The Killing Vision by Will Overby

sported Greek window
decals.
    He hadn’t been here since he was a kid, since it
still showed movies, and he thought that this was the place he’d come to see a
bad horror flick called Amityville Dollhouse .  The old ticket booth held
a mannequin, but a live burly black guy at the door was more than happy to take
Wade’s five-dollar cover charge.
    Inside, the old concession stand was now the bar,
and where the auditorium had been was a huge dance floor full of people
writhing and dancing beneath pulsing, multi-colored lights.  The music blasting
over the sound system was some kind of techno dance shit, its repetitive beat
thumping at such a breakneck pace that it was impossible to tell whether the
music was driving the dancers or the dancers were driving the music.  Most of
the crowd seemed to be college age, though he was sure hardly any of them were
actually students.  The pounding bass of the music coupled with the energy of
the crowd around him was suddenly exciting, and the buzz of arousal began to
hum through his body.
    He got a beer from the bar and moved through the
people, looking for somewhere to sit and watch everything.  This place was sure
a far cry from the atmosphere of the Wild Horse.  Women were everywhere, many
without men and most of them worth a second look; they were young and lively,
not the broken-down old crones that frequented the Wild Horse.  This was more
like Derek’s kind of place, and he wondered briefly if the kid had ever tried
to get in.
    In a far corner, he found a tiny table and took a
seat, his gaze drifting across the dance floor.  Strobe lights were flashing
monotonously, turning the whole place into a huge pixilated orgy.  Groups of
people were dancing together, not just couples; they bounced and gyrated like
an undulating human sea under a storm of light.  He leaned against the wall,
sipping his beer and watching.
    A group of girls were dancing frenetically about ten
feet away; a couple of them caught his eye and smiled.  He smiled back,
flashing his killer grin.  One of them, a blonde, leaned close to the brunette
beside her and said something into her ear; it must have been hysterical,
because they both burst out laughing.  The blonde looked at him again, and
waved him over.  He shook his head, but she waved more insistently, and he
reluctantly set down his beer and made his way out onto the floor.
    “What’s your name?” the blonde asked, not stopping
her pace.
    “Wade.”  He was practically screaming to be heard
above the music.
    “I’m Shelley,” she said.  She motioned to the
brunette.  “This is Abby.”
    Abby smiled at him from beneath her dark, kinky
curls.  “Hey.”
    Somehow, the three of them maneuvered into their own
frenzied, surging triangle that seemed to take on an energy of its own.  And just
when he thought he couldn’t keep up the pace any longer, when sweat was pouring
down his face in rivers, Shelley pressed two tablets into his hand. He looked
down at them curiously.  At first he thought they were some kind of candy; they
were mint green and embossed with a picture of a leaping dolphin. “What are
they?” he yelled above the noise.
    She laughed breathlessly.  “Just take ’em.  It’s all
right.”
    He popped them into his mouth and felt them dissolve
on his tongue into a bitter, chalky paste, which he washed down with a swallow
of beer.
    After that, everything became fuzzy and strange.
    He continued dancing with the girls, and was
beginning to think he wasn’t doing half bad, when the music just became part
of him somehow.  It was an extension of him, flowing through the
room and through his body at the same time, a type of radical energy storm. 
He’d seen those glass globes with sizzling bolts of purple light inside that
would follow your fingertips along the surface, and this was almost like that. 
Except now he was the center of the globe, and his energy, his light ,
seemed connected to everyone else in the room.