Spirit Dance
Last month, I asked BSF to pick some pictures for my critique group to write about. We had about five days to finish them, but I think all of us waited until the last minute
I was thinking about the story today and thought that I would clean it up a little and post it here. Perhaps BSF could post the pictures at some point because I don't know where the files are. I'll give a brief description here. 1 is a picture of the moon at nightime with bats or owls flying in front of it. 2 is a picture of a street dancer with people around him taking pictures. 3 is a picture of a man and woman pressing their hands against glass. They don't have shirts on and there are signs of Strip Tease reflected on the glass. The last one is a large sundial on cement. I hope you enjoy the story and feel free to post comments or suggestions if you are moved to.
Warning: Adult themes, but not graphic.
Roidon's knees hit the ground and his chest smacked the round stone. He glanced around for ogres lurking in the ruined temple. Seeing no one, he let his head drop. The scent of his blood and sweat would probably be carried by the breeze to them, and then he would finally die by their hand, too fatigued from his battles and travels to stop it. “Maybe in the next life, I'll make it here quicker,” he thought to himself. “Now that I know where it is, I can spend the next life finding out its secret.” But, moments pressed their way through time without the sound of footsteps scurrying to their quarry. The heaving of his chest evened out, and his eyelids slowly closed.
A camera clicked quickly as a model danced in the face of a giant fan blowing her hair about.
“No!” Roidon yelled and sat upright with his sword dragging across the dirt as his body shifted. He just wanted one night without that other life intruding itself into his dreams. And one night without yearning for completion.
Standing up, his body felt as heavy as a dead horse, but his mind pulsed with energy. He had reached his goal: the place where he had been split. Moonlight shone on old blood that stained the stone he had been laying on. Underneath the blood were carvings depicting different seasons. Was it his blood? How many lives ago had it been? Two? No, three. Shadows tripped through his mind with murmurs of screams and chants. Then they vanished, leaving his mind empty.
This was the first life he had an inkling of where it had begun. His other lives had been spent searching for something he knew was out of reach. Priests were useless without a god around to pray to, and sorcerers never were good seeing beyond the present. His youth had always been the best part; always rough protecting the families from the ogres, but at least dreamless. Still, he never felt attached to his families. Never was drawn by a love that he thought he should've had. His hollow heart gave him disinterest in company as he grew older. He had never married in any of his lives or found friendship among the ranks of armies he had joined.
The dreams always began around sixteen, and he always left his family then, trying to find where that other life was. He was good at killing, which was key to survival in his land. Not many soldiers would try the journey he had just taken, even if they had been promised a land of fruitful fields empty of monsters. He had begun the journey with promises of nothing, just a wild hope that he would be able to make himself whole again.
Roidon looked around the desecrated temple. Walls and ceilings crumbled on the ground together. Statues lay without limbs. The rubble was more than just attrition over time. The god had only been gone a century and a half, and the destruction had been done by the one who had destroyed him. A glimmer of remembrance whipped around the corner of Roidon's mind. He frantically searched through the ages of his memory. Tales had renamed the one who had destroyed the god, but he knew his real name. He had known him. Eric.
A screech tore through the sky, and Roidon looked up. The moon glowed below the clouds like a fiery sun at sunset. (1) Owls swooped in front of it, searching for their breakfast. One owl seemed to depart from the others and fly directly at Roidon. It grew bigger and blacker until it nearly illumined with the void of light. Suddenly, the immense winged figure changed into a streak of black that flew through the sky and shone strangely on the blood covered stone at Roidon's feet. Blinded momentarily, when he looked up, black eyes without even a distinction for the pupil stared back at him.
The man stood dressed in dark clothes with silver jewelry wrapping around his arms and legs. Each hand had one silver ring and his feet wore slick, black boots. His hair and beard were black like everything else, and his expression was unreadable. He exuded power that Roidon could nearly smell.
