Danse Macabre

there’s no cover, but there is a price.

Photo by Jacob Morch on Unsplash

Naomi’s face tingled. She heard the squeak of latex gloves. A good sign.

“As soon as that numbing cream takes effect, I’ll inject a mixture of your own plasma and donor collagen. You’re going to love the results.”

At least he sounds like a doctor, Naomi thought. She rocked from side to side on the table, releasing nervous energy. She squinted, trying to read a framed certificate on the wall that she knew was not a degree. God I hope you know what you’re doing.

“The donor collagen is excellent quality, by the way. We get it from organ donors, you know? Tested and everything.”

Naomi knew.

“If I change my will, do you give me a discount?”

He put his gloved hands in the air and rolled his stool back from her.

“Whoa, Miss.” Suddenly, he seemed incredibly amateur. “That is really inappropriate. I’m not trafficking body parts here.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t—sorry,” she said, embarrassed. But now she wondered. “Just a bad joke.”

She needed to get these injections every month, which had pushed her to find cheaper and cheaper sources. First she tried salons— some collagen to go with your pedicure, ma’am?— and now, well. Now she was in some guy’s apartment on Sullivan Street, trying to ignore his dirty floors, hoping for the best.

When he injected her face a few minutes later, she heard a familiar crackling under her skin, felt the pressure pushed in under her eyes. A dead person’s collagen, hopefully consensually obtained. It stirred something in her, throwing up a flare. She bit the inside of her cheek.

“Next time I can inject your hands if you want,” he said, as he wiped the cream off her cheeks. “In case you feel like they’re aging you.”

Naomi looked at the backs of her hands. She had never thought they were aging her, but they were virgin real estate.

“I’ll let you know,” she said, already two steps toward the door.

***

A few minutes later, standing on the sidewalk in the thin autumn dusk, she looked at herself in her phone’s camera. She could already see roundness where there had been tiny hollows, smooth shiny skin where there had been lines. Her lips were still over-plumped from last time. She pressed them together until they turned white. She was running out of room.

Ok asshole, I did it, she thought. Where the hell are you?

Her eyes darted from face to face as she walked home, scanning for him. A siren blared. A flock of pigeons was disturbed from a park bench, and dozens of them flapped into the air. Naomi flinched from the feathery cloud.

A moment later, she put her hand in her pocket and the flyer was there, like it always was. She spun around on the sidewalk, determined to catch sight of him, but she never had. A smile snaked across her face.

The paper was the color of steam, and almost equally translucent. It looked blank in the dying light, but when she held it in shadow the words appeared, silvery and shining. Her heart raced.

NEW MOON WAREHOUSE PARTY. DOORS AT MIDNIGHT. FLYER ADMITS 1.

There was a subway station named on the flyer, the last stop on the line, as always. Above the printed letters, someone had personalized the invitation in a spidery scrawl: Red. She flushed.

The cold fall wind nearly blew the flyer from her hand, but she held tight, the gnawing ache in her face like a sore muscle being stretched.

***

The New Moon party was never in the same place twice, but it was always in an industrial neighborhood. Cavernous warehouses lined the streets, their walls tagged—not painted with the bright murals that were the sign of a gentrifying area, but covered in quick, desperate autographs, one layered over the last.

Naomi followed a spiral out from the subway station, methodically tracing block after block, looking for the right warehouse, steeling her nerves against the desolation. She was on her third loop when she saw it: a single red bulb. Out front, the familiar silhouette of the bouncer, well over six feet tall and broader than the doorway. She was so excited she wanted to skip over to him, but she made herself saunter.

As usual, the bouncer’s face was in shadow, his black cap pulled low. He snatched the flyer out of her hand and inspected it.

How do you not know me by now?

Naomi smiled toward the dark void of his face. Her new cheeks were tighter than her red leather dress, which turned the color of dried blood in the light.

She rose on tiptoes to peer over the flyer and point at the handwritten part of the invitation. Her hand shook.

“Red. That’s me.” Her voice sounded tiny, but he finally looked at her. At least, she thought he was looking at her, she saw nothing but shadow.

He reached behind himself and unlatched a black velvet rope, shoving the door open with one hand. She stepped through the dark rectangle into a cold, dark hall.

For a second, she hovered at the entrance, tightrope walking the line between fear and thrill. She felt the prickling of adrenaline waking her up.

The first thing that hit her, no matter how many times she came, was the weirdness of the music. She felt, rather than heard, the low bass notes. They buzzed in her rib cage and she noticed her heart synchronize with the beat. The melody was hard to distinguish, atonal and unpredictable, dreadful and fascinating.

She took a deep breath and was met with the delirious scent. Naomi knew the smells in a warehouse rave, a cloying mix of tropical vapes, body odor and chewing gum. But this was different, it was something elemental: turned soil, wet stone, sawdust, and rain. And rot, an arching, insistent smell that wove through the air like an eel through water.

