Lost to the Night

The fiddles played, their merriment resonating throughout the hall. Each player’s eyes were closed so that all was gone except the sound of the music. People danced all around, spinning and swaying, stepping and twirling to the rhythm that flowed through them all, each of them lost inside their own hearts and the eyes of their partners. Sweat beaded on their foreheads and slipped down their backs, their clothes stuck to their flesh and growing damp, causing their skin to glisten in the lights that shone on from the ceiling. As a mass, they maneuvered through and around one another with such grace that it was sure to be a spectacle to behold from the sideline.

There he stood, on the edge of what the dancers knew as their boundaries, clutching his clear plastic cup filled with Jack and Coke, surveying and searching for someone to take the hand of and lead on along with the circular flow before him. His heart was in his stomach and throat, all at once, and his chest shuttered at each extirpation of breath. It wasn’t courage or confidence that kept him there or even the slight buzz that clouded his better judgment. It was the desire to look at someone new, someone who, in his mind, was filled with new possibilities. A girl who could carry the weight of his hopes and dreams yet still dance with such ease and beauty that it made him believe none of it was all that heavy after all, that abandoning all his misery had simply been a matter of a new perspective. A perspective at which she could give him, along with the answers to questions that had haunted him for so many years.

He held hope so deep in his heart that such a girl was somewhere to be found at this very dance hall on this very night. That at any moment now the song would end, the dancers would part, and there she would be. She’d have sad eyes and look as though she wanted to be whisked away at a moment’s notice. All it would have taken was for him to hold out his hand and, in a smooth and assured voice, ask her to dance.

He felt the swells of the music begin to descend and slow. Panic began to fill him as his eyes darted left to right, drowning in desperation as the waters of reality drew further up his body. He was fearful now. Afraid of what would happen if the song ended and he saw no one that sparked in him some wondrous inspiration that would beckon to him, as light would beckon to a pygmy lost in a treacherous and dark forest. He would have had to return to the monotonous life from which he had come. The torturous day to day that was slowly killing him, chipping away at his life with each passing second.

He hadn’t even planned on coming to the dance hall that morning when he woke up. All it took was a look in the mirror to see just how tired and miserable of everything he actually was. He didn’t want to acknowledge how hateful he had become, how numb he’d grown to all that had been offered him. But at that moment it was staring him right in the face. And he was stricken by a paralyzing fear that that was just how his life would carry on. That there was no changing his course, no matter how hard he’d work or fought.

So now he stood there, the song has ended and the music died, staring on with a panic stricken gaze hoping for somebody to grant him the peace of mind he had found to be impossible to find for himself.

The crowd applauded the band, to which they solemnly bowed their heads in return. They then began to tune their instruments for the next song. Everyone parted as the sound of music shifted to that of chatter and conversation that carried through the room and off the walls and back again, through everyone.

And there she was. In between a group of girls who looked young enough to still be in high school and a table of boys who occasionally stared at her with hungry eyes. She wore a lilac tank top that was cut off at the midriff and a pair of black denim hot pants. She sat on a stool at a small empty table, her bare legs crossed. He placed his drink on the table next to him and walked down the barren dance floor with strides so fluid that he looked to be struck sober. His eyes were locked on the girl that had caused something to blossom in him, if only for a fleeting moment. She had dark brown hair that flowed in waves over her shoulder like a waterfall. Her slender face and neck had a light complexion that glowed in the now yellow stage lights. She was toying with a bracelet she wore that looked to be made of some sort of gemstone that he couldn’t discern.

Carried by something he would have thought to be instinct, he crossed the hall and ignored the myriad of stares that had been pinned to him by the surrounding attendees. Then, at the foot of her presence, he stopped still. She lifted her eyes and looked at him, her hand still lingering on the bracelet that he now saw was made of interconnected opals. Her eyes were wide and sweet looking, a brilliant hazel that was made stellate by the overhead lights.

“U-um.” He muttered.

She furrowed her brows and tilted her head as if she were asked a question in a language that seemed like gibberish to her. Then the lights lowered and dimmed to near darkness and the fiddles began to resonate in a low, somber tune. People rushed to pass him by, couples holding hands as the sing-song melody of the fiddles called.

“Um…do you wanna dance?”

She smiled.

Abel had seen smiles that were sweet before. Smiles that were forced and some that were loving and even some that were threatening. But none that had made him feel like a lost field mouse that was now at the mercy of a fox with hunger in it’s eyes.

“Let’s go.” She said.

She took his hand and led him into the fray. She dragged him along with a strength he wouldn’t have expected from such a slender figure. He turned to look back at where she sat and saw the table of young men glaring at him with smoldering outrage. But then they were lost to him as he and she were now surrounded on all sides by the roiling sway of what he was, at that moment, convinced was hundreds of people.

The woman grabbed his hand and placed it on the small of her back and looked him in the eyes, still smiling.

“You’re gonna lead, right?”

The music picked up in a high rush that ripped the air from Abel’s lungs. Just before he could catch his breath, the young woman led him onto the music, stepping in unison with all those around the two. Abel couldn’t understand how he was keeping up. He was supposed to be leading but he felt that the woman was somehow carrying him along. He looked down at his feet and saw they were keeping pace with her, even to the degree that she was following him.

He looked up and she met his gaze with a stare that could have taken his soul through his eyes. She shifted her face closer to his. He wanted to move away, but everything other than his legs was paralyzed, and even then he wasn’t moving consciously. She came so close that he could smell her breath. It smelled like vanilla, sweet and soft and lurid with nostalgia. She then whispered in his ear.

“Spin me.”

And he spun her, sending her twirling down the length of his arm, her sable hair flowing outwards in all directions as it shone in the light like silk. Once she went the length of his arm, she returned to him, and they continued, never once going out of step. It was as if the music was conforming to their movements. He looked to the band. All the members, pulling their bows across the strings of their fiddles, were looking straight at him.

She pushed his face back to her with her hand on his cheek. “Don’t look away.”

And they danced and danced, song after song until his feet throbbed and his calves were sore and he nearly fell to the ground. Then, with a groaning wail, the fiddles played their last note for the night and took their bows. The crowd exploded in thunderous applause and Abel was left hunched over trying to catch his breath.

He felt a finger on his chin ease him back upright. The young woman looked him in the face as she smiled and as the applause roared ever louder.

He was scared of this woman. He didn’t know what to do. Something in him told him to run, but, aside from his legs assuredly giving out after a handful of steps, there was also something in him that kept him tied to that spot, looking up into the hauntingly beautiful face of this girl that threatened to steal his very heart through his chest. The crowd whistled and cheered in a furious exultation.

And, with the tilt of her head, she kissed him, slow and deliberate. He gave in and rose further, wrapping his arms around her waist. She ran her fingers over the back of his head and through his hair. Her breath was in his lungs. The touch of her lips and the wrestle of her tongue made all that noise around him die out and for a moment it was like he and she were the only real things that existed. Nothing anyone could say or do would have reached him. He was at once above all that was around him and yet his very being resonated that moment in time like he was a part of something beyond him.

He belonged in her embrace and would have happily died in it.

She pulled away and Abel stared at her dumbfounded.

“What’s your name?” he yelled over the cacophonous outcry.

“Sybil.” She told him. “This place is gonna close soon. You wanna come over to my place?”

In Abel’s mind, that question came in tandem with the answer. All it took was for her to ask it. And at its utterance, his fate had been sealed. He was now subject to some force beyond his control. His conscious mind had been slipping though his failing grasp since he first saw her until it was now ultimately lost to him. There was no fighting it. He was lost to her forever.

“Yeah. Okay.”