Bodies.

    A blur of bodies moving, beating like a heart, on the checkered dance floor of a shady club, nestled in the bosom of a dingy city. Bodies pressed close together in the dark, arms pumping in time to the funky techno music, sweat-slick skin from the dancing noticeable in the thickness of the air. It is difficult to draw a breath, but the music is sustenance enough. Long hair sways and billows like silky curtains on a morning breeze, and strobe lights of cerulean, fuchsia, and neon green sweep across the frenzied crowd, turning the club into a gemstone cave.

    The scene shifts—a metal jungle of the obscure alleys and slums of a sleeping city. Half-erected and abandoned buildings littered on the sidewalk soar into the clouds of oblivion, streaked occasionally with a lightning bolt from Zeus, a god of short temper. The dank but dewy smell after a rain is mixed with gasoline; water commingles in puddles collected around potholes. There is a meditative stillness, as though even the carrion crows are waiting for the tar on the road to move, to live.

   Dart into one of these structures to find a lone drummer on an empty, unadorned building floor. He does not mind that the architecture is incomplete and dangerous terrain—that pipes emerge from the proliferated walls of this war zone—because right now he is alive, and that is all that matters. 

   When you lean close, his drumset smells like concrete. But he is lost, his red tank top drowned in a tsunami of sweat and plastered to his olive skin, his glittering chains hammering against his chest, and his hands moving like electricity with his drumsticks to mimic the beat of the song. He exudes confidence; he is a culture.

     The young man morphs into a young woman dressed in a black sleeveless turtleneck with vibrant pink streaks in her hair but the look of Medusa in her eyes. A fruity smell wafts through the club bar she is seated at as she downs glasses of alcohol—her sweet sin—while regarding the music with a distasteful sneer. Music is an expression of emotion, yet the only emotion she feels is . . . apathy.

    Boom. She grits her teeth as the vibration of the bass persistently pounds through her, forcing her to taste a piece of her soul.

    She rushes out of the club bar in a large trench coat and down a dimly lit street, scurrying like the sewer rats at her heels. The sounds of cars in the distance drown out her thoughts. Although shadows veil her face, she glances back, for a moment, looking expectantly for someone—someone to come shield her ears with warm hands, to drown out the incessant music, to make her understand what home felt like again. But she is alone, and, frustrated, bites her tongue. A copper tang dances against her teeth and gums.

    Then there is only the blood, her heartbeat, and the cursed music ringing in her ears like the bells of Charon’s boat. A heaviness settles in her gut, as though someone has dropped a sack of coins into her yawning mouth; hopefully, she will have enough for the passage to the underworld, for the boatman is greedy, and she does not wish to wander any longer.

    One breath. Two breathes.

    And she is gone, dissolved into the peppered moths dancing in the light of the lamppost.