Short Story S: 3 Post: 4 - "They Danced"

They danced.

In the haunting stillness of the abandoned house, they twirled, dipped, swayed and caressed like time had forgotten them. Shades of red, black and amber skin flickered between ethereal blue flames while soft--echoing music guided their whispering footsteps throughout the darkened house, filling the shadows that hid from the swelling moon consuming the skyline out broken window panes with whispers of ‘forever my love’ and ‘until our souls are born again’.

They danced.

Their sunken eyes boring into each other with burning looks of longing, their ashen hearts thrumming with memories of stolen moments from a lifetime ago, and their transparent fingers gripping, tugging and digging into withered flesh and aging cloth with desperation as they moved like an endless foray.

They knew not the state of their decay, their visions seared in a loop of enduring youthful ignorance that swung them like a pendulum between the living and the dead. For him, she was the perfect embodiment of passion with her flowing dark curls, smoldering emerald eyes, fiery tongue and bewitching touch. She had sunk her elegant fingers deep into his soul and had yanked him from the mediocrity of polished society. She was a debauchery of fleshly need and he let her consume her like an insect caught in a spider’s web.

For her, he was the beast of her masters in the flesh--his muscles born from fire and brimstone, his animalistic appetites fed with the barest of bones to leave him forever wanting more, and his fierceness tempered with the whip of absolute loyalty. He heeled with a word, consumed her with just a look and scorched the unforgiven world around them with a gestured decree. She could want no more of an earthly man, and so she had taken him and made him her own.

But they had let time escape them.

And had left their backs bare to the fear and abhorrence of others in the world around them.

On a night, just like tonight, they had been blind like only hungry souls could be. They had let their guards fall away while they waltzed among enemy lines, caught up in a melody that sang like sirens on the highest of tides, and so death snuck up like the coward it was and pounced upon them in the darkest of deeds.

They danced.

While fire licked at their clothes, burning flesh from bone and turning wood into embers of coal, while knives plunged and plunged over and over into their fragile earthly frames, they danced through the pain of their demise and ghosted into a realm of their own where not even time could remain, embraced within each other, and enchanted to flicker across realities on hallow nights and sunken graves.

They danced for the possessed, for the haunted and the lonely. They danced for the creatures of the night, for those left wandering, and for those lost on abandoned lanes. They danced for the twilight cast by the goddess above and they danced for the demons that crawled on dirt ceilings inches from their floating feet above. They danced at midnight, at the behest of the depraved, and they danced  with the underlings of gods who could not be named.

They danced, like only lovers would.

They danced, because they could.

They danced.

They danced.