Swing It!

It started as a whim.

Something fun. Something light. Something to fix the rut.

“A swing dance class,” she said, tossing the flyer onto the kitchen table. “It’s supposed to be amazing. Old-school vibes. They only take couples.” He shrugged, half-interested. But her eyes were glowing in that way they did when she wanted to feel young again. So he said yes.

The school was hard to find. No website. No email. Just an address scribbled on a paper corner that wasn’t there the next day. They arrived at dusk. The building was tall and narrow, wedged between two abandoned warehouses. No signs, just music leaking through the bricks, swing jazz, hot and fast, like it had never stopped playing since 1943. Inside, the room was wide, windowless. Polished floors, low lights, and dancers already spinning, flipping, dipping like marionettes unbound. None of them stopped to look. None of them blinked. A woman greeted them with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. “You’re just in time.” There was no paperwork. No fee. Just shoes handed to them from a box without bottoms. The soles felt too soft. Too warm.

The lesson began.

It was easy. Too easy. Their feet moved without thought. Their arms knew what to do. The music curled around their spines and lifted them. They laughed, at first. Then the laughter felt rehearsed. The room grew hotter. The music never paused. The instructor circled them. Whispered steps they already knew.

“You’re naturals,” she said. “Almost ready.”

“Ready for what?” he asked.

She smiled wider. “The real dance.”

On the third night, the door they entered through was gone. They asked. No one answered. The others just danced. Always dancing. They couldn’t stop. The moment they paused, their legs twitched, their arms jerked forward, pulled by invisible chords. He tried to sit once. His knees buckled and twisted until he rose again, swinging her through the air, their breath locked in rhythm. She whispered through clenched teeth, “I don’t want to dance anymore.”

But their feet did.

The instructor clapped once. The tempo quickened. The walls pulsed with the beat. Faces blurred. Music swelled. Days passed. Or maybe weeks. Time unspooled with every spin. Their hands bled. Their shoes sank into the floor. They tried to scream, but swing drowned it out. And still, they danced.

Endlessly.

Because here, at this school, that’s all anyone ever learns. How to swing.

And never, ever stop.

                                                                                                                                                                                                     ~D.G