Nightmare on the dancefloor

The faces are what gave it away I was dreaming. They all wore the same expression. A flat smile with a blank stare. Every so often a pair eyes would flash in my direction and then away. But never all at the same time. That would give it away too quickly.

There were other signs I was asleep. The colours shining from the lights onto the dancefloor were too vibrant. Too saturated for reality. Illuminated fuchsia. Bright blue. Glowing amber. It gave the space an unsettling and unearthly radiance.

The music also, I realised, was a giveaway. The same eight bars on a repeated loop with the same electronic saw wave melody. I know that’s typical in nightclubs where the beat can stay the same, sometimes for hours. But this sort of repetition was unnatural. It would piss everybody off. And when I looked at the people… figures… around me they did not appear pissed off. Like I said before, they were smiling, even if the expression was only subtle.

I noticed movement from one of them. It turned its head in my direction and looked at me through black eyes.

I pinched myself on the arm once. Hard. But I didn’t wake up. I pinched myself in the same spot again, this time with nails. I still didn’t wake up.

The staring figure walked towards me, eyes unblinking. I moved away from the dancefloor and felt my back hit the edge of the bar. That seemed to have triggered something because, suddenly, all the figures turned around to stare. Their eyes were a thousand new moons burrowing into my skull.

I bolted down a corridor in the direction of the bathrooms. I knew where to go because I’d figured out where I was. This was the nightclub I partied at most weekends, where I’d lost hours to music and bad decisions.

I sensed movement behind me as I ran. Once I reached the bathroom, I entered the closest toilet cubicle and locked the door behind me. I waited a beat. The music loop was still playing but from the bathroom I could only make out the beat and the bass.

A pair of boots came into view underneath the stall door. There was a knock followed by another. And there was no way I was going to move or make a sound. I waited for what felt like an hour. Then the boots were gone.

I looked around the cubicle I was in, up towards the ceiling and to the walls around me. Then to toilet paper holder to my right. Whoever manufactured this dream had done a pretty good job. They got the pattern in the floor tiles right. And they nailed the stains on the porcelain toilet bowl. I looked to the bottom left-hand corner of the stall door. The dreammaker even included the initials my best friend Carly and I had carved into the wood.

J.A + C.C.

I smiled despite myself and the tense situation I was in. We had only made that carving about a month ago at the club’s Halloween party. It was also Carly’s birthday. She had dressed up as a sex cultist. Me, a slutty angel. We were in the same exact toilet cubicle and taking far too long to do whatever it was we needed to do. People were waiting in the toilet queue and getting angry.

“Someone is either k-holing in there or taking a massive shit,” we had heard someone say from outside the cubicle door.

“Either way, it’s terrible clubbing etiquette.”

Of course, this only sent us further down a spiral of laughter. It was then that Carly said she wanted to mark the memory of the night somehow. I didn’t know she meant it literally.

A loud clap sounded from inside the bathroom and shook me out of my dream’s daydream. I snapped myself into the closest state of reality I could. It felt like some time had passed since the figure had left the bathroom but I couldn’t be sure. Dream time works differently to real time. I pinched myself again just to see if anything would happen. Nothing did.

The sudden noise also had me feeling paranoid but I knew I couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever. I turned the cubicle lock, opened the door and peaked through the small gap. Only the basin and the mirror above it were in view. Droplets of water fell in a steady rhythm from the tap into the sink. My ears rang with the sound as each drop bounced off the ceramic basin. I looked around the bathroom.  Nobody was around. I pushed the door open further. Still empty. I looked at the mirror in front of me. No one. No face. No reflection.

My heart rate increased. My breathing quickened.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. It’s just a dream.

Blood moved fast around my body. I looked down. There was an unnatural bulge in my veins as they tried to keep up with the sudden demand for quick circulation.

But it’s a dream you can’t get out of.

I could feel myself overheating. It was as though my pores were going to erupt with steam if I didn’t do something quickly.

I turned on the cold tap, cupped the water into my hands and threw it onto my neck. Immediate relief. I let out a long sigh and opened my eyes. I could see my neck in the mirror now. My hands too. A floating neck and two floating hands but nothing else.

