Negative Space

Thumping bass rumbled in her guts. Each kick of the drum reverberated in her bones, the vibrations slapping against each nerve in her body like an ocean swell. Her skin was like napalm, liquid heat engulfing her. Her hips undulated in a rolling crescendo, the music twisting them at its whim.
She threw her head back, blonde curls so soaked with sweat they looked brown, long locks fusing themselves to the exposed skin of her shoulder blades. The bodies around her writhed almost as one, an incandescent sea of flesh. The music splashed over them, through them, under them, creating a pulsing net that held the crowd within its grasp.
Lifetimes passed, entire generations encapsulated in each gyration of her body. 
Soon the resonant sounds of bass guitar strings being plucked in a calm euphony caused a soothing energy to fall over the cavernous room, and her movements slowed to a gentle sway. Her lashes rose, revealing french roast eyes that felt like they were opening for the first time.
An emerald green haze saturated the air, illuminating only distorted shapes and puffs of smoke wafting up like hundreds of tiny volcanoes.
A man towered above the crowd, ebony dreadlocks framing his face like a lion’s mane. He held two sticks up in the air, letting out a vicious roar that hung with the profound buzz of the bass notes. 
Somewhere, a man howled in response, his exclamation slamming into the roar like a cold front hitting a warm front and the air began to twist and bend and a storm was brewing and her lungs felt like they were going to explode if she didn’t shriek and expel the demons inside of her so she opened her mouth and the scream felt like her body was turning inside out like the demon was trying to pull her guts out with it and she was falling falling falling-
The lion’s arms bent back at an impossible angle and he cast the sticks into the sea, slick wood flipping end over end in a perfect arc that moved like a tactical missile through the fog and smoke. Each one unearthed an outstretched hand, fingers snaking around timber in a grip that would never let go, for they had found their home.
Electricity danced up her arm upon contact, bones jerking at the sensation of simultaneously feeling empty and full and broken and whole and everything and nothing-
The universe collapsed in on itself and shattered, leaving her in empty whiteness clutching a stick, facing a man left in empty whiteness clutching a stick.
In the distance, a lion’s roar thundered towards them, and they fled.
“What the fuck is happening?” he huffed as he ran, feet pounding something hard that neither of them could see.
She glanced behind her, cold gripping at her heart at the thought of the lion gaining ground, but there was only white. 
“I don’t know,” she gasped, head spinning at the thought that they weren’t moving away from or towards anything. Her equilibrium thrashed in a violent dance that sent her body sprawling.
His stick halted as if anchored and he let out a strangled cry as his body failed to stop with it. He bounced back like a rag doll and fell next to her. Two panting masses of aching limbs flopped in negative space.
She rotated her head at the feel of his knuckles on hers, half slitting one eye to challenge the vertigo. She focused on the two fists, skin to skin, harbouring lengths of wood and unwilling to let go.
“What the fuck is happening?” she echoed him in a whisper, barely breathing the words into existence. 
Dark chocolate eyes fluttered and opened fully, taking in the upside down face of him, all smooth cinnamon skin and amber irises. Terror whirled in his gaze, mirroring her own.
Without any drive or direction, they allowed their bodies to lay in a gnarled yin yang for a time, chuffs eventually descending into soft respiration.
“I can’t let go of the stick,” she whispered. 
I don’t want to, and the thought panicked her, so she willed her fingers to uncurl from around the wood and they wouldn’t and the wood was life if she let go she’d die she had to keep it forever and ever and-
“What’s your name?” His words were like a thunderclap and she startled, pupils dilating, focusing on his lips. 
Ignore the white, how are we laying down, ignore the not-ground
Her synapses fired on his question and she frowned. “I… I don’t think I know.”
“I’m…” His brow furrowed and silence flowed over them like a river, confusion and panic roiling beneath in violent undertow.
Two bodies splayed in nothingness. The lion forgotten. Lost in the waters of hopelessness, trapped by empty minds.
There was no echo of her agonized screech, the sound swallowed by the white expanse.
sweat soaked bodies writhing together as one/thunder rolling in her bones/tiny squares of paper bitter against tastebuds
“Con-cert,” she whispered like a draft between frosted glass.
Understanding clouded his eyes and his gaze was far away, grasping at
hued beams in smoke/the elixir of life contained in clear plastic bottles/flailing kicking undulating
“Concert.” The word was hoarse but loud, and the sticks in their hands drew his attention like a magnet. Smooth light wood tapered towards the end, a thin oval bulb topping it like an anorexic snowman.
