a moment of silence, Quaint began to laugh. “A strange sight, I’ve been told,” said Quaint, still smiling, one of his hands covering his teeth. She flinched with the gesture. “That’s one of the reasons I’m here, in fact. My tattoos have been fading faster than normal.” “What are you, a masochist?” “Far from it, but Erik will know what to do. Can you call him, Miss…?” Erik again. Everything always went back to Erik in the end. “Ariadne. And no, I can’t.” Another firecracker exploded outside, followed by whistles and howls. The neighbor’s dog, from one of the houses across the street, barked at the sound, and other dogs followed suit. “See, Miss Ariadne, I know I should have announced my arrival, and that you have quite the temper,” stated Quaint, raising two smoky eyebrows, “but Erik and I have been friends for many lives. I need to talk to him. Tell him it’s to rest my heart. I’ve had the most unsettling dream.” Buy the Book Cabaret in Flames Hache Pueyo Buy Book Cabaret in Flames Hache Pueyo Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget “First, Mister Quaint…” Ariadne answered calmly. Her legs throbbed, and the stumps of her thighs felt sore against the prosthesis after a long day of work. “You know nothing of my temper. Second, I can’t call Erik because he’s no longer here. Or anywhere—might be dead, for all I know.” Quaint opened his mouth to reply, but he gave up before even starting. His shoulders slumped, a thick wrinkle appeared in his forehead, and he touched the ring on his little finger. “So Erik is really gone.” “He’s not gone, Mister Quaint. He just left. Vanished five years ago and never told me why.” “Only Quaint, please.” “I’m guessing you’re not from here based on your name, your clothes, and the fact that I’ve never seen you before, despite your claiming to be his friend…” “And you’re right. I did live in Brazil in the past, but moved back home in 2009. Time…” “… passes differently for guls. I know. Well, I regret being the bearer of bad news, but you won’t find anything of Erik here.” Ariadne touched the key chain hanging from the door. “Do you want me to help you or will only Erik do?” Quaint grinned, but the energy of his previous laughter was gone. “Ha! Now I understand why Erik chose you as an apprentice. You’re bold enough for the two of you.” His hands slipped inside the pockets of his pants, and he straightened his posture. “Forgive the verbiage, I wasn’t expecting such news.” “Please follow me.” “In a second.” Years later, Ariadne would still wonder if Quaint knew he would come into her house to stay, since he always seemed to know more than others around him. If he did, he never told her, and he acted as sincerely as she had then. He followed her into the consultation room and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing an already faded chest piece towering over the images that covered the rest of his torso. The central tattoo depicted two birds, one on each shoulder, their spread wings meeting at his sternum. The black ink had turned blue, unlike the guardian lion on his neck, fresh and recently remade. “The problem lies in your regeneration speed.” Ariadne’s gloved finger brushed against the tattoo on his inner arm, a branch of guaraná, its fruits looking like insistent wide eyes. “But I would have to investigate why it changed out of nowhere.” “Thank you, Ariadne. Please accept my apologies for appearing so late at night.” Quaint offered a discreet bow of the head, and unlocked his phone to input her number. A scream outside interrupted their conversation, but Ariadne just shook her head, telling him to ignore it. “I must say, however, that I’m afraid Erik might not have left of his own accord. I have known him since his youth, and he’s never done that before.” Ariadne stiffened. “He packed his bags and walked out the front door.” “Still, we shouldn’t…” Quaint took a good look at her, then smiled cryptically. “Never mind. I’ll talk to a few friends, and we can discuss the matter again at our next appointment.” Rua da Encruzilhada was a residential cul-de-sac located in Vitória, Espírito Santo, and it had only a few small businesses. The first was a three-story building with a compounding pharmacy downstairs and a clinic above, with a pair of residents: Ariadne, who lived with her cat in the duplex that belonged to Erik, and Ms. Terebê, a tiny gul shriveled like a fig who had been born somewhere in South America, long before the European invasion. The last was the coffee shop around the corner, managed by Boniface, an Italian immigrant whose presence attracted a steady clientele of ancient patients to her clinic. Their diet consisted of flesh, blood, and bones of humans like herself, but Ariadne felt safer with them around. While she waited for Quaint’s next visit, Ariadne checked Erik’s old address book for the clinic, but there was no entry under the letter Q. Admittedly, they were supposed to be friends, not patient and doctor, but the little black book was one of the few personal possessions Erik had left behind. Years had passed since she had touched his things—she hated them, in fact, those lifeless proofs of his