By Mandy Munro

The beat calls to me.

***

“It's beginning!” I bounce excitedly on the spot, and then I grab Nick’s sweaty arm and kiss his ultra smooth cheek. He’s shaved his head, his eyebrows and his body for this one event, and I totally get it. The beat is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s as if the thrum lives in me — in my very soul. My chest buzzes. My face throbs. My feet won’t stay still. If I could breathe a drum beat, this would be it.  

The red orb suspended over the drummer is like a blood moon bleeding light, and his pale, lean body — chiselled like Nick’s — is soaking in its glow. Sweat glistens on him as his foot drums the beat and his hands attack the snare with a salacious counter rhythm that drives my pulse faster.

A singing stick calls above the drum in an ancient bird song from a time no longer in human memory. A hum merges with the beat, sung by a voice that rises like a wave and slowly retreats from the shore. One, two, three, four, daah, de, daah. The beat is in my brain. In my body. I’m bouncing to it like it’s the only movement I know. 

A white light splashes on a giant man in a white shirt and red trousers, his shaved head and missing eyebrows giving him a ridge over his eyes like Cro-Magnon man. Sweat doesn’t yet drench him, but I know it will, like rain on a parched land. One hand holds the microphone to his pallid lips, while his knees spasm to the beat. The wave rises again, the ancient bird sings and my heart soars.

***

It stirs my blood, raises my heat and quickens my breath.

***

I’ve wanted to see this band play all my life. Nick too. The wild look in his tawney eyes tells me he’s riding the rhythm like me. I grew up on this beat. Lying on the floor in front of the stereo with Dad’s headphones plugged in so I could have it at full ball and not get yelled at. And now I’m here, feeling it. Loving it, even though mum was found dead after one of their performances when I was seventeen.

The wave is rising to greater heights. Same beat but a more insistent pitch and now Sweaty Man is singing. His words come out like he’s a human machine gun, bullets that must be spoken. Must be heard. I throw my arms around Nick’s neck, and we dance in a crush of sweating bodies.

***

To live a living death requires a sacrifice. 

No. It demands it.

***

My heart has synced with the beat like it’s known the rhythm all my life. Sweaty Man jerks on the stage like a zombie. Nick is behind me with his bare chest against my back, his hands slipping around me, worshiping my front as our hips gyrate. I love this freedom to dance in the tide of bodies, to feel alive. Hands roam on people everywhere, but Nick’s hands are hungry for me in the way that reminds me of when we first met. It was after mum’s funeral. He was bad news Dad said, but then he left, and Nick stayed. Nick with his bright smile who holds me tight as I sleep.

Nick splays his hand on my stomach pulling me tight. His lips are on my neck, kissing a path up my ear, nuzzling my lobe, then blazing a trail to where my carotid thrums with the music.

***

I thirst.

***

I moan as Nick’s mouth sucks; my blood is rushing to head as he feeds on me like a man whose thirst will never be quenched. The bird call takes me to places long gone, my spirit soaring over a vast land, dead and alive, old and renewing. I ride a tide of longing that will always carry me back to the shore. I love this man more than life itself.

The music has calmed, and Nick releases my neck. There is a redness to his lips as he smiles, and I kiss him, tasting salt. 

My mother wore a love bite on her neck when she was found drained of blood. I breathe through this memory as the drumming begins. 

Then I lick my lips. 

***

Sacrifice made.

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