Christa Faust is a fetish model and bondage enthusiast living and writing in Los Angeles. Her fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Revelations (aka Millennium,) edited by Douglas E. Winter and Love in Vein edited by Poppy Z. Brite. Her debut novel, Control Freak, has recently been reissued by Babbage Press and she is currently working on a second. She has also written a four-part black and white bondage adventure serial for the Web entitled Dita in Distress, a sexy, campy homage to the old Republic Pictures cliff hangers.
"It's funny," reveals the author, "even though 'Bootleg' deals with blood fetish and the cosmetic accessories of vampirism, I always thought of it as more of a ghost story or maybe even a zombie story (if you could make dead love get up and walk again), rather than a traditional vampire story.
"While I do enjoy bloodplay as a sexual indulgence, as a writer I find very little blood left to suck from that old archetype. As with my other 'vampire' story, 'Cherry' in Love in Vein, in this story I tried to take the idea in a slightly different direction. I wanted to get away from the whole doomed immortal thing, the romantic wish-fulfilment fantasy of being pale and thin and pretty for ever and ever, and try to do something that was a little more human."
Mona cut off his right hand first. It was more important to him than his penis, the source of all his brilliance, his ART (she could always hear the capital letters in his slow, jaded voice) and she took great pleasure in removing it. Then the left hand, severed just below the twisted copper bracelet she gave him last Christmas. Tattooed arms were next, lower then upper. Their swirling patterns seemed much more beautiful without him attached. She cut off his booted feet, left then right and added them to the growing pile. She sliced off his legs in thin denim sections until she reached his narrow hips. Before she detached his pelvis from the rest of his torso, she cut out his treacherous penis. (You'll never stick it in another anorexic art-school slut behind my back again, bucko.) She sliced up his belly and his stray-dog ribcage until there was nothing left but his head.
His face was serene, unaware of his own dismemberment as he was unaware of everything that did not fulfil his immediate needs. His eyes were as blue as the day Mona fell for him, a hard, pure shade of turquoise that she would for ever associate with lies. She cut them out separately, left then right. She cut out his sweet, lying mouth and his angular, aristocratic nose, then tossed what remained of his head on to the pile.
"Bastard," she said softly to herself and dumped all his severed parts into the fire.
She watched him burn for a long minute, coiling flames as blue as his eyes as they devoured him. Then she set to work on the other photographs.
There weren't that many. Mostly just snapshots taken by friends. Mona and Daniel at various stuffy parties, she uncomfortable in a strappy black, thrift-store dress and he in his eternal art uniform: paint-flecked T-shirt and torn jeans and hand-rolled cigarette, too cool to dress up. Mona and Daniel in Jackson Square, posed against wrought iron and surrounded by the bright chaos of Daniel's paintings. Mona and Daniel in love, arms wound around each other, smiling and not knowing any better. She shuddered and added these to the fire.
Then the rest of Daniel by himself, photos she had taken when the angles of his face and the smooth muscles of his arms meant something to her. Daniel with streaks of cerulean and viridian across his chest and cheeks, a thick paintbrush clenched between his teeth. Daniel sleeping like a child with his fists curled up under his chin. She slashed at them with her scissors and tossed the fragments into the fire.
The letters were all gone except for one, his most recent:
8/11/01
Mona,
I'm so sorry things went the way they did. I know I was an asshole and I would do anything to make it up to you if you'd let me. I know you're hurt, but you can't just shut me out after all we've been through together. Give me a chance to explain. If I could see you, talk to you, I'm sure we could work it out. This last week has been hell without you. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I can't paint. You're all I think about. I hate sleeping in this lonely studio, waking up every morning and reaching for you, only to find there's no one there. Look, I know what I did was wrong, but don't you think I've been punished enough? I miss you so much. Things will be different from now on I swear. Please call me, Mona. I need to hear your voice.
I still love you.
