Estimated reading time — 17 minutes

More likely than not, you won’t think I’m real. You’ll catch a glimpse of something moving in the dark after waking up in the middle of the night. Usually from a nightmare. In the middle of your room, or wherever you happen to be sleeping, you’ll see someone dancing by herself in the dark.

Most are too tired to care much about whatever their tired minds must be coming up with and go back to sleep. Immediate sleepiness is much more important than a flicker of motion in the dark.

Please don’t. Watch me for as long as you can, and please don’t scream even if my gnarled black fingers and frayed skin frighten you. Don’t call for help either, or hide beneath your blankets. Both of these will send me away, and that is a fate worse than death. Trust me, I know firsthand.

Before I died, my dream was to be a dancer. Throughout my childhood I trained myself with the internet and DVD’s at the library. Every weekend I put on private concerts, all for myself. No matter where I was living, I made time and room for a dance. When I was in a trailer park, I danced on top of the trailer. If I was in a house, the best place was always the basement. My home may have always changed, but I always danced. I still dance.

Most of my dancing is still done in basements, but now I have an audience. An audience is required if I’m to stay where I’m summoned, which is very rare. Yet I always try. Anything is better than what happens when I stop.

So I dance. Always in the dark. Always in front of at least one person, most of whom believe me to be a trick of the light. My longest performances tend to be in front of children tucked in their beds. If not, an adult in the middle (or coming off of) a binge. They both shiver and sweat in the same way. Kids grip the bedsheets, adults their shoulders, while they watch me twirl and pirouette. One in a thousand don’t immediately look away and send me back to hell. One in a million try to talk to me, and find that I’m quite eager to talk back, even though I can’t. Only one so far in all my years, a five year old boy, has let me stay a full night. He never took his eyes off of me and encouraged me to dance all over the house that the rest of his family were away from.

If I’m going to tell my story with the brief time that I have, I want to tell all of it. At least the most important bits before I entered that festival. A part of me wishes my story would fill more pages. For my whole life I saw myself as something special, something that could fill a book, a TV series, entire plays worth of stories and inspirations that would be left behind after I was gone. It’s hard to remember enough to fill out a few paragraphs. Fill it with the good I’ve done, anyway.

All that leaves is the bad, which started around the divorce. In a lot of the stories you hear about evil people, there’s either a massive event in their lives that triggers the evil. That, or a slow build and exploration of one’s self that reveals their (more often than not) “innate tendencies” for good, or for bad. Most often for good. Many doctors and surgeons use their inability to feel disturbed from the red, pink, and white slime and organs in our bodies to make very prosperous careers.

Some are exceptions.

The day after my parents screamed at each other in the kitchen for the final time and agreed on separating, I went out to play. I noticed my two neighborhood friends kissing behind the shed in one of their backyards. Even at nine years old, I saw the situation as very sweet and tender. They’d always loved to spend time together. When I told her parents, and when her parents sent me to tell his parents, my excuse to myself was that they might do something bad.

What was bad? I had no idea. But that urge to tell on them was overpowering, as was the feeling in my gut as I watched the parents drag their kids away crying. They’d always tried to get me to go to church with them, even though they both went to different kinds of churches, and something about that had always annoyed me. Though I never said anything, I hoped one day they might get the message and leave me alone about it.

That was the excuse at the time. None if it was thought, but felt deep in my mind. The reason was a lot more simple: Something or someone needed to change and I had to be the one to do it. My parents and their divorce wasn’t something I could fix or make better, but the neighbors getting too close for comfort and without their parent’s permission? That was something I could fix.

The two kids didn’t know I was the one that told on them, but they never talked to me again anyway. There was something far more rewarding in that, rather than asking them to stop. Those were words. Another kid asking them to stop was one thing, but their parents pulling them apart? That was physical. Something you couldn’t ignore.

My dancing that night felt so much better than it had before. There was what I called a “golden alignment,” where the universe aligns in such a way that feels like a present gift wrapped for you. These moments aren’t too rare, all things considered, but it still feels so special when they happen. Mine was a dance deep in the woods next to the trailer park.

