Dancing With Phantoms

Eyes clenched shut. Tears streamed down. Nausea. Dizziness. Sickness. Eyes clenched shut.

Transported. Transported far from the cheap motel room. Away from the noise of the city. Away from the neighbors next door screaming. Far away to a land of dreams.

Eyes open. The room is unfamiliar. The floor is made of marble, as are the walls. Both are glistening white. Great marble pillars rise up around the room, also shining as brightly as the floor and walls. She looks down at herself. She is no longer wearing the dirty, torn week old jeans and T-shirt, but a small black dress. Its thin straps snaked around her neck and tied in the back. The skirt flowed down to her mid-thigh. Her ripped up sneakers had also been replaced with heeled, strappy sandal that criss-crossed up her calf and tied below her knee.

She felt as though she was defiling a place of innocence, sanctity – her black dress tarnishing the brilliance of the white marble room. She spun around, searching for an escape from of the perfection. She swirled around and around, dress dancing around her hips like flower petals returning to life. The chandelier lights of the ceiling glittered off the sparkles of the skirt, seemingly radiating her darkness around the room.

Her spinning slowed, then ceased. She found herself facing a man across the room. She knew that man – ran from that man – loved that man. She took one step forward, heels clicking loudly. As the noise echoed the sound of a hundred stringed instruments started playing – started playing their low notes all in unison. Another step – a hundred violins joined in. Two more steps – piano notes punctuated the air. The high notes floated around the pillars as if washed ashore on the wave of low notes. More steps – the piano started playing a recognizable tune. One she knew; one she had always known. As she continued to advance, the piano whispered out an ethereal tune that screamed to her tortured soul.

She reached him. Her heels stopped resounding, the strings music died with it, but the piano continued to play. She reached out and touched his hand, fearing that hers would pass right though his, fearing that his image would be ripped away. But it didn’t. His hand was warm, real, here. He took her other hand and pulled her close to his body. Her black dress was in stark contrast to the fine white suit he wore. He seemed just as perfect as everything – uncontaminated by the world. Unlike her. He lead her slowly back out to the center of the room. His warm breath floated over her lips.

The piano tune still fluttered through the room, begging to be danced to. He stepped to the side, leading her into a slow waltz. Their feet stepped as one, each move in tune with the other. They danced around the room to their double slow waltz, pressed tight against each other.

“Rose,” He whispered, yet it seemed to resound through the marble hall as if it were the first word anyone dared utter here. Their pace became sharper – not more loving as his voice had hinged, but angry. Suddenly their dance stopped. He threw her hands away from his, pushed her away. “You left. You lied.” Again his word echoed a million times off the marble.

She tried to shake her head, want to scream out apologies, scream out the truth, but something about the place, something about him kept her from defiling the hall with more lies.

She stared at him in horror as he morphed and changed – changed into a different man completely. She knew this man too – the man she had feared her whole life and would fear the rest of her life. This man stared down at her predatorily. “Where’s Simon?” her voice quivered.

He laughed, an evil laugh filled with a thousand nightmares that echoed and echoed. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her off the floor where she had fallen. “Where’s Simon,” he mocked in a high voice.

The music changed, became something jagged and painful. He held her against him and pulled her along in another dance - one with fast, almost bloody moves that threw them around and around the room. His black suit blended with her black dress so closely that it seemed as if one dark entity was flying around the room. Each step they took together oozed out darkness the seeped through the room. It changed each white square of marble it touched into dull, black granite. The chandelier lights burst and the frames rusted instantaneously. They continued together until the whole room had been transformed into a dismal black horror.

They stopped in the center of the room, finally. He released his hold on her. Threw her down onto the cold, unforgiving granite. He looked into her eyes and laughed. The echo had been dulled in the transformation, but the effect had not been lost. As he laughed at her misery his body began to dissipate. It turned into a dark smoke that dispersed through his domain – once her sanctuary. The music stopped. The echoes ceased. All that was left was the shell of a sold-out girl.

Back in a motel room in New York City a girl had her eyes clenched shut, tears streaming down her checks, nauseous, dizzy, sick - left in her own misery and mistakes.

Eyes clenched shut – dancing with phantoms.

xFINx