Daniel
Mona shook her head and added the single sheet of expensive sketch paper to the fire. It was really a pathetic little fire, nothing but dark, glowing coals and pale tongues of reluctant flame in the centre of the wide brick fireplace. It perked up a little with this latest addition, flaring bright and then dying down again. There was not much nourishment to be had from the leftovers of Mona's dead relationship.
All that was left was a handful of postcards from his trip to Paris. She fed them one by one to the fire, glancing only briefly at their charming little messages full of I love you and I miss you and sprawling doodles of hearts and spirals. She later found out he was fucking at least three different women during that trip. Burning these last shreds of their relationship was particularly satisfying.
As the postcards curled and blackened, their sweet lies devoured by the hungry flames, Mona felt giddy and light, buoyed up by her new freedom. Of course there had been tears and anger and broken dishes, but that seemed like a thousand years ago. Now, she felt cleansed and streamlined, stripped down to fighting weight. There was nothing left in the Magazine Street apartment that wasn't hers alone. She wandered slowly through the long rooms, touching things with strange reverence. Her curmudgeonly old word-processor, her spaceship-console stereo, bought with the unwieldy lump of money that accompanied the sale of her first novel. A glass bowl of chalky grey bone fragments gleaned from badly maintained graves in the city's many cemeteries. Tacky, colourful beads from her first Mardi Gras. Her things, her history. The uneven but sturdy shelves she constructed out of cannibalized scraps of wood and glass. A pair of spidery chairs she rescued from the trash and painted silver. Models of classic monsters, Frankenstein's creation and his bride, the tortured Wolf Man and the tragic Mummy, the Phantom of the Opera and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, all built and painted when Mona couldn't bear to look at the flashing cursor for another second. They were a habit that had horrified Daniel. He called them the most trashy, paint-by-numbers kind of non-art. But they were still here and Daniel and his ART were gone and this made Mona smile. It was as if there had never been a Mona-and-Daniel. There was only Mona, now and for ever. A little wiser and a lot stronger, ready to get out there and kick the world's ass.
She stripped and showered, luxuriating under the cool spray for nearly an hour. She sang "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair" while she shaved the long, silky hair from her armpits. She only stopped shaving because Daniel thought it was sexy, so now she laughed as yet another fragment of the past went swirling down the drain.
Clean and fragrant, her skin still rosy from the shower, she sprawled across her new, post-Daniel sheets, on sale at Wool-worth's for nineteen dollars ninety-nine cents. They were dark, inky purple and smelled of innocence and fabric softener. Smiling to herself, she masturbated. She did not fantasize about anyone. Instead she dreamed of silk and water and the smell of her own skin. With each new orgasm, she felt empowered, propelled into the future.
8/17/01
Hey Mona,
You foxy bitch you. How the hell are ya? How's life in sultry New Orleans? You know I read your new book. It rules of course. Things are pretty cool here, workin hard and getting some decent sessions, but you know it's a boy's life and most guys don't trust a chick drummer (even a brilliant rhythm-goddess like myself). But I'm livin well and I got a loft in Willy-B where no one complains if I play all night. Life is good.
So anyway, my real reason for writing (besides undisguised lust for your body) is that Lulu and me are cutting a demo with this mad bass player named Nocturna and we wanna do "Blush". It was your best song and we'd really love it if you would come and sing. Come back to NYC and be Diva Demona again, just for a day, for old times sake. We'll even send you a ticket. Pretty please with sugar on top! We need to hang out and catch up. Maybe roll around with no clothes on. It's been too long, lady. I miss you.
Big love and a sloppy tongue-kiss,
Minerva
Sitting in an outdoor cafe in the Quarter with her bicycle leaning against the vine-covered brick beside her, Mona took a hot swallow of black coffee and frowned at the letter in her hand. It had been nearly ten years since she had kissed Minerva goodbye at JFK. They were never in love, only best friends and occasional, playful lovers. The night Mona fled the nightmare break-up of her live-in relationship with Victorine, Minerva had let her crash, had stayed up till dawn listening to scratchy old Kiss albums and the long and sordid tale of woe. Three days later, Minerva drove her to the airport with a single suitcase and a five hundred dollar loan. She picked New Orleans at random because it sounded exotic and romantic and she left her old life behind with visions of red-hot blues and chicory coffee and black-eyed Creole boys. She left everything, but most of all, she left Diva Demona.
