Danse Macabre

For the Fairy Tale Contest.

Fletcher knew he shouldn’t have come to Ramon’s Halloween party. She’d pulled some strings with a boyfriend of hers and got permission to use the Rose Garden Labyrinth at night and it had been transformed with fairy lights and Chinese lanterns into an enchanted world. A band, dressed in emerald green their black hair tied back with leather, played on a small stage in the corner. The Rose Garden Labyrinth, though, had a reputation that Fletcher was all too aware of which made him uneasy. Ramona thought its reputation made it more exciting.

 

The lights illuminated enough of the garden to see, but not enough to dispel the rumors or the shadows. The banyan trees, with their tentacles hanging down, surrounded them like guardian giants blotting out the moon. The darkness just outside the meager light was menacing.

 

He knew he shouldn’t have come when the woman with the magical laugh entered the garden. The conversation around him had stopped and heads had turned, his turned with them, and he was smitten. The entire party was smitten.

 

It wasn’t that she was beautiful, though she was. She was the most beautiful woman Fletcher had ever seen. There was something completely foreign about her, exotic, she moved like water. Fletcher felt instantly ridiculous. The woman was dressed in a red flapper dress, her hair perfectly bobbed. He wanted, desperately, to be dressed as Zorro now, or some other far more dashing character. At least, he wished he was in a suit with a fedora. But, he was dressed in an authentic Robin Hood costume, complete with doublet and feathered cap.

 

The woman attracted all of the men at the party and Ramona’s handsome, charismatic businessmen friends were soon gathered around her laughing and talking and offering her drinks. Fletcher was consumed with jealousy watching them, knowing that, in all his life, he was never that cool, that confident to go to a beautiful woman to offer her a drink. He turned his back on the spectacle and went to get a drink from the bar.

 

“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked. He looked like the men on stage, tall and dark with chiseled features and laughing eyes, dressed in green with his black hair pulled back into a ponytail.

 

“Anything,” Fletcher said. “Anything strong.”

 

He slumped on the stool and pulled out the leather wallet hanging from his doublet.

 

“Don’t worry about that now,” the bartender said and Fletcher put the wallet away. The bartender set a glass with something green in it on the table in front of him. “Specialty of the house.”

Fletcher drank it.

 

He’d expected a grasshopper but this was no crème de menthe concoction. The green drink was strong and tasted woody. He liked it.

 

“What is this?”

 

The bartender with the laughing eyes winked.

 

“Haven’t named it yet. You have any suggestions?”

 

Fletcher shook his head. He wasn’t good at naming things.

 

“I’ll have another.”

 

The bartender laughed, tossing his head back, his shoulders shaking as if he’d just heard the world’s greatest joke.

 

“Yeah, that’s a good name.”

 

Fletcher smiled. The drink was working fast, he probably didn’t need the other drink, this was as powerful, more powerful, than a Long Island Iced Tea. Then, he heard the woman in the red flapper dress laugh again and he drank the second glass the bartender gave him.

 

It hit him like a velvet sledgehammer.

 

“Not many people get through two of those, man, you better drink water from here on out,” the bartender said. Fletcher could only nod. Then, he stopped nodding because it was causing the lights to shimmer and streak in his vision. He looked around the party and no longer saw men and women in store-bought plastic costumes, he saw a witch talking to a priest, an angel with a devil, and he wondered what the world had done.

 

The woman was dancing with a gaggle of men, going from one to the other, a bright red hummingbird among dark flowers. She flitted into their arms and out of them as quickly. She laughed and her laughter resonated through Fletcher’s soul with a powerful frequency. He was going to be shattered apart.

 

Then, she was near him and her hand was touching his shoulder.

 

“You look like a man that can dance the Charleston,” she said. Her voice tinkled like wind chimes. Fletcher’s mouth gaped and he nodded.

 

“Uh, yeah,” he said.

 

She flicked her hand towards the men, now staring at him in unveiled hatred and jealousy.

 

“None of these bozos now how. How about you give a lady a spin around the dance floor?” she asked. Fletcher stumbled to his feet and took her arm, smiling smugly passed the men who had only moments before been so proud. With a flourish, he spun the woman, and she giggled as her arms and legs went akimbo.

 

The band started playing a song that hadn’t been heard since Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald had run around the world as drunk mad geniuses. The party watched them but Fletcher only saw the woman near him dancing lighter than air and shimmering. He was watching her underwater and she was floating far away from him.

 

A man in a black cape came between them and covered her from his sight. His pale face stretched in a grotesque skeletal mask as he smiled at Fletcher.

 

“What are you dancing with this loser for? Dance with me,” he said to the woman. Then, another man butted in and another and soon she was surrounded again. Fletcher wanted to protect her, he stopped dancing and his fists balled ready to punch, but she laughed.

 

“Well, now, all ya’ll think you’re something wonderful but I need a real dance partner. So, how about I propose a real dance off? Whoever’s left standing will be my date the rest of the night.”

 

They all jumped at the opportunity. The band struck up a lively swing dance and all the men rushed to the dance floor to take their turn dancing for the woman. She flitted to each one in turn, never staying for long, but leaving the man breathless with her beauty as she passed.