abandonment—but she wanted some clue that Quaint spoke the truth. “Ms. Terebê,” said Ariadne one night. They were watching the news together on the small television on the counter. The compounding pharmacy was open twenty-four hours, as Terebê rarely slept, but she closed the doors at eight, keeping a small window open in case there was a customer, which rarely happened after the curfew started. Ms. Terebê lifted a gray, almost-invisible eyebrow. “Hmm?” “Did Erik have friends?” The little screen continued to report the evening news: “An open letter was published this morning against the curfew, signed by more than two thousand artists, journalists, writers, and actors… Despite rumors of an illness, the president made a statement today, reaffirming that the curfew has lowered crime rates all over the country, but provided no proof of…” Ms. Terebê opened the minibar and took a blood bag from it. She had several stocked inside, her own personal blood bank inside the comfort of her house, along with bone broth and several plastic boxes containing pureed meat. According to Terebê, everything was provided by friends who worked at local hospitals and morgues, but Ariadne never tried to check the veracity of this claim, and never would. “I have something for you, too.” The elderly woman took another plastic bag from the minibar, but instead of blood, it was a packet of human food. “Let’s eat.” Ariadne recognized the bear-shaped chocolate crackers from her childhood, but the memory was foggy; it reminded her of something happy, something like being praised after a tough day, but she couldn’t recall why or when. Close your eyes and open your mouth, someone had said, and she had stuck her tongue out in response, feeling the cracker melt against it. “I didn’t know they still made these,” commented Ariadne, and her eyes fell on the expiration date: September 1996. The red packet remained untouched in her lap, and she almost gave up on asking any other questions. “It’s been a while,” Terebê said after some moments of silence, her eyes barely visible under the creases of aged brown skin. The top of her head had only a few strands of fine white hair, and her mouth had withered to a thin pout. “That you last said his name.” Only outside of her head. Inside, Erik’s name always lingered, a dictionary entry with many synonyms: teacher, savior, protector, friend, object of adoration, traitor. Ariadne straightened the packet, still with the faint memory of the crackers’ taste, the kind of taste that, once, Erik would have fought to replace—I can’t stand seeing you in pain, he would have said. “I had no reason to talk about him before.” The old woman muted the television. On the screen, an adviser answered questions in front of the Civil House, his right hand held close to his chest, all fingers gone except the thumb. Every other secretary seemed to be missing a limb, nowadays. Ariadne clenched her jaw at the sight, refusing to look at it. She couldn’t do it, not with a gul around. “Erik was only friends with my kind,” said Terebê while Ariadne emptied the blood bag into a porcelain cup for her. She made an appreciative sound, nodding emphatically. “Yes, yes, good.” “Anyone you might recall? A foreigner, perhaps?” Terebê sipped from the white cup, leaving a dark red mustache over her toothless mouth. Like many guls her age, she only had two pairs of molar fangs left, but the incisors were all gone. Ariadne gently wiped her lips with a napkin, and the little gul continued to drink. “I remember a woman. Tall, short hair, loud. Spaniard or French. Something of the sort.” “What about a man?” insisted Ariadne. “Then it’s the freak with the tattoos.” Ms. Terebê drank all the blood eagerly and left the empty cup on the floor next to their feet. “Why do you ask?” “He visited the clinic.” “Didn’t he and Erik fight? It’s been months since the last time I saw him.” Terebê touched the popping veins of her own arm. “I haven’t seen him since you were little, I’d say. Before Erik even brought you here.” “Years,” corrected Ariadne. “Many, many years.” Ms. Terebê caressed the back of Ariadne’s hand with affection. “Years,” she repeated with a smile. “I forget how quickly you people grow.” The old woman said that Boniface might remember him as well, and that was her last word on the subject. After the telenovela Terebê watched every night at nine, she would no longer hold any kind of conversation, and the next day she had forgotten all questions about Quaint. On Sunday, Ariadne left in the early morning, when the street was deserted. A few stray cats ate the remains of an Eshu offering, tearing apart the red and black paper, and one of the candles rolled down the pavement. She knocked on the front window of the coffee shop, and the door opened on its own. There were cracked glasses on the floor, and the tables had been flipped upside down. Ariadne knelt down to right one of the fallen chairs and noticed one of them had gouge marks, as if they had been chewed by a large animal. “Mr. Boni? What happened here?” If he were human, Boniface would have been around sixty, with his receding hairline, his thick mustache, and the