Before Roidon could ask who he was, the man raised a hand, and dirt began to swirl around the stone. The moon shone brighter as the dirt formed figures playing out a scene. They were two dimensional like the figures he would watch in his other life on a television. Roidon recognized himself in a past life tied up and lying helplessly. Eric was also recognizable. Bile rose to Roidon's throat when he realized what Eric was doing to the squirming, screaming figure next to his tied up image. Tossing the woman aside, Eric began chanting. Silver light crackled around them. Roidon's image was alternately trying to soothe the woman and spitting curses at Eric. Without warning, Eric plunged a knife into the woman. Her spirit rose out of her body into a hole formed in the dirt. The dirt figure of Roidon cried out and part of his spirit began to leave through the hole too. “No!” roared Eric, forcing the hole to close. He plunged the knife deep into Roidon's image, and the dirt fell to the ground.
Before Roidon had time to think about what had just happened, dirt blew over the blood stained stone and formed the words, “Bring her back.” The stone opened, and Roidon's spirit hurtled through it.
***
Roy clicked his camera rapidly at the street dancer. He would make the perfect cover for YES! for their article about the new Dance America competition. The dancer would, of course, receive an invitation to be on the show, and he could have an extra day on the weekend since he had found a dancer so fast. Satisfied with the shots, he bent down to pick up his lunch. (2) Before he touched the Styrofoam container, though, something entered his body with a jolt, and his mind began to expand twofold with snatches of dreams becoming vivid memories. He wretched all over his lunch and a jacket lying on the cement in front of him.
“Yo, man. Use this. That jacket cost me fitty bucks!” A large man turned around and shoved a bucket under Roy who wretched again. “Where'd you get your lunch? I wouldn't eat there again if I was you. Uh, uh. You gonna still put my brother on the cover of your magazine?”
Roy tried to nod yes while holding tightly to the camera.
“Then don't worry about no jacket. Let me call you a taxi.” The man gingerly picked up his jacket and threw it across a circular stone that Roy had been standing close to.
Too dizzy and sick to say anything, Roy allowed himself to be shoved into a taxi along
with the bucket. He murmured an address and puked again as the driver peeled away.
“Oh man,” said the taxi driver. “What's up with this? It's gonna be extra if you get any of that in the car.”
Roy leaned back and closed his eyes. Roidon stood before him. They both sighed feeling the pressure that was pulling them to completion. The missing half was finally there. There was no struggle to remain independent. There was no fear of losing individuality. Each needed the other to be whole and had felt it for lifetimes. The memories weaved together answering long asked questions. Roy had escaped to follow the woman's spirit, Therese, but Eric had closed the door to the world before Roidon could get through. Roy had taken with him all love and compassion, but left behind strength, agility and daring. Roy had never been able to find Therese and doubted he could now. Roidon insisted she must be near if he had been sent by a higher power. Neither one knew who the man was. They guessed the god had feigned his own death and must have returned. Their memories neared completing the weaving into one. What name to go by? Roy seemed best due to the world he was in.
“Hey buddy! We're here!” yelled the taxi driver. Roy opened his eyes, barely cognizant of his surroundings. He gave the taxi driver all the cash in his wallet and stumbled out and into his apartment. He barely made it to the couch before falling into a sound sleep.
Waking, he stretched and yawned and pushed further into the cushions of the couch. It had been the perfect dreamless sleep. One that he was ready to do again. He rolled over to return to sleep, but the words “Bring her back” swam before his eyes. Bolting upright, he reviewed the night with the strange man flying down from the sky. The man wanted her soul returned to that other world, and Roy only wanted to be with her again. How could he return anyway? He had never been a sorcerer. He pondered and then decided he would work out the return after he had found her. But finding her? Maybe it was a task for his whole life here. But, no, he sensed she was close. He didn't know why he felt she was near, but he had to act on it.
Trying to figure out what day and time it was, he glanced around his room. His message box was blinking, and he noted that it said it was the next day. He had slept about 24 hours. Pressing the button, his machine launched into a slew of messages about where were the pictures? Sighing, he decided he had better keep his job for the time. He downloaded all the pictures, quickly touched up the best ones, and emailed them to his office. Once he had showered, shaved and eaten, he emerged from his apartment ready for the impossible task before him.
