The last and final time I attended a performance of the Ballet Fantastique, the title on the bill read Eclipse, or the Courtship of the Sun and Moon . The meager troupe, which up until the incident I had considered the finest artistic collective in the city, was based in a shuttered cinematheque on the outskirts of old town, and specialized in the performance of obscure ballets with romantic, oftentimes fantastical, narratives. While there was an undeniable charm to be had in its maudlin tales of princes and fairies, the main draw of the Ballet Fantastique was the workings of the troupe itself, whose immense talent was matched only by their eccentricity.
From the moment of their conception (the exact date of which none can agree), very little was known about the troupe, and few details offered ever managed to hold up to scrutiny. Eventually, a collective rumor settled, alleging the Ballet Fantastique was somewhat of a fraternal organization—a tight-knit society of highly artistic gentlemen who lived in the shadows, operating in Byzantine codes and rituals. Given their bizarre methods, it made a strange sort of sense. Of the troupe, only three were ever identifiable, albeit to a narrow degree. There were the two anonymous danseurs: a sadistic youth, whom I had previously seen as the lead in some of the troupe's more outre performances, and a massive Russian, whose poise and grace was so great that even his own beauty couldn't outshine his skill. Of the two, I preferred the Russian; tall, limber, lantern-jawed, the perfect form and stature for all of the troupe's many dashing princes, gallant knights, and Grecian heroes. Leading the duo was the illusive composer Herr D., who was only ever glimpsed by way of a pair of shining white gloves jutting out from the darkened orchestra pit. While this elaborate devotion to ritual and performance ensured the Ballet Fantastique was never among the more popular entertainments in the city, it also earned them a slim but devoted following, of which I considered myself a member.
Ever since I had discovered the Ballet Fantastique's existence some years ago, I had made it a point to attend every program the troupe put on, even at times attending multiple performances of the same ballet if the show was particularly strong. Of course, they were all strong, in their own way—for me, to be in the audience of the Ballet Fantastique was to be rocketed from our scum-pond world into one of limitless beauty, where men and music suspend the setting sun just so above the crystal seas, and the heavens above were pure as diamonds.
I fully admit that by the time I witnessed the horrors of that decisive ‘Eclipse,' regular attendance of the Ballet Fantastique had become something of a prerequisite for my emotional well-being, and thus when I reached the shuttered cinematheque that dim autumn evening I felt the accumulative pressure of the week's sorrows already growing light. I had arrived early, per usual, and joined a coiling line of fellow devotees beneath the crooked marquee. It was bitter and cold that evening, and the sky was smothered by a sheet of charcoal clouds. I shivered. In a rush to flee my workplace a few hours prior I had neglected to retrieve my overcoat, which now hung in some darkened closet. Still, the chill was preferable to returning off company time, so I sulked in line, content to watch the cherry-red lettering of MOON flicker above me.
* * *
By dusk, the doors opened. The lobby was unchanged from when I had first begun to attend the ballet, and I could only assume that it hadn't been renovated since the cinematheque shuttered early last century. The formerly purple carpet was a blanket of peeling hickory, the lights buzzed at an unbearable frequency, and the rafters served as frames to rich cobweb tapestries. It all felt something akin to home. I made my exchange with the ticket taker (grey, sallow, perpetually mute) and headed into the theater proper.
The theater was spacious, and like the rest of the cinematheque, engaged in a steadily sliding state of disrepair. A majority of the seating was removed, and much of the remaining were obviously broken, sporting splintered backs or seats that jutted up at irregular angles. The entire upper rung of the auditorium was off-limits, and a few of the opera boxes suffered wounds on their undersides, gaping and terminal. Only the curtains that shrouded the mammoth stage appeared to be properly maintained, two billowing sheets of rich twilit blue. Like any self-respecting theatergoer, I had a favorite seat, which I found mercifully, if not expectedly, unattended—five rows from the front, three from the center. I sat, the old fixture groaning beneath me, and waited as the crowd entered.
Per usual, the audience was small enough to only occupy maybe a tenth or less of what the cinematheque could hold in its glory days, and composed largely of misfits—elderly couples in antiquated dress and unaccompanied artistic cynics whose very appearance radiated loneliness. One of them, a woman in her mid-fifties, sat a few seats beside me, brow locked in a permanent furrow. I looked to the blue and let my mind wander to scenes of great beauty, my consciousness buoyed only by the scent of damp wood and the brutal weight of anticipation.
A murmur overtook the theatre, my fantasies fled. Steadily, we were submerged in a pristine dark so thick it rendered even the bitter stranger beside me nothing more than a vague blur. We all sat in shade, I felt my heart beat once, twice. From the shadow, a glow, two iridescent specters breaching the black: the hands of Herr D., bone white gloves wrapped tight around thin, elongated digits with bulbous knuckles. One hand held a gnarled baton, the other was empty. For a moment, they were still. Then, in a single stroke, they sprung to life, and with them the orchestra, invisible in the abyss, their celestial fanfare the roar of a great beast. A silver jolt struck me, a stray breath escaped my lips. Soft lights raised against the curtains, and as the fanfare swelled and my excitement could hardly be contained a moment longer, the pale blue raised on a perfect world.
Behind the curtains was a cosmoscape akin to those found in children's picture books, a black expanse of space painted with purple nebulae and twinkling, many-pointed stars. Conch-shaped galaxies whorled where the high corners met the rafters, and the whole canvas was coated in a kaleidoscopic glitter that stood in for stardust. When the curtains were set, the frenzied intensity of the music ebbed, leaving just the sighs of twin violins, the gentle drone of solar winds. And then, the danseurs.
