Danse Macabre by Kinto Mythostian The curtain opens on a small, sparsely decorated stage. The stage itself is black, as is the backdrop. Near the center stands a fake tree, painted stark white and with a few spreading branches. Five young ballerinas of various species stand in a line across the front of the stage, their feet in the first position, their arms in the preparatory position: a chinchilla, a fox, a horse, a wolf, and a rabbit. They each wear opaque white tights, pale pink short-sleeve leotards cut low in the back, pale pink classical bell tutus, and, except for the hooved filly, pink satin pointe shoes secured with ribbons crisscrossing their ankles. A sixth young ballerina, a doe, dressed like the others, sits on a white wooden stool beneath the tree, her ribboned hocks and pointe shoes extended straight in front of her. A delicate silver circlet rests atop her dun head. Only slightly incongruously, all six ballerinas wear thin black collars. The music starts and the ballet begins. The doe leaps up from her stool and dances to the front of the stage, followed and mimicked by the five others. The music is light and airy, and the choreography well-executed, if not original or difficult. Every position, every move the doe makes is dutifully replicated by the others in the corps. This continues for only a short while before the doe steps aside and looks expectantly at the others. The chinchilla, the youngest and smallest of the group, steps forward from the corps and begins a solo variation. Her movements are enthusiastic and energetic, but lack refinement and elegance. When she finishes, she looks to the crowned doe, but the cervine only shakes her head. Dejected, the chinchilla returns to the line. The horse, a slender pinto filly, her mane neatly braided and her tail knotted into a tidy bun, is the next to perform. The solid-hooved equine is the only one of the six not wearing pointe shoes, though she still wears the ribbons tight around her ankles. Her solo is more refined, but she is clearly held back from reaching her full potential by her solid unshod hooves. Like the chinchilla before her the filly is sent away by the doe. The scarlet fox, her leotard stretched over her pudgy belly, and then the sandy-furred wolf take their turns, and are summarily rejected respectively. The rabbit, her gray fur appearing like polished pewter under the stage lights, keeps her eyes closed the entire time during her variation. Her performance is the most elaborate yet, her movements elegant and precise, rich in grace and aplomb. Her mien is serious, pensive; lost in her own world as she pours her heart into her dance, her passion for the art plain to see. Only when the music abates and she comes to a stop does she open her eyes and look shyly towards the regal doe. Even this performance, however, does not seem to satisfy the cervine and the rabbit closes her eyes once more and returns to her place in the corps. The doe flits from side-to-side on the tips of her satin-clad hooves before the line of her fellow ballerinas indecisively, clearly not having found whatever it was she was looking for. She gestures towards the quintet, wordlessly expressing her dissatisfaction. An abrupt change in the music interrupts the doe's admonishment and signals the arrival of another dancer entering from stage right. The stranger is tall, dressed in a black leotard and tights and a black leather doublet, with black gauntlets on their hands. A bone-white mask hides their blunt-muzzled face, the eyeholes like two black voids, and a pair of long white corkscrew horns spiral above the head. The mysterious figure in black is male; his leotard leaves no doubt in that regard. The sextet of ballerinas take one look and flee, jeté-ing across the stage in a graceful flurry of flouncing tulle. Five disappear off stage left, but one abruptly stops and lingers. The doe turns on her hooves and looks back towards the stranger, her pert little tail flickering curiously. The danseur extends one leg out behind him and one arm out towards the young doe. With one gauntleted finger he beckons her closer. She makes a quick chaînés turn, bringing her a pace closer to center stage. In a flash the horned apparition matches her. Again she looks and he repeats the beckoning pose. Another set of matched chaînés turns brings them face-to-face just on either side of the white tree. He reaches out to touch her and she shies away; he quickly withdraws his hand. The stranger stands up straight and a moment later a new strain of music rises. He begins to dance. The danseur uses the entire breadth of the stage, yet never takes his eyes off the young doe, his movements expansive, exuberant, seductive, every move executed precisely and gracefully, his bearing hinting at prodigious and confident strength. The doe watches enraptured, her hooves flitting from one position to the next. Here, at last, is the partner she has been looking for. When he next approaches, she unhesitatingly accepts his offer to join him. As soon as the doe allows him to take her hand, the tempo and mood of the music changes completely, now red hot and brash, flush with passion and bravado, and the pas de deux begins. The two dancers move as one, perfectly attuned to each other, their limbs a blur as movement flows effortlessly into movement, each more complicated and intricate than the last, executed with flawless aplomb. Though she is much smaller than he, they never appear mismatched; they seem destined to be together. She presses her body to his, hands interlocked, with no hesitation or fear. She pours her entire life into her dance, giving her partner everything she has. Lifts and dives, leaps and turns, pirouettes and arabesques, the danseur supports and guides her through them all. He effortlessly takes her by the waist and lifts her up lightly above his head, her legs spread in a full split as he carries her across the stage; the masked face focused unashamedly on the sight directly above his head. The last spiraling steps as the music slows and fades bring them back to the center of the stage, beneath the white tree. He sets her down gently, like a fragile porcelain doll, balancing on the tips of her hooves on the stool, her arms arced above her crowned head, fingertips just barely touching. Standing behind her, his leather-clad hands explore her body, creeping over the skintight leotard that hugs her torso. His fingers slide across her front and gradually down her taut stomach towards the waist of her tutu. For a moment, he pauses, and it looks as though he may