Diva Demona, her long-lost alter ego. An apparition of ragged lace and torn velvet. Of leather and silver and dead-white flesh, of kabuki make-up and fang teeth and long black nails. She had wild black-briar hair streaked with lurid purple and a stage presence that was all blood and power, lust wrapped in razor-wire. Sometimes she wore latex, sleek and glossy like a futuristic wet dream, insectoid sexy and somehow more than human. Sometimes she wore silk, tattered gowns and vicious corsets, like a ghost from a lost age. Men paid to watch her pose and sing, paid to feel the bite of her lash and the humiliating sting of her cruel tongue. She was a goddess and she knew it, young and arrogant and doomed. She was a burning construct with the half-life of plutonium, too volatile to live past twenty-one. So when Mona turned twenty-two, she left Diva Demona behind. The boundaries of that version of herself had become restrictive and she found she could not maintain that level of angst and theatrical rebellion without losing herself in the role. Her life had been reduced to shtick and she needed something new, something totally unexpected, to make her feel alive again. So the idea of resurrecting that old persona was strange and even a little unpleasant, like lying down in your old crib. But even though Mona had been devoting all her time to writing over the past ten years, she hadn't lost her voice, and there was no reason why she should not go back home to see some old friends and sing some old songs. Diva Demona was dead and buried, but moderately successful writer Mona Merino was alive and well and looking for adventure. A vacation might do her good, wash the last traces of Daniel out of her system. So would a fling with a strong, beautiful woman like Minerva, simple and sweet with no strings attached. She remembered Minerva's long, lanky body and the way her bleached and dreadlocked hair fell over her kohl-smudged eyes. She remembered long nights of conversation, of cheap red wine and Mr Bubble baths, rock candy and stolen cigarettes. She wondered if her friend had changed as much as she had, if she still wore that smoky sandalwood perfume. Draining the rest of her coffee, Mona decided that she would go.
6/13/90
Victorine, my most exquisite slave,
I am at the dungeon, awaiting yet another repressed yuppie with a diaper fetish. Why must I endure these clowns with their desperate little pricks and their pedestrian masochism? Well, we all have to pay the bills and I'd rather be a mistress/mommy to my lame clients than slave/secretary to some misogynistic creep in the so called "real world".
But you, my love…
Your delicious submission is the only thing that keeps me going on days like this. I miss you terribly, the pale, luscious curve of your upthrust ass beneath my lash, the trust in your bright eyes as I slide my last finger up inside you and curl my hand into a fist. I count the long hours until I can taste you again, the hot tang of your blood on my tongue.
Yours in Eternal Darkness,
Mistress Diva Demona
Victorine pressed the yellowed letter to her lips, fingers tracing the pale scars that criss-crossed her bare chest. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel the bite of her mistress's straight razor, the heat of that hungry mouth on her burning breasts. If she opened her eyes, she could see her mistress replicated a thousand times all around her. The stark, black and white photos that were her living and her art crowded the walls with images of Diva Demona. Diva Demona on stage, sweat like diamonds in her glossy hair, black lips peeled back from acrylic fang teeth. Diva Demona poised in leather, all spike heels and attitude. Diva Demona naked and haughty, her dark bush gleaming between pale thighs. Victorine still worked shooting hopeful bands in ill-lit clubs, but her best work was of her mistress.
