The midnight cowboy wore slacks and a silk black button up, holding out his hand to escort her through the darkness that laid before their next step; as if this were a ballroom for destruction masked in ethereal dances. Yet, the pitch black air that swept between the fine threads of her hair and soared through her senses was the same that she’d danced through for the past millennia of eternal living as she breathed mortality into the mouths of her other escorts.Yet she’d never let him see the glow of heartless hollowness that sparkled in the greens of her eyes behind the black mask of dissembling lace.
Though taking his calloused hand that manifested from folklores of hard work and labor, she followed him through the night air that welcomed her back with its roaring songs of malevolence. The masked girl would never let him know that the emptiness curling between her left hand’s fingers was just the unseen crutch of a heartless mentor. That grip forever firmer than the midnight cowboys, whispering along the edges of her ears songs like a thrilling drug he could never supply.
The music pulsated through the tenebrous ballroom wrapping its wire strings and glass chimes around the girl’s body, winding her skin with each cord, binding her frontage like a dam before the stormy bay that washed against her insides. He’d never know that the clouds had no tears left to cry because the storm brewing deep in her heart had stolen them and everything around her was a prop in the play.
The midnight cowboy bent the shaking muscles of his leg before her, bowing his head from her dream alluring gaze and dipping into reality to only swim back up and find desire swirling his vision like stars.
The girl behind the black lace veil drew her foot behind the other and curtsied, letting the folds of her dark gown spill onto the marbled floor like his heart would be bound to follow soon.
A glow casted from the moon shed the only light of the evening upon the glossy ground they’d soon dance upon, only to leave their shadows and footprints visible. Like lightning, the odd pair struck a dance with the devil only to fade into this short while of invincibility, where breaths were less important than the moment between them. Where his heart would remain intact until her lips spilled honey fumes of mortality as she dragged her tongue of lies down his neck.
Under the clouds that could no longer shed tears over their midnight grace, the girl behind the mask of sweet thunder, swept the skirts of her dress before her feet could follow, running towards the center of their demise, but the temporary heart of their own reveries.
The folds of her black gown swallowed his eyesight whole, daring him to follow a storm of seduction that swayed and danced only seven feet before him. Throbbing, the midnight cowboy’s arteries like magnets to her drawing hysteria, his left foot followed his right like the puppeteer she stringed along. One step. Two steps. Three. Four.
Songs of the wind and the stars and the ravens clawed to the turrets, carried them arm in arm, step by step, as they swayed under the moon’s spotlight and the high stage before a freefall of destruction.
His slick boots clicked over the marbled floors, but she wouldn’t let him fall yet.
The chiffon skirts of her fairytale dress swept across the stone like whispers of the night, like chants of company craving shadows.
Together they made an ethereal painting of oddities yet unknown possibilities of innocence and ferocity. Painted with the hands of the trees who watched over them. Colored by the fall leaves that dripped with honeyed awe. The midnight cowboy and the girl in the mask of destruction who held the hand of heartlessness, danced like dawn would never come. Caught up in the moment of immortality and miles away from the depths of death, the girl’s mask grasped onto the fingers of the breeze, catching the air as it loosed from the crown of her head to fall to the floor.
Like black waterfalls spilling into a white luminated pond of marble, her gown trailed her drawn out motions to the floor, and slowly her hand outstretched to the mask that bed itself at the edges of the man’s boots. But met with eyes of turquoise blue’s like a pool of diamonds where dolphins could swim and her ravens would die, she met his gaze. Staring through the thin threads of her ice white blonde hair, her hollow gaze collided into his as if she had been pulled out into a riptide. Drawn into the depths of his innocence, yet unexplored demons, she placed her left hand over the supple skin of his neck.
And so the midnight cowboy, caught in her gaze that held emeralds and her stare that promised a dark, daring love, couldn’t move. Not from fear. And not from intimidation. Yet struck like stone as if her eyes held the sorcery of Medusa’s snakes, his heart skipped a beat. Maybe one too many as he fell, thudding onto the marbled floors that devilishly illuminated his heart turned stone and his eyes of swallowing hollowness.
A ballroom of destruction, masked by ethereal dances. It was never the girl who masked her emeralds and awaited the spillage of her honeyed mortality. It was never the midnight cowboy who dared death too closely. Only the ghastly hand of her heartless mentor who was out to kill because selfishly it would never let her love.
Only the remains of their shadows and footsteps were left in that ballroom. Possibly even a moment she loved…left behind.