The Rhythm Battle

A blinding light show and cacophony of sounds backhanded Marquise the moment he pulled up to the scene. The bodies on the floor writhed, glided, bounced, and spun with a dazzling, fantastic, Christmas light display that made the young boy’s head throb. Shouts from the partiers and wails from the music rang throughout Marquise’s ears and created a dizzying display of sharp colors in his mind. Nine times from ten, Marquise would have backed away from the horror with his hands over his ears and his mouth making sounds it hadn’t since he was a baby in diapers. But Marquise didn’t shy away from the horror, and the strain the stimulation had on his mind was minimal.      

Waves of sound rose and fell all around him, and the halos surrounding everyone were more intense than any Marquise had ever seen in his whole life, but it didn’t deter him. He loved every second of it. The loud, obnoxious, ignorant mood reverberated in the very core of his being and exited the child that was still trapped within his mind. Jerome had been right, Marquise had never seen anything like a Negro Spiritual party before, and as he watched the lights floating off everyone’s bodies, Marquise realized that he’d probably never see anything nearly as spectacular as the magic at work there.

              Marquise gasped as his eyes continued to follow the lines of the everyone’s halos. Orange, purple, green, blue, red, yellow; it was all blending and creating a dizzying display that mixed with the very air itself. The longer he looked, the more the air glowed in a spectacular, ever-shifting multi-chrome. It was a new sight for Marquise, and just like with the partiers themselves, Marquise was too transfixed by his wonder to do look away and shield his already sensitive brain.

              “Those lights...what are they?” He found himself asking. Soon as the words were out of his mouth, though, he wished it would sew itself shut. That was the second time that day Marquise had asked about mysterious lights without first confirming anyone else could see them. If Jerome and Renée started asking too many questions, they might begin to suspect there was something off about him.

              “Sweat,” Renée said.

              “Funk,” Jerome clarified.

              Renée made a big display of shrugging, “Same thing.”

              “Neither sounds very good,” Marquise confessed. Internally, he breathed a sigh of relief. He was slipping, and he didn’t like that, but he was happy that somebody was looking down on his stupid ass, making sure no one else learned how crazy he was.

              “It’s energy mixed with sweat,” Jerome clarified again.

              “Yeah, you’re seriously making me want to leave. And shower,” Marquise responded with a questionable sniff in the air. It wasn’t too bad, but he could definitely smell the sweat—funk—whatever it was supposed to be.

              “Nouveau Wokes, I swear,” Jerome sighed.

              “You gotta admit,” Renée began, “it’s a pretty gross concept even in context. It’s residual psychic energy mixing with sweat and breath then evaporating into the air. After that, it’s absorbed by our bodies, refined, and shot out again. And again, and again, and again.”

              “What you call disgusting, I call a psychedelic water cycle,” Jerome said with a shrug.

              “So we’re breathing in magic sweat. That totally makes it all better,” Marquise sarcastically added.

              Jerome paid him no mind and continued moving deeper into the party. Marquise wasn’t sure where they were headed, but he didn’t care all that much. He was satisfied just being able to look around. Up, down, left and right were people dancing, eating, joking, and invoking the power of the Negro Spirit.

              To his left was a table of older boys, sitting together in a circle and smoking from a vape pen. Marquise watched in awe as the smoke took on the forms of different animals after each member of the circle exhaled a puff. To his right were a girl and a guy dancing together. It was a quick, energetic movement that shook their whole bodies including their long, multicolored locs. Marquise quickly realized that their locs weren’t actually shaking from the moves of their bodies, the couple’s hair danced along with them as the music played overhead. Just as Jerome promised, there were even people floating in the air or growing animal features. It was exactly the type of sight Marquise had been hoping he’d get to see the minute he realized X was dragging him away to a magic school.

              Suddenly, Marquise felt something both soft and hard collide against his body. Stunned, he looked up and saw that an older girl was standing over him, with a large wet stain on her shirt and an empty cup in her hand.

              “Sorry baby, did I get any on you,” she asked. Her voice was high and soft, but came out in a shout just a bit too loud, even for the music that was playing. Her large, round face was frozen in a perpetual, dazed smile, and her hair was all strung about across her face. Her voice and halo matched and formed a wobbly, pinkish-purple light that shook and wavered with every breath she took and every movement of her body. Drawing upon his years of experience dealing with the old winos that hung around the block, Marquise quickly realized the older girl was drunk.

