Interlude II: The Grand Dance.
I sink below and materialize in the grand dance.
The ballroom lights are a low, flickering red, and I am surrounded by others. Hundreds in silhouette. I feel a coolness resonating from them, and hear the deep heaving of their breaths.
I look around.
There’s an old man with a glass eye painted blue. There’s a gaunt woman dressed in black whose elbow-length gloves contrast sharply with her pale skin. There’s a young child with ruby-red lips and a purple balloon strapped to her wrist that hovers in eerie stillness. I see a young man with a hunched back and a thick open gash down his forearm. It doesn’t bleed, but it’s not congealed—merely a vertical strip of liquid around exposed bone and muscle.
They all look familiar, but I don’t know from where.
They face the ballroom stage with stoic looks, anticipation in their eyes. Their knees loosen and they sway gently, as if in preparation. I sway as well.
I spin around to look into the second-floor balcony surrounding the ballroom. Every seat is occupied. The audience sits silently.
A woman with dirty white hair is in a front row seat. She wears a white dress. A pearl necklace hangs around her neck, pearl earrings dangle from her ears, a pearl bracelet rattles on her wrist. She holds the railing. Blotches of white appear in her fingers as her distressed grip trembles. She looks familiar, too, but I don’t know why. Her eyes look past me towards the stage, as if I’m not there.
It is empty save a chrome microphone that shines metallic in the bright spotlight. A thick purple curtain hangs behind. Suddenly, it ripples.
A simmering energy weaves through the crowd. Odd giddiness creeps into my stomach. Like butterflies when you’re falling. The curtains begin to part.
A murmuring din sounds around me, so I murmur as well.
Nonsense words. Nothing of coherence. An incantation of sorts. Lips quivering like a cold night. Those around me burble similar madness into the air.
Through the curtains, as if beckoned by the crowd, out walks a woman in a red dress. She strolls, one bare foot in front of the other, across the stage. Her long brown hair bobs with each step.
Our susurration grows to a higher pitch. I feel the humming vibration in my throat. It tickles my ears.
She gets to the microphone and the spotlight catches her aqua blue eyes. They seem to illuminate the reddened room all on their own. Our resonant whispers echo against the ballroom walls to such a churning volume that my eyes shudder. The woman in red blurs into a veiled apparition.
The crowd silences. Expectancy lingers thick in the air. The woman opens her mouth.
Then, she screams.
The microphone amplifies it and the speakers blast shockwaves through my body, or whatever this is. It feels like being struck by a windstorm of heat, of anger. Her shriek forms gooseflesh on my arms, sends a shiver down my vertebrae, pinches the bridge of my nose so hard that I desperately want to squint, but cannot. I’m forced to look.
The woman’s mouth closes as she steps away from the microphone, but her scream still resonates. She begins to gently rock, side to side, swaying to some silent music only she can hear.
Those closest to the stage mimic her movements, then the second row, and the third. When the wave reaches me, I sway too. To my left, the old man with the glass eye. To my right, the young girl with the balloon. They sway as well.
A new presence floods the dancefloor. I notice the balcony has thinned out as they’ve begun to stream down. We squeeze against one another to fit them in. Our legs and shoulders rub, our backs and chests brush.
We sway, we all sway.
The woman in red glares at us with her aqua blue eyes, then she begins to softly twirl in a circle.
All at once, we collectively shuffle, our moves predetermined by some force. We form into a circle with rows between us. When our transition is complete, the woman halts. Our voices again quiver in high-pitched din.
The woman walks off the stage down onto the dancefloor into our aural bed of lunacy.
She walks into the opening of the circle and strolls, one bare foot in front of the other, through the corridor created by us, her looming dancers. She follows the aisle we’ve created, approaching closer and closer to me. And it’s now that I realize she’s walking inside of a spiral, and I am at its center.
I feel my heartbeat. I feel my pulse throb in my ears, my neck. The tips of my fingers feel hot and electric.
The woman approaches me. I reach out my hand, and she smiles and extends hers. I feel the faintest spark as we touch. She pulls me to her and we’re suddenly in each other’s arms. I close my eyes and let her guide the movements of our dance.
I feel her warmth. A sensation I haven’t felt in however long I’ve been here, wherever this is. She puts her head on my shoulder and I realize I can smell her hair. I bask in this reawakened sense.
I sense the other dancers moving around us, so I open my eyes. They look at us with smiles of bright white teeth and glowing eyes, anticipatory.
The woman removes her head from my shoulder and whispers in my ear. I can’t make it out. “What?” I ask her, but realize my voice has thinned into silence. She whispers her mysteries again. Still, I can’t hear.
The woman tenses in my arms. The smiles from the other dancers now seem strained, forced. They’re pulled back in torturous pain, their reddened unblinking eyes staring in desperate pleas.
The woman backs away from me. A look of horror grows on her face. Some new realization has entered her mind.
I fall again, away from the grand dance. And then I open my eyes.