never mind this, it's all just a farce

So the beat throbs like the death toll and her hands are shaking in the stained lights that stop and blur around everyone else, and she's tripping over her own feet and all the strings that hold her up, and her mascara looks like polluted waterfalls over her cheeks. Whoever's singing is high-pitched and screeching and she can feel her brain turning into ash so she curls up in the corner.

Lady-spider's legs build a cage around her, drawing lines in the neon ground. Boundaries, from the loneliness where even the rotating lights don't shine to the sprawling arena of dancing bodies. She shivers in the corner and the beats count down the last seconds. Each heel step spawns cracks from the black marble floor.

She could sing so much better than the girl whining over the speakers.

So the entire world is caving in on itself and she spends it huddled in her own private dark square She's unsteady, restless, tipping back and forth like the leftover cherry in a sherry glass. The singer providing tonight's torture drinks from a grayish cup and spits out lies over the microphone, sending her rotting lyrics swirling over their heads, crashing into the laughter and the static buzzing that is conversation.

Shall we dance?

Someone whispers, the only voice she can hear without it leaving ringing in her ears.

Or shall I kill you?

She curls up tighter and her pigtails drag on the floor, dust gathering between her teal-tinted curls. She remembers dancing on the stage, high-heeled boots polished and reflecting the lights, and clear voices instead of distorted ones. Her world is decaying and nobody can see it.

(she tripped, and that was it, she tripped and fell and that was it, she was the shrine maiden that crashed over the altar, the priestess whose tongue stumbled over the sacred prayers, oh, and she was damn ugly too – her lyrics too pure and transparent, they stabbed through people and instead of caressing them -)

The first one falls soon enough. Bare painted legs kick the body aside. The next ones topple over each other, staggering and falling over, disappearing in the widening gaps on the floor.

So everyone's breaking apart as the beat counts down, three, two, one, and she will be the only one left. The air is magnetic and each gulp is heavy with layers upon layers of intoxication. The darkness in her corner is suffocating, not that the few writhing dancers are much better. Yet she stands and breathes and picks her way across the debris and falling bodies and listens, listens for someone who knows that the top is empty.

There is no point in all of this, in pretending that glamour runs through their veins and that they're any different from her, that they're not scared and that they can't hear all the screaming. Or is it all in her head?

(they hear it, but they just can't stop.)

World's End Dancehall, guys.

Okay so school just started, so I won't give you much...not that I have been lately orz. Sorry about that.

Anyway. Hope you enjoyed.