The Loneliness of Strangefire Dancers
Alexander Zelenyj
(Continued—p. 2 of 3)
They ate a brief lunch of cheese burgers and grease-moist fries while marvelling at the expansion of the mall. New stores, new halls, renovated signs and floor plans, among the scattering of classic monuments; those staples of malldom: the Coles book store of many years duration, where he and she had perused the fantasy and science fiction novels excitedly every mall visit; the Hallmark gift shop still supplying its myriad display of greetings cards and gifts for all occasions; the old Zellers transplanted down the length of the central corridor to its new residence with greater floor space but its same old eatery, where the burgers were always greasier and the cola invariably tastier than from any of the various food court concessions which had sprung up over recent years.
They took their paper cups with them and wandered. Feeling rejuvenated with the icy cola going down their throats. Content with the fast food meal cramming their bellies and surprising them with sudden burps. They went in circles which led nowhere, traveled old sections and new alike. Getting the feel. Reliving the touch of past wanderings.
Samantha was as eager for tiny adventure as she once was, and accompanied him readily to the secluded portion of the mall when he suggested it. A short hallway opening off the central thoroughfare, without stores or ATM machines. Useless except as a nook for shopping-weary customers to rest on the single wooden bench. Or for teenage boys and girls to sit close and kiss behind the shiny emerald camouflage afforded by the potted plastic plants located alongside the bench and hiding them from view of passing mall traffic. Useless but for these things, and one other.
The machine was still there. A hulking mass of ancient construction, its false wood-paneled siding dating certainly from the 1970s if not the decade prior. Its face-level mirror besmirched as ever, the fingerprints of a million girls and boys readying themselves for the flash of the hidden camera spotting its surface.
He touched the stiff curtain, pulled it aside to reveal the narrow space within. Its single bench and dark walls. Its aroma of musty ancient days drifting out to their nostrils and bringing them backwards to distant mall days.
Wordlessly, Terrance deposited coins into the machine’s dark mouth, more coins today than when a younger version of his hands had fiddled there. Wordlessly, she stepped inside and he followed. Closing the curtain and realizing only afterwards that they’d neglected to check themselves in the mirror the way they once would have.
Like teenagers again, they were inside the warm claustrophobia of the photo booth. Like adults, their limbs felt awkward in the tight space, lost adults inside a magic carnival compartment designed for children.
They watched the blank plastic face of the screen with strained grins, saw the dot of crimson appear in three quick consecutive blinkings, and knew that the old magic still ticked inside the ancient metal and plastic walls. The series of four blinding flashes while they took the old familiar poses: One with big grins, one silly face-pullings, another of exaggerated seductive pomp, and one final picture left open-ended. Any face, any expression, often the most telling of the photographed person’s mood.
They waited outside of the machine and the open air felt good on their skin. A minute and then another passed and finally the strip of black-and-white squares dropped from the silver machine mouth with a small whirring.
They looked themselves over and chuckled. Samantha said with a laugh in her voice, “This one’s great. We both look crazy rather than happy. Let’s try again.”
And they did, another depositing of coins into the hidden confines of the machine and then clambering helter-skelter into the cramped murky booth. Assuming their positions before the dark screen, she whispered quickly, “This time will be better.”
He startled her, his words a breeze of heat on her cheek.
“I have something to show you.”
He watched her eyes widen, caught the flash of fear appear there once more. Now it remained, and with these new eyes she watched him silently. Lips set together into a narrow line, her pale skin ephemeral and ghostly in the murkiness of the photo booth.
He went on. “You’re the only person I ever saw something impossible with.” His words a whisper of loudness and insistence which held her rigid in the wake of their passing. Moulding her expression, setting it securely into its mask of trepidation and rapt attention. He felt it tingle inside him once more, a barely dormant anger rising behind his eyes fixed on her beside him. The soft, frightened look of her quelled its tidal pulsing a moment later, and again he eased back down to relative calm. He watched her watching him and let himself loosen, sagging his shoulders like hers and unclenching his fingers, too. Soon his breathing was normal and matched the light small sound of hers.
Silence had descended between them. The mall was a forgotten place, a million miles and years away.
“It was amazing, wasn’t it.” A statement put forth as a question, daring her to contradict its truth.
He saw the night as clearly as if its events had slipped through their fingers only the evening before. And he knew by the frightened look of wonder widening her eyes that she saw it plainly, too.
Like looking through a window:
The summer field, behind her strip of townhouses. Among the wild grass all spiky and quiet-noisy in the faint summer breeze. The two of them in bare knees and bare feet, being mindful of broken glass shards dangerous to their soft skin. Watchful for field snakes like the one specimen that had chased them screaming merrily the summer before, its light brown body like old leather slipping through the grass nearly as fast as their pounding feet could carry them to the safety of her backyard gate and the house beyond.
