Neon Cure
Steps should be cautious, but not enough to prove oneself a slave of the past and stepping on the lit up domain of dancing phantoms, one’s coyness, one’s insecurities were pecked at by hundreds of shining eyes. So when Imp took his first step, head buzzing with a fix of street prescribed solution to his many problems, the old cat-like soft-footed manner diffused like the smoke on the end of a cigarette of a particularly old-fashioned club goer. His eye swept over the reign of chaos. Its subjects wove into one fabric of endless motion. Governed by the beat of neo-modern techno, revived after the war tried to stifle the rebellion of electrical impulses, these people knew nothing but her majesty Disorder. Neon lights fell on their heads making white shine with tint of gas flame’s blue. Limbs twisted. Eyes locked and mouths no longer could communicate because they were busy memorizing new tastes. He felt someone’s hand slip around his waist, fingers falling to stroke the hipbone. “Whatcha doing, handsome?”
Imp didn’t turn. He smirked, more to himself than the stranger. Was it a man or a woman? Involuntary question, it didn’t particularly matter in the end. Names, genders, motives, they all faded away like illusion of immortality once he left the dance floor with someone clinging tightly to his neck, feeding off his warmth and drugged brain. “I was waiting for you,” he replied, eye catching a sight of a girl, a bit too young to be dancing here, much less offering a good time to someone twice her age.
Sweat ran down from the hairline, making the pale skin glow. He wasn’t her first. He wouldn’t be last. Lights lit her square in the face. He saw little to nothing, not that it mattered because she was laughing, with a fine hysteria and she knew she wouldn’t escape. Imp wondered if this was the way things were meant to be in the end. He fought the war to end chaos, to end techno, to end young prostitution, only to have them all be his only medicine against the viral horrors of past battleground epicenters. He would lead her into the heart of the dance, to save himself. She would say her name was Marion and he would kiss back that name so that he would never hear it again. That was the only cure Imp knew for his madness. It was the only way to block out the dead faces, to walk