“Drum.” Her vocal chords were compliant and confident in her brain’s assessment.
“Drugs!” Excitement flared in his chest, fluttering the membranes of his heart. “I’m high! I’m just high!” Laughter bubbled from his throat like vomit.
Her whole body relaxed into the ground—not-ground—a contented sigh escaping her crimson lips. “High. Just high.” Glitter infused eyelids closed, relinquishing control to the chemicals flooding her veins.
Confusion.
There was no feeling of electricity, no warmth, no roiling pleasure along the delicate hairs on her skin. 
There was no exhilaration, no dizzying vertigo, no colours behind his eyelids.
“I don’t…” He struggled to find his words again, brain cells leaping to grasp the thoughts playing keep away with his rationality.
Her mind seemed to pluck the end of his thought from the cloud, downloading the message and firing it from her tongue. “… Feel high.” 
What did I take? Tiny squares of white paper adorned with grinning pink cat faces
“Cheshire.” His voice shivered and the whiteness shivered and then they plummeted.
They clutched at each other, arms scrabbling for the only other life in existence to hold close as they fell. Terrified eyes darted wildly as flecks of black and grey whipped upward.
Realization crashed over them at the same moment that they still felt as if they were sitting on solid ground. Each hair on their heads weighed down by some kind of gravitational pull unable to be described by the absence of discernible physics instead of flapping wildly above their heads.
“We’re not moving.” A tentative release of her hand on his arm felt destabilizing, and she gripped him again.
The flecks gradually swelled in size, hazy outlines giving the appearance of inverse stars. 
I’m just high, just enjoy it, ride it out ride it out ride it out-
The whiteness bled away as the stars merged completely. Grey globules morphed into sharp contours, black smudges into jagged silhouettes.
Gentle wind caressed skin like a lover’s breath and they shuddered together. Soft blades of grass tickled her bare knees, and they were on a lush hill beneath an inky purple sky. Massive shadows littered the dome above, splashed with coloured designs too hazy to make out in the dimness.
Tendrils of yellow light bloomed over the horizon like long daffodil petals, casting a warm glow across the plush landscape. The sky blossomed into a vivid violet, causing eyes to squint in shock and awe.
The shapes above were vibrant balloons, wicker baskets bumping along underneath. There were no bursts of flame whooshing to keep them on track; somehow they bobbed lazily along with no discernible path.
She sprung up on wobbly legs, adrenaline surging to the tips of her frantically waving arms. He rose slowly as she screamed, catching her drift to connect with another potential living thing.
Colours warped along the surface of the balloons, fish eye lenses scuttling across silk. Her screams ceased, jaw clicking shut, frosty fingers of fear encircling her flesh.
He wanted to inquire, exclaim, demand answers, but no sound would come, and the shimmers solidified into iridescent blue creatures. Terrifyingly beautiful scales of jagged glass, glimmering in the dandelion sun, four spiked legs reaching a barbed tip that defied the probability of tearing the thin material they perched upon. Long hooked tails that coiled up and up, curling into an impossible infinity above a conical head devoid of any semblance of facial features.
Two tiny humans suddenly remembered how to breathe, and drew in simultaneous gasps of air. Each cerulean critter ceased all movement, beaklike noses pointing directly at the source of the ventilation distortion.
In unison they leapt, hovering for a millisecond that felt like a thousand lifetimes, then plummeted towards the grass in whistling nosedives.
Thunkthunkthunkthunkthunkthunkthunk.
A low whine fell from his mouth like a waterfall, body incapable of movement, lacking all fight or flight response that should have been coded into his instincts as if formatted from his hard drive. Creatures scurrying ever nearer, bouncing and flipping back and forth over each other, showing off agility and grace.
Hunters displaying their prowess, prey accepting the futility of fleeing.
The tiny humans clutched each other once again, linked by fear.
I’m going to die holding a stranger. I’m going to die not even knowing my own name.
She thrust her stick hand out as the creatures ascended the grassy knoll. Eyes squeezed shut to the point of pain, pain that would pale in comparison to the feeling of hooked glass tearing flesh and puncturing organs.
Two sets of eyes reluctantly peeled themselves open, widening with awe at the glass scorpions shrinking away from the shaky hand brandishing the stick.
Two tiny humans stood spine to spine, wielding wooden weapons in a sea of serrated scales.
“What now?” He was unsure of whether to try to attack or defend. Would they be stranded here forever on this lush green hill, keeping the monsters at bay with a pair of drumsticks? Would the magic in the sticks wear off? If it did, if they could release their hold on them, would the universe return to normal, throwing them back into the rave from whence they came?