I looked at myself more closely in the reflection. Trickles of skin were appearing mid-air around my floating wrists and down my hovering neck. I felt the water dribbling down my body in those exact places.

With this new information, I gathered more water into my hands and pulled it up across my forearm. The body part materialised in the mirror. I did the same with my other one. It also appeared. I bent down towards the sink and flicked the water onto my face, in every crevice I could find. My nostrils, the grooves of my ear cartilage, the inner rims of my eyelids. My hair was soaked and my head was dripping with beads of water. I took a moment to catch my breath and, with a slow lift of my head, looked at myself in the mirror.

The face wasn’t mine. The skin was a putrid, sickly green. From the head sparkled two white, wide-opened eyes.

The mouth was stretched into a high smile from which a tongue hung out of, long and lizard-like, licking the lips. Teeth, pointed and black, were locked in rows just behind. And worst of all, two red horns spawned from the head.

I screamed. My breath ran out. I screamed again. I ran out. I ran out of the bathroom and back to the main room of the godforsaken club. The nightmare club cursed dancefloor of my dreams. To my relief, the space was empty. No more figures were in sight.

I seized the opportunity and fled to the front door of the club. Checked it. Locked. The windows next to it. Tried them. Locked. I leaned against the wall and broke down. Then pinched myself again for good measure. No luck.

I stopped crying when the music changed to an actual song. I looked up and stared out at the room. I knew this song. I liked this song. I followed the music to the empty dancefloor lit up by light beams and lasers. And then I sat and listened.

The song was ‘Believe’. On the same Halloween night Carly and I had carved our initials into the bathroom stall door, we had also danced to this song. From the middle of the dancefloor, we pumped our fists into the air and screamed the lyrics. We held our hands over our hearts and we held each other. That was until my attention was captured by a man at the bar. He was there with his friends, dressed as some sort of hot demon. It burned when we locked eyes, but in a good way, I thought.

Carly caught on quickly. She saw the spark.

“It’s a sign,” she shouted into my ear over Cher, who was singing about not quite feeling strong enough.

“You’re the angel and he’s the devil. Tell me that’s not some sort of sign.”

“Knowing my luck with guys, it’s probably an omen if anything,” I said.

“Noooo! Just talk to him.”

“Carly, it’s your birthday. I’m not going to –“

“Talk. To. Him,” she said as she pushed me in his direction. I looked over at him. He’d figured out what was happening and came over. We made some small talk and when Carly was satisfied with how things were progressing she took her cue and left.

Demon Guy and I chatted for a bit. We danced a little. Then we got some drinks and made for one of the booths. He was nice enough. We chatted some more and then we kissed. But this is where I went wrong. Because sometimes when you’re smacking it on with someone insanely hot, who is most likely out of your league, you lose track of time.

Carly was patient with me at first. But then she was pissed off. The night had finished with her shouting at me about how it was a dick move I’d spent the last two hours making out with this guy while she sat drinking vodka cranberries alone at the bar. She left me alone at the club after that. Fair enough. I didn’t know where Demon Guy had gone either at that stage. In fact, I didn’t remember anything that happened after the argument.

Maybe that’s why I was still trapped in a dreamt-up depiction of the club. Maybe it was some sort of punishment for ditching my best friend on her birthday.

I was brought back to my senses by a voice. It echoed throughout the space.

“Jacob?”

The music stopped entirely.

“Jacob, please wake up!”

“Help!” I screamed to the ceiling. “Help me, I’m stuck here!”

There was no response.

“Please, help!” My desperate voice pleaded to the walls.

Silence.

I hugged my legs and whimpered. My cries filled the empty room but not for long. There was a creaking coming from the door to the cloakroom nearby. When I looked at it, the door snapped shut, then opened again with a slow, high-pitched cackle. I watched as a green, bony hand with long fingers and lumpy knuckles emerged from the black of the room. It gestured for me to come in.

A wave of calm washed over me and drained the fear from my body. I stood up and walked towards the door, towards the hand, which had already disappeared back into the darkness by the time I reached it. I pushed the door wide open and stepped inside. It slammed behind me. I wasn’t scared.

