The Last Dance

She sees it as much as feels it. She does not question this. Content instead to be afforded a ringside seat to a very special moment in her life. A moment made special by it’s simplicity. A celebration of an end. All of her final exams now over. The elation of having completed this part of her journey. No care as to the results of her efforts. That is for another day. All that matters is now. There is nothing else. She feels alive in a way that she hasn’t in such a long time and she embraces that feeling and pulls it closer.

She sees it all and she smiles. She congratulates herself for being so in the moment. You got this right, she thinks to herself. No regrets. No recriminations. This was a winner. She was a winner.

Basking in the reflected light of her happiness, she is warmed and she is at peace. Everything aligned and she was at one with the universe. Did she really appreciate that at the time? How open she was! How carefree! The music was moving her even before her song played. But it was not only the music that she was moving to. All those people around her felt it too. Fronds of pond weed swaying to the invisible tides of energy. She couldn’t help but go with the flow and that flow passed through her as well as around her.

A fleeting moment in the expanse of a lifetime, but one that shone so brightly that it could not help but stand out. A golden standard that represented her meaning. An expression of her truth.

And that was even before her tune was played. That track came out of the blue, and if she thought that the music had already moved her, then what was about to occur was a whole other world. She transcended the remains of the machinery of her day to day life and she was lifted into a world of light and joy. 

Watching that moment now, she remembers not remembering. There she is, dancing on a table and being cheered on by smiling onlookers, but none of that was relevant. Her eyes were closed tight, blotting out her surroundings. Sight was superfluous. There was only the sensations of sound and her feeling that sound. 

She has never seen herself dancing. She danced like no one was watching, but had she ever thought about it, her self-consciousness would kick her about and remind her how clumsy she was. That she was deluded in thinking that any of the beauty she experienced translated into anything beautiful to anyone else. She was ordinary, and it was best for her not to stand out.

That was then. 

She returns to her now.

Now she is motionless and the silence that surrounds her is numbing. She is numb. She lays there and wonders at a world that can turn so far. Over the silence, she can hear the sound of her breathing. She would turn her head but she’s tried that already and it didn’t work. 

Above her is a canopy of leaves and branches. They stare quietly down at her and she wants to ask them what it is they see. Whether they have seen this all before and seeing it before become so accustomed to it that it no longer matters to them. The leaves are impossibly still. She wants to see them moved by a breeze. She hopes with all her heart that she will feel that breeze even as the leaves are moved by it.

Beyond the leaves is the ink of a night that cloaks everything in secrecy. Before this night is out, she know that the silken sheet far above her will fall down upon her and smother the last of her breath from her. She will not go into the light. That is why she remembers the light of that night as she lays here and hears his approach.

The music of his movements is sombre, threatening and dark. Darker than this night. Darker than any night. The crunch of dead leaves and twigs are percussive to his song. She has heard this song before but cannot place it. A dread knowledge is afforded her, that she mistook his song for a symphony of life when all along it was a march to a funeral. Her funeral and the ends of countless others.

As the last of the world unfurls around her prone form she wonders what she did wrong. She seeks answers even as the dark curtain of night is falling down on her final act. But then life is the accumulation of meaning. Why stop now?

Closing her eyes upon her tears of sadness and impotent fury, she goes back to the last place where she was happy and she observes those moments of joy once more. The simplicity of the moment. Her abandonment to the music she so loved. This speaks to her and she hopes she can find it within herself to abandon herself to her fate when that time comes. 

Thinking that this is the reason why she has revisited her last dance, she almost misses it. The discord even in the midst of such beauty. Brave young warriors yet to join the battle of life. No scars here. Only the unalloyed hope of a generation set to do it all and change the world all over again. 

And yet there he is. A dark pool of malice and contempt. She sees him and now she places his song. A song she has heard so many times before. He looks up at her as she dances on that table and in his face are all the answers she could possibly need. Motionless he stands in the crowd. A traitor in their midst. But no one sees him, nor do they notice him pour the powder in her drink. A seemingly innocuous sugary potion that robbed her of her senses and led her to this place and this sudden ending.

She wants to say his name; Charlie. But all she can do is think the word and it evaporates before it can enter the world. Her thoughts summon him all the same though. He drifts into view, a murderous moon. The last face she will ever see. 

Charlie, her boyfriend, the man she thought was a keeper. The first and perhaps only man she was planning to take home to visit her folks. He stares down at her, then he slips a barbarically sharp knife into view, “you embarrassed me tonight. I thought you knew better. But you’re just like all the others.” He shakes his head and his knife drifts from view. The next and last movement she experiences is the knife as it enters her.

Her last thought is that it was best for her not to stand out. She doesn’t know how she got it so wrong. She doesn’t even know what it was that she got wrong. Not really. Not knowing should hurt. But there is no more pain. She is beyond that. All there is, is her favourite tune and an inviting bright space where she will dance once more.