The Loneliness of Strangefire Dancers
Alexander Zelenyj
(Continued—p. 3 of 3)
Her eyes were wide and dead in the semi-light. A flat, lost look lived in them as she watched him, allowing his words to hold her inside of the fantastic story they told. He felt peace settle over him at the sight of her so chilled, so moved to numbness. Perhaps she realized her mistake, even now. Maybe regret filled her like it did him, too.
“And then one night. I found it again. In the same place. Like it was supposed to be there waiting for us. A summer night. Perfect. A summer night, and I touched it. The redpurpleblue thing in the field. The weird fire. It came back and it was like fireworks shooting from the grass. But there was no sound. Maybe a whisper of noise but that was all. Like before. I put my hand in it and…and it didn’t burn. Like I knew it wouldn’t. Like we both knew it wouldn’t.” His smile flashed in the dark or maybe it was only a camera flashing.
He finished, “Now I have it with me every day.”
He unravelled his fingers fully and saw her face coloured in crimson. He watched her raise a hand to her mouth, as if to stifle a scream or perhaps it was only some instinctive recoiling gesture which commanded her. But the longer she watched, he saw, and her eyes began to smile, in wonderment, in awe. And he saw her lips part in amazement as her hand fell limply into her lap and her breath exhaled long and slowly. Utterly captive to the spectacle of the moment. Held in place by the beauteous colour painting her and him and their shared universe of cramped musty little space.
Terrance remembered a time when he would dream her lips this way: Parted and ready for his touch. She shivered him with her beauty they way she once had. She recoiled from him when he raised his hand of light towards her cheek, knocking her head against the wall of the booth. His fingers lost in the luminous crimson blaze, a torch consuming his digits and goose-pimpling her skin with its eerie beauty. An accompanying icy blue flickering in his eyes, a real or imagined river of electric current glimpsed briefly in his appraisal of her and which kept her pinned fearfully against the wall. Samantha’s awed look gradually became chilled again until she noted the peace in his face, but her eyes softened completely only when the fire was extinguished and their tiny congested space was dark once again.
A silence born of awe energized the booth. The darkness still held the amazing burning, he knew it smouldered before her still. It would burn there forever, inside her memory, and the thought filled him with sadness, and resentment, too, and somewhere beyond a biting sense of vindication. And the still ignited fury, smouldering inside him. The wildly swinging array of feelings which she wrung him through as if with some innate alchemical powers of her own.
“What does it do?” and her words were barely a whisper in the murky space, the quiet bustle of the afternoon shopping mall a million miles away.
Ignoring her, he said, and felt petulant and empty even as he did, “Now you’ll never have it. You’ll never ever have this.” An electric shimmering from the gloom, its mood now dimmed to a more melancholy purple hue, and finally a pulsing icy blue over the walls of the photo booth and them huddled within its walls. A deep sadness infused his words. The sound of regret. It was all he said to conclude the reason for his visiting her that day in the mall where he once lived and pined for girls with hair like hers. And it sounded like a dual damning, of her, and her and him together the way they once were, and the waste it had all really been. Because who wanted to own magic without someone with whom to share in the great secret? Who wanted to live with the wonder of strange things licking inside of them alone? After meeting intimately one of the night’s deepest mysteries, how could he share himself with an ordinary girl with wondrous hair and supple calves and lips parted for kissing?
Because some things should remain intact. The late night wanderers exploring the world of nocturnal insects and cats and the impossibility of strange lights burning in summer grasses. Some explorers should remain united in their star-lit missions.
Because of their predisposition to find the unattainable. Because of the simple fact of their perfect place in the night while the world slept.
The fire glow remnant vanished.
Darkness in the booth. The smell of ancient leather and musty air.
They realized their moment of picture-taking had passed long ago. No electric whirring sounded from within the thin plastic walls surrounding them. No hum and no flashing lights. They’d passed already and snapped them in their far-away reverie. Two time-travelers huddled closely in one final moment of photographic capture.
He stood, feeling suddenly monstrous, and left her silent inside the time booth.
He glimpsed the forlorn-looking photograph strip resting crookedly in its silver tray: A crimson rectangle with no photographed people to be found. Crimson and vivid. Violent and sad. Stronger than regular black-and-white. Mightier than simple and everyday. A strip of images showing something like wildness and beauty in each of its small frames.
He left it there for her to discover on her way out into fresh air and mall noise. Her final link to an impossible past, a proof of what she’d been too afraid to accept.
He considered his forthcoming lonely bus ride home as he walked. Its circuitous and familiar route with its many painful stops in his childhood. Its disgruntled-looking passengers with grey eyes looking nowhere, its crash of rickety metal frame tossing him around in his hard seat like so much flotsam. And he was comforted by these thoughts of these images. And he welcomed them the way one welcomes familiar little pains which remind you that you’re the same person you were any number of yesterdays ago.
He saw the bubble gum machine boys at their stations again as he rounded the corner en route to the exit. He said to them as he wandered past, silencing their chatter, “You’re the lucky ones, guys. Call her and make it funny.” Terrance was met with expressionless stares and a trickle of laughter which grew braver and louder the further he left them behind. Crazy adult older guy with his insane words and serious way of speaking them. A conversation-piece and joke for years to come, a little legend between friends sharing special moments. He didn’t mind their laughter, though, because he liked its sound, free and easy and of the moment.
Alexander Zelenyj's previous work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Front & Centre Magazine, Revelation Magazine, Cerebral Catalyst, Jupiter, Whispers of Wickedness, Freefall Magazine, Crossroads Magic, The Lightning Journal, Worlds of Wonder, Simulacrum Magazine, Double Dare Press, The Rose & Thorn, Upfront Magazine, Amazing Journeys Magazine, Death Bus, and Nth Degree, and anthologies such as Windsor Salt, Revelation: Volume 2 and forthcoming in Dead Men and Women Walking. Mr. Zelenyj has received multiple grants from the Ontario Arts Council under recommendation of Coach House Books, Descant Magazine, and Kiss Machine Magazine towards two separate novels-in-progress. He is the author of a children’s book entitled Marco Polo: Overland to China, published by Crabtree Books. His fiction has been nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Literary Prize. Mr Zelenyj's most recent achievement is having his speculative fiction short novel, Black Sunshine, published by Fourth Horseman Press.
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Story Copyright © 2006 Alexander Zelenyj. All rights reserved.
