[Log - Jacek Wozniak and Debbie]

[jacek_wozniak]

Fade in, compress. Flip back and equalize. Jacek's fingers flew from slider to knob behind a spread of turntables and mixing gear, twisting beat and pinching sound until the rhythm echoed back at him just the way he liked. He was in prime form tonight, livemixing for a feverish audience. And you couldn't tell from where he bobbed his head and shoulders in shadow, but he was almost smiling about it, almost a person instead of a metronome.

It was hot in the club. Hot and dark, but for the strobe lights bedazzling the place like psychedelic dalmation spots.

But it was hotter in Jacek's blood, even though he'd yet to break a sweat. On nights like this he liked to let go of his senses and allow his heartbeat to roam, closing his eyes against the flicker of red lights to see things a little differently.

Comments

[ofhamelin]

She had her passport, but no one checked it as she pushed the heavy doors and stepped through the looking glass into wonderland. The club looked just like the google image search had said it would, but there was no way she could have been prepared for how it felt. it almost knocked her over, the smell. Fruity alcohol and sweat, smoke from the dry ice machine stale and weird against her nose and heat. It was so warm, like going into the reptile house in a zoo, and just as weird and colourful.

For a few moments, she just stood there, not sure where to go or what to do. This was probably a mistake, but she was desperate. She had to do something to prove she wasn't whatever they kept saying she was. A prude? Frigid? Shut in? Crazy cat lady? Whatever...

"Eep..." She squeaked as she pushed past a few bodies to try and find a clear space where she could watch the lights and music.

[jacek_wozniak]

He saw her behind his eyelids, moving completely out of sync with the music but with no apparent direction or motive. A moment later Jacek opened his eyes but did not lift them from his mixing gear, instead zoning out while the cognitive shape of her imprinted itself on his mind, his shoulders steady rolling with the music.

Huh. Maybe he'd keep an eye on her through the next set. See what happened. Could be the one... for tonight, anyway.

He scratched, faded, and transitioned into his next edit.

[ofhamelin]

Somehow Deborah made her way to the dance floor floating like a ghost in a white dress. She had worn flat shoes that seemed like soft slippers compared to the other girls high heels stamping around her like knives. Her legs were bare where as the other girls had tights. Her hands clutched her hand back when other people held other hands, or hips. There were so many bodies so close to each other and she felt like she was being pushed through a factory machine. Eventually she ended up on the outskirts of the dancers, nearer to the bar where she could at least consider getting something to drink.

She breathed a long sigh, punctuating the noise with a inaudible melody as she tried to get the bartenders attention somehow. Usually singing a little helped bring what she wanted to her, but in all this noise it probably wasn't going to work.

[jacek_wozniak]

A good night meant a good crowd, and a good crowd meant a loose one. Loose-limbed, loose-willed, able to be dangled, like puppets, by the string of his beat. More than anything Jacek loved it when a crowd bowed to the force of his music, writhing to keep up with his tempo, and using his arrangements for their cute little mating dances.

He slid his long, pianist's fingers across his mixing board, toyed with the volume of one layer of sounds, and faded the depth of another. It was a good night, he'd decided. And so he closed his eyes to watch them dance.

There was a method to his madness, a reason he fed hi-hats into almost all his mixes. No one could possibly hear the inhuman sounds reverberating in his throat as he echolocated and waited for those sounds to echo back.

It always came to him in the form of blue outlines, almost like night vision, position data burning a blueprint into the space behind his eyelids. And when he did it this time, he saw her again. Lingering by the bar, and sticking out like a sore thumb in her struggles.

Jacek opened his eyes, looked up and gestured to a guy off to the side. She wasn't going to get a drink anytime soon behaving like that.

[ofhamelin]

The music was so strange to her. So unlike anything she would play herself. She wondered briefly just how she's make any of these sorts of sounds work through through her flute...

She had time to wonder, because she wasn't getting any attention from the bar staff any time soon. Or anyone else as far as she knew.

[jacek_wozniak]

"Excuse me, ma'am," came a voice brimming with strict professionalism. Suddenly, the owner of said voice stood beside her, tall, wide and dangerously firm in his presence.

Even if he hadn't been wearing a security badge it would've been incredibly obvious that he was alive to be an enforcer of sorts. For the time being he was there purely to enforce Jacek's needs upon the audience, and tonight he definitely had a need for something... a little different than usual.

"Please follow me," he swept an arm out in welcome - an arm that plenty of people moved to avoid, as though he were Moses himself. Then he turned and began to escort her through the crowd and up to the stage just as another remix flooded the speakers.