Beside her on the bed that she had shared with a goddess so many years ago (yesterday) was a fetishistic arrangement of love letters and memorabilia. Keys to hotel rooms and scraps of black lace. Bar napkins kissed with black lips and fragile bundles of dried roses. Rings of silver and onyx and rosaries with filigree beads. Nipple clamps and razor blades. In the dim illumination, the careful sprawl might be mistaken for a long, lanky figure reclining with one knee cocked like a dancer. On the pillow, where the figure's head would lie, Victorine had set a ragged oval of black velvet soaked in her mistress's perfume, a heady brew of cloves and roses called Night's Breath. She refreshed it every day. Its haunting aroma was the thread that bound the illusion, that gave it form. When Victorine was caught in its olfactory web, the letters and dreams became flesh and her goddess was real, the sting of her kiss and the delicious agony of her touch as true as the first time. It was as if there had never been a betrayal, and she had never been alone.
Victorine took in a deep, greedy breath, letting the fragrance transport her. The steel rings her mistress had driven through the tender flesh of Victorine's pale nipples felt cold, electric almost. Diva Demona would come again tonight. Victorine could feel it.
Mona gripped the grungy sink in the bathroom of a coffee shop in the East Village, panic sweat clammy in her armpits and on the back of her neck. She stared at her wide-eyed reflection in the cracked mirror. Until now, she had always thought the thick twists of early silver that had sprung up in her dark hair were striking and classy, a genetic tip of the hat to her Italian heritage. Now she wondered in a desperate frenzy if she shouldn't have had some kind of rinse. Minerva would think she was an old fart. She felt like an old fart in her plain black jeans and motorcycle boots. Yet trying to squeeze her new self into the old crushed velvet and leather would have been a joke, an exercise in infantilism.
"You look like a successful, independent thirty-one-year-old woman," she told her reflection. "You know who you are."
She fiddled with her belt buckle and slicked her mouth with an unnecessary extra coat of dark lipstick. With a deep breath, she grabbed her suitcase and yanked the door open.
Minerva had arrived while she was having her little moment in the john. Her heart froze and then revved like a Harley. She considered retreating to the bathroom but Minerva spotted her and there was nothing to do but wave and smile sheepishly.
Minerva rushed over and swept Mona up in a warm sandal-wood embrace. The blonde dreadlocks were gone, shaved close to the scalp, and Minerva's tattoos seemed to have multiplied, colonizing her shoulders and the back of her neck. There were tiny lines around her dark eyes and a ring through her lower lip, but the rich scent of her skin and the mischievous curl in the corner of her wide mouth were just the way Mona remembered.
"You dirty bitch," Minerva cried, holding Mona's face between callused hands. "You look absolutely edible." She coiled a silver lock of Mona's hair around her finger. "I love the Elsa Lanchester thing. It makes you look like a real writer."
Mona pulled away, laughing. "You trying to say I look old?"
Minerva pulled her close. "I'm trying to say I missed you, you silly slit!"
Tears caressed the back of Mona's throat as she hugged Minerva back.
"I missed you, too," she said.
They held each other for a good minute, content to lean into the embrace and let silent memories wash over them. Then, feeling a little wobbly, Mona let Minerva guide her to a table and order her a double espresso.
As the tide of catch-up chat flowed between them, the story of Daniel, the story of Minerva's latest butch beloved and her subsequent police-escorted departure, Mona became aware of something waiting to be said. Something important and delicate that Minerva wasn't sure if she should keep her mouth shut about. She knew her friend well in spite of ten years gone and sure enough, there came a strange break in the conversation. Mona sipped her second espresso, caffeine glittering in her veins.
"Y'know," Minerva said finally. "Not like it's my business, but I saw something really strange the other day and I thought you might like to know about it."
"Yeah, what's that?" Mona asked over the rim of her tiny cup.
"Well…" Minerva toyed with her napkin, folding it into chaotic origami. "Remember our new bass player, the one I told you about. Well, she lives in the building on East 9th where you used to live. In fact, she lives in the apartment directly underneath the one you lived in. With Victorine."
