Red Threads

Inspired by Butoh

They were leaving, I was being forsaken. I looked out towards my mother. Her face painted white, her lips painted red, she showed no emotion. They were blank as they stared blanking at me. My Fathers face was gaunt and empty. Same was reflected on my brothers and my sisters. They stood still, their emotionalist faces stared towards my direction with unseeing eyes. The doors were closing and I was going to be lost.

I tired to step forward but my feet were frozen to the slate marble beneath me. I tried to call out towards the gold and black clad monks that were reciting verses, each holding two long sticks of incense. The smoke was rising off each of the branches, burning away rapidly. They were burning away, with me. Thick smoke spun around the monks who steadfast pace of prays became a buzz in my ears as my blood rushed in my ears. The ghostly white haze swirled around my family, they became ambiguous dark figures that started to descend into the distance. The monks slowly closed their prays, one at a time, until the last said his end.

The red wooden doors were a crack apart as I looked towards them. As each monk turned in their ceremonic dress away from me, walking into the void. The last one finally look up towards me, we made eye contact. He smiled gently at me, his golden eyes were gentle bringing a shiver down my back.

The doors completely closed with a hissing sound. I was left in the darkness. I tried to move but my feet were still rooted to the ground. Yet, I felt no fear. Once the doors closed, my body went numb. I heard a distant clicking sound, that made a soft beat. The sound grew, but I saw nothing. Clicking, became a beating of drums and stomping of feet. It came from behind me. I willed my self to turn my head, but my neck was still. I looked down at my feet and notice that my Zori and tabi were no longer on my feet. I could see my toes, I tried to wiggle them but they would not move.

The beating and stomping sped up, then stopped directly behind my body. I heard a slithering sound in the distance. I looked around, with my eyes but saw only darkness, and the white halo from the reflection of my white kimono embroidered with red, gold, and black peonies.

Cold fingers touch my bare feet. I wanted to jump up and scream. But I was unable to. I looked down and saw red threads twisting and pulling around my feet. Moving its way up my ankles, up my legs. Coving every inch of my body with its colds hairs.

The icy fibers started to cover my face, crawling its way into my mouth, ears, nose and eyes. It pulled my hair ornaments out of my hair. The golden hair sticks and combs fell to the floor and shattered as if glass on to the black floor. My hair tumbled down my back into my face, then fell off my head. Yet I could feel nothing but its cold touch as the thread invaded my body.

My haori fell to the ground, crumbling into dirt. My obijime and obi loosen around my waist and they came tumbling down to the ground with my heavy furisode. They also became fresh earth on contact to marble around my feet. The rest of my under kimonos fell to my feet and disintegrated into soft earth. My hair, the glass and the dirt slid away from me, as if by wind, but I did not feel its breath kiss my skin.

I looked down at my own nude body, expecting to see the red threads constricting it, but my skin was smooth and hairless. No longer my once fleshly creamy skin tone but a sold red color. The same as the color of the threads that once moved its way up my body.

A tingling pulling sensation, pulled at my arms and feet as my body turned itself towards the now quiet drumming and stomping sound. It was empty of life, but I saw stairs, in the darkness, that glowed by an unseen ray of light. moving forward, and I was no longer alone. Slowly with each step I saw figures walk towards the stairs, the soft patterning of the bare feet against the marble. They were all painted red as they started to ascend the stairs. Up we went with no say, as we slowly glided up. hearing a roaring and beating that was way now above us. We climbed and climbed each step, all at the same speed, lifting the same foot at the same time, and setting it on the next step on the same beat to the drums that became clearer and clearer. I saw all the red bodies slowly loose their color.

They faded in to an imposable white color, the same I once painted on my face, and help paint onto my mothers and sisters. With each step the red pulsed out of the body, leaving their feet white, then the ankles, the legs. With step they evoked nature to clam their bodies. Clam their grotesque minds.

Were were all the same with each step, are white limbs now fading with each step. We were loosing ourselves. I could no longer look down, only up to the bodies that were dissipating into the void.

The drums were so load know, it was a roar in my my mind. My mind, mind. Nothing as I looked up for the last time, into golden eyes.