With a CD filled with songs I’d pulled randomly from the classic/psychedelic rock tab on my dad’s Napster account, I danced in a grove of trees that was so tightly knit together that you had to climb up the trees to jump into the clearing in the center of them. My dance was normal for a few minutes, which I spent imagining what it would look like when I’d grow up and could really capture people’s attention. A song came on, one with a pulsing tambourine-accented beat, screeching strings, and a silky bass that all made me grin like crazy. In the middle of the song I was laughing with intense glee as my body melded with the rhythm and took over, my little dancing grove lit with the deep mix of orange and purple of the far overhead sunset.

The song was “Venus In Furs.” It’s still my favorite song.

The moment itself, the golden alignment, felt like I was being rewarded for what I’d done. So I assumed that I was. The burning in my chest, the energy running through my veins, it was all too much to be simple elation for teaching my neighborhood friends a lesson. Something out there, something buried deep within me, loved what I’d done. Loved me.

It was the happiest I’ve ever been.

There wasn’t an impulse, an urge, to do something like it again until my junior year of high school. I was the only goth girl on the dance team, but none of them seemed to mind. If anything I stood out in a good way. A few of the girls even paid me to burn songs to a CD that they didn’t want their parents to know they were listening to. My dad had taken the family computer in the separation and wasn’t doing anything with it. Usually he was drinking or eating something that made him sweat and his eyes grow all big and dilated while he watched TV. If he wasn’t working at call centers or warehouses, he was smoking weed and watching cable we couldn’t afford. We didn’t talk much, only light conversation when I got home from school and a simple “good night” if we happened to see each other before bed.

One of the girls invited me to a party. When my dad let me go, he didn’t bother to tell me not to have sex and don’t do drugs. We both knew I wasn’t attractive or adventurous enough to make either of those happen, even if he didn’t form the thoughts in his head, he knew.

“You should take this,” he said instead, holding out a big white camera while I was on my way out the door. I took it and muttered thanks, putting it in my bag without much thought as I walked to the bus stop and took the city bus to the redhead’s apartment.

Instead of the sex and drugs that I had somewhat come to expect, there was a large yet quaint group of friends that were enjoying a Friday evening together. We played board games, had chugging contests with ice cold soda, and we watched a scary movie to cap things off. The camera remained in my bag the whole time, only coming out when I saw two members of the dance team making out in the concrete stairwell up to the apartment. I didn’t really think about what I was doing, but I switched the flash off, focused the lense, and caught a pretty good picture of the two in the act. The sound of the party masked the click and printing of the picture, and when it came out and fell into my hand, I knew what I wanted to do with it.

The two girls and their boyfriends met and hung out before classes started. The Monday after the party, I taped up the picture to both of their lockers when nobody was around. I’d planned a bit ahead in case it was a rare day where they each went to their locker alone.

I was standing in line at the photo section of K-Mart when I considered what I was doing and why I enjoyed it: It was interesting. Proactive. Dancing was one thing to show people, a performance, but these lessons? That was physical action, a real force to get the mechanisms in life to move forward.

Like with the kids I’d told on when I was little, it was all a big show for myself. Of course what I was doing had a reason, and of course it was grand and had a real point to it.

It definitely wasn’t that I wanted to get home as late as possible. It absolutely wasn’t that glowing warmth I got in my body as soon as I spotted the two on the stairwell. Part of that instinct I mentioned before was the heat pulsing in me as it sensed an opportunity to flourish, but I couldn’t admit that to myself.

Even with my reasoning, I wasn’t completely sure until my friends on the dance team saw for themselves. I was worried that the boys would shrug it off like some jocks you’d see in a movie, high five-ing each other and pretending to be joking when they asked the girls to get a group thing going. An unhealthy response, and no lesson learned.

Both of the boyfriends looked shocked for a moment, passing the picture between them. The girls whispered something, but neither of the boys heard. One of the girls started to cry. Her boyfriend shouted at her so loudly that everyone in the hallway jumped. The boy that had managed to remain calm had to drag the other away, still screaming, spit and insults flying out of his mouth. No doubt this had been an issue between the four long before I stepped in.