carved lines in the olive canvas of his face, but he looked like a young adult when close to Ms. Terebê. He was on all fours, washing up spilled soda, and gestured irritably as he spoke: “Oh, those, those—those fascistas, you know who I mean! The boys patrolling the streets at night… My blood’s still boiling because of them.” Not only his, it seemed, as there were reddish-brown stains on some of the discarded rags. “The death squads?” “They think they own everything!” Boniface got up and threw a broken bottle into a trash bag. His Bolognese accent was more apparent, and there was a gash closing slowly on one of his hands. “They came here last night, talked to me like we are on the same side—I’ve left my home to avoid their kind, Christ—and made a mess out of my place, as you can see.” Ariadne raised her eyebrows, and Boniface slapped his own stomach with a grin. “They’re here now.” “I’m trying to treat your dental damage, yet you refuse to follow my liquid diet.” Ariadne sighed. “But that’s not why I’m here. Mr. Boni, do you recall any of Erik’s friends?” Boniface stopped sweeping the trash. “Erik’s friends?” “More specifically, a gul with tattoos?” “Tattoos and glasses. A good-looking fella. Yes, I talked to him once. Had a loud argument with Erik in the clinic, you could hear them from miles.” Boniface brushed his mustache with a finger. “Came here later and called a taxi to the airport. And that was it.” Further investigation proved to be even less fruitful, and Ariadne gave up on finding anything about Quaint; if it was important, he would come again. She treated a woman from Chile the following month, a middle-aged gul who was finally expecting after several miscarriages. A geriatric pregnancy, considering her age, but the future mother swore that this time she was feeling well. It’s always been hard for us to have children, she said while Ariadne performed an ultrasound. But in the last two hundred years, the birth rates… When the woman left, an unknown number, code +86, tried to contact the clinic incessantly. At first, Ariadne thought of ignoring it; most of her patients appeared without warning, and the few calls she received were scams from prisons in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro or relentless harassment from telemarketing agencies. The ringing continued from the first hours in the morning to late in the afternoon, and when she finally decided to take the call, she heard the same words as before: “Hello, gul doctor.” Ariadne held her breath. “It’s been a while, Quaint.” “Yes, I realized only now that I should have called a couple days after our meeting, not two months. If you’ll forgive my insolence…” His voice was muffled by car horns on the other side of the line. “Can I invite myself to your home again today? It’s about Erik.” As much as she wanted the subject to stay buried and forgotten, she felt compelled to accept. “I’m free for the rest of the day.” Ariadne went straight to the bedroom to find another shirt. She had been wearing sweatpants—gray, loose, and as insipid as they could get—and a long-sleeved black shirt to hide the synthetic skin of her arms; with the pregnant patient, she hadn’t cared, but knowing that Quaint was coming made her find an additional layer of clothes that made the volume of her breasts look a little smaller, as if that could protect her in any way. It’s about Erik, she thought, slapping her own cheeks to take the thought out of her head. Maybe something bad had happened. Maybe he really was dead. The mirror stared back at her: her thick lips, the dark circles around her narrow black eyes, her shaved head. I need to know; after this, I won’t think of him again. Quaint arrived at 4:20, wearing a dark green three-piece that made her feel underdressed inside her own house. Ariadne made a gesture for him to follow her to the living room, and they sat on the armchairs facing each other. “I’ve been thinking about your tattoos,” she started before he could tackle the unwanted subject. “If you insist on continuing to hurt yourself, we should try to add heavier metals to the ink. Mercury, lead, antimony, maybe arsenic.” Quaint crossed his legs, resting one hand on his knee. This one had a blooming peony tattooed on the back, its spread petals covering up to his wrist. There were inked dates scattered on his long fingers, but the memento mori rings made them unintelligible. “Sure, let’s do it,” answered Quaint. The white Angora she had found roaming the street the year before rubbed against his legs, meowing, and Quaint bent down to scratch her ears. “What’s her name?” “She doesn’t have one yet.” “Are you feeling well? You look upset.” “It’s nothing.” “Let me guess,” continued Quaint, and the cat jumped onto his lap like she’d known him for years. “Erik never mentioned me, right?” “He didn’t,” Ariadne admitted. “How typical. He didn’t tell me about you either. Which is too bad, as you inherited his clinic and I have the key to his storage. If anything happened…” “Storage?” The word made her look up. Ariadne had been staring at his rings for the past minute: a skull and crossbones with rubies, another made of gold with