              “I’m fine,” he quickly said, hoping not to draw too much attention to himself or the girl. It wasn’t a lie and he wasn’t upset, but he had to be quick and end the conversation. Otherwise, she might make a huge fuss over him, and draw everyone’s attention to the three kids that had just snuck into the party.

              “You sure you’re all right? I wish I could—Oh! Lindsay! Lindsay! Hold up, girl!” The ditzy girl suddenly sped past Marquise and ran towards an empty chair.

Marquise hurried to catch up to his friends, who either hadn’t noticed him colliding with the tall, older girl or didn’t care.

              “She’s had a bit too much,” Marquise commented as he rejoined Renée and Jerome.

              Renée looked back to see what girl he was referring to. “Oh, Erica? No way. She’s teetotal.”

              “Teetotal?”

              “She never drinks. Ever.”

              Marquise smirked and shrugged, “Well I guess that she’s had a change of heart because when I tell you that girl was faded!”

              Renée shook her head, “Nah. I think she’s just been here too long. Absorbed too much of the magic sweat, and now she’s just feeling the whole vibe of the party. Happens a lot at Negro Spiritual parties. When it really turns up, people start vibing so hard that you think they’d been doing shots.”

Marquise raised an eyebrow and cocked his head, “You telling me that everyone here’s sober?”

Renée folded her arms, “No. Truth be told, can’t even say that most of them are. But that’s how this power works. Didn’t you wonder why no one’s pressed over three kids just walking around?”

              Marquise had to admit she had a point there, and nodded his head. Even if everyone was high or drunk, it just wasn’t realistic to expect that absolutely no one there was aware enough to notice them. Just to be sure, he took a glance around—still, they were unnoticed by everyone there.

Renée and Marquise followed Jerome and his chair through the room for a while longer. It wasn’t too long before Jerome stopped, right at the edge of a crowd circling a lone figure.

              “Is this what you wanted to see so badly? What is it?” Marquise asked.

              Jerome shook his head, “My part doesn’t come in till later, but just for now, I wanted you to be here so I could show you something. You are going to love this, trust.”

              In the center of the ring, the person began to speak. Marquise had to squint his eyes a bit to get a good look through the haze of the Funk. He saw that in the center of the circle was a woman. Well, she wasn’t exactly a woman, but Marquise figured she was close enough, considering she was clearly older than most of the students at the party. She had a large, bushy head of black hair that almost swallowed her face. Bags and lines from fatigue draped themselves under her bloodshot eyes. This short, stocky, not-yet-a-woman had seen horrors and woes too awful to speak aloud; horrors that kept her awake at night.

              “College student,” Renée explained when she saw Marquise’s concerned look.

              Understanding immediately, Marquise called out, “Oh!”

              “That’s the ex-Rhythm Master,” Jerome began to explain. A voice that blasted the air like construction noise cut him off.

              “To my ancestors!” The ex-Rhythm Master declared. She raised a glass bottle to the air, then poured half it’s contents out onto the floor below.

              “To myself!” She said again, then took a swig from the bottle. As she pulled it away, she smiled a wide, toothy grin and let out an excited “Whoo!”

              Not yet done with the spectacle, the Rhythm Master took another sip from the bottle but didn’t swallow. She held the liquid in her cheeks and pushed her lips together. The Rhythm Master reached up a single finger to her chin, and Marquise noticed a flicker of orange light dance from the tip of it. She began to blow, and a jet stream of flames shot out towards the crowd as she swayed back and forth.

              “And that’s for all my Westbank sistas!”

              Marquise heard hoots, hollers, and chants of “Westbank, best bank” echo around the room.

              “Aight naw! Ya’ll already know what it is! Bring out your best and let’s see if anyone can replace the queen.”

              From all around the room, people began to step forth. Some of them moved awkwardly, taking small steps and looking this way and that, but never directly at the Rhythm Master. Others walked up with their whole chest puffed out as they raised right foot, left foot, right foot, left in a confident stride. Once all the people that were going to step up did, they circled the Rhythm Master and held out one arm each.

              The Rhythm Master soon followed suit, raising her left arm high in the air, then lowering it to a more neutral height. She opened her palm and let her hand lay flat, face up to the ceiling. Marquise watched as the light pink halo surrounding her began to wiggle and move, concentrating into the palm of her hand. A ball of light formed, and Marquise saw it turn into a blinding, yellow orb that floated in the air, above her palm like a tiny, mid-day sun.

