HE LOOKED IN DESPERATION

© Dana W. Paxson 2005

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HE LOOKED IN DESPERATION

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A trio of horns blared at Andrew. Breasts and bellies and backsides slithered, jouncing, past him as he craned his neck to look between bobbing heads. Sweet flowers and herbs, hot sweat and jism, acid wine and fruit, all invaded his nostrils. Arousing and distracting him, the music throbbed in his groin.

So Arlen had cut up Engel too. Why had Arlen gone to all this trouble? Monopoles, whatever they were? Was Arlen looking for him now? Where was Janny? As he stood and braced against the buffeting, a part of himself detached and receded inward. He didn’t belong here, not now.

He stepped into the living stream of bodies, finding quickly that the only way to go anywhere was to move his feet and legs and body in time with everyone else. His muscles, absorbing and reflecting the rhythm, fought with his desire to look for children. The music thumped at his spine. How would he see Janny in all this, scuttling along between people’s legs? Time was short. He set his sights on Aswar Tyrae, the large domed crossing the van had nearly reached; his body danced him with a double line of women and a few men up to where their snakelines dissolved into a boil of celebrants raising their arms in the air, wriggling like fish. Happy cries rang in Andrew‘s ears.

He turned, and turned, his own arms raised, searching the faces around him, his hips bumped and rubbed by sweating women, his breath coming now in time with the joyful tympans and panpans and tangs and bells, his cock coming erect even while he looked in desperation among the joggling paint and hair and weave and metal for his little girl, his son, his lost wife, his children burned and dead.

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