My last class of the day, one I shared with both of the girls, was gym. In the gym’s locker room, all the girls kept their distance from the cheaters. Nobody said anything, but they didn’t have to. After everyone had gone and the girls thought they were alone, they both collapsed into each other’s arms in one of the shower stalls and cried so hard that they dry heaved. I sat and listened, relishing not in their cries, but in the looks I saw from the girls that had already left.

A lot of them looked scared.

The girls tried to be a couple for about a week before realizing that there wasn’t anything between them. The make out on the concrete stairwell had been a dare by some other kids at the party that I’d happened to see the results of.

I didn’t mind. I taught them and everyone else in those hallways about breaking that trust and what it did to everyone involved. My chest burned brighter than it ever had when the two cheaters walked past each other in the halls, both forcing their eyes downwards while they passed, though I didn’t feel the burning from that. I felt the burning from every hand I saw squeezed from an onlooking couple.

There was no doubt. I’d made an impact. I’d taught everyone a lesson.

That night, I took a lot of candles down to the basement me and Dad were living in at the time. The basement was bare except for cement and walls filled with insulation. My earbuds went in, my iPod went on, and I danced in the candlelight.

Well, to say I “danced” would be an understatement of both the dancing and myself. The burning in my chest was radiating throughout the entire basement, and I spread that heat around in too many ways to count. I realized that both my dancing and my lessons were a gift from this burning, and that showing my appreciation back would be the greatest gift of all.

In many ways, and especially that day, I showed my gratitude towards the heat and myself. Pain, pleasure, expression, meditation – each fueled the heat in me until it had no choice but to respond in bursts of affirmation and clarity the likes of which, I’m certain, nobody has experienced before.

So my lessons and my dancing continued, both happening at least once a week. The dancing was always as intense and gratifying as that first night, but the lessons only became more and more eloquent and potent. Sometimes, when I walked through my school’s halls, eventually my college’s, I’d feel that burning and knew that the heat wanted to express itself. So I let it guide me to do petty lessons to people like I had with my old childhood friends or the cheaters in high school. These made my heat flourish for the time being, but before long I needed something more.

The heat wanted me to wait. There was a golden opportunity ahead, one that would define my life. A moment that every creative dreams of, my time in a spotlight that would shine red on me for years and years to come.

The opportunity came at a punk concert hosted by some of the university’s big music dorks. There was a lot of controversy leading up to it, including protests from both sides of the aisle over something important going on. All I remember is the vile, hateful things said on social media sites, comment sections, and chat lobbies. I made most of the posts myself. It was so easy, too. Nobody is as gullible as someone looking for an argument on the internet, all I had to do was spin it towards a protest at the college’s concert. After a time I didn’t have to do any spinning or goading or threatening. The hate and vitriol was so adamant that I doubt even if I had come forward with evidence that I had been the one to fan the flames, that anybody would have cared. It was real to them, and that’s what mattered.

A big plus of being on the university’s dance team was the ability to volunteer to help set up the water and refreshment stands for the concert. It took a lot of time for me to unscrew anything with a cap and dose the contents, but I made it work. I didn’t put too much in, though, I wanted the concert goers to be wound up and seeing things, not going batshit insane. At least, not at first.

The band tripling security did nothing. It was one of the biggest crowds that the meager university stadium had ever seen, and there was a clear distinction between many of the attendees. One group carried handguns, while the other knives and homemade acid (“Just in case,” they all claimed) both of which kept out of view from cameras and security guards. “Just in case.” Everyone wore masks, because even at the threat of violence, nobody wanted to know who the other was. That might sound backwards, but I’d bet everything that it was true.

All it took to set things off was a homemade firecrack that I threw in the middle of the crowd. I felt a moment of clarity before I let the fuse with my lighter. I’m being sincere when I ask to please give me that much credit. For a moment the fire in my chest and head were gone, and I saw the world for what it was.

I asked myself, out loud, if this was how I wanted to be remembered. If this was the lesson I wanted to teach. A lesson forged in blood, metal, and acid.