              The boom of thunder striking a giant drum echoed around the room, and the orb changed from yellow to bright, hot pink. With another boom, it changed again and became a green that made all the jade jewelry in the room feel blue. With each new noise, the orb turned a new color, until finally, a purple ball floated above the Rhythm Master’s hand.

              The people standing in the ring around her quickly followed suit, making their own balls of energy, then following the pattern of noises and color changes that the Rhythm Master laid out. She’d start a new sequence the second she ended the last, and didn’t give anyone even a moment to catch up. Marquise watched in awe as the people surrounding her struggled to keep up with the incredible speed of her routines.

              “It’s a game,” he muttered to himself. In any other context, a game as simple as that wouldn’t manage to hold his attention more than a few seconds, but that game was special. Marquise found that he couldn’t bring himself to look away. Large noises were going off all around him and vibrant colors constantly flashed in his eyes, yet he felt neither sickness nor the desire to flee. Yes, there was a slight pinprick in the back of his head, and he noticed his eyes were slightly wider than they should have been, but ya boy did not care! The pounding of the energy orbs sent excited shock waves throughout his body. He quickly found that he couldn’t tell where the blast of the energy ended and the beat of his heart began. As the sounds went off around him, Marquise felt like a baby in the womb, and when the lights hit his face, he felt like a newborn seeing for the very first time.

              Jerome looked at his friend and smiled, “Boy I just knew you’d vibe with this! From the minute I met you, I knew a Rhythm Battle was your scene!”

              Marquise continued to watch in awe as the sequences became longer and more elaborate. More and more players found themselves behind the Rhythm Master, who it appeared hadn’t changed her mind about giving them a chance finish. It quickly became a keep-up game as each player struggled not to get too far behind. Marquise found himself wondering what the point of the game was, then, if so many people were allowed to be two or even three sequences behind the Rhythm Master.

              A crack of thunder echoed through the room as the player closest to where Marquise went up in a shower of rainbow sparkles.

              “Our first elimination of the night!”

              Before he could question who’d spoken, Marquise felt a wave of emotion hit him all at once. He was conflicted between feeling bad for the girl who’d just lost and tickled to the point of laughter at her defeat. Let him tell it, neither of those feelings was really his own, and he was right. They had been implanted there by the Orator that had spoken just moments before.

              Maintaining the life of these parties was a difficult task, but Eddie Duke didn’t mind it one bit. He was the Duke of Gentilly, the man whose role in life was to keep the Spirit alive in all his subjects and make the party go for as long as he could. Parties, barbershops, town halls, and other large gatherings became his laboratories where he learned everything he could about the wide range of human emotions, and how it coalesced into a beautiful symphony when a big enough crowd got packed together. His emotional cocktails, delivered at the slightest utterance, ensured that everyone in the room felt whatever they needed to keep the vibe going. And in the case of the end of the year Rhythm Battle, that meant keeping a healthy balance of sympathy and mockery for the losers.

              “Our competitors are gonna need all the love and support they can get if they gonna knock down Queen Dria. Show a little love, everybody!” 

The room erupted into applause and cheers, and Marquise wasn’t an exception. He knew he was being manipulated by an Orator’s magic, but he didn’t care too much. The thought of the game becoming more intense excited him.

              Queen Dria continued raising the stakes. She began incorporating stomps and arm movements alongside the rhythms she created, resulting in an elaborate dance that Marquise found himself wanting to follow. The other players joined in, but they each did their own thing instead of copying the Queen’s moves. One boy in particular had a very unique trick of changing which hand kept the ball with every few stomps of his feet. Stomp-stomp-stomp-boom-stomp, ball in his left hand, boom-stomp-stomp-boom-boom-stomp, ball in his right hand. He quickly drew the attention of everyone in the room.

              “Ayyy naw! Look at Hotep Earl, doing his own lil thang! Boy, we see you! But does he have what it takes, my brothers, sisters, and cousins? Does he have what it takes to take home the gold tonight?”

