Connecticut hits the ground with a bodily thud, ribs yawned like double doors where she's struck. The wound isn't real, of course; it doesn't need to be.
In the absence of stage ribbon, Carolina's mind draws from memory. A solid splatter like red paint thrown against a wall. Unlike anything she's ever witnessed in combat. The smell of it is so immediate she's certain she'll be sick.
The audience draws collectively backward as the stage is drowned in red light. CT crumples. Carolina wants to rush for her and finds she cannot move a muscle. (Not until the lights come down and the actors have fulfilled their purpose). Dancer's grace is let like old blood from her foe's invisible wound. This doesn't feel dancing anymore. This is something else. Something cruel, ugly, grounded in reality.
She stands triumphantly above CT. She is Texas. She is Allison. She's the perfect agent and soldier and killer enveloped in midnight armor. She is their shared reckoning. A hero.
They're posed like this for sixty seconds. There's a moral here, maybe; a fight with Texas is a fight with Death. Something you'd see on an old Western poster.
Then the lights come down. Not the easing into death one wishes for, but an immediate, jarring and all-encompassing darkness. So complete that for a moment Carolina is blinded. Her body caves under the weight of exhaustion but she doesn't let herself fall.
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Connecticut hits the ground with a bodily thud, ribs yawned like double doors where she's struck. The wound isn't real, of course; it doesn't need to be.
In the absence of stage ribbon, Carolina's mind draws from memory. A solid splatter like red paint thrown against a wall. Unlike anything she's ever witnessed in combat. The smell of it is so immediate she's certain she'll be sick.
The audience draws collectively backward as the stage is drowned in red light. CT crumples. Carolina wants to rush for her and finds she cannot move a muscle. (Not until the lights come down and the actors have fulfilled their purpose). Dancer's grace is let like old blood from her foe's invisible wound. This doesn't feel dancing anymore. This is something else. Something cruel, ugly, grounded in reality.
She stands triumphantly above CT. She is Texas. She is Allison. She's the perfect agent and soldier and killer enveloped in midnight armor. She is their shared reckoning. A hero.
They're posed like this for sixty seconds. There's a moral here, maybe; a fight with Texas is a fight with Death. Something you'd see on an old Western poster.
Then the lights come down. Not the easing into death one wishes for, but an immediate, jarring and all-encompassing darkness. So complete that for a moment Carolina is blinded. Her body caves under the weight of exhaustion but she doesn't let herself fall.
There's no applause. Why would there be?