SHUT UP AND DANCE

2011

Scary

The rehearsal room smelled of sweat and cheap wine.
Outside, it was snowing, but inside everything burned.
Someone turned up the music and the bass throbbed in everyone’s ribs.
Bodies moved as if they were one: arched backs, glistening tongues, laughter breaking into screams.

No one remembered exactly when the party had started.
Some said it was to celebrate the end of the tour,
others that it was because they finally had a roof to sleep under.
But in that moment, nothing mattered.
The only real thing was the rhythm running through them like electricity.

Lucy spun around with her eyes closed, damp hair sticking to her neck.
Her laughter blended with everyone else’s, though something inside her began to twist.
The wine tasted strange, too sweet.
Someone had mixed it with something else.
She realized too late, when the floor began to bend beneath her feet.

The music didn’t stop.
It never stopped.

A group huddled against the wall, hugging, crying, and kissing all at once.
In the corner, two dancers fought like animals, teeth bared, blood splattering their sneakers.
The air was dense, soaked with cheap perfume, smoke, and something that smelled like hot metal.

Lucy tried to open the door, but it was locked.
She banged with her fist, with her shoulder, with her whole body.
No one helped her.
Everyone was too busy losing themselves in their own delirium.

The DJ never stopped smiling, eyes wide as saucers.
He kept turning the volume higher and higher until the ceiling seemed to shake.
“This is a dream,” Lucy thought, “or a trap.”

The strobe lights flashed again.
Red, blue, green, red again.
The walls seemed to breathe, swelling with every beat of the bass.
Someone screamed in French, someone else began to pray in a language no one understood.

Lucy ran to the bathroom, searching for water, silence, anything.
She found a cracked mirror that multiplied her reflection into fragments.
It wasn’t her, or at least not completely: her pupils had swallowed her eyes,
and her mouth was stained with blood she didn’t remember.

Behind her, a child was crying.
Was there a child?
Yes.
On the couch, abandoned, arms stretched out as if reaching for someone.
No one looked at him.
No one could.

The temperature kept rising.
The air grew thick, impossible to breathe.
Every movement teetered on the edge of collapse, every gesture a fall into the unknown.
A woman collapsed in the middle of the dance floor, convulsing, and instead of helping her,
the others circled around and danced on her body as if it were part of the choreography.

Lucy screamed, but her voice was swallowed by the music.
The floor was no longer straight: it tilted, as if the whole room were hanging over a bottomless void.
Clinging to the wall, she walked back toward the exit, though she knew there was no exit.

The DJ laughed with a metallic cackle and played the same song again and again.
It was impossible to tell how much time had passed.
Hours?
Days?
Time was an infinite spiral.

Lucy collapsed on the floor, exhausted, watching the ceiling spin like a whirlpool.
Dancers writhed around her, faceless, only vibrating bodies.
The child kept crying, farther and farther away.

And in that instant, just as the music reached its peak, she understood: the party would never end.
They were trapped in the eternal height, in a dance that sought neither pleasure nor beauty, only to devour them until nothing was left.

Lucy closed her eyes and let the rhythm swallow her whole.