I hesitate to open the door. I can feel the hum of the music under my fingers. It flows through my arm. Then it settles in my chest, beating in sync with my heart. It spills out through the cracks, the irksome, repetitive beat soaking my toes. I shiver from the contact. It’s unpleasant.  The door is only wood, I know that, but all the same it towers over me as it did in life, unmoving, silent and terrifying. Somehow, I can feel it guarding back the song that presses its face against the narrow slits of windows. It waits for me to set it free.  

I can see people through the door. They sway to the tune, a sea of strangers. Do they know the futility of it all? Dancing to minute, invisible waves that flow through the room and to my ears. Drowning themselves in it. Writhing in the colors like tortured prisoners. These people flap their arms in strobe lights. The red cups swing up and down in giant arcs, water sloshing out and raining down on the wooden floor. It’s all hazed over with a dark filter, disrupted with intermissions of flashes that causes me to flinch. 

How long has it been? Everything feels so separate as I draw my eyes away. For a second, all I can see is white.  I want to hide away immediately from this new world. It can spin and turn without me on it. But my feet are fixed to the floor. They can’t move and they won’t move along. They stick to the overripe beer and alcohol, which sticks into my nose, into my brain, keeping me to the floor.  

She’s saying, “excuse me” and I notice. 

Another herd of stumbling drunks fly by me. He sweeps by me, too. I can tell by the way the hairs on the back of my head rise. They open the door. Music spills out, and laps at our legs, and I shiver at the beat that swallows up my calves. It makes my veins throb. But he’s in there, somewhere, his ghostly face submerged by dancers, twisting and shaping themselves in the uncertainty of the light.  

I breathe in. My hands tighten again at the warm metal of the door. It’s warm because he touched it. I curl my fingers around, and it's like the ghosts of his fingers curl back, like he wanted to hold my hand two seconds ago. It gives me a warmth that spills in my chest.  
Then the handle gives way. The music hits my face in cold retaliation, it stings my face. My skin feels raw. It makes me retch slightly as I enter the world ahead. It throws everything into my face. Yet he is nowhere to be seen.