Taut Tangos

Standing before the bleak gate, I saw no sign nor heard noise that would betray a hint of commotion within. Without, the night held in its airs a sort of agitated yet limp festivity: behind me, in an inner court crowned by a fountain, young men and women wandered vaguely, stirred into Brownian motion by spirits and sexual tension.

The ghost of sensual grace lingered there all the while enveloping the columns that held the balconies above me suspended in the burdened air. The shadows of those pillars, hence, resembled the svelte figure of the Flamenco dancer that had infused so much presence into the then quiet plaza. The towering terrace above took me under its wing, shielded me from the unnatural light of street lamps, and muffled the sound of senseless murmurs. I extended a night-cloaked hand and hissed a call.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

The hive replied with a buzz. The door gave way to cautiously curious fingertips. Within, a stony staircase rose like smoke, ethereal rock. Step by step, the stairs breathed me upwards to the light, like a moth. Out it streamed from the threshold, solidifying not only the stairwell but also the sense of music. The warm, textured sounds slid along the walls and floor, perspiring into my shoes. Like grit it was, hot sand stinging my feet, giving me agony for each instant stood still, bound by boots of Spanish leather.

I strode through, past the oaken door, past mirrors and fedoras, past Gauchos and Catalanes. I stepped into the royal chamber, where the Tangueros moved and spoke the tongue of turning bodies, shaking to the Milonga's beat like bees. The tiled floor, whose flowery regularity scented each tread taken, extended but a handful feet in each direction. A box of sardines where a dozen couples slid like fish past one another and past an impromptu audience waiting for their turn to enter the play.

I lost little time, instead losing myself in the communal embrace, letting the pleasantly poisoned music sting deep into my ear.

Tacit dancer

Her dark figure grew from the ground up, a shade liberated from the confines of surface. Her stance was a silent dance, motionless, yet stating intent, a stifled shout: "Flamenco!" Her face was aged, yet of timeless beauty:

Half moon eyes - the inverse smiles of samurai masks. The slender, sharp nose sliced the air she breathed, a blade hung over her fine mouth, wide and stern guarding a voice deep and sensuous, of musky tones, textured like white birch bark. Her hair, knotted into a tense bun, more than embraced her scalp, nigh permeating it even, the black ink of an epopee twisted and condensed beyond sense.

What darker threads of thought hid beneath? I imagined their ebony silk boil into sung voice as passion burnt them, leaving only the ash of memory. She did not rummage through the pale flakes of feeling, but instead tamed desire by becoming more obscure than its object, unfathomable to temptation and fate.

As dark stars absorb all light about themselves, so she had drained the light of day to herself, leaving the rest of the square in darkness to my eyes. Only later did I take notice of her escort, a man of ample chest and weathered, rocky face. His apparent prowess was tempered by his meek demeanour, such that side by side the two companions appeared disparate yet inexorably bound: like the King and Queen of a graceful chess set, like Lord and Lady Macbeth, like Mathieu and Conchita...

Silverback

A living image of the one who is Silverback, yet charcoal heart, burning...

Broken glass

Years ere, I had a Nightmare, a most unpleasant affair. Indeed, a nightmare with capital letter, for the usual nightmare is rather interesting. The latter turns the misty matter of dream more solid, more living, and sharper than sentient existence. But Nightmare is something else, it is the sweat soaking your face in the morning, the tremor of tendons as fingers sweep sand out of dilated eyes. Nightmare is a dream too frighteningly real, one that threatens to overthrow stable reality to let reign the pandemonium of reverie. Fear comes from feeling that your existence is perhaps confined to the realm of the looking glass, and the smirking face behind the mirror gloats over your stolen freedom...

That morning I had been thus caged in Nightmare, not by iron bars, but by the vast, barren landscape that stretched before me and across infinity as a tired god on a cloudy bed. The whiteness of the endless plane bred madness in my mind as my eyes turned drunk with bare absence. I floated, shapeless and incorporeal, an eyeless observer to the scenes that would unfold in that timeless limbo. Both my being and senses were ensnared, unable to deviate but for one instant, locked into place by dread and anticipation.

Suddenly, an image manifested, as though it had always been there: a young woman, bare and beautiful, sprinted towards the glass screen separating her and me. She leaped through the wall and, as though Time blinked during the impact, appeared on the other side. She crouched on the floor unharmed, almost foetal in her mien, her head bowed not low enough to masquerade the fairness of her face. But then another blink, this time in the eyes of Chance, and where she had been, a bloody pool extended on the plane. Horror shook my sleeping body as I felt, more than saw, her body entire torn by the sharp shards of crystal. Both images stood waiting, languishing in my eyes as consciousness attempted vainly to refuse them passage. Both seen at once, yet separate, as though Fate held its trumps in hand, a sadistic player who out of spite refuses to play a card. Death and life clasped in one cruel fist...