slide his fingers inside, may probe the sanctuary secreted beneath. The doe closes her liquid brown eyes and her lips part ever so slightly, no resistance offered. But he does not penetrate beneath the corollate tulle vault of her tutu. The ballerina's eyes open as his hands slide deliberately back upward, over the smooth textile texture, up her sides and then to her arms, past the short sleeves and on to the velvet fur of her arms. As the background music lilts along, he guides her raised arms down and behind her back. He produces a length of pink ribbon, from where it is hard to say, and binds her arms. She turns once on her hooves, allowing the audience to see the dark stranger's craft, her dun forearms bound together across her back in a crisscross pattern of pink, matching the ribbons that ornament her ankles. The skeletal stranger draws out a long length of rope from within the trunk of the tree itself, white and silken smooth. It seems quite slim in his gauntleted hands but appears suitably thick enough when he holds it against the young doe's slender neck. Her trembling lips part a fraction at the touch but her composed poise never falters. With practiced hands the skeletal figure forms the rope into a lethal noose as elegant and graceful as the ballerina before him. The one belongs around the neck of the other; to wrap that neck in any other noose, to wrap that noose around any other neck, would be sacrilege. She makes not a single movement as he lowers wide loop of the ivory noose over her head, touching neither her delicate muzzle nor her folded-back ears. He carefully draws the knot against the nape of neck, the deadly snare resting against her throat right below her chin; snug, but not yet tight enough to choke. A gentle tremor shivers down her chest, but she remains placid, content to place her life in this stranger's hands. The white-masked danseur ties the other end of the rope firmly around the branch of the tree directly above the ballerina's head. There is no slack, a single perfectly straight line of white between the young doe's neck and the stout tree limb. He steps around to the side of the stool and she raises her adoring eyes to his. He cups her chin in one hand, raising her muzzle gently and bending down to meet it. She closes her liquid brown eyes as his pale white lips approach hers, so close now that a spark might skip between them. But the horned figure does not complete the kiss. He backs away, soundlessly bowing as he does, leaving the noosed doe alone at center stage. She balances, eyes closed, her gentle cervine nose pointed heavenward, the unconsummated kiss hanging in the air before her softly parted lips. She kicks once, twice, her legs spreading to midair splits as her torso remains immobile, her pointe shoes returning to the stool before the rope pulls taut. She flexes her knees into a demi-plié, the rope bunching the fur of her throat ever so slightly as the music subtly builds. The music blares out in a sudden loud sting and with a sharp flat-footed kick the doe pushes the stool away, thrusting herself completely into the fatal embrace of the noose. Her chin snaps downward, her mouth gasping open as the knot abruptly pinches tight around her pure throat, imprisoning her final breath with her chest. The sharp sting of music reverberates and fades as the rhythm picks up once more with a fresh urgency as the doomed ballerina begins her last dance. From the outset, her dance is not the random struggle, the panicked desperation of raw reflex. The doe kicks and thrusts in perfect sync with the lilting music, so closely matched it is impossible to tell if she is reacting to the music, or it to her. She twists at the end of the ivory rope, the low cut back of her leotard showing the youthful fawnspots only half-faded, now to never disappear, for it is death she has chosen as her dance partner. Her white-tighted legs keep up the dance, flickering with grace and vivacity even as the silken white noose chokes the breath from her lungs, a vigorous reminder of the energy and innocence of youth that has been today condemned to the grave. Her flat chest heaves uselessly against the skintight pink fabric of her leotard, cycling the same stale air again and again, her life slowly strangling away. Her ears flicker in pained distress, but her eyes, still bright and focused, look relaxed, blissful. Here, at last, is the partner she has sought, the dance she was born to perform. The true grace of weightlessness, a degree of ballon she could never before hope to achieve, freed from the shackles of life. Her tutu rustles and flutters as her small tail flashes its white underside in instinctual panic. Still she fights to retain control of her body, striving to prolong her terminal moment for as long as she can. Even now her posture is perfect, her poise faultless, every spirited kick of her dainty satin-clad hooves a work of art. Her final dance is a jubilant celebration of the once-in-a-lifetime experience of death. Slowly, gradually, her face fades to a pale ashen gray, shading to blue where her swollen drooling tongue protrudes from her lips, opening and closing in a futile imitation of breathing, but she will never breathe again. The music and her movements slowly both become more irregular, fitful, as the dying doe loses command of her body. Her eyelids flutter closed over her reddened, unfocused eyes, as they roll back into her skull. A dark stain spreads down the tights on the inside of her thighs, seeping down towards her knees. She is motionless now, save for a random faint tremor of her pointe shoes. Her silver circlet sparkles in the stage lights above her peaceful brow. The only music now is a faint, regular tempo, every now and then stuttering, skipping, timed with the hanged doe's heartbeat. She is young, petite; too small and light for the hanging to kill her outright. Though her brain is dead, her body still struggles on, fighting a lost battle. The horned stranger, who has watched the self-execution from the side of the stage immobile, once more approaches. He cups her downward pointing chin in one gauntleted hand and raises her lips to his. With his other hand, he takes a firm hold of her shoulder right beside her neck. He presses down on her shoulder, stretching the rope and her neck, until a sudden crack rings out, the sound of her neck breaking. At that moment, he presses her blue lips to his, and the music stops suddenly and finally. The curtain closes. First draft begun May 4, 2015. First draft completed May 14, 2015. Editing completed May 18, 2015.