Mass Hysteria
by Tim Frank
Max queued outside a giant dance tent in the city’s central square, where statues of forgotten tyrants shared space with tourists taking holiday snaps. The tent was shaped like a brain with scaffolding jutting out into the sky, holding it in position. Max refused the white pill with a rainbow imprint offered to him by a dealer in a shell-suit that crackled with every movement.
Max’s girlfriend, Tammy, frowned. “Come on, Max,” she said, “you’ll be the only one not on it.”
“That I can live with. Look around, Tammy. What do you see?”
“I see hundreds of ravers ready for a good time, knowing the military might shut us down any minute.”
“No, you know what I mean. Look at that guy there, look how he twitches. And that girl, look at the lumps on her back. That’s the effect of drugs, Tammy, drugs.”
“You sound like an infomercial,” said Tammy.
The dealer wiped his nose with one swipe and said, “Want one or not?”
“Max,” Tammy pleaded, “it’s got a cool rainbow on it and everything.”
Max was very careful about what he ingested; he didn’t smoke weed, and even alcohol gave him an unpleasant, woozy feeling. But this was the last rave of the summer, and it was rumoured a military regime was about to sweep into power. Who knew how their lives would unravel in the following months? Max didn’t want to disappoint Tammy on one of the last big nights they might share together.
Max accepted the pill and popped it in his mouth, but when they entered the tent and were cloaked by darkness, Max shifted the pill he’d lodged in his cheek, clenched it between his front teeth and then spat it to floor.
Looking back at the dealers brazenly traipsing up and down the queue, Max noticed that the ravers who refused the drugs were shunted to one side and then led away by soldiers.
“It’s half an hour until DJ Gene comes on, that’s what I’m waiting for,” said Tammy. “He’s a mysterious figure; no one knows much about him. Some say he has taken so many drugs he can see through walls.”
“Right,” said Max.
“And he’s created a whole new sound that can change your molecular structure.”
Max mocked her by pretending his face was melting. Some people who had refused the drugs were shunted back into the tent by a group of soldiers, and Max was intrigued.
He said, “I’ll meet you here in a bit; I want to talk to some people.”
Tammy bobbed her head to the snare drum and played with her glow sticks. With a shiver and a half-smile, she said, “I can feel it.”
She disappeared onto the dance floor, limping in time to the music as if she were carrying a brick on one shoulder. Other ravers, dancing frenetically, absorbed her into their ranks.
Max approached the couple of ravers who had just been ushered into the tent. Their pallid skin, sweaty mullets and all black T-shirts made them look like metal-heads. They pressed their hands against their eyes, shielding themselves from the revolving lasers in every corner of the tent and groaned as if they were winded.
Max smiled and said, “Hey guys, everything alright?”
One of them jabbed a finger in Max’s direction and said, “I oughta, I oughta kill you.”
His friend pulled him back and said to Max, “Forgive him, he’s coming up.”
“Sure, I’m sorry. But wait,” Max said, “I saw you in the line. You refused the drugs.”
“Well, what can I say, in the end we didn’t have a choice. Excuse us, we want to sit in a dark corner and fight our way through this. Listen buddy, prepare yourself for tonight, something’s going down.”
“What did you...?” but Max’s words were swallowed up by machine gun-style electro beats that marked DJ Gene’s introduction to the stage.
Max felt a surge of dread move through his body. As the bass line was unleashed in a flurry of powerful blows and the mist from the fog machine masked everyone’s faces, his sense of unease only increased.
He thought of getting out of the tent, maybe out of the city, hell maybe he should join the military and travel the world like his father. Max was never really committed to the counterculture scene like Tammy and the rest of their friends. No matter how much they made fun of him for being strait-laced, and even though he wanted to impress Tammy, he had to accept that he just didn’t belong.
Max took one last look at the crowd gathering on the dance floor, hopping from one foot to the other and flailing their arms to the music, barging into each other like pedestrians at rush hour. He couldn’t see Tammy among the throng, and that made it easier to leave her behind.
