All he ever wanted to be was normal.
The nightclub smelled of musk incense and sweat, the scent tantalizing and thick in the air. The heady mixture swirled through his nostrils like the smoke of too many cigarettes to strangle his lungs in it’s chemical resistance.
A leather and fishnet clothed boy no more than sixteen was leaning against the black wall leading from the entry door as he passed. Silver glitter coated the ground beneath his boots but not even the flashing reflections off the tiny specks could hide the cold message hidden in his young eyes. We’re all alone. Can you see? Have you realised?
As he passed the boy, his eyes flickering away, a quietly sobbing girl caught his attention. Under the electric flashing of the spectrum of colours parading across her face, her eyes were closed. Her pale skin glowed and darkened in secession as the lights passed over her. Arms waving in the air above her head like a twisted funeral march, she swayed with the beat of the pulsing music.
But this was not an uncommon sight among the writhing black and white crowd. Inverted crosses and chains dangled from the ears and necks of the pale wraiths, death’s own children come to mourn. One didn’t have to look hard to see the message from the boy at the door wasn’t singular. It was reflected out of the deep pits glazed with glass that served as the multiple despair-riddled eyes of the night children.
Tragedy turned his head to see another boy, thin arms garbed in black and bracelets wrapped around his emaciated body in a tight defensive hug, wet face toward the ceiling. It was hard to tell if his arms were meant to keep something out, or to keep something so precious and poisonous in. Sightless eyes closing in pain as Tragedy turned his back, the scene already acknowledged and identical to all the others in the crowded, dark club.
The PA system was blaring a song Tragedy didn’t recognize. The rhythmic flow of drums and synthetic voices led the way for a cresting wave of shrieking guitars and guttural screaming. A succulent lush voice gave way to another; a thinner, harsher cold version. Darkly sensual yet warning of a psycho-edged truth, the sound was hypnotic. It drew the desperate soul thirsty for any type of consolation, anything to prove they were not the only ones.
Tragedy closed his eyes, identical to all the other people in the crowd, just children really. Children forced to be adults in a world that left them with spider web scars on delicate wrists. The bodies he could feel on every side of him were bone-thin, starved of everything but hate and drugs. His nose caught the heavy scent of damp skin underlying the sharp tang of vomit and alcohol on the beer-sticky floor.
He allowed the masses to move his body, swaying in a slower, more painful dance of despair. He lost himself among the nameless faces. He knew what was really in their minds, what lurked behind the shadowed eye sockets painted in night. He knew the crimson velvet secret that slowly corroded their sweet forgotten innocence.
And he was just like them. The countless scattered minds of youth that swayed with death‘s rhythm, he was among them.
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La. Think I might actually turn this into something.