The Moths - Short Story #1
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Music festivals bring joy and meaning to the lives of many. Being in a crowd, sharing the same heart-stopping bass, elation at the same drop in a wave of ecstasy. Some even say they feel a connection with the divine. Divine or not, the crowd has a controlling mind of its own that is indifferent to the individual, for better or for worse.
Festival pamphlets have bands arranged from top to bottom and by size of font depending on the musician's popularity. Knowing the ones on top was a given, you just had to, but knowing bands with smaller fonts offered a unique pleasure. The hardcore fan could always reference the small font bands only they knew, that they had listened to well before their peers. And they'd preach for months like missionaries, but with a real reward at the end of the tunnel - a live performance of their adored for all to witness and believe. This year, to the unadmitted shame of many would-be attendees, there was a band no one knew. At the bottom of the list, in the smallest font, read "Moth Light". No one could get any info on them. Search engines were flooded with irrelevant results any way you typed it. Yet like true missionaries, complete ignorance of their gospel did not stop these aficionados.
The year's line up was filled with artists everyone knew, so in tight circles, the word of Moth Light was spread, for no one dared say they were out of the loop. What delight would they all relish upon after a live concert from this most obscure band. "I saw them once at an underground club" was the little white lie told various ways and in different combinations by all sorts of stale imaginations. Word caught on, for the mysterious never fails to spark a sense of intrigue and the complete absence of information only strengthened people's convictions.
Show day approached and still no one knew what to expect from Moth Light. "They're French techno with an avant-garde twist!", "Exclusively vocals!" "They re-imagined music!". Each claim was grander than the last, and as the event began, the attendees enjoyed the main acts considerably less for they were already consumed with impatience at having to wait to see Moth Light, the final act on the final day.
The long awaited moment arrived and the stage was set. A space of the expected size for the last act with the smallest font on the proverbial pamphlet, was over-packed before the band even took stage. But a stage it was not. There was only a giant 3 story sized Coleman lantern behind a DJ booth on the floor. Exactly like the ones you'd take wilderness camping, with metal wires around it to protect you from the hot light. The crowd waited with baited breath; they'd never seen anything like this. For all the hype around this band, it was delivering. The question was answered. It was a one man electronic, and the light behind it was performance art out of Burning Man.
The show began, and the lantern shined more brightly than a midday sun. The crowd in front had to close their eyes but soon found no safety from behind their eyelids. Yet keeping them open didn't quite hurt. There was warmness to the light, and with the cue of a flicker, the music began. A steady bass beat, nothing more. It was nearly identical to a heartbeat, playing a steady 60bpm. Crowning the start of the spectacle, in the DJ booth rose the star of the night, in the most intricate and realistic giant moth costume ever seen.
The crowd was on edge, with no barrier between it and the DJ, nor the lantern, they knew not how to behave. The music kept the whole crowd waiting for a variation in sound. In their minds, the buildup of ecstasy was rising, drawing ever closer to a drop, the ultimate climax. And yet no hint of change ever came. As if to experiment with the sound and the light, or simply to escape the monotone nature of the music, listeners started walking forward closer to the moth DJ, past him towards the light. The warmness encouraged, waved them on, and now amidst blinding light and deafening sound, they were pure.
Enveloped in vibrations, light and drugs, these daring few felt they were walking towards the mystical white tunnel of the afterlife. And so they marched on, entirely diluted of their earthly senses in this simple mixture of sensation, until they were so dazzled, so uncertain of their movement beyond their necessary forward motion that they touched the light and were instantly electrocuted to death. With a light zapping sound and an odor of burned flesh, this was the release the crowd was waiting for, the drop, the variations that freed them from their bondage. The rest of the crowd felt they too must go forward, their brothers and sisters had made music for them, and now they too must add to the spectacle.
They sprinted towards the light, trampling over the bodies of their fellow listeners, fueling the zap and smell overlaid on top of the heartbeat for the sake of the sound and their unity, until not a single audience member remained standing. All attendees had died in their greatest moment of ecstasy for themselves, for others, and for the music. As the last man fell, and there was no one left to listen, the music stopped, the DJ took off his moth helmet, and instantly collapsed to the ground. From within the human-less body suit on the ground, thousands of moths fluttered outward, scattering into the night, spreading in all directions, each searching after it's own calling luminescence.