There were racks of coats surrounding me. As I walked forward, I brushed up against a fur coat, a leather jacket, a suede blazer. There were other hanging garments surrounding me too. Jumpers, dresses, pants, ball gowns, costumes. I spotted my angel costume hanging a few racks over. Demon Guy’s was next to it.

I walked as far forward as I could, until I was a few steps away from the wall. I waited. Somehow, I knew to wait.

There was a low rumble and the wall in front of me gave way along with the ground beneath it. I stood at the edge of the hole in the floor and looked down.

Below me was a night sky. In it were dark grey clouds gathering and swelling and shrinking before me. A cold wind blew upwards into my face and numbed it. My entire body tingled with pins and needles. Every so often the entire sky lit up. Lightning streaked it with shades of cobalt blue, magenta and yellow. A droning thunder followed in the distance.

I was mesmerised by the scene. I stood there just watching the clouds and the colours swirling around each other. Then a voice reverberated through the room. It sounded concerned.

“Something’s not right,” it said. “Please, somebody get help. Something’s not right.”

The cloak room began to shake and the coat racks rattled behind me. I tried to grip onto them to steady myself but they rolled away to the back of the room. I lost my balance and slipped off the floor’s edge and became enveloped in the sky below.

Raindrops hit my skin and lightning flashed around me as I fell through the clouds. My ears were filled with the roaring wind as it tore past me. I was weightless. In free fall for hours. The ground never came.

I felt a sharp pain when the lightning did finally strike me. It surged through my body. My eyes rolled into my head. Still I continued to fall.

“Please wake up.”

It was dead silent for a while. And pitch black. I lost all sensation in my body. I wasn’t even sure I was falling anymore. I wasn’t sure where I was or whether I was awake or still dreaming or somewhere in between.

Suddenly, my eyes were blinded by a light. It burned. I blinked a few times and looked around me. I couldn’t see anything except a bright, circular imprint seared into my retinas.

My vision gradually returned and I was able to make out the night sky again. But it was different to the one I had just fallen through. Not as many colours. And no thunderstorm.

A woman’s face appeared in my view. She looked like she was wearing a paramedic uniform.

“He’s back,” she said to someone nearby. “I think he’s alright.”

I looked to my right and saw another paramedic leaning next to me. To my left was Carly, still in her Halloween costume. She was crying into her hands.

The paramedics helped me up from the path and into the back of an ambulance. Even though I was recovering quickly they said they wanted to take me to the hospital to have some tests done, just to be safe. I caught a glimpse of the nightclub entry sign as they closed the back doors of the vehicle.

The paramedics had said it was okay for Carly to ride in the ambulance with me. She held my hand on the way there. We didn’t say anything for a while. Then I broke the silence.

“I’m really sorry I ditched you on your birthday for that demon guy.”

There was some light chatter from the paramedics in the front. The man turned around to ask me if I was doing okay. I nodded.

I shifted closer to Carly. The tears on her red cheeks hadn’t dried yet. Out of nowhere, a cheeky grin appeared on her face.

“You should be more sorry you nearly died on my birthday,” she said.

We laughed. The levity was welcomed.

“But seriously,” I said, “I know you gave your blessing and everything but I shouldn’t have spent that long with him.”

“The demon guy?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Like I said before, it was a dick move.” She looked down as she said it. I felt my stomach sink.

“But considering everything that’s happened tonight, I think I can find it in my heart to forgive you.” Her smile had returned.

“Thanks Carls.”

“It’s cool.” There were fresh tears in her eyes. She reached over to hug me. I put my arms around her too and kissed her on the top of the head. We stayed like that for a while. Then she looked up at me.

“Also, I don’t know why you keep calling him Demon Guy.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

“Oh god, did he tell us his name and I’ve just completely forgotten it?”

We pulled away from each other. She let out a teasing laugh.

“No, actually, he didn’t, at least when I was talking to you both on the dancefloor.”

“What do you mean then?”

I searched for clues in her facial expression.

“He corrected us when we told him we liked his demon costume. But he wasn’t dressed as demon like we’d thought. He said he was dressed as an incubus.”

I didn’t remember anything about what he, Carly or I had said in that moment. But I guess it had been a month since that conversation, at least in dream time.

Still, I didn’t understand what Carly was saying.

“What the fuck is an incubus?”