Evan looks out over a sea of black and white striped waving arms.  He grins at them, maniacally encouraging them to wave harder in time with his band’s music so his crowd obliges with willing desire.  Evan starts to sing again, to jump and spin on the stage in time as they sing his words back to him.

He strides forward and takes his stance once more at the front of the stage, leaning with dangerous closeness towards the front row of his girls, smiling as they strain against the metal barrier reaching towards him.

He glances across each of them, watching as their mouths make the words he sings, still surprised by their willingness to submit, even after all these years.  He tries to meet some of what they need from him without losing too much of himself, with no loss of body and soul.

He sings out a little further past them towards the dancing pit and flashes some fist pumps to acknowledge them, nodding as they reciprocate.  Anyone watching his face might be surprised to see a look and smile of real love.

But it is there.

At the centre of the pit, a troupe of women focus on their ring of furious dancing.  They dress in mixtures of soft, sheer and shift fabrics clinging to their dancers’ bodies as they move around in-between each other, making it all but impossible to determine where one dancers’ body starts and another dancers’ body ends.

They spiral from the ground up, spinning from the centre outwards, undulating from the top down and then back up again, creating an energy to build a light around them.  It fills their circle, and now, towards the end of this night, the entire room.

Evan smiles.  Only he can see this.  See them.  They are his.  He has used them to help write his songs, to help build his confidence and craft his on-stage performances.  They are his dancers – something only he has ever known about.

That’s not entirely true, is it?

He falters for a moment.

What was that?

Evan pulls back from the edge of the stage just as Jase starts his solo.  That voice.  It was like…  But that’s not possible.  Evan realises he is already nodding with the guitar rhythm, using his microphone like a mini-guitar and pretending to solo-along.

As he moves across the stage, he is eyeing the room.

A hooded figure is standing next to one of the speakers and for a moment Evan thinks he’s been shocked by the electric microphone.  The figure is stood where she once stood.  Where she once danced.  Where the music is loudest.  Where she had the desire for furious dance.

Before she fell.

Fell?  Is that what you tell yourself?

Evan looks around, the band are all looking at him.  Jase has finished his solo and Evan’s missed the intro to the final verse.  Fortune favours him as the crowd picks up the words, so he thrusts the microphone out towards them, then brings it back to join them in the final moments.

With the song finished he looks back towards the band and their questioning looks.  He says ‘tired’ and they nod agreement.  They bring themselves up for the last song of the night as Evan goes to face the crowd for his final performance.

He walks down to the front of the stage, looking out at expectant faces.  The first couple of notes ring out and his crowd screams in joy.  It’s their favourite song, saved for last.  Evan nods knowing, taking it all in.  He looks for and finds for his dancers.  But he is unable to stop there, unable stop himself from searching for the hooded figure.

It hasn’t moved yet, but now it’s looking directly at the centre of the dancing pit.  Evan stares at the hooded figure.  It seems to be looking at his dancers.  The ones who have always been with him.  But that’s not possible.  Is it?

Only he can see them.  Only him.

He starts singing the words.  Or do the words just sing through him?  Crowd doesn’t really care.  They could sing it without him.  He is just a means to an end for them.  He is only there so they can stand in the dark next to each other and prove what they know.  How well they know.

He watches the hooded figure start to move towards the centre of the room and his voice suddenly stops working.  He bows his head to the room and pushes the microphone towards them.  Crowd sings louder, proving what they know.

Evan lifts his head and watches, helpless to stop the hood’s slow smooth progress.  Evan takes the microphone back and sings with eyes closed, but not really closed, as he watches its deliberate movement through lidded slits.

It takes everything he has to control the sound coming through him, and then the first part of the song is done.  He can leave the middle part to Jase, who will take this slow-moving song and quicken it towards its rocking climax.

He puts the microphone back in its stand and moves in time with the solo, grasping and leaning on it, holding on for fear of falling.  He looks out, lurching towards the crowd at the front of the stage, closer to girls in the front row.

He doesn’t see them now, only the hooded figure as it moves towards the centre of the dance pit, certain now it’s going for his dancers.  He watches almost without breathing as it approaches them close enough to touch.

Evan sees the hood come down and hears her voice for the final time.

You had your chance.

She-hood grins horribly at him and much too wide before sinking her teeth into the first dancer, freezing in a tableau of surprise and agony.  The jolt of pain hits him in the head and only the microphone stand keeps him standing.

He watches as light above his dancers’ head is sucked down and out of her, leaving nothing behind but a spent shell.  She-hood discards the first dancer and bites into the second.  Evan feels the hit in his chest and begins to stagger on stage.

He knows he’s going down.  He fumbles the microphone from its stand.  He drops to his knees on the stage.  To the adoring crowd, it looks like he is going down before them, but his band knows something’s wrong.

The bass player Vic does a dramatic slide across the stage on his knees with a large smile on his face, and rocks out beside their singer.  Evan looks over at him with pain and gratitude on his face, then manages to lift the microphone to his lips.

He rejoins the song with the crowd for as long as he can, then pushes it back out to them for the next part so they will take over.  Just in time for the gut punch of She-hood consuming another of his dancers.

It’s not just the loss of energy being drained from him, but the scream of agony contorting the once beautiful face that no one else but him can see.  Evan looks down at his clenched hands on the grimy stage, not wanting to witness any more.

Jase the lead guitarist takes up his own dramatic kneeling position on the other side of Evan, mirroring Vic’s rock-out manoeuvres.  Only the keyboard player sees looks of concern passing between them and the singers’ slow collapse forward onto the stage.

Evan pulls the microphone back towards him once more.  He manages to put one knee up and lean heavy as he finishes the song, using the climactic ending to scream out his final echoes of frustration and pain.

The lights go dark.

Evan’s head swims with the screams and cheers that normally lift him up but now they sound out the death-screams of his dancers.  He’s having to rely on his two best friends to lift him physically from the stage.  He’s only just upright when the lights come back on.

Evan looks at the crowd, trying to focus on smiles and cheers, but all he can see is the dance pit.  The place where his dancers created circles of desire and light, discarded bodies lying on the ground.  Their energy drained, the force of their beauty gone.

How did he ever let it come this?

Then his own light falls.