737

It gathers strength as I watch it form, drawing like to itself, accumulating forces and swelling with its own essence until, heavy with promise, it breaks free and runs down the wet window pane.
My attention breaks away from the raindrops following suit and I resume vigilance of the city that sprawls wantonly before me, glittering and winking unabashedly, tempting the watcher into itself. The sky that embraces the city’s magnificent shimmer is dense and impassive, as lovers of such scintillating objects often are. The searchlights atop the building dance across its dispassionate visage, teasing the thick blackness as they skim across it lightheartedly, eliciting nothing more than a low rumble from the thus tortured heavens.
I reach out my hand and place it on the cool glass, which immediately flushes at this familiarity, clouding my view of the bejeweled city far below, a veil that could little detract from my fascination with it. The glass is throbbing beneath my fingertips with the same energy that pervades the atmosphere in the club; it pours into the walls and pounds from within like a mad, unrelenting heartbeat that imprisons my own until my body is in synchrony with its frenzied pulsations. It is the drum of a city and it’s some 30 million people, their hearts beating in time to the waves washing over them, holding them in their grip, enthralling, mesmerizing; every nerve being touched by the fire raging through their bodies. Controlling, commanding, making them powerless to resist, their eyes shining with the sheer intensity of emotion that every shift creates. Each body obeys orders that aren’t even its own and there’s the mounting excitement of knowing hundreds of writhing bodies around it are similarly bound by this narcotic experience, willing sacrifices upon this altar. The spell cast is irresistible, undeniable. They feel the blood crashing within them; angry tides whipping the shore with a fury that has a sense of abandon and delight. Music takes over, each new rhythm a new form of seduction urging them on further and further.
I watch them forsake all notions of modesty and control as they feel the pounding in their ears, the steadily increasing flow of the hypnotic beats, a pulsating effect fans out encompassing minds and bodies. Imprisoned by music and their bodies’ eager betrayal, the heated atmosphere sets souls ablaze, escapists’ doorways to a freedom usually only achieved through the retreat sleep provides from the day’s anxieties, or death’s absolution. There is an all too temporary abandonment of sensibilities, people spinning wildly in a world at once alone and yet a part of the many, each searching for his unique escape.