At the end of the hall stood a tall figure with square shoulders. She thought of him as the Manager, and he had never corrected her.

His clothes were a blur of soft gray. His face flickered in and out of view. But it wasn’t really a face, even when she could see it. A hint of a square chin, a shadow of a carving cheekbone, the memory of a wicked smile. In truth, his eyes were caverns in bonewhite sockets; to look into them was to see the abyss.

Red. She heard him, not in her ears, but in her mind. He sounded like the wind blowing through a broken window. Her skin rippled with goosebumps.

Welcome.

He didn’t put his arms around her— this was not a place for affection. But he wanted her here and that was enough. She gave him a smoldering look. Next to him she felt small, but also lethal. Brave and powerful, unafraid of dark things.

I don’t know if I can stay, she teased, one half of her mouth twisting into a grin.

You will. His words creaked in her skull.

He tilted his chin to the dance floor. The dark room was washed in silvery lasers and flashing strobes. A dense crowd of pale, faded phantoms surged and heaved to the weird music. The dance of the dead.

Naomi had been to the New Moon Party six times. It was the best party on earth, flirting with the very edge of existence. She was as entranced as she was terrified; fear surged through her veins.

She had no answers about what was happening here or why, but curiosity and disbelief were irrelevant. The Manager stood next to her, his bony face a projection, a memory, a religious experience, an extra-dimensional bleed—whether she believed in him or not.

The dancers, that moving ocean of energy, were as real as any person. She had seen what they could do.

She popped a tiny pink pill into her mouth, chasing it with a swig from the flask in her purse. When the Manager walked her to the floor, the dancers parted to let them through. She closed her eyes and rocked to the strange music. Soon, the borders of her body disappeared.

The dead moved like water, flowing around her in collective euphoria. When they touched her— a hand on the small of her back, a hip sliding against her own— there was a moment when they felt human, before their touch faded to a wisp of cold silk. It was carnal and immediate, scary in the best way. She melted into them, hypnotized by the smell and the strobes, waves of hot pink dopamine rolling through her body.

“Holy shit, you’re real!”

Naomi jumped. The shrill clarity of a human voice jerked her out of her trance. When she turned, there was a woman, very alive, with dark olive skin and bleached blonde hair that had been hacked short, probably at home. She was tall, and her long limbs were wrapped in shiny fabric, that fake vegan leather that Naomi knew as plastic. Naomi looked to the Manager but he was gone.

To play with the dead, she had to play their game. Challenge accepted.

“I’m alive,” Naomi corrected the woman. “It’s all real.”

“Have you been here before?”

“Yeah, six times.”

“Oh, thank god!” The woman gushed. “Please, tell me what’s going on.”

Naomi looked around. Her job was to babysit, make this woman comfortable. But hanging out with a living person made her feel like an amateur. She pulled her to the edge of the crowd.

“This is so weird but is it— is it the donor collagen?” The woman talked quickly, her nerves spilling out of her mouth. “Injections?” She asked again. “I’m guessing they have something to do with it? I came out of the salon and—”

“I think so, yeah.” Naomi said, faking naivety. She guessed the woman was young, maybe 25, but in the age of Instagram, no one was too young for injections. Naomi plucked a cigarette out of her purse and put it between her lips.

“I don’t really understand it either,” she began. “But every time I get the donor collagen, I find one of those flyers in my pocket. You can smoke in here— they don’t mind,” she said, lighting up.

“Cause they’re—.”

“Dead.” Naomi took a drag, and let the smoke curl out of her mouth like a tentacle. “Ghosts, spirits, phantoms. I’m not an expert. But whatever they are, they’re really something.”

“They’re amazing.” The woman looked out at the crowd, their bony faces flickering in and out of view.

“Yeah, they are.” Naomi leaned in and spoke quietly. “At first I thought it was fake, like holograms or something. But what would be the point? There’s no one here to see it. Like us, I mean.”

As she said the words, Naomi saw the faces of the others like her, vibrant and precise next to the gray, blurry dead. Six women in six months, and she had escorted them all to the end.

“They call me Red.” She gestured to her dress, the cherry on her cigarette glowing lurid in the dark room.

“I’m Jade. They talk to you?”

“No, they don’t talk. But there’s one guy here, I think he’s the manager. He calls me Red, like, in my mind.”

“In your mind?” Jade looked skeptical.

Naomi pulled the silver flask out of her purse and handed it to Jade.

“Oh, is that the part that seems weird to you?” Naomi laughed. “There’s no bar, by the way.”

Jade smiled.

“Anyway, you can feel them, right? How would you even fake that?” Naomi found herself repeating the list of arguments she had gone over in her mind a thousand times. “I don’t know how to describe it. Like standing next to an open fridge.”

“Like if fridge air wanted you.”