              Marquise honestly wasn’t sure what to think. Hotep Earl’s moves were the best out of everyone in the ring, and though Marquise had initially assumed the dances were just as important for winning as anything else, he started to question that after hearing the Orator announcer. Marquise’s mind went back to the girl that had been eliminated not too long before. She hadn’t made any obvious mistakes, and though she lagged behind the leader, others were much further down the line. Marquise looked around to verify his suspicions and—yup--there was one boy far away that was way behind everyone else. He wasn’t even on the same sequence that Queen Dria had been when she first started dancing. If it wasn’t a game of accuracy, speed, or style, then what was the point? To expertly demonstrate all three at once?

              Another crack of thunder turned the world yellow. Marquise looked to his right and saw another contestant surrounded in rainbow sparkles, then watched those sparkles get absorbed by the Funk. That made Marquise focus on the other halos in the room. The spectators, as he expected, matched the light pattern of the Funk, and every time the Orator spoke, a huge wave would ripple through the mist. Marquise guessed that the mysterious announcer only spoke every time the Funk’s pattern appeared to falter. Any color slightly off a shade or an untimely flicker in the air was quickly met with the Orator commenting on the game.

              “Hey, Jerome,” Marquise finally asked, “The game and the Funk are connected, right?”

              Jerome nodded his head, “Boy, you sure you’re a Nouveau Woke? You figuring out stuff that some folk never do. Unless someone else tells them.” Jerome chuckled.

              “Thanks. I think. The game and the Funk, how are they related? Are the contestants drawing energy from the Funk?”

              “Sort of, but that ain’t all it is. The Rhythm Master standing in the center defines the parameters of the game. She reads the vibe of the environment, which in this case is the vibe of the Funk-”

              “Please tell me you realize that ‘the vibe of the funk’ is a stupid sentence,” Renée cut in.

              “Technically it’s a sentence fragment,” Marquise commented, humble-flexing his A+ in Mrs. Romero’s 5th Grade Language Arts class.

              “The vibe of the Funk,” Jerome continued, putting an annoyed emphasis on each word, “is a particular vibration of energy radiating off every living being here. The Rhythm Master and all the contestants are masters of energy control, so they’re sensitive to subtle changes in the Funk. Now, to keep themselves from blasting off like Team Rocket, they gotta make sure the energy they’re controlling doesn’t clash with the vibe of the Funk. I know that sounds easy, but if the pattern gets more intense, it becomes harder to keep the vibe. And the more beats everyone makes, the more energy they burn off, so they have to draw energy from the Funk to keep themselves going. This whole game is straight-up impossible for anyone that can’t control energy like an expert.”

              Marquise shook his head, pretending he understood.

              “It’s like this,” Renée began. “Imagine I told you to run the length of a river without stopping. You want a drink, you can dip a cup in the river and get some, but you can’t make a single splash or spill a single drop of water.”

              Marquise shook his head, but that time he did understand. “So how do we know who wins?”

              “Last one that doesn’t spill a drop of water,” Renée answered.

              “Who do you think that’ll be?” Jerome asked.

              Now, Jerome was asking Renée and not Marquise. But Marquise just assumed Jerome was asking both of them. So he immediately commented, “I’d put everything on the Muslim girl with the golden light around her.”

              “Wait, what!” Renée’s eyes grew wide as she craned her neck to look for the girl Marquise meant.

              “Does he mean Knockout? Did she activate her Sunday Soul? That’s against the rules!”

              “No,” Renée told Jerome. “No golden aura, no Sunday Soul. Damn, Marquise, don’t scare us like that!”

              “Must have been a trick of the light,” Marquise excused. “Not used to all these colors and sounds.”

              It didn’t sound like a believable lie, but Marquise knew that Jerome and Renée were too distracted by the game to think too much about it. Out the corner of his eye, he looked in the girl’s direction, then sighed. Big, blue Al-amira with a floral pattern draped perfectly on her head, with a matching tracksuit, looking like a glamorous Olympian. There was a golden light around her, but just like he’d seen on Jaime before, it was only part of her halo. Both were faint, but Marquise figured that made sense. Her ‘real’ halo, the one Renée called an aura, was the one that she was drawing from to control the ball of energy. As for the other one...as far as Marquise was concerned, the fact that Renée and Jerome couldn’t see it was proof enough that it was just another one of his hallucinations.

              Two cracks of thunder went off at once, and they were soon followed by another. In less than a minute, four different competitors had been eliminated. Marquise reasoned that the game was entering the final round.

