"The Host in the Attic" teaser - terror behind the smiles
Teaser for the video-book of Rohan Quine's novella "The Host in the Attic" - teaser VI(xvii) "terror behind the smiles". // Before long the party is in full swing, with much dancing on the strobe-lit dance-floor, many pills popped, bumps of coke snorted and even the occasional copulation in a dim corner. // The indefatigable Champagne Marc is in his element, pacing himself with sureness through a gargantuan intake of alcohol over many hours, and generous in the fattened swing of his own pleasure, which he spreads with good-humoured taste among the hundred faces that float through his conversational bubble throughout the evening. // With equal ease but less verbiage, sometimes in Marc's company and sometimes not, Jaymi glitters charismatically throughout those same hours - always in control, opaquely charming and untouchable, everywhere stared at, and whispered of with terror behind the smiles. // At some point in the later part of the evening, he is standing prominent and alone on the wide balcony overlooking the ballroom, as the party continues beneath. From a distance, his stillness is eloquent: it is the stance of one who has reached a point of being utterly alienated by his power and very deeply alone, near the end of some enormous, unique and unrepeatable journey that could not now be stopped or undone by any means whatever. // Presently he senses a movement that is small but noticeable for being located elsewhere than within the stew of humanity below him. This movement occurred on a balcony straight across from this one, he realises, at the same level on the opposite side of the ballroom, where Angel has just appeared and is now standing alone in a bold mirror image of Jaymi. // For one protracted moment their two gazes meet and hold each other. Then invisibly, a dragon coils out of him towards her, through the space above the party, breathing cold fire at her - // She steps back in haste and slips away between the curtains into shadow.