That was the first time I realized that the reasoning I’d carried for my entire life was bullshit. I’d never wanted petty justice, or cheaters getting their just deserts, or anything of the sort. All I’d ever wanted was to fan the flames of the heat I’d carried inside my chest, my one true companion in all of the moves and uncertainty and changes in my life.

Yet the heat wasn’t there when I lit the firecracker. All I felt was a distaste towards those around me, and so I started my own festival.

A few knives plunged into a few chests. Rounds went off. The crowd in the stands screamed and fled while a war happened on the grass. The band that had been performing, each wearing shirts calling for an end to violence and tyranny, helped to throw a cooler full of gasoline on nearby security guards. They were easy targets from the company badges shining on their chests. They’d been trying to stop someone from bleeding to death. The one that had been bleeding was the great grandson of the college’s founder, and all it took for his slow and agonizing death by fire was for a woman with a handgun to point him out to a crowd that had long ago absorbed itself to become an aimless cyclone of violence and hatred. Even at the edges of the field, men wearing shirts and body armor proclaiming the need for safety and security were executing anyone running towards them with clean shots to the head.

I kept low at first, but after the shouting and screaming gave way to a steady flow of moans or cries of pain and despair, I climbed up on the stage and started to dance.

The heat inside of me blew outwards in a red haze, all across the field. Despite not having earbuds in, I could hear the music and feel it in waves as a droning melody blew and swept up the chaos around me. The death and destruction stopped, as those left alive stared at me in awe. A few began to dance with me, in tribute to me. Before long the dead were starting to rise to dance with them. I saw men and women that had wished death at each other dancing in each other’s arms with blood pouring out of their mouths and chests.

It was beautiful. The apex of my life. A lesson that, though learned in death by most, I’ll never forget. The dance amplified my lesson, until the same crowd brought together by hate was united in love and learning. In a shared beauty and appreciation of the heat that had brought them together and made acolytes of us all, peons and worshippers of the friction that held humanity together and ripped them apart at the same time.
I screamed in pleasure and praise. So did the crowd.

Everything went dark and silent.

A lot of people, me included, imagined the process of going into the afterlife to either be everything or nothing. There’s either nothingness or fanfare, with bugles and golden gates and clouds for going up, and a road paved with broken glass and fiery coals for going down. It could be that for most of you, I don’t know, but it didn’t match my damnation. Because it was a damnation, not a death. I’d welcome a real death on my knees with open arms.

The sky went red, basking the field where I stood in a harsh crimson that hurt to look at. My body was red too, a fiery red that stood out from the duller tone in my surroundings. The field around me was empty, no blood or bodies to be seen.

I felt my precious heat for a second before it floated out of my chest and coalesced into a ball, a sun, lines of heat and passion flowing in and out of itself.

My perception had changed since I’d gone to wherever I’d gone and still remain. There are no words there, even after all these years, but you can feel the intent of everything you see. In my ball of passion that I’d raised and nurtured all those years, I felt a pitiful indifference before it floated upwards into the sky to join the enveloping crimson where it belonged. The strength went out of my legs and I collapsed on the stage.

Cold.

I feel so cold when I’m there. A decaying, vicious cold throughout my body. For a long time, possibly years, I lay on that stage and shivered. Naked. I hadn’t even noticed that my clothes were gone. Every rack of my body sent icy needles into whatever nerves happened to move. After that first long while, something found me. My eyeballs were just balls of frost at that point, but I could still see the tall, lanky man that picked me up and put a chain around my neck. I didn’t say anything while he dragged me out of the field, I barely had the strength to writhe in pain, that itself was a fresh hell that stagnated but is still impossible to get used to. The man never spoke, but I could feel his intention: Another one for the festival.

I could see that the world, hell, was a massive red prison lined with black iron bars on the horizon all the way up to the sky. When I mustered the strength to look back while I was being dragged along the white dirt, I didn’t see the field where the concert had happened. There wasn’t anything to see but a vast white and grey desert that stretched into the iron bars on a horizon that I’m almost certain can’t be reached by anyone or anything. I’ve caught glimpses of huge white structures and pits filled with fire and tar, but I’ve yet to experience them for myself. The odds are against me though, no doubt even I can’t fathom just how long I’m going to be down there.

