Carnival’s Pulse

Music filled the air, the beat pulsed through her body, rattling the pins and bones through her flesh. It reminded her of a time, of another throbbing, charged moment, when, the beat had intensified and intensified until it was cataclysmic and the explosion rocked the world both with its inevitability and intensity.

The house on the hill was crowded with revelers; everyone in Monaco celebrating Carnival, the season of sin. The ballroom, artfully divided into eating and lounging space and a dance floor, was cramped with bodies moving in time to the music and the thumping, pumping, jumping rhythm of the Techno blend. Even the bodies draped across chaises and chairs in the intimate sitting areas, seemed to pulse in time to the hypnotic rhythms. From the packed balcony above, this effervescent stew was both compelling and repulsive.

Through the lens of her fathomless dark chocolate eyes, hidden but not concealed by her party mask, Lia surveyed the scene of twisted bodies. Smokey air sliced by the flashing lights, thunderous pounding music, and her heart beat joining the competing reverberations in the room, electrically charged and maddening. Then, in a flash of light, blue eyes, the color of the sea, caught her gaze, and captivated her with their hypnotic clarity.

Elegantly pushing through the bodies in the balcony, moving ever forward towards the stairs into the pit. Following the marble steps, Lia passed the throng of people; sinking into the pool of bodies – gesticulating and melting like the ice in the cosmic colored cocktails, saturating her senses and drowning her sorrows and misgivings in the rhythmic never ending pulse of humanity or insanity. This, this is the scene of the crime or resembled the scene of the crime; another time, another party, another night of throbbing rhythms and colliding lust.

With each step, the screaming house music wrapped itself around her body, passing through her flesh and bones beat for beat, pulse for pulse. The colored lights flashing on and off in time with the music causing her to see and not see with a maddening blindness. The rhythm remained the same even as the melodies changed.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Lia took a cocktail from a waiter. Holding the glass in her hands, she luxuriated in the seductive and glossy coolness of it, pressing the smooth edge to her painted lips and slowly, as if kissing her lover while he slept, rubbing the glass to her lips. She let the chilled liquid fire caress her tongue; feeling its bite as it rolled gently down her dry throat. Returning the now empty glass to another waiter’s tray, Lia sank deeper into the crowd of bodies.

Once on the dance floor, she closed her eyes and let the music carry her away. The bass pounded her brain, moving her body in time and in counterpoint to the others on the dance floor. All the while, the lights swirled above her and the pool of human flesh around her, mingling scents of perfume, sweat and smoke. The smells of lust and the temptation of the devil cloaked her, carrying her off to another time, to the scene forever present in her minds eye, as Lia danced in the now and drifted deeper into the then.  A sleek dark sedan, windows open to the cool night air and the scream of the music intensifying with the ever increasing rpms. The car clinging to every curve, like a lover, as it sped faster up the mountain road, wild in the star studded night. The g-forces ramping up their lust, tightening its hold on their collective madness, their race with lust and death, reckless in the moment until the devil took control and ended the race, an event which left Lia to face the night alone. The roar of the engine, roar of the music, her screams, as he bobbed in and out of the traffic, tight in this curve and then loose in the next; blind recklessness eating at her mind and overtaking her fear, feeding the lust for more, just one more thrilling near miss. Always more. Faster. Drive faster. As if the kinetics, the defiance of the real, the supernatural powers of the moon, all mattered and yet didn’t as they sped up the coast, as if they were riding the rim of a martini glass.

Brown eyes open now, scanning the crowd. Her body moving in time to the music or to the wildness of her mind, she could not be certain. Suddenly, hands are at her hips, firmly pulling her in closer, grinding with the music. The world shifts and she is whipped around and into strong arms, pulled firmly against his hot body, as they continue the furious and reckless dance. Hearts beating wildly, minds swimming in the wildness before them.

Floating on the ever increasing tempo, Lia felt the speed in her bones, the wind in her hair. The reckless climb, up the rim of the glass, the dark and inky liquid to her right capped off by a studded and sugared, never ending rim of the bowl shaped glass. Ever narrowing, with each edgeless pass, until, until there is nothing but the sound of her scream on the silent wind and the long stretching silence, of inky cloaking, suffocating blackness.

Flashes of light and his mouth on hers, greedily stealing her breath. Greedy, in the Devil’s Sea of tumultuous temptation, only they are not his lips she feels, but the cold lips of her nightmares. The once warm lips, which kissed and held her rapt, as they sped up the mountain pass, to the very edge and then back again, pushing the limits of reality and gravity.

Opening her brown eyes, gasping in surprise, to see those azure wonders staring back at her. Knowing surely this is a trick, black magic on the devil’s night. For the deepest blue, the sapphire pools of fire, which held her rapt, once upon on furious time, had flamed out; leaving her crumpled and mangled and broken, to find her own way.

In her mind, as the music vibrated her body, in his hands and painfully aware of the furious beat behind his firm but still gentle tentative kiss, Lia surrendered, to sink further into his kiss and her own madness for a moment. Suddenly, in a flash of the lights or a blink of her eye, her mind revolted, rejecting the heady sea of pleasure before her.

“No.” Lia screamed as she broke the kiss and pushed the presumed imposter away. Those true blue fires long ago extinguished. She would not succumb to the Devil’s ploy. Pushing through the crowd to the far corner, in the darkness, desperate to flee the tumultuous sea of people, the waves of sensation, which conspire to assail her sanity.

Firm hands again on her hips whirling her around, backing her against the cool marble wall. His warm hands press against her throat, her hip bone.

“Yes.” He whispers. 

”One more.” He demands.

Lips warm and fierce and taking assailed her and carried her away, the pulsing of the music no longer vibrating through her body now. Instead the ever increasing pulsing inside her, is the unwelcome madness of that other fitful time.

The tires squealing, the smell of burning rubber, the spray of gravel, her mind turning the scene round and round furiously, the colors blending into an amazingly tight swirl. Crumbled and broken and screaming, the colors come to the inevitable stop, diving and spinning and exploding into the night, under the blanket of watchful eyes above.

Brown eyes melted and released their bounty, behind the mask of frivolity, meeting the deep fathomless pools of blue, as he once again moved to touch her face and hold her firmly for his lips’ amazingly warm and determined caress.

“Lia.” He whispers.

Lia, unable to break away, held there by the devil and her own desires, melted into him, as formless and bodiless as her dreams. The pulse once again filling the hallow spaces inside, the music long forgotten, the beat of her heart driving them both. Up and up to the summit, heedless of dangers. Louder and louder the roar in her ears, of the fierce climb and the rush of unbridled desire, becoming electric between them, charging the air and firing their new madness.

The colors twirled tighter and tighter, sense of time and space evaporating into the moment, the press of this man’s warm hands and just as Lia melted, pulverized by the relentless beat, her eyes flashed open.

She stands alone, against the wall, with the night air from the opened door, dancing against her skin, chilling the stream running softly from her shiny, confused, melted dark chocolate eyes.

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