Page 48 of Dance of Defiance

10

ROMAN

Sometimes,when the bottom drops out, it feels like there is no end to the long fall into the abyss that follows.

Metal music pounds around me, roaring like a dragon, slamming into my skull as I throw my head back and fuckingscreaminto the madness rampaging around me. Someone knocks into me, half spinning me around. I barely feel it—and even if I did, I wouldn’t give a shit.

The name of the game tonight isnumb.

Bury. Excise.

Anesthetize. Neutralize. Vaporize.

Fuckingeuthanize.

I barely feel the shot glass in my hand as I bring it to my lips and dump the contents down my throat, reveling in the burn and craving more, more,more.

Doomsday, the wild dance club that Laz part owns, is usually my go-to. But when I’m like this—when I’m well and truly fucked, shattering, screaming, and fucking drowning—I can’t go there.

I need something rawer. More violent, like a punch to the fucking chest. And if I’m too fucked up for the fight club, I come here, to Reaper: a grungy, hellish metal club deep in the East Village.

A place where you can look your demons in the eyes and scream in their faces as you choke them on their own blood.

A live band—three guitar players, a bassist, two drummers, and a guy screaming pure death into a mic—unleashes a wall of noise into the crowd of goths, fuck-ups, burn-outs, rejects, monsters…the broken and the damned who fill this place either to celebrate or hide from their own darkness.

And I fitright fucking in.

I flinch as the memories come rushing back into my cortex—the explosion of pure ecstasy, followed by the blackness trying to swallow me whole. Craving more of his touch—fuck, cravingALLof him. Needing it. Hungering for it.

And then fucking hating myself for it.

The cold, brutal, icy snarl of disapproval. Of shame. Of a hatred that runs so deep it bleeds from my veins.

But also the feel of his body tightening against mine. His kisses. His firm grip on me. His release. His mouth…fuck,his mouth…

And then all I see is blood dripping from his nose and that look on his face. I see it every fucking time I look in the mirror and want to smash my reflection.

A guy with wildly spiked silver hair, wearing a black leather vest full of band patches, slams into me. I grin savagely and shove back, violence detonating in my eyes. For a second, it looks like he’s going to push me again. But when he sees the pure venom leaking from my fucking soul and oozing from my pores, he reconsiders. He puts his palms up and I’m pretty sure he mouths “chill, bro” over the thunderous music screaming through the club.

Fuck, I needed that. I need more.

I whirl, shoving another metalhead headbanging behind me. He grins, looking almost as crazy as I fucking feel, and returns the favor. I snarl and raise a fist, as if to drive it through his face, and by proxy through the black void and the all-consuming cancer spreading through my body and mind like a plague of locusts.

But he just grins even wider, then throws his head back and fucking howls before he suddenly wraps an arm around the back of my neck and thumps my chest heavily.

“HERE!” he roars, yanking a little baggie out of his pocket. “Let’s fuckingGO!”

He taps a bump of coke out onto the back of his hand, between his thumb and index finger, and raises it to his nose. He snorts it, and his eyes light up with that narcotic glow of pure unfiltered reality that only drugs can bring.

He grins and offers me the bag, watching gleefully as I tap a huge amount onto the back of my hand and lower my face.

FUCK. YES.

Alcohol has always been my go-to. It’s what dulls the edges when life tries to fucking gut me. But sometimes, it’s not enough.Sometimes, I need something faster, somethingmoreto forget who and what I am, and the chaos I’m fucking drowning in that nobody else sees.

The cocaine explodes in my veins, igniting my cells and turning my insides to liquid fire. The man roars, grinning like a fucking maniac as my eyes glaze over. He throws his head back andhowlsup into the madness.

I do the same.