My cage was slightly, slightly less cold than the rest of hell. Between deaths, us damned souls wrapped their bodies tight around the bars and cried for having just a little comfort. Inevitably, something partaking in the festival finds me. We’re all too cold to scream, so we whimper when we’re taken. The screaming, so much screaming that it envelopes every one of your senses, comes when the things in hell use you, body and soul. They take their time, as I’m sure we are their equivalent to the slightly warm iron bars in our cages, but it’s eternities upon eternities for us.

I’ve seen the beasts fed bits of heat from the red miasma above us by creatures that stand so large and imposing over all of us that the most I’ve ever seen of one is a hand that could have flattened everyone into the frozen ground.

I’m certain that one time, during a period where a group of beasts had gathered together to form a sort of pit for their toys, I saw a group of damned souls that looked exactly like a group that had been at my festival. Nothing can talk in hell, not even the beasts that play with us, but I wish I could have asked.

My first death in hell took a long time, and I begged without words for it to come. Every pleasure and pain receptor inside and outside of my skin had been stretched and pulverized.

There was another period of complete darkness, like when things had first gone red..

When I opened my eyes, I was in a small room. It was near pitch black, yet I could see everything like it was being bathed in the brightest moonlight. A little dresser with a piggy bank and plastic houses, a little bookshelf filled with pictures, chapter books for kids, and an entertainment center with a TV and DVD player.

In the corner, in a bed, was a little girl. Her eyes were wide while she clutched her blanket to her chest. She was whimpering, crawling as far into the corner of her bed as she could while she looked at me. Her body shook with so much fear that the rusty bedpost squeeked. Without saying anything, she watched me fall to the floor, weeping and shaking even more than her. I was alive. God knew how and why I’d gotten back, but I was alive.

That girl and I stared at each other and cried. I tried to talk to her, but she didn’t understand me or my voice couldn’t reach her. I’d been in hell so long that even standing felt like the best thing that had ever happened to me. I walked around the room, noting that none of my steps made sound, relishing in the lack of pain in my body and the sane surroundings of this little girl’s bedroom.

At some point she became too exhausted to keep up her guard and fell asleep clutching her blanket.

There was another moment of darkness.

I was back on the empty stage below a red sky, cold and pained. My screams then were even more intense than when I’d first died. In that darkness, the last nail of my punishment to be pounded into my soul was revealed to me in the moments before waking back up in hell

My concert, back when I was alive. I felt everyone that had killed each other dancing and singing in unison. Not only was I not there, but I was ripped out somehow. To the real world, as it was now, I’d stopped existing a long time ago. In a way, this was the worst punishment of all. Not only would nobody remember me or what I’d done, but I’d be paying for it for all eternity.

The same lanky man that took me to the festival came back to get me and dragged me, kicking and screaming even through the searing cold, back to my cage. I died quicker this time, but it took what felt like years.

This time I woke up in a teenage boy’s room. He sat catatonic at his desk, eyes dilated, so high that he could only move his eyes to watch me.

So I danced.

I’ve found dancing is the best way to keep your eyes on me. Once they’re off, I have to go back. I can’t talk. The best parts of my life are when I wake up in rooms with occupants that can’t sleep. It leaves me so much time to explore their rooms, pretend their lives are my own in the brief time that I have, and to dance. These moments in between hell are my heaven.

Sooner or later I’ll come to you, to everyone, I think, and I have only one thing to beg of you:

Have mercy on me. Let me enjoy the brief moments of life for as long as I can. Watch me for as long as you are able. I promise that I’ve paid for what I’ve done, even if to you it didn’t happen. I know I look scary, with bruised and frostbitten skin that’s flayed around my waist and legs to almost look like a dance outfit, but please let me be around for as long as you can.

Hell is a cold and lonely place where the agony cannot be shared and cannot be dulled over time. It’s as vast and varied as any place you could ever dream of. There is no passion, and there is no heat, only pain, suffering, and worst of all: regret.

So please.

Let me stay.

Let me dance.

Credit: Chance Kimber

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