At first he looked at every person he past. Maybe she was a man in this life. But, eventually he decided she had remained a woman since he had managed to remain a man through all his lives. He was not 100% sure, but at least that eliminated 50% of the people he was seeing. Las Vegas was blazing that day. The part of him who had been living so long in Vegas thought the chill of the other world would be welcome today, but that thought was quickly quelled when he remembered all of the monsters that were back there. As he compared and contrasted the two worlds, he lost track of where he was going, and found himself a couple of hours later in the strip section off the Strip. Roy groaned. This was no place for Therese. Why had he come here? “Strip Tease” signs decorated the street like a main street for an adult Disneyland. Roy began to turn back, but a woman dancing in the window of the Hustler tavern caught his eye and drew him towards her.
It was late afternoon, and the sun reflected off of her window a torn down building behind him. The torn down temple flashed in his mind and he heard the screams of Therese as her soul was ripped out of her body. A quizzical expression flashed across the woman's face, and then it became once more disinterested. She was dressed in leather as if she had just stepped off of a motorcycle. Other men walked by her, smiling appreciatively, but they didn't stop. They knew if they wanted to see some real skin, they would have to enter the bar.
The woman's body moved like water running across glass. Roy thought the song by Train blaring through the window must've been written just for her, “She acts like summer and walks like rain, reminds me that there’s time to change, hey, hey.” Her hips swayed easily as her hands roamed across her body. It seemed the woman danced only for him. Her gaze never moved from his eyes no matter what her body was doing. He unbuttoned his shirt hoping to relieve the heat as she unbuttoned her leather vest. He seemed part of the dance now, removing his shirt as he walked closer to the window. Her vest vanished and they pressed their hands against the window as the song sang, “Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star, One without a permanent scar, And did you miss me while you were looking at yourself out there.” (3)
The woman shouted as she was ripped away from the window by a large man yelling at her. Roy shook his head and grabbed his shirt laying on the ground next to him. He bolted past two big body guards while throwing his shirt back on.
“No nudity in the window!” boomed the man who had pulled the woman away. “If they see you nude out there, why should they pay to come in here?”
“Look, I'm sorry,” said the woman, also putting her vest back on. “It won't happen again.”
“You're right it won't, cause you're fired.”
“It's my fault, sir,” said Roy. “I'm a photographer from Yes! We're doing an expose on strippers and I was scouting out places for pictures. You're window would be good in a different light. Right now it's too reflective.” Roy had pulled his wallet out of his pocket and shoved his Yes! ID at the man.
“Where's you're camera?”
“I'm not taking pictures today, just looking for spots. Naturally I was going to ask your permission before I did the shoot.”
“That doesn't explain why Terry was taking off her clothes.”
“I just got excited, all right,” said Terry, looking defiant. “I thought if I showed him some skin he might be more inclined to use me in the shoot.”
“I'm sure he's ready to use you for more than that, you slut.”
“Hey, now,” said Roy. “No need to get ugly. I want to take Terry out for dinner now to talk about the shoot. Can we use your window and do an interview with you as well for the article?”
“Front page?”
“Of course.”
“All right. Get outta here, but be back for your 8:30 show.”
“Gotta change,” said Terry without looking at Roy. She went through the bar and up some stairs. The manager shouted for a drink for Roy and sat and told him all the woes of owning a strip club.
“That's very interesting,” said Roy, seeing Terry emerge. “I'll let the interviewer know, and he'll call you soon.” Roy sprinted through the bar in time to catch up to Terry leaving through the door.
Outside, she turned to Roy and said, “Look, I appreciate what you did, but I don't want to go back to your 'studio' for a 'photo shoot,'” she held up her hands in quotation marks as she spoke.
“I don't want to do a photo shoot with you; I just want to take you out to dinner.” Terry looked at him with furry and he quickly added, “I mean, I would love to take your picture because you're beautiful, but really, I just want dinner with you right now.”
Suddenly red, Terry burst out, “Look, I don't know why I started taking off my clothes for you back there. I'm a stripper, but I don't sleep around. It was like I was momentarily in the Twilight Zone.”
Roy clenched his fists. He didn't want to scare her away with an explanation about past lives and being sucked into a world they didn't belong in. Instead he said, “I, in no way regret what happened, nor do I expect anything because of it. I just want to take you out to dinner.”
Terry stared at him a full minute before saying, “Okay.”
Roy stopped at an ATM and then called a taxi to take them to the other part of town. At first, Terry was stiff and sat sullenly looking out the window. Roy attempted a joke about a billboard advertising a fortune teller, but Terry didn't laugh. “I think some of them know what they're talking about.”
