Read Online No Life But This by Anna Sheehan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anna Sheehan
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twisted with colour, strobing and dancing with the music. No one could make out faces, let alone complexion. Those around me were intoxicated with alcohol and nicohol and the sexualexcitement of each other. The music drowned out all sound but itself, so there was no speech. No one would notice I could not talk. I went from an Eepie to a nobody the moment I walked through the door. No wonder 42 had been drawn here. You couldn’t feel your impending death when you were a part of all this life. I closed my eyes and plunged on to the dance floor. I held my hands out. Bodies dancedagainst me, and minds flowed through my head – drunken minds, empty minds, excited minds, frightened minds, hungry minds. All of them charged and activated by the music and the lights and the pushing crowd of people.
I knew why 42 had come here the night she died. The knowledge was too much, the terror. I needed to be part of everyone else, to leave my body and my thoughts behind, to become onewith the whole. I let the music take me. My body pulsed with it, pounding, raging, tearing my way through the music as if I could break it apart. My eyes were closed, and amidst the muddled sea of people I could feel 42, almost feel her hands on my back, or dragging me through the crowd by my forearm. Her mind hummed inside mine, activated by the addled minds of everyone around me. I could barelyhear the music anymore. Just the bass, pounding again and again inside me. The decibels in the club were stronger than were safe, anyway. Eepies tended to be hypersensitive – when I was younger and 42 had snuck me in here I’d worn earplugs. If I didn’t have any, I’d make them out of damp napkins. I didn’t care tonight. I wanted to go deaf. I wanted to go blind. All my senses, taken away. If I wereto die, I could be washed away in this throng, swallowed by the beast, fade into a hundred intoxicated lives.
Rose was still there, though. Pure and perfect, her white rose petal skin, her sunshine hair, those dark, fathomless eyes, her burning, thorny, spiralling mind. Crying, because she was about to lose me. Like she had lost everything else. Her time, her whole world.
‘I’m dying!’
I toldeveryone around me.
‘I’m dying!’
Some of the throng dissipated, frightened by the disconnected thought that I had pushed through the sea of people. But many more danced more wildly, crying out in the night, dragging themselves into life, pulling me with them. People who had never met before clutched each other on the dance floor. Couples kissed. Some did more than kiss. I wasn’t paying attention.My time was ticking away. Rose was beyond reach – even if I could have won her, I wouldn’t have time. I wasn’t going to have the time. And 42 breathed down my neck, dancing in the throng, as real and present a creature as all these bodies around me. She ate up all the life that they were shedding like old skin. The ghost of her made herself into a real person again, just so long as they surroundedme.
Then I saw her. Not in a fever dream behind my eyes, or an imagined glimpse behind everyone else’s writhing bodies. There she was, her blue skin dark in the strobing lights, her hair a midnight cloud. For two seconds I was scared, until I realized I’d called her. This was it. I was never going to have the time to win Rose, and I had gone here to find 42. She would take me with her. Takeme back down into death. I held my hands out to her, and she grabbed them, pulling me from the throng of people. She pulled me out of the sea of minds and into the corridor. Once I was free of everyone, I sagged against her, drained.
The mind holding me wasn’t 42. It was Tristan.
I pulled away, but she held me fast.
‘No you don’t!’
She told me, and took me by the wrist. I was too exhausted tofight her. My mind was still a whirling pulse of sound. I had no idea how she’d managed to follow me in.
The answer to that mystery stood by the door, the doorman’s throat held in his
I knew why 42 had come here the night she died. The knowledge was too much, the terror. I needed to be part of everyone else, to leave my body and my thoughts behind, to become onewith the whole. I let the music take me. My body pulsed with it, pounding, raging, tearing my way through the music as if I could break it apart. My eyes were closed, and amidst the muddled sea of people I could feel 42, almost feel her hands on my back, or dragging me through the crowd by my forearm. Her mind hummed inside mine, activated by the addled minds of everyone around me. I could barelyhear the music anymore. Just the bass, pounding again and again inside me. The decibels in the club were stronger than were safe, anyway. Eepies tended to be hypersensitive – when I was younger and 42 had snuck me in here I’d worn earplugs. If I didn’t have any, I’d make them out of damp napkins. I didn’t care tonight. I wanted to go deaf. I wanted to go blind. All my senses, taken away. If I wereto die, I could be washed away in this throng, swallowed by the beast, fade into a hundred intoxicated lives.
Rose was still there, though. Pure and perfect, her white rose petal skin, her sunshine hair, those dark, fathomless eyes, her burning, thorny, spiralling mind. Crying, because she was about to lose me. Like she had lost everything else. Her time, her whole world.
‘I’m dying!’
I toldeveryone around me.
‘I’m dying!’
Some of the throng dissipated, frightened by the disconnected thought that I had pushed through the sea of people. But many more danced more wildly, crying out in the night, dragging themselves into life, pulling me with them. People who had never met before clutched each other on the dance floor. Couples kissed. Some did more than kiss. I wasn’t paying attention.My time was ticking away. Rose was beyond reach – even if I could have won her, I wouldn’t have time. I wasn’t going to have the time. And 42 breathed down my neck, dancing in the throng, as real and present a creature as all these bodies around me. She ate up all the life that they were shedding like old skin. The ghost of her made herself into a real person again, just so long as they surroundedme.
Then I saw her. Not in a fever dream behind my eyes, or an imagined glimpse behind everyone else’s writhing bodies. There she was, her blue skin dark in the strobing lights, her hair a midnight cloud. For two seconds I was scared, until I realized I’d called her. This was it. I was never going to have the time to win Rose, and I had gone here to find 42. She would take me with her. Takeme back down into death. I held my hands out to her, and she grabbed them, pulling me from the throng of people. She pulled me out of the sea of minds and into the corridor. Once I was free of everyone, I sagged against her, drained.
The mind holding me wasn’t 42. It was Tristan.
I pulled away, but she held me fast.
‘No you don’t!’
She told me, and took me by the wrist. I was too exhausted tofight her. My mind was still a whirling pulse of sound. I had no idea how she’d managed to follow me in.
The answer to that mystery stood by the door, the doorman’s throat held in his
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