The first to arrive was the Moon, the lithesome youth, sporting a leotard with a slight grey accent and a bob of silver that nearly covered his eyes. The second, the Sun, was the Russian. His leotard was coated in a dull gold that matched his natural shock of dirty blonde hair, thick black diamonds smudged beneath his eyes. Neither man wore tights, and their rounded calves glistened beneath the stage light. The duo bowed, the dance began.
The ballet consisted of an aggressive pas de deux, the Moon descending upon the Sun in sharp strides and lunges while the besieged star twisted around his blows in a flurry of athletic bounds and shining pirouettes. The strings echoed their movements in the pit below, one violin stabbing while the other wound a retreat. As the dance unfolded in epic, stage-spanning spirals, I found myself stunned. The youth was adept in his role, nimble and with movements that possessed the necessary menace, but the Russian was exemplary, and I began to wonder if I had ever seen him in such a form. As always, he possessed a definite valiance and strength, but tonight it was clear his hero was overrun, a great warrior who, from the moment of his entrance, was doomed to fail. I found myself gripping the seat with brutal claws.
As I watched the show of straining limbs and rippling muscles, my mind twisted down strange new passageways, hurtling through scenes of subjugation, a gallery of mutilated angels. Without thinking, a clenched hand began to drift from the arm of the chair, and when I came to it had worked its way down to the growing excitement in my lap. I surveyed the dark. The audience, elderly couples and artistic cynics alike, were wholly lost in the black. The impression of the woman seated beside me—likely the only one who would notice any improper conduct—stared blankly at the performance, so still she may as well have been inanimate. My hand dipped beneath fabric.
The dance continued. The music had grown more frantic, and the Sun was now the definite loser of the battle, his rasping movements displaying the sort of pathetic weakness only the most accomplished danseur could intentionally conjure. As the violins crescendoed, the youth lunged forth and clasped the Russian's wrists, pulling his muscular arms back while leaning in against his shoulder, and as I attended to myself I saw, or perhaps imagined, canine teeth digging into the taut veins of a supple neck, a crystal tear streaking down a concave cheek. I watched the Russian fail to break the grasp, legs trembling, ankles braced, a shimmer coursing beneath his rear and under his arms. I pictured him bare, tatters of gold stuck to his sweat-matted skin like stardust, and there I would be the Moon, the cruel gem of heaven, descending on him with ropes and whips and knives. Now the hands of Herr D. waved the baton like a mad magician, and the players in the pit swelled with the incantation: low brass rumbling, chimes shrieking, the sound of war. By the time the full orchestra made its return the Sun had well and truly fallen, the Russian splayed out onto his back. The Moon knelt and pulled him close, and I saw in pantomime silver blades on golden skin, and behind my eyes appeared the exquisite suffering of a saint, and the stage swelled with rivulets of red. I strained, gasped, felt myself tighten. I braced for release.
* * *
It never came. My eyes flicked back, and in the corner of my vision I glimpsed a pale flicker, a vague shadow trembling. I withered. There, in the upper leftmost corner of the stage where the coral galaxies met the rafters, was a shape veiled beneath a mossy green cloud. At first, I saw it as some abhorrent creature, a mutant animal with a rounded body and a long, protruding appendage, but after a moment I was able to recognize it as the vague silhouette of a human head and an accompanying outstretched arm. Only its hand, wrinkled and white, pierced through the fog. The face was indiscernible.
Only then did I realize that the horrible green had built steadily in the theater for quite some time now, and when I looked back to the stage I found the fog had grown so thick that it wholly obscured the painted cosmos, giving the odd impression that the stage extended back into an unknown and previously unseen dark. Even the danseurs looked different within the miasma, their skin curdled into some sallow film, their eyes and mouths rendered obscure, sickly pools. Mortified, I looked back to the rafters, where I found the stranger's hand engaged in the same wild, erratic motions of the gloved Herr D. below, claws contracting and pulsing like a swimming jellyfish. Now I saw clearly the silver threads which coiled around the figure's thin fingers, weblike wires that descended from the rafters to the stage, and as I followed the trail down, I felt my stomach sink, for I knew where they would end.
The silver strings were wrapped around the Russian, one pair coiling around his forearms while two more bound his calves, and another still constricted his stomach in peculiar twisting patterns. I watched, dismayed, as he and his partner continued to dance to some new ungodly composition, and as the duo whorled amongst the sickly mist, I understood the horrors of that which I had long adored. Even through the obscuring fog I could recognize that the Russian's act was no act at all, his hollow face twisted into an encapsulation of agony, the abject terror of some small, beaten animal. I knew then too that the ‘sadistic' youth was in fact a victim of the same fate, and that the captive duo's dance was nothing but the wild flailing of marionettes carved from flesh and bone. Then it all fell apart, and I understood that the hollow, luminescent gloves of the mysterious Herr D. were all there ever was of the phantom composer, that the orchestra pit was a screaming void in which no musician had ever been present, and even the stage, the sole beacon of beauty in this temple of decay, was a shadow cast from some black sea whose surface bobbed with fetid algae.
All there was, all there ever had been beyond the glamour, was the ghoul—the lurking terror with the human face, the face that was growing ever so clearer and so familiar. And when I glimpsed the first details of the beast's definition emerging from the haze, the awesome spell that had immobilized me was shattered, and I could hardly suppress a scream as I bolted from my seat and fled out from the dreaming crowd, past the long-abandoned ticket booth, through the doors of the shuttered cinematheque and into the arms of the miserable all-freeing night. For that face, that awful face, could only be my own.