What Dance Begins At Dusk

A Story by IComeAnon

A long, depressing metaphor for a bit of a screw up in my past.

What beautiful and numbing solace which occurs in the unfathomable, dark hours between the horror of drifting into ignorant, unknown sleep and the crash through troubled breaths into the first gasp of waking is entirely wasted on the stupefying shrieks and screams of dream. That damning darkness washes through the skin in the highest tides of twilight and drowns the bones in coldest terror, telling such intricate tales of fear, winding stories of panic and curiosity twisted and tangled together into a cloth of seeming eternity, to the soft and tired soul�"and what lame beast may hide from the hunter? The disarmed soul is ensnared in the net of jumbled hearsay and those tales mate with reality and birth the truest image of the spirit, all the terrors and desires of the heart with speech and movement all its own.

Such terror and spite toward the night I could not hold that creature out! I began in the dusk walking through the dead air, cold, immobile, and rank with the stench of its prolonged stillness, slowly stepping with delicate rhythm through brick streets like rust-watered rivers, flowing into each other, embracing under the deeply shadowed gaze of broken, forgotten cliffs�"buildings staring through warn, glazed faces. Throwing paints of orange and pink against a purple clouded sky, the sun, as warm and strong as he may be, had begun a great and noble retreat to the haven of the horizon from the growing darkness.

I marched further down the flows of brick, passing naked trees mustering what pride they could and standing tall and still on the banks, facing aback the absence in the east, until reaching, climbing, and standing upon a firm earthen tower, a great mountain above the canyons of the city, breathing deep the last hints of the sun’s breath, and in the brittle grass of the city’s crown, I sat.

I do not remember any thoughts or feelings taking refuge in my tired veins, only an unearthly numbness, a calmness of the shore bracing itself for a flood. Through bloodshot and half-cracked eyes I viewed the waves of darkness crash through windows and fill the streets with a singular silence I have never heard spoken of in the most depressing and eerie tales. It grew like a swelling ocean up the sides of my fortress and the mountain became an island, the quiet held at shore only my bloodcurdling wheezes of breath, falling like fog from my lips and pooling at my neck.

I watched and waited and hated the night for bringing the darkness upon my city. The reprieve from self-doubt brought about by the sun had rolled from my coat like drops of rain and I was dry and cracked with insecurities. I pleaded with my lungs to let a goodbye pass through my screeching breath but my lungs had grown tired and weary. I saw the last orange lines of life trickle down the sky and I was alone.

What drove me to descend my keep into that foreign ocean remains a mystery, but after an eternal moment of waiting for the company of my heavenly friend, I stepped down from the crest and into the dark. Silence consumed me and my breath fled the cold as I treaded the sleeping Atlantis and the spark of curiosity charged my heart into painful, rapid pounding. It was if death and decay had fallen like snow from the face of the diseased twilight and in its pestilent place lingered an air of frigid beauty, like an angel in ice, and all around me the currents kissed the doors and arches, embraced the bare trees giving them new motion, and danced in and out of the alleys and boulevards as far as the eyes might dare to wander. The arctic whispers passed through my eyes and lingered in my spine, pacing back and forth, up and down between my hollowed skull and still back, tapping and tugging at my shoulders and shaking my curiosity awake.

The current took shape and the night had me in her embrace. She smiled, through her arms to the sky and cried without noise in joy. The wild dancer intertwined with the darkness and they threw themselves in contorted ecstasy, dancing in and out of time itself and I followed the unnatural angles into the night’s rupturing face. Her soft eye locked with mine and froze my pursuit of the dance. The moon watched and studied my grey frame and I let it taste me and sample the flavors of love and fear in my sweat until the icy gust of its sight stretched my arms and coat behind me and poured from my laughter and beneath the light for a hint of infinity I was a pure and glorious god floating through a Heaven all my own, but she closed her eye behind a blind of clouds and the dancers fled back into oblivion.

The blow of the wind came to and unwarned halt and my frozen joints broke loose as I stumbled forward, back into the brick rivers with a splash until again, even silence fled my echoed footsteps and I was alone again. A rise and fall came back to my chest as my lungs wrestled themselves awake and I moved like a train through Asphodel. Smoked bellowed from my mouth, light caught and cast itself from my eyes, and creaks and groans escaped my limbs as they came back to life. Warmth shot from my chest and into my blood and back again. Beauty retreated before me into the alleys and I moved along under the song of the streetlights lighting from Lethe to home and again, lights from the door to the bed.

I walked through my coat and drifted as a ghost between the soft, familiar sheets and I waited as exhaustion caught up to me; I watched the wall, then my eyelids, then nothing. At first I heard the whispers of one’s empty home, the air coming through the vents, the twists and groans of the wood fighting back the wind, the tapping of nature against the window, begging to come in from the cold, but then the song of silence returned and my lips ached for the kiss of the twilight beauty I had found and the thrill of quiet reached my lungs.

True as its nature the unpredictable night came at her choosing, all at once and full of exotic, impossible movements as she danced around my throat before I even felt her presence. The colors faded and her eye bathed me in silver and her whispers crawled inside my ears, bringing an all too soon goodnight and she retreated into her own slumber, a land so far and yet only inches away and as she left, darkness stood close at hand.

We had nothing to speak of and little to do. Our mutual love had left us and nothing but jealousy filled our two hearts and while he remained timid and in the shadows at the presence of the goddess, here behind my pores the fright and sickness of necrosis wound its way back up his emaciated features and death again breathed upon me. Silence gripped my spine and bit my skull as his master held me to sleep and walked freely through my confusion and terror. I cried out for my love to save me but silence was, too, at my throat, choking the plea and letting it fall flat on the ground before us.

Flashes of brilliant monochrome assailed my core, shaking my stomach and stopping my heart. The quiet moved from my ears to let in all the sounds I had ever heard at once. In through my soul and out through my mouth, cutting away at my tongue and voice, so many lies poured forth horrors. I watched as they opened my chest and carried away the pieces of my spirit and for time immemorial, he dug away at everything I had ever known and left nothing but cold inside me. My vision was blurred to blindness and pitiful shrieks fell like slobber from my mouth and bargains for relief foamed on my lips. My pale skin grew darker grey and my thoughts became a siren and explosions of light. Fear became madness, madness became nothing, and I awoke from the dream.

The room was quiet and cool and the hum of the artificial breeze greeted my ears with a calm reprieve from the horrors of sleep I but I did not care. My love, the night, slept all around me but my blood was cold and I could not remember the love of the past hours. I dared to watch the dance that even the sun does fear and where I once was lonely and broken I now cannot even feel sadness and again love had left me numb. It takes one's whole life to learn to love and I wonder, how can one love when one must start fresh so often? I'm not a monster; I'm simply empty and learning.