braided hair inside a crystal enclosure, a thin ring painted with black enamel. Quaint took a key from his breast pocket, twirling it around his index finger. “The only copy. I never asked what he keeps there, and he never told me.” “And where’s this storage supposed to be?” “Why, in his office.” “There’s nothing there.” Erik had taken everything. Only the empty furniture remained, wooden carcasses decaying in his abandoned office. “Can I take a look?” Ariadne responded with a shrug. They went to the second floor, and the cat trailed behind them. Quaint didn’t scare her now as much as he had on the first day, but she tried to keep him in sight. He went straight to the last closed door, moving with confidence in the corridor, like someone who had been many times before in an apartment that was supposedly hers. “Quaint,” called Ariadne. “How did you meet Erik?” “It’s complicated.” The office smelled like an old wardrobe that had not been opened in years, and inside were the desk, the chair, the shelves, and a massive cabinet that had so many drawers, doors, and locks that it had taken Ariadne months to clean all of it after Erik disappeared. “Complicated means you won’t tell?”  Quaint touched one of the panels, a fingertip tracing the mother-of-pearl of the intarsia. She hated that cabinet in particular, and had tried to remove it from the office several times, but it was so heavy, antiquated, and dark that it looked like a shadow encrusted to the wall. “When we met, Erik was a boy of twenty-three, clever beyond his age, and he discovered on his own what I was, which amused me. At the time, I believed him to be kind, curious, and intelligent, and I thought there would be no issue in introducing him to my world. Let’s say he aged like a rotten apple.” “Rotten,” repeated Ariadne. “That’s not how I remember him.” Instead, her memories were of books with annotations made on the sides of every page, entire dialogues they had written around literary or academic texts, questioning or agreeing with the content or one another. Erik had talked to her like an equal; he had believed there was something she could be, something more than a helpless, decaying cocoon of a person… “That’s not how I wanted to remember him either.” Quaint removed his jacket, leaving it folded over the chair. “Erik has his qualities, I guess, but it would be a lie if I didn’t say I disagree with most of his scientific curiosities, or whatever he calls them nowadays.” The thread. Ariadne could still hear Erik’s placid and constant voice, the only stimulus in what felt like an endless night. You need to follow the thread. Quaint cracked his shoulders and neck. “What about you? Erik rarely interacts with other humans.” “When I was younger, I had a health complication and he helped me recover.” Ariadne was surprised by the coldness of her voice. Erik said she had been unconscious for almost a week when he brought her to the house, and he was almost giving up when she finally woke up. “I owe him everything I have. My home, my job, my body, my knowledge… Even the protection of the guls of this street. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him.” “I see.” Quaint placed both hands on the side of the cabinet, lifting it as easily as he would have lifted the furniture of a dollhouse. Behind it, on the dusty wall spotted with mold, was a door she had never seen before. “Ariadne.” Quaint dusted his clothes and inserted the key into the hole. “I don’t know what he keeps here. There might be things…” “Yes?” “Never mind.” Ariadne watched as he unlocked the door. The storage was as big as a comfortable bathroom and was crammed with countless objects: piled suitcases, a trunk, a small chest of drawers, a rack with several articles of clothing, and prototypes of arms and legs, thrown around like amputated limbs. Quaint turned on the light, and the cat observed them from the office. Ariadne stopped in front of a tattered satchel with a red cross. Next to the satchel was a military uniform, old and green, and a pilotka with a red star. Ariadne held the jacket in the air, the sleeves longer than her arms, and stared at the single medal on its chest. “Red Army,” said Quaint, as if that was the most natural response in the world. “From 1945, I believe.” He took a bunch of papers from the trunk, and several black-and-white pictures fell to the floor. Ariadne knelt to look at the people in one of them. A young man with blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses smiled on a bench, and a middle-aged white woman laughed by his side, the finger wave of her short bob appearing under her hat. Someone had written over the picture with beautiful calligraphy: To my darling Erik With love, GenebraBuenos Aires, Summer of 1953 “Genebra and I lived in Paris during the war,” said Quaint, stretching his neck to look at the picture. “I don’t remember much of this time. I guess my worst memories of Erik have overwritten the best ones.” “That’s impossible.” The man in the photo had the same smile as Erik, the same long nose, the same thin lips, the same down-turned eyes. “Erik can’t be older than fifty.” “Born in 1923, actually.” She