Friday Flash: Dance Class

I've been pretty absent from this blog space through the holidays, and it's hard getting back into the routine, but I'm making an effort! Next week I'll start with some more photos--my August backpacking trip in Montana/Wyoming, but today we have a bit of all-new flash fiction! Just one of my typically goofy little stories. I hope you enjoy it!

 

Dance Class 

Urgle the Andromedan studied themself in the mirror and cringed.

“You need to get in shape,” they said. It was a common refrain in all corners of the great space station, since anyone arriving there had been in space a long time. It’s hard to stay fit in space.

Urgle considered the equipment in the ship’s exercise room. They’d long since tired of it all, and settled for minimum fitness. Their dominant arms and legs were strong enough to serve, but the lesser limbs were flabby, and their core—no good thinking about the core, which was too complex to understand anyway.

While cleaning their teeth with the left dominant arm, Urgle used the right sub-dominant to pick up the flyer they’d collected earlier from where it was stuck to the wall near their docking station. “Dance your way fit with Julia’s Fitness Extravaganza Class!” The picture showed a range of humans, Andromedans, Burks, Dwerbs, and a couple of species Urgle didn’t recognize. None looked like they needed a workout class. They looked like they did nothing but work out.

Anything was better than going back to space looking like this. If they did, by the time they reached Andromeda again they’d be globular.

Urgle went to the class.

At the door to the dance studio they almost turned back. There, in the front row, dressed in a stretchy skin-tight workout suit utterly unlike Urgle’s utilitarian jumpsuit, was the fittest Andromedan they’d ever seen. All the rest of the attendees, despite the advert that suggested the class would be multi-species, were as human as the absurdly skinny and elastic human leading the dance. Julia, presumably.

The humans were of no particular interest to Urgle. The Andromedan, on the other hand—they were a member of the third sex, same as Urgle, but there the resemblance ended. Their sleekly fit body with all its lycra-clad appendages stood in sharp contrast to Urgle’s own lack of shape and tone. They were warming up with effortless bounces and hops.

They had to go in. It was that, or back to the misery of the treadmill and the same videos they’d watched a hundred times. Urgle sucked in their stomachs and slunk to a spot at the back of the class, hoping the gorgeous creature in the front row wouldn’t notice them until they’d lost at least some of their space flab.

Fifteen minutes into the class, Urgle tangled their left dominant arm with their right secondary leg and fell with a thud that shook the studio. The leaping and swirling dancers slowed to a stop, and everyone turned to look at Urgle.

Julia bounded over to help. “Are you okay, sir or madam as the case may be?”

That wasn’t a matter of case, Urgle grumbled to themself, but of gender, and they were neither. Human language was so limited. Whatever. Urgle prepared to accept Julia’s help, green with humiliation, when THEY stepped up to lend a pair of hands and a spare leg. They. Them. The gorgeous Andromedan.

“Hi, I’m Drvrk. Want me to help you get sorted? This stuff is hard at first.”

Urgle would have run away, but all their limbs were so mixed up they couldn’t move. Drvrk told Julia to keep the class going, they’d help the new student.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” they told Urgle. “Just watch what I do.” Urgle was more than willing to do that. “We can’t do what Julia does,” Drvrk went on. “She doesn’t have enough arms and legs.” Nice of Drvrk to make it about Julia’s lacks, not Urgle’s inability to manage the limbs they’d had since birth.

The point was to get fit.  Sternly reminding themself of that, Urgle untangle their limbs, watched Drvrk for a moment, and began to copy their movements. Drvrk would never go out with a clod like them, but at least they could learn the moves and get fit before spacing again. No doubt Drvrk would be off on the next ship out—they must have been in port quite a while to get that fit. More than fit. The best thing Urgle could do was follow suit.

Urgle almost fell over again when, at the end of the class, Drvrk said, “Want to get a drink? Healthy stuff, of course.” They looked Urgle up and down, obviously clocking them as third gender, which they must have noticed long since, and gave Urgle a wink that made that sweating spacer sweat a little more.

Urgle would follow Drvrk anywhere, even to a health food bar.

After that, Urgle came daily to the dance class, and Drvrk coached them through the steps until they ceased to stumble. The space flab melted away, and if Urgle wasn’t as sleek as Drvrk, no one could accuse them of being out of shape now.

About every third day they went out after class. Urgle assumed that Drvrk had someone else to hang out with, though they’d not seen any other third sexers. They were a long way from home, and there weren’t many Andromedans of any description about.

When Urgle looked in the mirror and saw a taut abdomen and evenly muscled arms and legs, they knew they had to leave soon, and worked up courage to ask, not the real question, but something close.

“What are you doing here, Drvrk?”

“Drinking a wheatgrass smoothy,” they answered, accurately but unhelpfully.

“No, I mean here. On the station. I’m going back out soon, but you…” Urgle let the sentence trail off.

“I’m looking for a place on an Andromedan ship.”

Urgle’s breath sped up. They opened their mouth.

“With a hot lover,” Drvrk added, and Urgle’s mouth closed. They drooped. But they didn’t give up.

“Will you settle for a ship and … me?”

 

The spaceport dimmed out of sight behind the ship, but Urgle and Drvrk never noticed. They were too busy remodeling the exercise room into a dance studio. Among other things.

 

 

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2026 

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