He slipped through a flap in the tent and was confronted by a trio of soldiers smoking and laughing, but when they saw Max their faces dropped into fearsome expressions. Max, unnerved, tried to pass by them without a word but they took a step in front of him, blocking his path.
“This isn’t an exit,” one of the soldiers said.
“How do I get out, then?”
“You don’t.”
“Please, I just want to go home.”
“Go and dance, forget your problems. You can go home when all this is finished.”
Max did as he was told and skulked back into the tent. He had to find Tammy. He felt pangs of guilt because he had been so ready to abandon her, but now, he told himself, he could make amends.
Everyone was on the dance floor, even the bar was empty. Max couldn’t make out the DJ behind the decks, all he could see were two red LEDs strapped to his forehead as he rocked to the music. The melodies had become discordant and yet the ravers responded with more frenzied movements. Everyone had reached the peak of their high.
Max began his search. He elbowed his way through the melee and peered into dozens of faces as he went, looking into eyes that were simultaneously savage yet absent.
He saw Tammy in a small clearing pogoing beside a seven-foot speaker, whirling a cigarette above her head. She didn’t see him until he was up close and when she did, she couldn’t contain her excitement. She enveloped him in a giant bear hug, her cigarette singeing the back of his jacket. “I love you!” she shrieked in his ear.
Max grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and said, “Tammy, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Suddenly her mood took a dive and she said, with a scowl, “What are you talking about?”
“It sounds crazy, but the guys I just spoke to gave me a weird vibe, and then I talked to the soldiers and, well, they wouldn’t let me leave.”
“Why would you want to leave?”
“Because... I don’t know, I’ve just got a bad feeling about tonight.”
“Listen, Max, I really don’t know what your problem is but, please, just relax and enjoy your pill. Trust me, you’ll have a good time.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t take the pill.”
“You what?”
“I said, I didn’t take the pill; I spat it out.”
“You dumb... I should have known. You’re always like this and I can’t believe I thought tonight would be any different. You’re a Puritan.”
“No, Tammy, it’s not about that. This time, I think this is a military thing.”
“No, this is about your dad, a soldier who didn’t hug you enough as a boy. Jesus, just leave me alone.”
Tammy’s eyes flashed like fire and then her skin shimmered the colours of the rainbow. She dropped her cigarette and disappeared into the shadows.
“Tammy!” Max called after her, but she was gone. Then from the corner of his eye Max spotted a raver, in a luminous beanie hat and gold trainers, collapse to the ground like a bag of sand. Before Max could rush over and help, a couple of paramedics appeared out of nowhere, grabbed hold of the man and dragged him through an unseen fold in the tent.
Max followed. As he exited the tent, he was astonished to see a truck with its rear doors open and the paramedics heaving the unconscious body inside. A few soldiers were gathered around, casually supervising. There were a few other bodies laid out in the truck. Before Max could assess the situation, another pair of paramedics brushed past him, carrying one more body.
A soldier turned to Max and said, “Hey, you, what are you doing?”
Max was speechless and quickly scoured the area for an escape route. Everywhere he turned was a dead end so he had no choice but to dash back into the tent.
Back inside, the music had increased in ferocity. The ground was shaking. Max could hear high-pitched screams, and he spotted someone scaling one of the pillars that propped up the tent. A teenage girl with rainbow-coloured skin and tears of pus oozing from her eyes rushed towards Max out of nowhere. He steeled himself. The girl skipped by and he took a sharp intake of breath.
It was then the overhead lights flooded the tent for a second, illuminating the crowd. Everyone fell to their knees and clamped their hands over their ears as the music soared. They all had multicoloured skin that flared in the light. Soldiers appeared from every corner and watched on with playful smirks.
The lights snapped off and the room was plunged into darkness once again. A man near Max was curled up in the foetal position, blood seeping out of his ears and his body shuddered like he was having an epileptic fit.
“The noise burns!” he cried.
As the strobe lighting picked out other ravers, everyone else was revealed to be on the ground and shaking. In fact, Max was the only person left standing.