wanted to laugh, but she was only able to grimace. “He would be more than a hundred…” Quaint stared intensely at her. Ariadne wondered what he saw behind the round black lenses—did he see a frail rabbit, hideous and frightened? An unpleasant human woman who couldn’t smile? The promise of food? A naive and inexperienced child? He started to collect the pictures scattered on the floor, piling one on top of the other. “Erik isn’t a gul, if that’s what you’re wondering.” “Then how…?” “Maybe we should leave that story for another day.” Quaint offered a cryptic smile, mouth pressed in a taut line. Ariadne moved to another photo. A man leaned on the railing of a balcony, a cigarette resting comfortably between his tattooed knuckles. Smoke escaped from his lips, blurring the image of the city behind him. “You haven’t changed at all.” “How kind of you.” “Quaint.” “I should have warned you,” he said. “I assumed you knew that Erik is older than he looks.” “No, he never…” “I’m very sorry. It was insensitive of me not to ask.” Suddenly, the storage room felt too small for the two of them, and Ariadne crawled over to the chest of drawers, dirt clinging to her sweatpants. “Anything there?” “Notebooks,” said Ariadne, waving one with a leather cover. “Many notebooks.” “Ah!” That caught Quaint’s attention, and he stooped behind her to look at the contents of the drawer over her shoulder. “His journals. Those might help.” In her memories, Erik was constantly drawing or writing, but she never knew to what extent. Countless pages written in Russian, realistic sketches made in pencil with diminutive notes next to them, folded newspaper articles, crumpled toffee wrappers, and dried plants that turned to dust when she touched them. She even found a drawing of Quaint: the sunglasses, the tattoos, the smile. Erik had taught her how to read Cyrillic script, but thousands of cursive handwritten lines were a little bit of a challenge for her, and she had to focus to understand. “Were you born during the Ming dynasty?” Quaint, who had already moved to another box, turned around immediately, and Ariadne allowed herself a rare smile. There were two things most guls considered too… private to share: their age, and eating full meals in front of others. “It’s you.” She pointed at the scribbled lines. “‘Quaint, a Chinese gul born sometime during the Ming dynasty. A well-traveled diplomat.’ There’s something else, but I can’t understand it.” “Yes, that’s me.” “I suppose Quaint is not your real name.” Quaint chuckled, taking the diary from her hands to read what Erik had written there. “It’s not. Some of us guls have this impertinent habit of changing names from time to time. My wife used to call me Quaint, and it stuck.” He played with one of the rings on his left hand. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you my other names.” “Are you married?” Ariadne raised an eyebrow. She couldn’t imagine what kind of woman a man like him would like. “Widowed. But I was married, yes, more than once, in one way or another.” Quaint pulled every journal out of the drawer, checking the dates on the spines. “Here, from last year! ‘Tomorrow,I will go to Genebra’s house, but I must leave the journals behind. I can’t stop thinking of their proposal. What do I need to do to be left alone? I don’t want to do this again. I caused enough harm…’” “Wait—Erik left years ago.” “That’s not what he wrote. There’s more: ‘I’mnot brave enough to talk to Ariadne, but I won’t run away anymore. I’m often drowning in guilt whenever I come to the clinic without telling her, but I know it’s the right choice: they don’t know about it, and Boniface and Terebê swore they would keep her safe. The last thing I would want is to see her involved in this nonsense.’” Ariadne took the journal from his hands. How dare he? How dare he enter the house while she slept without telling her? He knew she rarely ever left. How could she rest now, knowing someone had gotten into the apartment and she had not even noticed? She turned the page and found something else written in pencil: Quaint, if you’re here, I need your help again.There are people who know what I did in 1972, but I won’t say a word. Promise.I will ask for help in Cabaré. E. Ariadne glanced at Quaint from the corner of her eye. The man repeated the words again and again without a sound. “What does that mean?” “It means that someone took Erik,” answered Quaint. “And, if what he wrote is true, the situation is worse than I could have imagined.” You need to follow the thread, somebody whispered in her ear, caressing the thick dark hair on her forehead. Ariadne woke up, or thought she did; her mind was awake, but her body was tied to the mattress by invisible chains. You need to follow the thread, Ariadne, the voice continued, and heavy claws choked the air out of her. Ariadne moved a finger. At first, she feared breaking it, but her consciousness reminded her that all her limbs could be fixed, starting from her lower thighs to the tips of her toes, and from above her elbows to her hands. She continued the movements until she was able to open and close her fist, and she kicked the duvet