The espresso in Mona's stomach gurgled, burning up the remains of her airline lunch. Just the name Victorine was enough to make her feel like eating a bottle of Rolaids.
"So anyway," Minerva continued, obviously uncomfortable, but unable to stop now. "I'm over there hanging with Nocturna and fucking with this new song when power in her place just dies. We could see lights on in other buildings outside so we figure a fuse must've blown or something. There's no light in the hallway either, so we grab a flashlight and start knocking on doors, to see if any neighbours have power. There's no one home on her floor, so we go upstairs. In the upstairs hallway, one light is on and one is off. Before I know what's happening, she's knocking on the door to your old apartment."
Minerva finished her coffee, just to have something to do.
"All the old stickers you put on the door, Siouxie and Sisters of Mercy and those weird little drawings, they were all still there. We could hear music inside so we knew there was power. Someone had to be home, but it took 'em a really long time to answer."
She paused again and Mona closed her eyes, a thin coil of nausea twisting in her stomach. She didn't want to hear it, but somehow she needed to.
"It was Victorine. She was all sweaty and she looked really nervous. She hasn't changed at all, y'know. She still wears that Cleopatra make-up and black lipstick and teases her shoe-polish hair up into this big old rat's nest, but she looks… I don't know. Dirty. Like she never washes all that white make-up off, just adds more. And the apartment, I mean, what I could see of it, was like a museum, a shrine to Diva Demona."
Mona turned her face away.
"Why are you telling me this?" She could feel the thick knot of a headache tightening in her skull. "I can't help it if some rejected psycho wants to keep a roadside Elvis Museum version of my past in her bedroom. That part of me is dead and buried. Why should I care what Victorine does with her wretched excuse for a life?"
"It's not that," Minerva said softly.
"Well what then?" Mona was beginning to feel sorry she came.
"When Victorine answered the door, she…" Minerva bit her lip. "She had some else with her."
"Great, the little leech found a new host."
"No," Minerva said. "It was you."
Mona frowned.
"What?"
"Well, not you now." Minerva's eyes were dark, remembering. "It was Diva Demona."
The nausea that had been building in Mona's guts flexed like a body builder and she clenched her teeth, refusing to be sick. This was crazy. Even the thought of someone imitating her, imitating who she used to be, made her feel deeply violated, as if someone had dug up the corpse of a favourite child.
"You mean that crazy bitch has convinced someone to play the role of Diva Demona for her so she can pretend I never left?"
"It must be, although this was no bullshit dress-up. I mean, we've known each other since high school and I'm here to tell you, this chick even smelled like you. Or at least like you used to smell. If I hadn'ta known better…"
Mona's nausea began to curdle into slow anger in the acidic cocoon of her belly.
"I believe it," she said. "I really do."
She paused, chewing her lip. She remembered the first time she saw Victorine. Back then she was plain old Vicky, just a mousy girl with a camera at one of the shows, looking like it took all her courage to walk in the door. She was like a blank slate, an empty vessel looking for an identity. She met Diva Demona and she thought she found it.
In the beginning, it was really flattering, the way she paid such careful attention to the things Mona liked and the things she hated. She was so subtle, the way she changed herself to fit Mona's ideals.
Mona shook her head.
"She didn't know who she was before she met me," she said, half angry, half sick. "She worked so hard to become everything I thought I wanted, the perfect slave, wanting nothing but to make me happy. She cooked and cleaned and let me torture her in every way I could imagine. She was a pretty little vampire housewife and I was queen of her world. As long as I never changed."
Minerva nodded sympathetically.
"Christ, you don't have to tell me," she said. "She was like your own version of Frankenstein's monster. You created her out of nothing, took a bland, blonde suburban chick and turned her into a Gothic vampire fan-girl from hell, and when you got bored with the game, it was too late for her because the game was all she had. It's like she used up all her energy trying to be everything you ever wanted and there's nothing left for anyone else."
Mona laid her head in her hands, guilt and anger warring inside her.
