writing_shadows

I can feel it first in the queue. As the sound ebbs and flows with every swing of the door, the first tingle begins.

It's been a long time. Twenty years without this kind of music. Twenty years without the press and heat of the crowd. Twenty years since I've felt the shiver as the pulse of the bass hammers in me like a beat in my cold, dead heart.

It's like a test; a trial by fire. All those bodies, all that heat, all that blood. I want to cut loose; want to scream until the windows burst, lash out until my knuckles crack, feed until I bloat like a balloon. For a moment the sex-food need of the hunger grips me by the throat and I am sure I'm about to tear the room apart.

The moment doesn't pass; those moments never do. I beat it down, drop it in the stream; let the river carry it away.

Twenty years; I'm not about to let that go to waste. I have control now.

Inside, it all wells up again, stronger this time, but the battle is half-won already. I channel the cravings, the needs, let the rhythm take my body and make it move.

I haven't danced like this in twenty years either and the release is incredible. The music isn't my music, but the beat is there and the crowd shudders in time. I almost feel alive with it, the rush so intense that I almost forget I'm there to feed.

Almost.

The girl's blood pulses into me, the bassline thudding down my throat and beating out through my body. Iron tang, sweet with the sugar and fat of a poor, Western diet; heavy bass and the insistent crash of artificial drums. For the third time I come close to the edge and fight my way back.

I am fed. I am spoiled. I am tested. I have prevailed.

I think I love this country.