Chapter One: Denmark

Present Day, Ten to Midnight

The music was loud, the beat was hypnotic and all he wanted was to do was sleep. Ed stared at the flashing strobe lights and wondered if he could work up the stomach to dance. The liquor burning in his gut was the only thing keeping him from bolting. He took a quick drag on his cigarette and waited.

He thought it would be easy, dancing to a roomful of horny strangers. Easy money, after all he knew he had the looks and body for it. His piercing green eyes and tight butt were his best assets, but not his only ones. He knew from experience that he was more than generously endowed.

The months had passed and the excitement and novelty of dancing quickly wore off. He was tired of looking into eyes filled with lust, tired of kisses that had nothing but money behind it. But most of all he was tired of seeing the pathetic things people did just to feel validated. Lonely men and women willing to throw money for the illusion of affection. Like junkies they couldn’t get enough. Ed pitied them at the start, but now all he felt was contempt. Contempt, and a liberal dose of disgust.

The last strains of Gloria Estefan faded into the background and the first dancer moved away from the stage. Ed wondered how anyone could dance to that music, it was just too faggy. His song came on, beckoning him to the center. He let his body switch to automatic, dry humping to Metallica. As their eyes crawled over him, he closed his eyes.

“Taaake my hand, off to never-never land….”

His thoughts whirled in time with his body, muscles flexed along his hips and cerebral cortex. And the regrets began to swirl to the surface.

If only he hadn’t lost his temper and punched his asshole supervisor at bloody McDonalds for feeling him up.

If only he hadn’t wasted his last savings on medicines for a sister who would only wind up dead of a drug overdose.

If only his loser mother (God rest her soul) didn’t let herself get beaten up every night by the drunken deadbeat man she called a husband.

If only he was born to a decent family.

If only he was never born.

If only. If only.

“Let’s give a big hand for Denmark ladies and gentlemen!”

Ed opened his eyes to the sea of faces as they applauded him. It got so he could catch the look of naked desire like a candle in the dark. One face would be lit up more than the others and he knew exactly where to go once he left the stage. Inevitably he would be asked why he chose such a strange stage name. He had half a dozen witty answers ready, but none of them would be the truth.

When he was six years old he had an uncle who flew in from Denmark and lived with them for a month. It was the happiest time of his life. For one whole month his father stopped coming home drunk, his sister actually began to smile again, and his mother (God rest her soul) was positively radiant. Ed basked in the attention his uncle showered on him. When the end came, as it inevitably does, he was devastated. He cried all the way to the airport and he would have cried all the way back except before boarding the plane his uncle took him aside, hugged him tight and promised that when he was older he could come visit and live with him in Denmark for a month. He’d even send Ed the ticket. The ticket never came. His uncle died two years later in a boating accident. They never found his body.

So when they asked Ed what his stage name would be when he joined the club, Denmark seemed as good a choice as any. It seemed fitting somehow.

Ed could feel the song surround him, and his hips began to buck and sway, milking the notes for every last drop of nuance and emotion. Savoring every moment of the cascading crescendo, feeling the urgency welling up around him.

This was his moment. He was the rarity within the walls of the club, perhaps the only one supremely confident of his sexuality, his sensuality. He was the object of desire, and at that moment he had them all worshipping at his altar.

There! The woman sitting alone in the corner table, her eyes locked with his for the briefest instant, and he felt the heat of her need reaching out to him, the wanton lust cutting through the air like a bone saw. Jagged and grating with urgency.

He spun closer, twisting towards her with serpentine grace. She seemed a tad old for his taste, wrinkles were visible along the corners of her mouth, which even the most efficient Botox treatments could not erase. Still, he sent a well-timed smile her way, his teeth glimmering white in the black light.

When he whirled to look at her again, his smile froze his heart skipped. Was her face sagging just a bit more? Through the haze of smoke and sound his mind screamed at what he saw. My God, she’s melting!

Before he could stop or shout for help, he saw that all around him people had begun to clutch their faces, their skin flowing like wax. Flesh melted all around him like butter warming over a furnace.

And still he danced. The music ended but Ed continued to sway in ever-frenzied gyrations, unable to stop. Tears and sweat mingled as they rolled down his face. The cries for help and the gurgling screams that escaped from lips that flowed down chins in a river of crimson became the only music that his body responded to. He spun and pranced onstage until his sweat-coated body was the only one that remained. Melted flesh and empty clothes pooled on the floor.

“Which only proves that if you can’t stand the heat, you shouldn’t dance too close to the fire of desire.”

Ed whirled at the voice, a cold humorless thing that seemed to hang and twist in the air before fading in the stillness of the empty club. His body finally gave in and collapsed like a puppet with its string cut. His heart thudded in his chest, desperate to escape.

“I could use a dancer like you, Denmark.”

“Who are you?” Ed stared at the stranger who loomed over him. He was impeccably dressed in a white suit and black overcoat, and his face was hidden beneath the shadows of a black fedora.

“I don’t like names. They will hold you in their thrall if you let them. If you must, simply call me the Rumple Man. It will suffice.” And Ed felt more than saw the smile that formed on the Rumple Man’s face.

“What do you want?”

“I want many things.” The Rumple Man answered, walking around Ed like a shark circling a school of nervous fish. “But right now, what I want is you.”

Ed licked his lips nervously. His body shook from a sudden chill. “Why?”

“Why? To give you that which you most desire, a chance to serve a higher power.”
The Rumple Man stopped and extended his white-gloved hand. “I have great things in store for you, and tonight the curtain rises on a show the world will not soon forget. Take my hand now and you can be a part of it.”

off to never-never land....

Ed hesitated for a moment before taking the hand offered to him. He gasped as he felt cold electricity shoot up his arm, arcing to his heart and stopping it instantly.

“Ed is dead. Dead is Ed. Long live Denmark.” And the Rumple Man smiled with satisfaction as his first servant rose from the floor.

Denmark stood for a moment, flexing dead muscles before taking his place beside his new master. All the while thinking just how proud his mother (god rest her soul) would be of him at this moment.

Together they stepped out of the club into the hungry night.