"It's not my fault," she said, hating the weak sound of her voice.
"Hey, of course not."
Minerva slid her chair around the little table and put her arm around her friend.
"Listen, I really didn't want to upset you with all this bullshit. I just thought you might want to know that someone is out there imitating you, that's all. Hey, look on the bright side. Maybe you can sue her for copyright infringement."
Mona smiled against Minerva's shoulder.
"Yeah, or go drive a stake through her heart!" Mona straightened up, fingers combing nervously through her silver-streaked hair. "Man, I thought I killed Diva Demona but that psycho bitch went and dug her up. Now my dead past is out there walking around and I feel like I oughta go shoot it in the head or something."
"Don't sweat it, kiddo. I'm sorry I brought it up." Minerva put her hand on her heart like a boy scout. "I swear it'll never happen again."
She leaned in and squeezed Mona's thigh.
"So, honey," she said, wiggling her eyebrows in preposterous imitation of some smooth-talking pick-up artist. "You wanna go back to my place and fool around?"
Mona laughed.
"Why, I thought you'd never ask!" she said.
Minerva had a session that night and so Mona struck out on her own, needing to move, to walk, to drink down the essence of the city, her long-lost lover. Some primal gravity drew her back to her old stomping grounds and she found herself walking the avenues of her misspent youth with a strange and clinging sense of unreality. It seemed the neighbourhood had changed as much as she had. So many of the old familiar bars and clubs that had nurtured Diva Demona were gone, scabbed over with rusted metal shutters or mysteriously replaced by trendy cafes full of immaculate counter-culture acolytes. The streets all seemed fake, like a low-budget movie set of themselves.
She stood on the corner of First Avenue and Ninth Street, letting the warm ache of nostalgia wash over her. There was the Korean fruit stand where she always bought oranges and cookies and cool white roses. There was the news-stand where the old Indian man used to scowl at her choice of fetish-oriented periodicals.
In a sudden rush, she was assailed by ghosts, flickering memories of all those old endless nights sparkling with dreamy, drunken glitter and arrogant passion as she stalked these streets like a high-heeled predator, marking territory, immortal in that moment like only the young and stupid can ever really be. She remembered tumbling like a kitten through the most extreme fantasies with the utter conviction that there would never be a tomorrow.
She took a deep breath. The rich smell of hot salted dough and spiced tomatoes wafting from the steamy interior of the corner pizzeria competed with the dark thundercloud of patchouli and jasmine surrounding a vendor of essential oils and the toxic-sweet exhalations of passing buses. So many memories.
Mona shook her head. It was easy to be seduced by the past, the good times. Easy to forget the way that lifestyle had nearly swallowed her with its unrelenting embrace and narcotic bite. The armour-plated image of the Vampire Goddess, the mistress of men's fear and desire, the Queen of Pain, that exotic persona that she had worked so hard to craft had become a prison, a mask fused to the soul, with no escape, no way out. With Victorine, she had to be on stage 24-7, always performing until she began to forget who she really was. Victorine could never accept her longing for simplicity, for humanity. Everything had to be like those damn photos she always took. Gorgeous and exotic and frozen in time, immune to the entropy and inanity of everyday life.
It was Mona who had crated Diva Demona, but it was Victorine who would not let her die.
Mona bit down on the soft flesh inside her cheek. No matter what Victorine decided to do with her irretrievable leftovers, Mona had already escaped, years ago. That crazy life was for ever past tense and she had grown up into a strong and unapologetic woman. A passionate writer who had mulched under the nightmares and ecstasies of the past to create fertile ground for unflinching fictions. She knew who she was.
