#d3s

The floor bounced. I gagged. But I wanted to be here. My mouth tasted of a sweet and bitter mix of the orange juice, energy drink, and 6 shots of vodka I used to pregame the night. To enhance the pleasure and dull the pain.

How long had I been coming out to this place? It was here that my digital dreamer played out. Sure, a dive bar. But one with a stage and an indie music rave night.

He didn’t even give a real intro. He stopped doing that a while ago. He just began with that glitchy, ear-grating scream, mixed with sensual moaning, mixed with a clear line of his poetry. As many voices as he wanted, all at once. Something to envy. Something to desire. The drumming rhythm and my heart beat as one.

“>God, I love losing control…”

He danced and moved his hands along his body in unusual ways that highlighted the impression of his silhouette. Ways a person probably never could. I could only imagine what intricate mechanisms lurked underneath the fabric. His bunny-like “horns” shone blue, white, pink, red - whatever color the stage light demanded. The broken halo enthralled me.

“>Feeling things I shouldn’t know…”

Ecstasy. I raised my hands to my face, palms pressing on my jawline, and curled my fingers into my cheekbones. Savored it. Did I want these hands to be his? Did I want him? Did I want to be him? No, that felt too far. Just wanted to meld my mind to his through the music for a while.

The movement ended with the decisive chime of a synthetic keyboard to finish itself out. A hundred drunk, drugged-up arms soaked in a sickly, multicolor glowing paint flung themselves into the air and what seemed like a thousand voices rang screaming in my ears.

Hell.

The figure made his way off the stage. My mind was alone again, and not a single thought crossed it. I was seeing everything in front of me as a great, almost impressionist smattering of light and color. It was not as if the world blurred, but as if every detail had been sharpened so terribly that they became invisible, each fine element lost in a sea of contrasted markings. So much to process that it became blindness.

Except, was that ring of light making its way closer to me?

He stopped a few feet short, reconvening with faces familiar to him. High fives and clustered, boisterous conversation. The swaths of noise died down and rose again in a sinusoidal cacophony as the next musician jumped to the stage. In my starstruck fixation, I didn’t even notice.

Excitement. Terror. I just stared.

Most of the group made their way toward the bar. I looked away, then back again. Away and back again. Away. My gaze lingered on the stage for just a moment. Back again-

A face in mine. My breath hitched and ceased.

“>You always watch, but you never dance.” Despite the blaring of the amplifiers, the sensational hollers of the crowd, his buzzy, grinding voice reached me through the fog. I averted my eyes. He had seen me before? Noticed? That small, invisible thing, out in the crowd?

I wanted to spill out a hundred thousand pleasantries, compliments, gushings of horrifically strong, grand feelings. An overpowering sense of worship. On the close likeness of the minds. Praise to the bodies. Hands to my god. I came here only for you.

“Your music is good. I like it.” I finally mustered, looking down at the ground in front of me, before thinking to actually answer his implied inquiry. “I don’t like dancing in crowds…”

The voices wailed again as the idol on the musical altar bowed.

His fingertip slid up my neck and came to my chin, tilting my head upward towards his face as he leaned forward. “>Then come dance for me. I’ll give you a private show~” I heard lust in the undertone of his words. I shook.

Unreality. Too much excitement. Fear. Shattered illusion. Memories I didn’t want to remember.

You can’t do this to me. You cannot do this to me. Mind bleeding as my legs rushed to run, arms pushing through the bodies, reaching for the exit as I retreated, a scrambling animal. I slammed my whole body against it.