She let out a hysterical and high-pitched laugh that could almost be mistaken for excitement in another circumstance. “No fucking clue.” 
“You think we can move through them?” He imagined them in a bubble of safety, the membrane made of bulletproof glass, rolling down the hill with creatures diving aside for fear of being crushed.
“And go where?” She didn’t sound any less maniacal, nor feel it any less.
“Anywhere.” He motioned wildly, ignoring the ridiculousness of purple skies and endless white universes. “There has to be a point to all of this.”
“A point?” Another shrill laugh clawed its way from her throat and if he were facing her, she might have stabbed the stick right into his eye socket. Maybe that was the key, the point of it all. Maybe the wood was hungry for blood, and it would release her once saturated in oozing ocular pie.
“I mean, if this is just a trip, then I go and try to make it fun again,” he rambled, desperate to occupy his mind with something, anything other than the gods of death dancing around them in a twisted ritual. Talking to her made him feel like she was real, like he wasn’t just hallucinating her so that he wasn’t alone. “And if I’m not just fucked out of my tree and you’re real and this is all real and we were sent here by a magic drummer, then there must be a purpose. Maybe we have to bring these somewhere. I don’t know.”
She knew he made sense, but her guts were red hot. They didn’t have any options. Whatever this was, it was all-consuming, all-confusing, all-complete batshit insanity.
“Go slow,” she conceded, reaching back with her free hand to snatch his, her only life raft in a tsunami of hopelessness and fear. His right hand linked fingers with her left, his calloused digits feeling massive against her silky slender claws. They held their grails high, a deformed chandelier descending in a bubble of safety.
Scorpions snapped and clicked and lunged, but kept their berth wide, the bubble descending down the hill through the rustling grass.
They reached the bottom of the hill and ran, legs pumping and screaming, still clutching each other and the totems they’d been gifted from the lion god. Muscles worked overtime, hot and tough as feet pounded dirt.
Two tiny humans reached a shallow river, tinkling cyan water flowing over bubblegum pink stones, something out of a child’s drawing. They splashed in, still running, still huffing, and then steaming.
“What is that?!” he chuffed, eyes darting around as their shoes began to hiss.
She stopped short, nearly bowling them both over, and stared down at herself. The pretty water bled dark around her legs. Synapses fired and lungs seized.
“The water’s corrosive!” she shrieked. 
Two humans, holding hands and sticks, ran through acid water, bringing knees up to chins as they splashed and screamed as their legs burned but they couldn’t fall, couldn’t succumb any more of their bodies to the river of death.
They made it to the bank on the other side, shoes and socks and pants melted away, skin bright red and blistered in the light of the alien sun. 
“We can’t—we’re gonna die here…” he moaned as they collapsed in the too-soft grass, velvet cradling their searing flesh.
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Her mind reeled, brain pulsed, fear gripped her chest.
And then, the beat of a drum.
The deep bass rumbled the ground like an earthquake, and two tiny humans in a vast world of confusion and horror looked into the forest beyond, gnarled branches like skeleton hands, beckoning as they twitched in the wind.
BOOM.
They simultaneously wondered what size of drum could cause such a ruckus, imagining a giant bearing down with tree trunks on an instrument the size of a shopping mall.
There was nowhere else to go but into the woods, a thin path awaiting them through the trees, flanked by the acid river and the spitting, slicking scorpions beyond. 
Breaths heavy, gasping hard, they got to their aching feet, still clutching each other, still white-knuckled on their little sticks, and moved into the darkness.
And dark it was, in that forest, as if stepping into night, complete with the eerie call of an owl, then two, screeches in the inky depths of the woods. They wanted to run, wanted to move, but their feet were made of lead as they staggered down the dirt path, tripping over roots. 
BOOM.
Things buzzed around them, things they couldn’t see, but the noises were bad enough. With what they’d already seen, the screeches and buzzes and sounds of life conjured up horrendous images, nasty monsters that could leap out of the ebony distance at any time and devour them, tear them apart with razor-sharp claws or gnashing teeth…
BOOM.
“Should we… should we be going this way?” she asked, voice trembling as her skin crawled. 
He opened his mouth to reply, teeth clicking against each other as he snapped his jaw shut again. He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything.
But the drum called to them.
Where else do we go? he thought, and whether she heard it or not, he wasn’t sure, but she didn’t reply, and they continued to walk.
BOOM.