She had missed three lights, lost in reverie. She wanted to laugh at herself, but her old apartment was less than a block away. She hustled across the street, determined to pass by that pit of hook-tipped memories without looking back. Two buildings away and then one. Her breath caught in her chest, and she cursed herself for a superstitious baby. She counted her footfalls as she walked along the coiled iron railing that fenced in the building's cluster of sad, dented garbage cans, passing the cement steps to the basement and the hot smell of fabric softener from the laundry room. Then the battered metal door with the number "3" still missing, visible only as a row of holes and an outline of older, lighter paint. She could see the ranks of mailboxes through the scratched safety glass. Her old mailbox still had the word "box" written on it by Victorine as part of some obscure joke. She stepped away from the door and leaned her back against someone's car, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. Her gaze crawled up the building's brick skin towards the window of that forgotten world, that place where she had lived a thousand lifetimes ago. The black lace and velvet curtains were faded and dusty. Mona didn't know what she was expecting to see: maybe her own younger self peering down at her. Instead, she saw nothing but the still and ratty backside of those old home-made curtains that had seemed so deliciously gloomy and perfect back then when Victorine had stitched them together from balding velvet and tattered scarves out of the dollar barrel at Dizzy Dot's used clothing store.
Mona stepped away from the car and passed her hand over her eyes. When she looked back up a skinny young Asian girl on rollerblades was opening the door with a keychain sporting more toys and trinkets than keys. She looked back over her shoulder, her glitter-glossed lips twisted into a sardonic smirk.
"You coming in or what?" she said.
Mona wanted to say no, but instead she put her palm against the open door. The metal was cool and gritty, scarred with fine scratches and scribbled names nearly worn away to nothing. The girl wheeled away down the hall without another word. Mona swallowed and went inside.
1/21/91
My Beloved Slut,
One year we have been together. It was one year ago that I first held the delicate stem of your vulnerable throat between my fingers. First felt the dance of blood beneath your white skin. First tasted the luscious nectar of your submission. You are still as precious to me as you were on that first blood-kissed night. I will always love you, my exquisite slave, dark companion of my soul.
Yours in Eternal Darkness,
Mistress Diva Demona
Victorine's lips tasted of tears and clove-sugar. She licked them repeatedly as she read the letter a third time before laying it back in place on the tattered bedspread. She stretched for the elderly tape player on her bedside table and ejected the Cure, tossing the cassette into the clutter. From the careful formation on the bed beside her, she selected a black and silver tape and slid it reverently into the machine. It was a much played copy of the only demo Diva Demona ever cut. Its title, written in silver marker, in her mistress's own dramatic hand, was "Licking Shadows".
The music unfurled in the aromatic dimness, swirling like incense around Victorine's naked body. Its gorgeous, hypnotic rhythms painted the inside of her closed eyelids with images of Diva Demona. When her mistress's voice slithered from the speakers, Victorine's flesh crawled with anticipation. Each visitation was stronger and longer-lasting than the one before it, and Victorine was sure that this time Diva Demona would come to stay.
She smelled her first. The exotic scent of Night's Breath, mingled with the subtle tang of passionate sweat and the secret musk of her thick, unshorn bush. She was afraid to open her eyes too soon, afraid that she might spoil it. Every tiny hair, every millimetre of skin was excruciatingly sensitive and she could feel the heat of her mistress's presence just seconds before she felt the touch.
Victorine gasped, tiny, secret muscles clenching deep inside her, and her eyes flew open.
Diva Demona stood over her, eyes burning and hungry black lips turned up in a sardonic smile. She was clad in torn black lace and a heavy leather corset, leather gloves and tall boots that laced all the way up her long white thighs. Her edges were hardly blurred at all, though her features still held a sort of soft-focus smoothness that bled out into the air around her.
"My most exquisite slave," she said. Her voice sounded slightly muddy, like a recording copied too many times.
Victorine's heart melted.
She slid to the floor and pressed her lips against the soft leather of her mistress's boots. She could almost taste the rich but vaguely unpleasant flavour of boot polish.
"My life for you, mistress," she whispered. "Anything for you."
