Sunday 25 March 2012

it's finished

dance
no


I screamed as they twisted around me, searing my skin with their shaking forms as they roughly pulled my limbs this way and that. I fainted as I felt my mind sear with pain and my skull ache with pressure, as if my brain was bubbling out of my ears - and then I woke up on the stage, and stood.

I was in a huge open-sky stadium, and twisted skyscrapers rose above that broke through the black sky and created impossible shapes. I averted my eyes, for it would have pained them to look any closer. I looked back down, and saw an audience full of people. Dark things of all shapes and sizes, some of them ashen humans and some of them shadows on the wall. They all looked at me expectantly.

It was then I realized that no matter what I did, I was going to end up on a stage, dancing until I died. I felt an intense pain in my legs, and looked down to see dark shapes cutting through them like needles. I got the message, and started to move.

And I danced until I felt myself sinking into the ground beneath my feet, and I looked up to see my shadow there, standing tall.

and i'm happy.

brightness of shadows

who            is                    nyx
he's my friend.
no

The beings quivered as they spoke, the outlines of their bright but defined bodies shaking as if with every word they were plucking themselves like a guitar string. 

that                was

They pulled my shadow upwards, all of their arms reaching forwards to grab him by his throat. At his heels there was a mass of flesh and bone and blood, distorted and twisted by the flickering light of the citizens of the night, the Nightlanders. As they pulsed, soft whimpers escaped the thing that hung from my shadow's heels. It looked vaguely human, and I realized that under a steady light source it would be.

From my shadow's feet hung Nicholas Sundyr, Nyx to his family and friends. Standing where Nicholas once stood was a shadow who was convinced it was him, and was soon to be corrected. Pity, revulsion and grief filled me, and I failed to keep down vomit.

no
dancers                                are                           elegant                 you                    are
disgusting.
"i'm not a dancer," I shriek at the bright figures, and turn from them.

it's                okay

we

will

help.

an orderly world

My shadow took my hand, and I understood.

"nyx, i can't see you."

"I can't see you either. You're all... wrong."
i don't understand
"You will."
I walked through the door, and I saw a world of all and none. I knew that everything was wrong, but I had known that about my life before the door as well. Perhaps this was where I was meant to be all along. I stumbled through the dark but saw my shadow as a white beacon, and it clearly knew where it was going.


"Why won't you dance?" my shadow asked. I looked at Nyx oddly. "why would i?"


"...Just... because! You're a dancer, aren't you?"
"only when my mother wants me to. i don't want to."
"But you are."
but

what if i don't want to be?
What if you have no choice?
i want to think for myself
You don't know how.
why? why are you being like this?
I...


My shadow shuddered, and suddenly we were surrounded by of all sizes and shapes, united by the fact that they were all flat and bright as the sun, splayed against invisible surfaces. They were the denizens of this wonderful place, and Nyx was one of them now.

vampire

I escaped from my mother long enough to venture to a forest near my previous home on the other side of town. I found the ring of toadstools in the backyard that I had dreamed of.

"Felicia."

The voice again. I held my head in my hands and groaned, and when I lifted them away, the backdoor to my old house was gone. The windows, too - the entire house was featureless. Assuming that I was hallucinating from hunger or fatigue, I shook my head and went out into the street. I'd buy myself a soda or sneak a nap. But, to my growing horror, none of the buildings had any entrances, and the streets were eerily quiet.

"You just have to ask."

I looked back to my old home, and my shadow looked back to me.

"please, may i come in?"

But the entrances remained barred. My shadow vanished around the edge of the building and, lost for words, I followed. And there stood in the middle of the fairy ring an ornate wooden door.

rings and rings and rings

i made mother angry today i don't even know what i did it just happened and

and

"Felicia?"
nicholas, nyx or nyxie to his friends and family, disappeared last night in his home...
I struggled to sit up. Did I hear something? I didn't know. I didn't hear it with my ears, I heard it like you hear a song that's playing in your head or a sentence that you're trying to make sense of.

