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Danse Macabre

M. L. Hufkie

Decorative Green Leaf with pink stem

Ward Zero


     “Nurse!”


     She turned her attention to where the voice was coming from, armed with the artificial smile she’d adopted ever since starting her new job two weeks ago. The doctor was stomping towards her, a heavy scowl on his forehead. He was attractive in an old-fashioned sort of way. Cleft-chinned, tall, broad-shouldered, his dark hair neatly slicked back. He could be charming if not for his curmudgeonly demeanour, which often seemed to take centre stage.


     “I need you in Ward Zero. The woman in 1518 has broken free of her bloody straitjacket and I cannot seem to find any orderlies. Where the hell is everybody?”


     She wanted to tell him that the staff hadn’t gone missing. They were simply having lunch,  but there was no point. The pompous idiot couldn’t even be bothered to call her by her name.


     The stench of excrement wafted from a room further down the hall and she recoiled.


     “Come!”


     The doctor had started walking back the way he came and shouted his demand over his shoulder. If I could roll my eyes out loud, she thought. By the time they reached room 1518 the young woman had already managed to sever her full-body straitjacket and was dancing around her room, eyes closed, entranced, moaning along to a tune only she could hear.


     “Grab her arms, Nurse!”


     She did as she was told, expecting the woman to fight her, as most patients did, but she only opened her eyes and smiled sadly, shaking her head. Taking hold of the young woman’s arms, she forced them behind her back, as the doctor brought forth a syringe, injecting her with one deft, swift movement of his hand. It didn’t take long for the drugs to take effect and less than two minutes later the girl drifted off to wherever.


     “Call the idiots in the basement and request a new jacket, right now. The dancing girl hasn’t broken free for a while, but we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”


     She left the room, leaving the doctor behind. The dancing girl. She had heard some nurses refer to the inhabitant of 1518 as that but had never asked why. She made the call and returned to the girl’s room, peeking through the heavy glass panel in the door. The doctor was still there, his hands in his pockets, tears streaming down his face…


Anna


     They think I cannot hear them. But I can. They think I am crazy, disturbed, mentally unstable, whatever descriptions they like throwing at people who behave differently. “I am not.”


     They think I am an imbecile, when it is they who are the idiots. There’s nothing wrong with my ears. I can hear fine. There is also nothing wrong with my brain. The dancing girl! What an insult! My mind is not broken. It is my body that has failed me. Ironic way of putting it, I know. From a choreographer’s point of view, I am a wunderkind, a moving genius, an anomaly. But let me start from the beginning.


     My mother often says she knew I was a dancer by the time I was a month old, and she saw my excitement at watching a ballet troupe on TV. According to her, I looked at the television awestruck and unblinking my baby face serious as I concentrated on a rendition of The Dying Swan. She decided forthwith that my suggested name of Sarah, after my grandmother would be abandoned and that  she would give me a name that as she put it “would determine your future.” And so the following week as she registered by birth I was christened Anna, after the legendary prima ballerina, Anna Pavlova. Her decision was solidified as the perfect one when she walked into the bedroom that same day to find me in my cradle lying on my back with my little legs elevated, tiny toes pointed. According to her, as soon as I was able to walk I attempted to position myself en pointe. 


    Perhaps it was my father’s rejection of her. A married man who had kept his marital status from her and denied us both when she informed him of her pregnancy. Or perhaps it was the strained relationship she had with her own parents. Whatever it was, my mother poured everything into me. My grandparents, though aloof and somewhat disappointed by their ignominious daughter, supported us financially, and thus I was able to go to one of the best ballet schools in the city.


     By the time I was 12, I was top of my class. With the support of my tutors, teachers and the head of the school I danced in various on-stage performances.  Even my grandparents started taking note. At 17, I was chosen as prima ballerina in performances taking me from Paris, Milan, Berlin, Cape Town, New York and St Petersburg. 


    Despite my mother’s upper-middle-class upbringing, she had the soul of a socialist, hating anything superfluous. Upon her insistence, I started teaching ballet classes to less privileged students three times a week. When I think about it now, I realise how sheltered and naive I had been. I believed if I did the right thing and tried to be as good a person as possible, only good would come from it. I was wrong, and I was soon to find out just how wrong I was.


Ward Zero


     She moved away from the door before the Doctor could catch a glimpse of her, hurrying down the hallway. The doctor was in tears. Why? 


    Later as she sat in the cafeteria eating an egg sandwich, she had the overwhelming feeling of being watched. She wasn’t surprised when she looked up, and found the doctor lingering in the doorway staring at her. His face didn’t carry its usual haughty expression. He looked defeated.


     “Three years. That’s how long she’s been here. They diagnosed her with schizophrenia, but that’s nonsense.”


     The Nurse swallowed, not sure what to say.


     “When they brought her in, I had just started working here. I remember the day. She had been sedated by her family physician, her mother in tears. She couldn’t stop, you see.”


