She spun round and round. She danced and skipped gracefully, as if a gazelle in the middle of a meadow. She twirled about, a blur of motion painted in pink and black amidst the building corridor.
Outside, the rain pelted noisily against the windows. Heavy sheets of rain soaked the building but only on the outside. Inside the old dormitory, where students had come and gone, where years had scratched the surface of the floorboards, where insomnia had taken its rounds, she continued dancing.
The rest of the student body was asleep. No one can see her dance across the hall, moving along a music only she can hear. But. But there was one student who was seeing it all.
The dancer’s tights and shoes were pink, as was the ribbon tied around her neat ballerina bun. Her leotards were black, as was her hair. As she skipped and twirled and danced, a new color soaked her feet: Red. It began as splotches on her toes, until it began to spread all throughout. And yet she continued to dance.
The student let out a silent scream, her eyes huge with fright and fear. She wondered if the dancer could see her, if she knew she was there witnessing her dance.
And then.
And then as if hearing her scream and reading her thoughts, the dancer began to skip and swirl about toward her. The student jerked herself away from the keyhole and flattened herself against the wall, heart beating furiously against her chest. She was inside her room. The dancer was outside. If she counted one to ten and tried to regularize her breathing, then perhaps it would all disappear.
And so count to ten she did. Breathed in and out she did. Finally, choking back her sobs , the student straightened herself, peeled her delicate body off the wall, mustered a new dose of courage, and then peeped through the keyhole. She could no longer see the dancer. It was odd, though…
The rain was steady and heavy and noisy outside. The sound of it was driving her new found courage away. Whatever bravado she first felt was beginning to ebb away. Why was she now seeing nothing but red through the keyhole?
The wind began to scream outside and the view before her changed from red to that of the pale face of the dancer. Now all she could see was its ghostly face and red, red eyes that were quickly turning into angry slits. And then the student knew. Now she knew why all she could see was red a few seconds back.
