The Music Makers

“This is going to be epic,” Jonno yells, his voice barely reaching Tony as they stand at the club’s entrance. People flow into it in droves and sound flows out, waves of it. Tony can hear the noise run down the street. It barrels through the busy roads filled with motorcycles and sleazy drug peddlers. It bounces off the open drains and through the stores selling cheap knock offs. He is caught up in the mob, dragged inside like driftwood in some chaotic ocean.
Inside, Jonno grabs his shoulders, shaking him as though to wake him from this obscure dream.
“Are you ready for this?” He screams.
“The walls,” Tony whispers, “The walls are moving.”
Jonno slaps him on the back. He doesn’t hear what he said, but he doesn’t really care. He’s caught up in this moment, in this movement. There is no stillness here. The vibrations of a hundred footsteps fill the corners and spill from the shadows. Everywhere is the dance floor.

The concoction of drugs hits Tony’s brain like a road train, smashing into his eyeballs like the strobes on the ceilings. Tony can see the walls move. This place is breathing, an ebb and flow of air that matches thousands of lungs. In the dark corner of his eyes there are tongues, disembodied, that hurry to match its rhythm.
The sound brings Tony’s heart to reverberating echoes. The walls follow. These are the tribal beats that once pushed bodies in machine gun rhythms. Tony mimics their pulse, and dances like he’s never seen a revolution. He lifts his hands to the sky, praising some invisible God.
“We are music makers!” he screams and the masses take up the call as they move through the night.

Tony’s sweat drips heavy onto the floor, merging into a river, and flowing to the sea. In the daylight he is nothing but a ghost with thin skin burnt sun-red, but at night, in this place, the underbelly rolls over to the moon. It is pasty, and ingrained with the secrets of a generation, but so alive. Every breath Tony takes is thick with smoke and expectations. Nicotine and bad intentions. But he lives for them, swims through them like bodies on the dance floor. This is the ocean of his mind. He grabs at sweaty bodies trying to save himself, screaming because he is drowning in humanity.

Outside, as the dawn approaches with practiced excellence, Jonno pulls Tony out against the tide to softer air. Tony flounders, his feet forgetting how to walk without that noise. First he stumbles, and then he falls, trying to dive back into the sweaty embrace. His heartbeat is a frantic echo to silent memories against his bones. When the moon and sun change shifts in clouded dawns, Tony beaches himself in a clove-ridden taxi, to make the journey home. Down twisted alleys and narrow lanes, he shields his eyes as the sun banishes all traces of the night. He is just that ghost now, lamenting the transparency of this new day, and waiting for the time when the beat will rise again.