BY HANNAH ROSE NEUHAUSER
1) a: a heterogeneous mixture of sound waves extending over a wide frequency range
b : a constant background noise; especially: one that drowns out other sounds
2) meaningless or distracting commotion, hubbub, or chatter
I became negative space, void—somewhere in the blackest of nights. I was easily sucked under by the strength of sound waves to join the aimless buzzing. A place where identity is lost. Everything amalgamated. Fractured sounds blending together— each feeling like an individual, important addition to this world that seems so alive, where hearts aligned to the stable beats. This nightlife, creating the same white noise, the same comfortable monotony that puts so many into a deep REM.
***
Deep in the dead of night
you’re at the discotheque
you should have been sleeping
--Disco for the Devil, Bottin.
We should have been sleeping; it was just an illusion.
***
We knew the music the way we were supposed to know each other. The synth and its nuanced darkness. The kick drums—trustworthy and timely. Lyrics—sharing their vulnerability. Soul—lingering, aching. It had scope. And we strove to know every sonic shard— listening, like any good friend. There was something intoxicating, intangible about this scene. Beats—heavy, hypnotic. It started slow—smooth disco, head nodding, finger tapping. And then it moved you, consumed you, drove you to the floor. Time, only measured in bass lines. Clocks, swallowed by dim lighting and fog machines that shared our oxygen. DJs, on stage, controlling how fast the night moved. The music, so loud that when you walked in the bar, you felt an instant increase in pulse— veins, electrified. Drinks emptied like hourglasses, turning over and over, spilling, sticking to the floor.
***
The laser lights landed on us, freckling our skin without the permanence of the sun. We became disciples of the DJs, tracing their echoes around town. They stood on the stage, watching, conductors of electricity and noise. Their eyes drank our youth—our hair, our hips, our blood, the way our feet became ungrounded; this was their elixir.
***
I let my blood, accidentally, one day. Kneeling on the window seat, fiddling with my sister’s leatherman. I don’t know if I wanted to measure the thickness of my skin or the sharpness of the blade, but blood pearled, glittered, spilled. My intentions, innocuous, my curiosity, malignant. The color my parents craved for me ran out in salted streams. Each night my blood was thinned by a tiny turquoise pill, ensuring platelets wouldn’t band together to lodge in my heart. I bled all night.
***
Skin stretched over bones scaffolding to sockets. The skin under his eyes seemed to be seeped in wine—grape shadows absorbing sleepless nights. We cloaked ourselves in black, camouflaged until lasers caught us in a slow-motion gaze. We plunged into the floor, drowning in sound. I had just gotten my wisdom teeth removed and my jaws ached as I kissed him. I worried that my gums would start bleeding, but I only tasted grapefruit and vodka.
***
I was an infant with a blue flame pulse, it flickered for oxygen, in discordance with heavy whispers and the eerie machines. Vulnerability etched in bowed fingernails—a telltale sign of a broken heart. Purple potions diffused the cutting light; I drifted under into watercolor.
***
Nightlife was far from lucid. I danced on fumes of possibility—of a look, of a whisper, of fingernail in my spine, my heart. A hand on my knee. A rug burn. My brain filled with noxious ideas that ate away the space between my ribs. The space where long-boned fingers rested and traced the scars along my sides, where I had been pieced back together, where stitches once kept my youth from unraveling into dirt.
***
Things had never been too real for us. They were buzzed and fogged, nights and breakfast. Sometimes his eyes droned into space and didn’t notice my presence under his plane of blitzed night vision. Those nights, I was painfully aware of the uncharged oxygen between us. He was unplugging himself from me. The feeling started slowly in the bones of my toes, snapping one by up, and up and up, climbing the ladder of ribs, breaking the rungs.
***
Wires hung from my limbs. A tube down my raw throat. Sounds swallowed. Saline slipstream. Ginger ale and ice chips. Cleansed, tidied veins. I synthesized.
***
Once, I completely lost my voice and I’d swear he liked me best when I was incapable of syllables.
***
I was only allowed so much time. I wanted to draw out the night, but I didn’t have that power. My room was tiny, windowed, bright—days were unavoidable. But I never got to see the sun filter in on him. I was always left with the scent of basil soap and argan oil— which dissipated into the light soon after him. On this night, my tongue was a razor blade cutting pleas out of my mouth, bleeding onto him. He shook himself off, leaving me spluttering blood against the white of the door.
***
I severed the cables before we flat lined. My stomach held only coffee, sending cold currents underneath my skin. In a world of white noise, power is slipping out underneath sound waves.
Hannah Rose Neuhauser is from Louisville, KY, but currently lives in Ann Arbor where she works at 826michigan. She spends most of her time with words, young authors, and robots. Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Cactus Heart, Maudlin House, and apt. She tweets @velvetraccoon.