My shadow looked back at me from the wall, and I sniffed and went back to sleep. I woke up the next morning with the corpse of a dream in my head, and the more I struggled to preserve it the more it rotted away.

I remembered fungi. Circles of fungi, fairy rings where the fair folk danced.

newspaper clipping

"That boy with the girly name went missing. That one you saw last week."

"i know. news travels fast in schools..."

"Seems like you know a lot of things these days, huh? I swear, if you try to one-up me one more time..."

I read the newspaper that my mother had been reading. It said that Nyx had called his parents about a strange door in his house, and the call cut off just after he said he was going to go check it out. Sometimes I feel the same way, like I don't even know my own home. Sometimes it feels that nothing is real, nothing but myself and the ground below my feet. Everything else is secondary.

phone conversation

You know how sometimes life likes to do that thing where things go really well for about ten minutes, and then things get worse than they ever were?

We saw the Lorax, and it was nice. I didn't care about the movie so much as that I was seeing it, and that I was doing it because I wanted to do it and noone could stop me. And I went home, and I stood proud. For ten minutes. How does she do it? How can someone have such a talent for breaking somebody down?


"i'm sorry, nyx, we can't do that again."

"Why not?"

"just because"

"But..."

"just shut up, alright, just shut up, i don't want this either, but... but she..."

"Is this about your mo-"

"I don't want you calling that boy again. You hear me?"

"i was just breaking it off"

"I know. You have a performance on the first, you'd better get to work. No more distractions."

come back

.

"No."
too 
fucking 
bad.

there's a world above to match the one below

"I saw you dancing last night."

"...oh?"

"You looked beautiful. Do you want to go out sometime? To, like, a movie or something?"

"um, i'll have to look at my schedule. i'm very busy..." yes yes yes

"Alright. Well, let me know, alright?"

"i will."

don't let science in the room

"Why are you so tired? Were you up late again?"

"i was practicing."

"Excellent. Keep up the good work, dear."
you told me never to lie but
You know how our eyes can only see so much? I wonder if there are different spectrums within colours, layers of light nestled within one another. You would see red and then you would see all of the different types of red. Just like white is the unification of the colour we see, red would be a whole different spectrum united to create red. All of the colours would be like that, and all of them would have different spectrums within them, forever. Except black, which is none of them. Or is it the point where they reverse and become something much more strange? 

I felt that night that there was another place where up was down and black was the sum of the infinite colours of nothing and i could be happy.

the firebird doesn't bear scars

A lot of effort goes behind a performance. What seems so easy and natural is merely the end result of hours upon hours of blood, sweat, and tears. It can be frustrating, and sometimes you'll want to give up. Especially if your only motivation is fear.

"I'll stop when you learn."
i've learned i just made a mistake everyone makes mistakes
I can't wear outfits that show my back anymore. "Oh," they say, "Well, we can't be having that." You'd think it'd invite questions.

breakdown

When there's a sufficiently large group of people, they all fade together. You can no longer discern faces, and the larger the group gets the harder it can be to think of them as people. An audience may as well be composed of shadows.
On the other hand, in the abstract, you don't have to think of them as people. You can think of them as simply eyes, watching, and it really doesn't matter who they belong to. Fear needs little reason to manifest, it finds an opening - no matter how illogical - and dissolves the faculties you have developed to tell it no, you should not exist. All there is is the what if. What if. What if? What if!?


That was what it was like for me, standing in front of hundreds of people, shaking and sweating and smiling and functioning on sheer instinct lest I break down and be broken down further after leaving the stage in tears.

"That was pathetic."

i know

katie crackernuts

"What happened? You weren't nearly as good as you were last week, and, well, we had a discussion after that, didn't we?"

but

"Don't you dare give me the silent treatment, Felicia. You will have to practice more, and I'll be there with you, alright? Just like old times..."

i don't