away, exhausted. Ribbons of light invaded the bedroom through the venetian blinds, and the tablet on the nightstand announced the time: eleven in the morning. How long since she stopped having that dream? Ariadne sat on the bed, massaging her thighs and observing the intersection of flesh and carbon fiber. Erik’s invention bordered on perfection: robotic arms and legs that allowed full mobility, removable synthetic skin, a neural implant, and delicate waterproof sensors that allowed her to experience heat, pressure, and even pain. All of that made just for her. First, for her teenage body, then for the adult woman she became. I just want your life to be as comfortable as possible, Erik had said, petting her hair. He also taught her how to maintain and update them, so she wouldn’t depend only on him. If I can help you a tiny little bit, I’ ll be the happiest man on earth. Ariadne touched her own skin like Erik used to, her head raspy against her palm. Even her bangs, black and sweaty, had been part of the dream… By her side, the tablet blinked with a notification under Quaint’s name, reminding her of his ominous words: I’ve been trying to contact Genebra, but a friend in common told me he has not seen her in a year.Can I bring you lunch? Her answer was a dull “yes” before she entered the shower. Scalding water eased the pain but didn’t erase the thought that haunted her like the voice of her dreams: You’re allowing a gul inside your house. Ariadne slipped on her pants and walked to the office with a towel around her shoulders. So what if she did? What was the worst thing that could happen? Look at you, Erik again, his voice pitiful and sweet. Look at you. Now it was her, checking the robotic articulations exposed without the skin. It has nothing to do with guls, Ariadne answered herself, furious for even humoring the doubt. She was nothing like the amputated advisers on TV. Her limbs, her life, had nothing to do with them. Stop making things up. If she tried, she could see Erik opening the door, but the office was exactly like they had left it the previous day: the cabinet had been pushed aside, the storage area was unlocked, and the papers were disorganized over the desk. In her mind, it wasn’t the Erik of the photos, but the one of her memories: light hair sprinkled with gray falling over his eyes while he worked, sun-spotted skin, a straight nose that pointed down, a narrow mouth that smiled too well. But Erik wasn’t there. He had been, while she slept, or on the rare occasions she left the building. He had spoken to Terebê downstairs, broken into the apartment, pushed aside a gigantic cabinet, left his belongings inside the storage. And then disappeared again. Ariadne sighed. Quaint sent another message saying he would be there soon, so she went back to the bedroom to put on her skin, bra, and shirt before going downstairs. The intercom rang ten minutes later, and he crossed the threshold with paper bags smelling like moqueca capixaba. “ I hope I made the right choice” was the first thing Quaint said, leaving the bags on the living room table. “Since I can’t actually eat it, I tend to choose based on what smells good and looks nice.” Quaint had brought more food than any person could possibly need: a bowl full of salad, another with white rice, a third of pirão paste, some plantain, and a container of fish stew garnished with chives, parsley, and onion, along with a box of Belgian truffles. “Do I look like I eat this much?” Ariadne set the table for two, even if he was just going to watch. Quaint adjusted his dark glasses with a finger, the corners of his lips turning up. “I might have been accused of overdoing it in the past.” “Did you eat?” The question sounded casual enough, and Quaint’s smile grew. “Two weeks ago. Worried about my diet?” “I want to know if I smell like food to you.” She helped herself to a generous portion of moqueca. An adult male who ate fourteen days ago could either spend the whole month without eating, or eat again in less than a week. “How many fangs do you have?” Quaint laughed and threw his head back, his Adam’s apple going up and down. From that distance, she could see how massive his canines were. “Ten pairs, Doctor. Is it worrying?” “To me it is. To you, it’s excellent. The guls I’ve treated so far had four pairs at most. Erik said the average is six.” Stewed fish and tomato melted on her tongue, and she nodded, pleased. “The damage must be impressive.” “My mother had an astonishing eleven at her peak, and my father had seven. You should see the wreckage that tiny little creature could cause in her day.” Quaint scratched his chin, rings glowing under the light. “Even I was scared of her when I was a child. Not that she’s any less threatening with eight pairs.” “Is?” Ariadne narrowed her eyes, trying to imagine his mother to no avail. “Present?” “Present, yes.” Quaint swallowed another chuckle. “Sometimes, I think she’ll outlive me. Last year, she made it a promise…” “I’m sure she’s fascinating.” “But rest assured, Ariadne, I don’t feel any joy in terrorizing harmless humans, nor in mistreating them. I only eat those I deem deserving of