“Yes! Exactly. They’re so eager to be around living people, you can feel it.” Naomi looked at Jade. Was it just the drugs, or did she like her?

“How do you know they’re good?”

“What?”

“How do you know they’re not, like, demons or something?”

“Oh,” Naomi paused, blowing a cloud of smoke. I’m pretty sure they are demons. “I guess I don’t know for sure, but I always get out alive.” She laughed.

She noticed Jade’s nails. They were chewed down to the skin, her matte black nail polish flaking. An empty feeling opened in Naomi’s chest, threatening to swallow her high. Jade was just a kid, in way over her head.

“I really like your earrings,” Naomi said. She didn’t like them, cheap dangling black chandeliers, but she didn’t know how else to tell Jade she was sorry.

“Oh, thanks! When I moved to New York last week these were the first thing I bought!”

Naomi looked away, chewing her lip. This stray kitten had wandered too close to the road.

She reached into her purse and pulled out the baggie, a few pills still inside. She put a second one on her tongue, the sharp chemical taste reassuring her, and dry swallowed it.

“Do you want one?”

Jade took the pill with a swig from the flask.

Leave, Naomi thought. You left a candle burning.

She was sure the Manager could hear her silent prayers, the little ways she tried to save everyone. She had a feeling he enjoyed her discomfort. Jade’s eyes glazed over as she took another swig. Naomi tossed her cigarette butt on the ground and stepped on it. You have somewhere to be tomorrow, don’t you? Leave.

“Shall we dance?” She asked.

***

Gradually, Jade felt the crowd build around her. The music was hypnotic and the drugs made her feel slow and stupid. She had a nagging feeling that something bad was going to happen. Red’s presence had calmed her— she seemed so comfortable here— but she couldn’t shake the unease.

Naomi watched Jade and knew what she was feeling. But no one was ever strong enough to leave. The music was melancholy and primal, communicating directly with her heart. To be packed in on this dance floor was to be swaddled in satin. Her head rolled and she let the phantom bodies press against her.

In the tightening crowd, Jade noticed the wet stone smell was replaced with something more like burned matches. The skeleton faces shifted and morphed, flickering out of sight and reappearing somewhere else. The crowd rippled around her. She felt her mind slowly unraveling, unable to hold onto a thought. She looked around, but she couldn’t find Red on the foggy dance floor.

Jade tried to move toward the edge of the crowd. But as she started, she found herself packed so tightly that her feet were lifted out from under her. The sea of dancers swayed and her stomach rolled. She dropped back down but there was no room to escape. Their bodies no longer felt like air, but had become heavy, pressing against her like a wall of water. Jade was sinking.

Naomi saw Jade’s head disappear right as her own feet left the ground. I told you to leave, she thought.

Jade was on her hands and knees. She knew she had to get up or she would be trampled. When she breathed out, she felt her chest being compressed, leaving no space to inhale again. She coughed as the pressure on her body built, squeezing until it finally cracked, with an explosion of pain in her ribs. She pressed a hand to her side and found a sharp bone jutting through her skin. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t get enough air to make any sound. She tried to get her feet under her, but she was knocked down again and again.

Blood and saliva oozed onto the floor. She made one last move to reach for Red, but it was useless. Her vision blurred, then went dark.

Naomi found herself being passed over the crowd, the mass of dancers moving underneath like waves. She felt the Manager’s eyes on her from wherever he was perched, his approval passing through her body like electricity.

Eventually, the dancing slowed and Naomi was dropped back on her feet. She slid down the wall and closed her eyes tight, feeling the air around her begin to warm. She wanted to take another pill, stave off the downward slide that was coming, but the night was over. The sun rose like always, ruining everything.

When she opened her eyes, she was in an empty warehouse. Watery sunlight trickled in through gaps in the walls. As the high drained from her body, she forced herself to stand, heavy under the weight of being alive.

On the floor lay a pile of shiny vegan leather, in a crumpled shape that looked nothing like a human, and a puddle of black liquid. Naomi walked to the door.

The street was damp, and the morning light made everything look dirty. A rat crashed through some trash bags and a rainbow sheen of grease danced across a puddle. A slow police car cruised by and Naomi saw herself reflected, grotesque and distorted, in the windows.

When they passed she heaved into the trash, but nothing came up, the liquid contents of her stomach long gone. She dragged her fingers under her eyes, coming away with black smears of mascara.

She used the last bits of her energy to get onto the subway, right on time to join the regular people, shiny and clean, on their way to work.

In the car, she leaned her temple against a pole. Behind closed eyelids she saw a pair of black chandelier earrings. She wished she could fall between the cars, disappear into a hole in the earth.

She wondered if she could change. Dissolve the collagen, start a new life as a clean girl, someone who wore white sneakers and went outside in the daylight.

But even as she considered it, she had her phone out, searching for a new faux doctor. Twenty-nine days until the new moon.

Maybe her hands did look kind of old.

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