Startled, Roy asked, “Why?”
“When I was a teenager, I went to one with a friend of mine. She told me all about my abusive stepfathers. At the time, it amazed me that she knew that about me. Now I realize I was pretty much the poster child for domestic violence. But when she was done with that, she told me I didn't belong to this world. That my soul was from somewhere else and that I'd never be happy here. I've felt that way since I was a little girl. I always thought it was just wishful thinking on my part. That somehow I would be swept away to that other place like in a fairy tale or somethin'.” Roy sat silently, and she continued. “Back at the window, there was something about you that seemed from the other world, too.” Silence stretched between them. “I'm sorry. You must think I'm a nut.”
“Not at all,” said Roy, daring to stroke the back of her head. “Perhaps a vortex will open up while we have dinner and take us to this other world. But it will probably only be the affects of White Russians in the hot evening.”
“That's my favorite drink,” said Terry.
“Mine too.” Roy smiled and the taxi pulled up to the Harley Davidson Cafe. They sat under chains hanging from the ceiling and talked like old friends who had separated at college only to realize nothing could end their friendship. Terry called to get another woman to cover her 8:30 show, and they ended the evening on the floor of his apartment, too overcome with passion to make it to his bed.
The week passed in a haze between work and sex. Roy managed to get Yes! to agree to the stripper article, so he was able to visit Terry frequently. At first, it was bliss. But the closer they became, the more frequent the words “Bring her back” swam before his eyes. Terry also seemed to be changing from elated to desperate. At the end of the week, Terry's body quivered in sobs as she cuddled closer to Roy.
“What's wrong?” he whispered.
“It's no good,” she cried. “The closer I get to you, the more that other world calls to me. It's like I need to end my life, but I'm so happy with you.”
Roy held her tighter and finally said, “I will help you. Try not to think of it now.” Terry turned to face him with a confused look on her face. He silenced her questions with kisses until she lay sleeping peacefully.
He didn't want to return. That other world with its hordes of monsters held nothing for him. Here he had everything, everything but inner peace and a happy Terry that is. He felt the pull to it grow stronger everyday, and always ignored it. But Terry was falling apart. How could he return, though? That man or god, whatever he was hadn't given him any instructions. He hadn't even spoken. It probably was that old god. Typically difficult as the stories had said. The god of struggle and strife. Roy closed his eyes and thought of his arrival to this world. The first time had been through a stone. So had the second time. The street dancer spun through his head. He smelled vomit and watched a jacket being thrown over a stone to dry. “That's it!” Roy cried out loud. Terry turned in her sleep, and Roy kissed her gently. “Still, it doesn't seem likely that we can just walk through it,” he thought to himself. The unfortunate answer intruded itself onto his brain. They would have to die on the stone.
Roy spent the next few days alternating between trying to figure out how to kill Terry and himself and refusing to believe death was how to get back to the other world. The words “Bring her back,” were always in his mind now, and his dreams always showed Eric killing Terry, and her soul leaving through the stone. Terry quit eating and began calling in sick to work frequently. She only seemed happy in Roy's arms but also loathe to go to him for comfort. In the end, Terry's health pushed him to procure the poison for his plan.
On a bright, sunny day he talked Terry into a picnic at a plaza. He packed the lunches and walked her to a stone that looked like an old sundial. (4) There were more street dancers performing, but Roy took no notice of them. He spread the blanket on the cement and leaned against the sun dial with his arm around Terry. Not knowing what he would be able to convince Terry to eat, he had poisoned everything. She picked at her food, but the sun drove her to take a big gulp out of the thermos. He quickly did the same, and in minutes the world was spinning away from him as his soul hurtled through space. He slammed into the body of Roidon and stood up slowly.
The man in black grinned at him as Terry's soul soared to the heaven's. “Well done,” were words that formed in the dirt.
“No!” roared Roy. “I brought her back! I want to stay with her!”
The man in black grinned and then streaked through the sky as a black light and then a black winged figure flying to the moon.
“Terry!” screamed Roy, so loudly that he did not hear the footsteps of the ogre behind him or see the ax coming to slice off his neck.