it.” “Meaning I shouldn’t get on your bad side.” “You can disrespect me and loathe me as much as you want.” Quaint pressed his lips together. “Still, the bar is set above petty disagreements. I only eat the violent and truly dreadful. If I never considered Erik for a meal, I doubt you’d end up on my list. You’re far more pleasant company than he is.” “Is this about what happened in 1972?” Quaint joined his hands, reflecting for a few seconds before answering. “No—it’s about our last clue. Have you ever heard of Cabaré?” “Once, but I don’t know much about it,” said Ariadne. Erik had told her about it when she was a teenager, and described it as the most traditional gul club in Brazil, built three centuries ago and remodeled a few times since. It’s an interesting little place, frequented by the gul elite and powerful people, Erik had admitted with a thoughtful smile, but I wouldn’t recommend humans go there. “Do you think they did something against him?” “I doubt it, but the others might know something,” answered Quaint. “I’ll be in Rio in two days to find out.” Her lips parted, trying to form a response. Quaint had appeared in her life without a warning, different from anyone she had ever met, different from Erik, from herself. Part of her wanted to laugh with relief, glad to be back to her little routine, where she hid inside the house and pretended the years were not passing and the clock was not ticking, stuck in an endless cycle of repetitive days. She would not know what had happened to Erik; she would only be given a report later, from the mouth of someone else. Ariadne closed the plastic boxes to put them in the fridge. “What about your tattoos?” “The tattoos can wait.” Quaint looked like he intended to say something else, but gave up before he even tried. He got up to help her with the dirty dishes. “I’ll let you know if I have any news.” The day dragged after Quaint left. In less than forty-eight hours, her life would continue to be the same as it always was. Wherever Erik had vanished to, if he was in danger, Quaint would solve everything by himself. Ariadne extracted one of Boniface’s damaged molars, left food outside for the stray cats, and, at night, she turned on the television to watch the news after curfew. The whistle blew religiously at nine in every neighborhood, and she preferred to distract herself to avoid thinking of what happened in the streets at night. She believed, in part, that the government had made a secret deal with the guls: after a certain hour, the world was there for the taking, far from curious eyes. But that didn’t explain the mutilated advisers, or the squads that patrolled the streets for anyone they deemed unfit, from the homeless and the ill to those who broke the arbitrary laws that changed every other day. “… The Civil House released a memo stating that the president vehemently rejects any association of his person with death squads, and is solely focused on his recovery…” Ariadne glanced at the TV as footage of the president entering the hospital from a helicopter from the previous month, looking horribly, humanly frail, appeared on-screen. Serves him right, she thought, unlocking the tablet and typing an answer to Quaint’s last message, then deleting it. “… The president continues to be under observation after a hip fracture. Tomorrow, the vice president…” Ariadne typed again, but this time she pressed send: Quaint, are you going tomorrow? I need to ask you something. Three dots appeared under his name, but instead of a message, she received a new call. Ariadne accepted it without thinking, and his face appeared on the screen. Quaint, still wearing his round sunglasses, a strand of black hair falling over his forehead, and tattoos up his long neck, with the elegant yet nondescript wall of his hotel room looming in the background. He was watching the same news on his TV: “The armed forces have arrived in São Paulo today to control an insurgence of protests…” Quaint smiled when he saw her. “Good evening,” he said. “I see we are doing the same thing.” Ariadne muted the TV. “This channel is horrible, turn it off.” “But we’re not going to talk about the news, are we?” joked Quaint, the image blurring as he moved to turn off the television. “Erik helped me when I needed it.” Ariadne tried to ignore her ugly little face in the corner of the video call. She held the tablet in the air, feeling like her wrists were about to glitch under the weight of it, and she convinced herself that the pain was not real, just an illusion of the implant. “I want to help him, too.” Quaint didn’t answer. With the glasses, it was hard to guess what he was thinking, but she took his solemn expression as encouragement to continue: “Take me with you, please.” On the television, the news had been replaced by ads: a family enjoyed a particular brand of coffee, then it changed to an obligatory health campaign. Finally, Quaint answered with a reassuring smile: “Two heads are better than one.” Excerpted from Cabaret in Flames, copyright © 2026 by Hache Pueyo. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Cabaret in Flames</i> by Hache Pueyo appeared first on Reactor.