Neon light-beams slash at the darkness in a black velvet room crowded with music, smoke, sweat, and the bodies of strangers, and my heart beats a little faster, perhaps deliberately out of time with the dance and the rhythm, my individuality fighting claustrophobia and the fear of being assimilated into the tribe. I can't touch the walls; you see I have the idea that they're just veins against skin and we are just blood cells circulating circling within, containing no purpose at all but the one aimless purpose that seems to be "Life". And perhaps I am an invader here, and once they know, they will turn on me with their pretty painted claws and their pulsating skin and tear me all to pieces. And I wonder, would I fight them? Would that make it easier? I think I had some notion of why, when I first came here, but the storm of the music and the waves of melting ice washed it all away. And when I try to remember, my heartbeat quickens its tempo yet again.

It's okay, garbage blossom girl; it's all going to be okay. Don't you know? The drums are only swells of the white gossamer-smoke hardening to crystal and a skyful of diamonds inside the cradle of your head. You are perfectly mad, and perfectly you, and oh, so perfectly alone.

I always talk to myself--have I always talked to myself?--it makes things easier. Less alone. And perhaps I am the only one who has ever listened to my voice anyway.

My voice.

But is it really my voice, speaking those words, here there everywhere inside my head? It seems to come from somewhere else, always, this voice--somewhere out there beyond me and my song and the crystalline faking dreams and the drums and the lights--

beyond the lights--

So I am looking through the spaces in between the strobes to the darkness that prowls behind the pulse, hunting it down under my lashes till I think it takes a beautiful form--moving against the wall and around fleeting, flickering images of lovers and dancers, its catlike energy discharging in little zaps of electric blue and rising to halo its body.

The darkness takes a beautiful form.

And I am the one who is standing still--you and me, darkness and moth, entangled in frozen time--and the room is moving, and this...essence of you is all black and silver and so bright it's setting fire to some wall within my mind--and all this while you've been watching me think, watching me dance, isn't that so? Hunting me down beneath your own lashes and from behind a veil of hair that flows and shines like the ocean under moonlight--and we know each other, don't we? At least, I feel like I should know you.

You take one step towards me, and beckon me with a black-gloved finger over to your corner, and the darkness pushes me gently towards you. I think I would go, even if I had a choice...


Who are you?