     “Couldn’t stop what doctor?”


     “Dancing. When they brought her, she had been dancing for eighteen hours. Her heart was under strain. It was like she was possessed.”


Anna


     Those shoes! Those godforsaken shoes. I saw them in the window display of an antique shop one Saturday afternoon walking back from teaching. Frau Troffea’s, it was called, the name in gold lettering on a chain-linked board. How beautiful they were! The perfect shade of pink satin, daintily displayed resting against an old wooden chest. The most exquisite ballet shoes I had ever seen. 


    I walked in browsing, stalling. I didn’t need any new shoes. I had several pairs, too many to count. Something about those shoes beckoned me.  I walked through the door, aiming for the display. The place reeked of decay. I didn’t see a soul.


     “They say those shoes were once worn by Anna Pavlova herself.”


     I spun around, stifling a low scream. Where the woman had come from I couldn’t say, but a tall, blonde woman was stood behind me. Her heterochromatic eyes seemed to look right through me. One a fresh hazel, the other startlingly blue. Before I could respond, she walked over the ledge to the display and placed the shoes in my hand.


     “You should have them.”


     Later that night I sat on my bed looking at them. They were light as a feather and smelled brand new. That night I dreamt about a woman dancing in an open field. Alone, she danced as though bewitched. She was wearing what appeared to be 16th-century peasant clothing. When she turned to face me, I saw her eyes: one hazel, one blue. I woke up with a start, thirsty and confused, my legs heavy. Swinging my feet onto the floor, I stared in shock at my feet. I was wearing the shoes.


Ward Zero


     “I didn’t know who she was at first. It was only later that I realised. I watched some of her past performances. What a dancer! Even I could see that she was a marvel. That grace, those light-footed glides, her beautiful face shining with radiance.  When she came in she’d broken both her feet twice. Painful reconstruction had been done on them, yet she could not stop dancing. It was like she was under a spell. That is why we keep her in a straitjacket and sedated.” The doctor’s voice came out raspy and laboured, like he hadn’t spoken that much in days. When he finally stopped talking, a heavy silence infiltrated the room, the ticking of the clock and his breathing the only sound filling the space.


Anna


     I can hear the music. That morning when I rose after the dream to find those shoes on my feet, I instinctively knew that my life would no longer be my own. I was right. 


    After that things got stranger. When attempting to practise wearing my usual shoes a terrible fatigue would take hold of me. I would feel dizzy, sleepy, unable to move no matter how ready I was.. This carried on for days, until, out of frustration, I reached for the antique shoes.

And then, voila; a phantasmagorical performance would follow, my dancing intense and crazed. Grotesquely amazing. 


    I started recording myself, and posting my performances on YouTube. The responses to my genius were unparalleled. I  reached 6000 followers in less than two days. My popularity grew. Each practice was more intense than the previous one. My feet looked awful, yet I felt no pain. I was numb to it. My only thoughts were to try more steps, dancing from one corner of the room to the other, the music in my head, loud and overpowering. Danse Macabre by Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns.


     My mother cancelled all my performances when she discovered me passed out in the studio. I had been dancing for 18 hours. Dehydrated, my feet broken, my leotard sticking to a sweaty body that was rail thin. Her horror when she realised  I hadn’t noticed my damaged feet, that the opaque cloud of time meant nothing to me. And her scream when she leaned in, took my face in her hands and asked sotto voce, as though afraid we would be heard, “Your eyes, what’s wrong with your eyes?”


     Rummaging in her handbag she grabbed a compact, positioning it in front of my face. My eyes had changed colour, one hazel, the other blue. 


    Meanwhile, the phone on the tripod kept buzzing with comments on my live videos. My mother snatched it, reading some of them, her voice heavy with fear, confusion and horror.


     She’s a genius! It’s like she’s from another planet!


     I’ve been watching her for 3 hours now, this is CRAZY!


     Are you guys seeing this?! WTF! Who’s that blonde woman standing in the corner?! Do ya’ll see her? Creepy shit!


     My mother threw the phone across the room where it smashed into the wall. 


    I don’t know how long I’ve been here, or how long I’ll remain here.  I know my mother attempted to destroy the shoes. She’d set them on fire, she’d cut them into pieces. Both times she’d find them back in my room, at the foot of my bed, immaculate. Her last resort was to return them to the store.  When she got there, instead of Frau Troffea’s she found a pharmacy. One that, according to the owner, had been there 40 years. Consulting city planners didn’t help, nor did driving all over the city. Everywhere she looked a dead end.


    That’s what I know, only that and the fact that I spend my days sitting by the window staring out. Observing people as they come and go, staff, patients, and visitors toing and froing in this dance of life. I don’t know much anymore, my head is always filled with that cursed music that won’t leave me be. I know this, though. I cannot stop dancing. Not now, not tomorrow, perhaps never. But I will die trying.

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