They were holding hands, an act both secret and less rare those late July nights and wee mornings. Those endless hours when time stretched strangely and they found themselves wide awake despite a day-full of adventure behind them. When their watches told them a quarter past two but two hours later only fifteen minutes had passed and the moon shone just as ghostly-bright and from its same sky-position as last they’d checked. Inventing names for constellations or star clusters which they pretended into constellation-shapes of ancient warriors and legendary beasts.
And more and more, holding hands during the inventing. During the field treks and cat-walk whispering footfalls while the neighbourhood snored and alley cats eyed them suspiciously from shadows: Who were these creatures slinking about in the night? Which species of nocturnal wanderer were these, passing through the orange street light glow and into the wild country of night time fields beyond?
Another night swishing through the tall grass, heading towards the nearby river sounds. Another A.M. stretch of quiet secret talk close to one another’s ears so as not to disturb the night.
Then: Magic burning in the ink of the night.
Fire in the field close to them.
Crimson, and deep. By turns purple, and cold. A savage kind of flame. A colour livid and yet somehow gentle, too. Softviolent. Strange. Humbling the crickets into song-less silence and keeping cats at bay from mice-hunting. Urging their own trembling steps closer with some kind of promise.
Tentatively, they’d approached. Incremental steps, clutching each other’s hands with icy-sweaty fingers. Drawn, and unable to withstand the pull. Inexorable their march towards the weirdly burning spot in the grass.
They cast glances about them: No one. No creatures stirred beyond their circle of strange light. The neighbourhood far behind them, impossibly distant and painfully ordinary. They looked closer, peering through the aura cast by the flames, saw. The grass about the fire un-singed, only stirring subtly in its wake. The area directly beneath the flame flattened, as if from the inexplicable tangible weight of the light.
Beautiful, the gentle way the flame danced. Turning slowly about, red to magenta deepening to crimson fire and purple light.
Terrance reached forward eagerly with his free hand, desirous of its touch. She did, too, shakingly though, with the tears in her eyes causing the spectacle to blur into a smear of bright. He urged her with his fervent, wild-eyed look to plunge in with him, envelop herself like he was ready to burn, too. Samantha pleaded with him silently, whimpering with her lips set in a grimace of terror. She wasn’t yet ready for such exploration in the night.
They felt it graze their fingertips: Coldwarm. Icefire.
Then, before their eyes, the flame in a quick shimmer of movement, danced upwards. A quietly hissing brilliance spiking from the grass and into the night sky. A rocket of fire and blood and ice into the black. Among the stars. Joining them, maybe, in their frosty vigils overlooking the land.
Then they were running.
Bolting a mad-dashing flight through the tall waving green spikes. At her behest. At her cry, he turning with her unthinkingly, only following her desire to flee and be away from the site of their recent seduction. Because of her fear at striking into the heart of their adventure. Because of the fear of the unknown which had driven her like the child she was to seek safety in knowable things.
And so they slowed only when the street lights returned and dotted the curbs. Where cats roamed alleyways, and occasional adult argument or television conversation drifted through opened windows onto the balmy air. They wandered for hours, speaking only very little, so different their mood now than before the arrival of the burning thing.
He recalled the way they’d spent the remainder of their bottomless A.M. Like he’d wanted all their late-night-early-morning journeys to end. Entwined among the rusted skeleton of a derelict jungle gym adjacent to the field. Creaking the ancient once-shiny poles and weather-ravaged plastic child-seats with the ferocity of their tangling. She touching him beneath his pants and making him cry out quickly only a moment later. Her moment of climax just as brief but etched forever in his memory as one of awe and wonder at her secret wildness and the unimagined things her body was capable of: Her legs spread wide while he filled her with his fingers and worked to make her cries louder and more insistent; until her moment of shrill outcry, startling him with its brave freedom on the still A.M. air, and the amazing sight of her wetness like a fountain shooting from the boiling place between her thighs and catching the silver of the moon as it cascaded down onto the sand below. The sputtering sound of it darkening the sand and marking this site of their quick and endless moment.
He remembered her perfect in moonlight, perfect in his hands.
In the darkness of the photo booth, he was prepared to show her. He murmured:
“Look.”
She watched his parting fingers unfold.
Terrance remembered her look of ecstasy and the sound of her cry like a shriek making the moonlight more beautiful. And he longed for true magic again.
“I went there many times. Without you because you wouldn’t come. It made me cry like a little kid, being there without you, even years later when I’d go. After you’d stopped talking to me completely. After you stopped answering your phone and your window after midnight while I chucked rocks at the glass. But I always went. I went to the field on summer nights like the one we were there, Sammy. I sat there in the Fall, too, and even visited there in the dead of Winter.”
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