“What are we meant to do now?” The cartoon cinema inside my mind reels an image of me as a lemon stood at the bar looking clueless. Everyone else around me appears to be going bananas (cue a cartoon of dancing bananas in my head) dancing to the noise and different colours light each expression they pull. Jasmine cranes her neck back as she looks at me, and I have an urge to ask if she’s a brontosaurus but feel it won’t go down too well, it’s too much like asking if she’s an elephant. “What?” She shouts over the music.
”What do we do now?”
”What?” She grins, her yellowing teeth somehow managing to glow, “You’ll have to speak up! I can’t hear you over the music!”
I swallow hard before opening my mouth to speak but the words won’t come out. My words are stuck in my throat, in my brain like razors cutting through me reminding me I’m not normal.
I find myself fidgeting on my feet, compelled to rock on the balls of my feet.
Jasmine looks across at me like I’m an alien and I feel sick.
”Gilly?”
I hear her voice a little but the music is vibrating through my body and I don’t like it. All the faces are flashing their different hues as they dance and everyone appears monstrous to me.
I run to the toilets a fluorescent strip flickers intermittently, this club has an obsession with flashing lights, or is it I that is obsessed? My light bulb head flashes between the flickers above. Artificial suns, artificial light. We sacrificed the stars; the sky is bloody with murder! We sacrificed the stars! The white tiles are yellowing, and the long silver gutter like urinal is orange with hardened piss that had failed to reach the drain. Clumps of chewing gum seal cracks in the walls and stick to the dotted floor tiles, people have left their mark in the form of grooves from their shoes in the gum. Artificial suns, artificial light. I breathe heavily.
“Gilly,” A female voice enquiries in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Jasmine?” I find myself mimicking the conspiratorial tone. The door opens and the music blasts through like an unwelcome draft.
“What, you can’t come in here!” I look at her puzzled, “It’s the mens!” I explain as if she doesn’t already know.
Her shoulders lift in tension, and she folds her arms as if cold, “I’m just checking you’re okay.” She chews her gum loudly and I find myself clenching my fist at the sound.
“I’m alright.” I’m so used to these lies now.
She leans against a stall door, and the door opens inwards, pushed by her weight and she falls in with it. She just about holds herself up via the stall wall. After a moment of what felt like impenetrable silence she laughs and I find myself laughing too, “You’re anxious.” She decides out loud.
“No.” I lie. “There are too many people. And the lights, all the lights, all the dust. Everything.”I knead my hands and visibly shake.
”What if I was to….” She pauses and licks her lips seductively. I blink and hear my blinking inside my head as my eyelashes meet. She’s walking over to me and shimmying her butt, bulging her chest out to emphasise her breasts. She pouts her lips and slowly wiggles her way down on her knees rhythmically, and her head is right at my crotch. I gulp. The light flickers above us. A tap drips. and the light clicks and buzzes in sync with the drip, drip, drip.
The light has flickered off for a longer second than usual when I hear her giggle. The light comes back on, and she’s stood in front of me. Her mint breath in my face, “I know what you need!”
“Whats that?” I step back a bit, my back meets the rim of a sink and digs into me. She takes some pills from her pocket and holds out the palm of her hand. We just stand here in silence, blinking again, the light clicking and the tap dripping.
I’m claustraphobic. I’m drowning.
“Go on.” She shoves her palm closer to me, “Take two,” she smiles, “You’ll be right as rain.”
“Okay.” I gulp down the tablets trying not to heave them straight back out.
I look in the mirror looking for some change in my face, though I don’t know what that change would be. “What now?”
Her eyes light up behind me in the reflection, “Now,” she wiggles her eyebrows, “We have fun!”
She grabs my hand and pulls me out of the toilets and into the horde of zombies being lit up different colours.
She moves her body near mine, shimmying her body up and down her breasts brushing against me. The music that is playing has some classical music I recognise underneath it. Sweaty bodies are dancing all around me, invading my personal space. My light bulb head flashes on and off in the middle of this berserk crowd of rainbow people. People pull strange faces and back away from me as the Anglerfish in my bulb greets them with its toothy grin. I watch dust motes floating in the light streams from where the light source is on a balcony, shining down on us all like infected ants.
The lights are brighter than ever to my eyes and as I look around me I feel like I’m at a mass exorcism. Bu I can’t connect to their delirum, their sense of fun.
The music is making my skull ache, “Can we leave?” I find myself shouting it over the music, shocking myself by my own voice.
“Just wait,” Jasmine replies with a knowing smile.
For a while I don’t notice anything different, deciding she’s just given me a sugar pill I smile to myself with the knowledge. “You can’t fool me,” I whisper.
She moves her body to the music, “What are you on about?”
“You think you’ve got one over me, but you haven’t.”
She frowns but carries on shaking her arse to the music. The music seems to get louder which at first makes me panic and flail about, storming back to the bar trying to wave the sound away from my ears. People look at me weirdly, but I figure it’s the scary Anglerfish inside my head. men and women are dancing bathed in multi-coloured lights, some dancing together with sexual tension almost visible as an aura around them. I float back to the crowd of dancing zombies to find Jasmine, and she’s dancing with a surreal smile on her face from ear to ear. Her body shimmers with its own source of illumination, the grin still splitting her face she beams, “Unicorns are just horny horses.” and giggles.
The music vibrates through my body, the music and I are one together. “I’m a…” A wave of green light shines on me and I bathe it in, spreading my arms open wide like an Eagles Wings, “I’m a dragonfish.”
She gives me a questioning glance.
“It’s an ugly little fish that lives in the depths of the ocean. It lives in the darkness.”
“Cool!” She says with real enthusiasm, “wow that’s so cool. Actual dragons in the sea!”
“No, they’re fish. Great fish.”
She gasps, “Oh my god!”
I think something is behind me; I check over my shoulder. “What?”
“Gilly!”
“What?” I grasp both her shoulders and shake her, “What is it my glowing angel?” I laugh loudly. A woman with a purple face glares and pushes past me.
“Gilly! You’re a dragon FISH. FISH. And you’re called Gilly. It fits.”
“I’m not really called Gilly!” I argue.
“People call you that more than Jacob, so you are!” She beams her massive Cheshire Cat grin.
“It fits!” I find myself agreeing, a wave of nausea caused by little butterflies in my stomach. “I think I ate some butterflies.”
“And what did the butterflies eat?” She asks, genuine curiosity on her face.
“A dinosaur.”
“How does a butterfly eat a dinosaur? Nincompoop!” She slaps the back of my head.
“Well, they fold the dinosaurs to an edible size first, obviously,” I roll my eyes. Another song comes on with classical music as background underneath all the added shit. “We fold what we know into our brains so that means a butterfly can eat a dinosaur!”
Jasmine has wondered off amidst the crowd; I barge through the people and their barriers radiation. “Jasmine,” I stop in my tracks because a man gives me a dirty look, a sheen of green over his face which then turns to purple. “Wow!” I find myself saying out loud as I usher him out of my way, “Jasmine!” I make way through the crowd till I’ve come full circle and I’m back at the bar. I turn back to the dance floor to watch everyone and their radiant faces, and I stick my tongue out to taste a trace of the dust particles I can see in the split streams of artificial light, artificial suns and moons beaming on us all. “It tastes like a lighthouse in here.”
I feel a presence close to me and then a hand on my shoulder; I look over my shoulder to see Jasmine’s face hovering above me. An unfamiliar expression crosses my face, “I just had an epiphany,” I start,
She drags me outside, “And what’s that?”
“Dragonfish have to be their own source of light!”