The music didn’t let up. It was as if the DJ was trying to bludgeon its victims with sound.
Somewhere amongst this chaos Tammy was suffering. Helpless, the only thing Max could think to do was clamber up onto the stage and stop the music. He had a clear path through to the DJ because the soldiers guarding him, assuming Gene was under no immediate threat, had left their posts to help move bodies outside.
Max stepped onto the stage, noticing the DJ’s diminutive frame — he was probably fifteen years old — and how his hands danced furiously over the records. Max tapped the DJ on his shoulder, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Stop the music!” Max shouted.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” said DJ Gene.
“Have you any idea what’s happening down there?” Max said. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”
“You better go before I set my guards on you.”
Max grabbed Gene by the neck and tightened his grip. “Explain yourself or your short life will soon be over.”
“Look,” the DJ squeaked, “I was told just to play the records that’s all.”
“And?” Max said, squeezing tighter.
“They gave me a truckload of money and said no one would get hurt. What was I supposed to do?”
“Then why didn’t you stop when you saw people in trouble?”
“I’m just a boy, dude. I’m not gonna fight the military, am I?”
Max released the DJ, who was left squirming with pain and dabbing at his reddened neck. Gene said, “Why hasn’t the music affected you?”
“I’m not sure,” said Max. “I think maybe because I didn’t take the pill. Listen, stop the music. My girlfriend’s out there.”
“If I do that, it’ll only alert the guards. You know that, right?”
They could only watch, powerless to act. As more bodies were pulled out of the tent, Max could only wonder what strange fate was in store for Tammy and the unconscious ravers. Then one of the records reached an end and began to skip. The bodies on the dance floor reacted to the sound violently and an idea sparked in Max’s mind.
“Gene,” said Max, “if music can do harm, maybe it can heal. Listen, play some random tracks and let’s see what happens. I don’t think the guards will get suspicious about that. It’s worth a try.”
Gene did as he was told, rushed back to his position and played some seventies soul. The ravers continued to act maniacally, so Max signalled for the DJ to change the music. It was then someone tugged on Max’s leg and he looked down. It was Tammy.
The skin from her face was raw and beginning to split. Her lips were chapped. Her rainbow skin was now charred, and she was panting with short, sharp breaths. Max sat beside her and stroked her hair. Clumps came loose in his hand.
“Max,” she sighed, “my Maxie.”
“Tammy, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.”
“No, Max, no.”
“It is, listen; I knew this would happen, I knew there was something happening today. My dad told me so I wouldn’t come. I thought he just wanted to freak me out, but part of me wanted to bring you here to punish you and this whole scene. Now I know this is just one sick experiment to find a way to control people like us. I’m so sorry, Tammy.”
He kissed her on her cracked lips. She reciprocated then slowly bit down hard until he couldn’t pull away. She chewed through flesh and blood squirted out.
The music switched tempo once again. A hip-hop record resounded. Tammy’s back arched like a gymnast on a pommel horse, and she ripped off Max’s lower lip in the process. As the music played, Tammy and the other ravers nearby stood upright. Everyone looked alert and fully aware. Then, as if they were hit by a lightning bolt, the ravers became rampant, attacking the soldiers fearlessly. The soldiers fired their guns in retaliation, blasting through flesh and bone, but the sheer number of ravers finally overwhelmed the guards. The soldiers were battered and bruised, and shallow pools of blood were left on the dance floor.
Gene desperately changed the music in an attempt to spread calm. Finally, as soothing Latina beats played, the ravers relaxed into slow, robotic movements and then, methodically, as if in a state of hypnosis, they stacked the dead soldiers into a heap like a funeral pyre. Tammy lifted Max as if he were as light as a tree branch and dumped him on top of the bodies. Max’s shoulder was dislocated and his kneecap crushed into splinters, but he was alive.
Tammy, with blood dripping from her mouth, said, “I’m not inviting you to a rave ever again.” She raised her hands to the ceiling and spiralled on her toes. She screamed, “Now, DJ, play the last tune one more time!”
Copyright © 2021 by Tim Frank
