Fiction: ‘Faces in the Pit’

There’s a layer of white noise underneath the music blaring from the speakers and the roar of the crowd. The spotlight feels warm on my skin. A buzzing gradually fills the room as the air comes to life with charged particles.

I can see those same familiar faces in the front row.

They look up at me, singing along with the music, and for a moment I feel as though we exist on the same wavelength.

We connect.

It makes the world spin around us.

I spot the guy with the chipped front tooth and electric blue Mohawk. He has a cigarette tucked behind one ear, its tip twisted to a fine point. He’s always at the show. I feel like I know him so well now.

There’s the girl with the lip-ring and Marilyn Monroe curls. Her lipstick is smeared down her chin as she looks up at the lights with a glazed expression in her eyes.

There’s the boy with the patched jacket. He’s young and very skinny. He looks like he’d be crushed amidst the jumping bodies around him, but he holds his own like a paper boat on a roiling ocean.

There’s the woman with the lily tattooed on her neck.

She looks me straight in the eyes as she sings those same old lines in the chorus.

I can feel myself falling in love with these faces; these people singing and dancing and shoving each other in the mosh pit.

They’re soaked in beer and sweat.

I can smell them.

When the song is finished, I thank them all for coming out before jumping down from the stage into their welcoming arms.

That crowded room in that crowded hour contains a world of its own. Voices mingle as words stumble drunkenly over one another. Suddenly that unknown pub feels like home, and those beautiful strangers become my family.

~ Ekaterina