Closer and closer to the thunderous drum, their hearts and skulls thumping with the bass.
BOOMBOOM.
The trees parted, twisted and dead, leaving two tiny humans at the top of a cliff face, jagged rocks pointing every which way to reveal the chasm below. At the very bottom was, indeed, a drum, but it wasn’t very big, and nobody thumped on it, not even a giant.
They waited. Stared. Tried to make sense of it. Couldn’t.
BOOMBOOM.
The drum thrummed all on its own, emanating from its place in the cradle of death, no plants daring to grow amongst the black slate abyss. 
As if by instinct, they held up their stick hands, holding up the totems they’d been given, bound to, unable to let go. Something inside, pulled by the guts, jerked every time the drum bellowed its bass beat.
Without a word, they descended. The stone was cold, icy cold, feeling good on their blistered feet for a few seconds until their toes went numb, pins and needles licking their nerves as they tried to navigate the jagged rocks. With no hands, they had only each other, and only their feet, and every time they fell and pulled each other back up, the cold stayed with them. Whatever part of them had contact with the surface stayed frozen, hard, like a lump of frozen meat half-thawed. 
BOOM.
The drum grew closer and closer, and so did a mounting feeling of dread. The lumps of frozen meat hardened in their guts, bringing nothing but unease and anxiety. They staggered at the bottom, dragging numb feet and stinging legs towards the ghastly instrument.
It looked like it had been painted with blood, intricate designs along the outer shell swirled with crimson, brushstrokes more like finger strokes than anything else. It stood on a rickety stand made of uneven grey sticks—no, no, those were bones, the drum sat on bones, were they human bones?
“Ohhhhgodd…” she moaned, and she moaned because the skin of the drum was human skin, stretched and still moist, the ragged torn edges dangling off of the sides still dripping blood, tied around the top with some kind of sinew and she knew—just knew—that it was from a body, from a human, from a living thing, this drum had been constructed from something living-
BOOMBOOM.
This close, the ground rattled, but the drum stayed still, never faltering, never tipping despite the movement of the earth. Two tiny humans stood before an instrument of fresh death, a drum, holding sticks, staring at it, then at each other, then at it again.
“Are we supposed to…” The words catch in his throat. They came here with sticks. Would they leave through the sticks? Or would the simple act of beating his drum unmake existence?
They didn’t know.
But they felt like they had no other choice. 
“On three,” she whispered. Unsure of why she should whisper, but she couldn’t help it, the air was too still, too thick, too dangerous to be moved by her noise. “One.”
BOOM.
“Two.”
BOOMBOOM.
“THREE!” And she found her voice, and they brought the sticks down in unison, slamming their totems down onto slick skin, and the resounding BOOM was earth-shattering, everything coming apart at the seams as if they’d just been in a bag the whole time and someone clawed it apart, into tatters, nothingness, spacetime ceased to exist and they screamed and screamed but no sound came-

Lisa groaned and her eyes fluttered open, then immediately closed again.
What the hell? 
Sunlight. A cocoon.
Where am I?
She slitted her eyes again, and then the familiar scent of her lavender laundry soap invaded her nostrils, comforting her with a kind of relief that was almost terrifying. She was soaked with sweat. Had she been having a nightmare? 
She slithered out from beneath her duvet, brushing her matted bangs off of her forehead. Her bedroom. How had she gotten home from the concert last night? She searched her memory, but everything was just fuzz after her acid had kicked in.
What a crazy trip, she thought, though she didn’t quite know why, since she didn’t remember anything crazy. But the sweat. Dehydration.
She swung her legs out from under her covers and recoiled. She’d slept in her clothes, and her jeans looked seared off at the knee. Her shoes and socks were gone, and her legs were bright red, as if she’d passed out in the sun and cooked them.
Her heart pounded, then seized, and the air left her lungs. In the back of her brain, she heard a boom, as if someone were smacking a bass drum inside the base of her skull. She pressed her hands to her temples, blinking rapidly. 
She shook her head, trying to rid it of the cobwebs from her trip the night before. Water. She needed water.
As she staggered to her sore feet, her brow furrowed as she glanced at her nightstand. Sitting next to her alarm clock was a drumstick. For some reason, she felt like she shouldn’t touch it. She wanted to throw it in the trash, get rid of it, get it away from her, but her whole body turned to ice at the thought of even brushing her fingers against it.
“That’s cool,” she said, to nobody in particular, but mostly to the stick. “That’s cool. You can just live there, then.”
She staggered to the kitchen, her skull resounding with boomboom, boom.

END

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