              “Damn, Hotep Earl! We all believed in you! Guess we’re turning our support towards our remaining competitors. Throw your hands together people, for the brave fools sticking it out against our own Nubian Queen Dria!”

              Marquise excitedly slammed his hands together. In the back of his mind, he found that he was more than a little annoyed at Hotep Earl. His applause was partially to support the competitors still going, and also as a slight towards Hotep Earl. The feeling passed as quickly as it appeared, though, and Marquise immediately understood it was put into him by the Orator.

              “Don’t let the psychic projection fool you,” Renée told him, “the announcer and Earl are cousins.”

              “You can hate your cousins,” Jerome mentioned.

              “Boy, you know what I mean! They play cousins. Been best friends since they were five. He’s just messing with him.”

              “Still a shame he didn’t win,” Marquise said.

              Renée shook her head, “He’s got flashy moves, sure. But no one handles energy better than Knockout.”

              “What about your brother,” Jerome asked.

              “What about my brother?” Renée quipped.

              Marquise giggled, “You wrong for that.”

              “Knockout’s the best, period. Jaime could never, even though he wishes he could. Just watch, Queen Dria’s bout to get dethroned!”

              Marquise had to agree that Knockout was doing exceptionally well. While everyone else was still trying to catch up, the gap between Knockout and the Rhythm Master had almost disappeared. The Rhythm Master could barely begin the next step of a pattern before Knockout copied her last vibration. She was perfectly still the entire time. She didn’t wave her arms, stomp her feet, or even sway her body to the beat. Marquise saw a fire in her eyes, the blinding fury of a girl—no, a woman that already knew she was victorious. Queen Dria locked with Knockout’s intense gaze and shot another one right back at her. Knockout increased her own speed once again, and soon she overtook the Rhythm Master entirely. The gap was entirely gone now because Queen Dria and Knockout were making the same energy vibrations at the exact same time.

              “Wow! That’s just straight-up disrespectful,” Jerome said with a wide grin as he clapped his hands together.

              “That’s how you win!” Renée said.

              Marquise continued to look in awe at the sight laid out before him. Knockout and Queen Dria created lights of blue, green, and red. The shockwaves of their energy hit Marquise with the firm softness of a good pillow. Contestants erupted into a shower of sparkles left and right, and in a matter of moments, there was only Queen Dria and Knockout left. Queen Dria had long given up her dance movements and poured all her concentration into generating enough energy. Knockout stared her down and poured her heart and soul into every single pulse. The energy in their hands changed color faster and faster until eventually, they became blinding balls of light too intense for anyone else to differentiate.

              But Marquise saw it all! As their energy grew stronger, Marquise could clearly make out the different colors. The energy flashed before his eyes like a strobe light, and the shock waves began to sound less like drums and more like...Marquise couldn’t exactly describe it. The sound was high, a bit like ringing, but echoed in a deep way that felt otherworldly to Marquise. Still, the lights flashed faster and the sound grew intense until eventually, it didn’t sound like a boom anymore. Throughout the room, Marquise swore he could hear a voice crying out.

              Then there was a flicker that caught Marquise’s eye. Time seemed to slow as he gazed closer at the battle before him. The women’s halos met in the space between them. Queen Dria’s was a blinding white while Knockout’s halo--the one everyone else should have been able to see--was becoming faintly yellow. But in the center, where their lights crossed, Marquise could swear there was a shadow. A second ticked by and Marquise was certain that a shadow was there. An impossibly black void stretched between their lights and transformed. At the bottom end, the shadow began to split, and at the top, each end seemed to pull itself further from the center point. The shadow was beginning to look like a person! A simple, stick-figure person, but a person all the same.

              Another second ticked by, and the person began to wave its arms and legs wildly like it were on fire. It was an insane, jittery, maniacal dance, but something about watching it made Marquise want to join in. Marquise’s eyes widened, but he didn’t mind the extra light. He heard the announcer’s voice in the back of his mind but didn’t respond to its siren song. Marquise just stared longingly at the dancing figure, listening to the shrieking song echo around the room. And he took a step forward.

              A sudden blast erupted from the center of the ring. Sparkles like stars rained down everywhere, then a dead silence dropped into the room like a heavy stone.

              “Queens! Kings! And our fine cosmic beings! I give you our latest and greatest Rhythm Master, Knockout!”