 

She touched Fletcher’s arm and he spun her around and she was gone off to the next partner.

 

The next dance was the jitterbug. Fletcher’s partner was a woman that was clunky on her feet but she squealed in delight when he swooped her over his back and between his legs expertly. He wore her out after the next dance, the Texas two-step waltz, but there was another woman in her place for the rumba.

 

Some of the men were already tired. They were used to a little bit of light box-waltz that dance schools taught married couples for their wedding or club dancing where men only had to stand with their feet planted moving their hips. They were uncertain of the moves and jerky on their feet. Fletcher worked at an old folks home and danced with women who knew how to dance.

 

“The foxtrot,” the woman shouted out.

 

“The watusi.”

 

“The twist.”

 

“The tango.”

 

The woman was his partner for the tango for tantalizing seconds then she was gone. The other men were no better at holding her.

 

“The mamba.”

 

“The flamenco.”

 

Some of the men dropped out now, sweat dripping from their foreheads and their chests heaving. They sat on the sidelines with the other women laughing at the rest of the men on the dance floor but looking disgusted with themselves. Fletcher danced on. He only had eyes for the enchanting woman, still dancing lightly from partner to partner.

 

“The samba.”

 

“The polka.”

 

More men dropped now. Fletcher could read the horror on the faces of some now and wondered why. Ramona was in the crowd saying something. Fletcher couldn’t hear her, couldn’t see what was wrong, he could only see the woman.

 

“The salsa.”

 

“The waltz.”

 

Fletcher ached all over. But there was only one more man standing. He could do this, though he could no longer feel his feet and he was exhausted. Still, she danced lightly with no signs of being tired. He pushed himself through the red haze of exhaustion, the dizzing unreality of it all.

 

“The cha-cha.”

 

Ramona was by his side now, shaking him, screaming at him, but he couldn’t hear. The other man stumbled, righted himself, then fell.  

 

“We have ourselves a winner,” the woman said.

 

The music died and the world went dark. All Fletcher could see was the woman, an image in red, walking towards him. She stopped the music. But, Fletcher couldn’t stop. His feet went through the motions though people were on the dance floor now trying to hold him. He shook them off.

 

She stood to the side with the band and laughed. They looked different now and Fletcher wondered why he hadn’t noticed before that the band and the dancing woman looked like they were related. The same curly black hair and sparkling eyes. They were all laughing and all of their laughter tinkled.

 

The bartender was one of them. What had been put in his drink? Was he drugged? 

 

He couldn’t continue. The music had stopped but he could still hear it and as long as he could still hear it, he had to dance for her. So, he danced. The music was different from what it had been before. It was strange and made on instruments he couldn’t place.

 

The band and the dancer were strange now, too. They shimmered. There was something wrong with them. He stared and wanted to know why no one else noticed that they were different. But, everyone was too busy screaming at him, clawing at him, trying to get him to stop.

 

Then, a clock struck one. He could see the faint tinge of sunlight on the horizon. He’d been dancing all night, the realization struck him with a horror that he couldn't understand.

 

The clock struck two and he wondered vaguely where the clock was. It sounded like an antique grandfather clock echoing hollowly in a room but they were outside and there was no clock. This all seemed so familiar, a half forgotten dream. He needed to remember.

 

The clock struck three and he stopped. His feet were bleeding and he was tired, so tired, he fell the ground. The woman and her brothers shimmered.

 

The clock struck four. People were carrying him now, lifting him up and moving him. The woman and her brothers weren’t there now. They’d disappeared. Fletcher looked around for her frantically.

 

The clock struck five. There was a bench in the gazebo and he was laid down. Ramona bent her head over him.

 

“Are you okay?” she asked.

 

The clock struck six.

 

The people at Ramona’s party were struck with the silence of the morning. Something had happened last night, they were certain of it, none of them had wanted to stay until morning but now the sun was rising. They’d lost hours of their lives and weren’t sure what had happened during those hours. They only had the vague notion that it had been horrible.

 

One by one they left the party, clutching to each other and laughing at the weird feeling they all felt but didn’t want to acknowledge. Ramona stayed behind with Fletcher.

 

“Where is the woman?”

 

“Which woman, Fletcher?”

 

“The woman in the red dress, the flapper?”

 

Ramona frowned. It sounded like something important, his description almost sparked a recognition in her, but it came with a rising sense of anxiety so she frowned and shook her head.

 

“I don’t know who you’re talking about. There wasn’t a woman in a red dress here,” she said, and it was true.

 

Fletcher’s eyes rolled in his head and he looked around desperately. He could still hear the tinkling laughter.

Reviews

[Cynthia]

Very great story! I love the characters as well!

[Faerie-Story]

Wow. The way you write about Fletcher's exhaustion is fantastic. Certainly gives me a new way to think about "the witch riding you". I'm not sure if witch-riding was your inspiration but you give a nice spin on it. No pun intended of course. Well done!

[Coyote Poetry]

The story was very good. I like the characters. You create a festive mood and interesting surroundings. You brought me in with a very strong beginning and a very good ending. A outstanding story.
Coyote