Black-nailed fingers twined in the sticky snarls of Victorine's hair, pulling her up to the tips of her toes, yanking her head back to expose the scarred flesh of her throat. Her scalp burned and the knots of scar beneath her chin ached in curious anticipation, like track marks longing for the needle. She wanted to open her eyes, to drink in the living image of her beautiful mistress, but she was paralyzed with desperate desire. It didn't matter. Every angle, every curve of Diva Demona's fierce body and proud face was burned into her memory. She could see the lush black lips part, revealing shining canines like twin scalpels, seconds before she felt the caress of cold leather and the vicious, crushing pain of her mistress's bite.
Then, like a stiletto to the heart of her fantasy, the harsh voice of the doorbell.
Fighting for control outside the door of her old apartment, the doorway to the past, to the tomb of Diva Demona, the new Mona stood, hands opening and clenching without purpose. What the fuck did she think she was doing anyway? She had no desire to see Victorine or her new Diva knock-off. She told herself a thousand times to get out, to let dead dogs lie, but yet here she was. A film of chilly sweat coated her body. Her heart pirouetted madly. She had to piss. She could hear her own muffled voice, singing. She rang the bell again, following it up this time with her fist against the painted metal.
The door opened and in the thin slice of darkness, Victorine's narrow white face, first suspicious, then blank with shock.
The past ten years had been cruel to her former slave. Her hair and make-up was identical, but the face beneath was worn and plague thin. Her body beneath the tattered black kimono was hardly more than a skeleton, sharp bones straining against grey, unhealthy skin. She even smelled wrong. Under the heavy mask of her perfume lurked the thin, acrid stench of a skewed metabolism, of madness. Her unclean throat was smeared with blood.
"Victorine," Mona forced herself to say. "We need to talk."
Then, from over Victorine's knife-blade shoulder, a voice, her own. So young and arrogant, pretentious, real as flesh.
"Who dares to interrupt our pleasure?"
Mona would not allow the sickness in her belly to rise up and drown her. Anger was her only strength as she pushed the grimy door open all the way.
The apartment was unchanged, a meticulous shrine, just the way she remembered it.
And standing in the middle of the clutter with leather fists on her hips and black eyes blazing, was Diva Demona.
The air between them seemed to gel to a hideous thickness, skewing off into monstrously distorted perspective. Her own burning, kohl-smudged eyes stared back at her from the end of a howling tunnel. Greedy animal paws clutched at her intestines, pulling and twisting. She staggered to her knees in a pile of dirty black lace.
The stench of stale sweat seemed like the only normal thing in this mad new world, and Mona's floundering brain clung to this simple truth like a life preserver as the tips of her fingers began to split and bleed, spontaneous stigmata opening like crimson orchids, drops of blood slithering through the strange air towards a vast and gaping mouth (her mouth), pink tongue tasting, shiny black lips peeled back over fang teeth and there was blood in her mouth, just like it used to be, sweet and sickening, real as memories. She felt so weak, each beat of her heart like lifting a tremendous weight while Diva Demona stood above her, suddenly pure of outline like a living photograph superimposed on to the blue screen of the real world.
Mona's bloody hands seemed a thousand miles away, cold as moon rocks. Her flesh felt insubstantial, fading slowly, dissipating like some theoretical gaseous element. She felt so tired, but at her core was a white-hot rage slowly burning through the layers of narcotic lethargy. That thing walking around in Mona's cast-off skin was not her. It was nothing but a figment of Victorine's twisted imagination, clothed in fragments of dead love. Mona was real, flesh and blood, and she was furious.
"No," she said, forcing her numb lips to move. Heat pulsed though her body, bringing distant limbs back into focus. "You can't have this. I own who I am."
Mona closed her cold fingers into a fist and punched up through the apparition's pale chest.
The fine skin parted like rotted silk and a dull pain gripped Mona's struggling heart, but she would not flinch. Beneath the flesh of this lanky doppelganger lay not the heat of living organs, but a strange chaos of texture that came loose beneath her fingers. There was a screeching wail that twisted up through the octaves until it lost all resemblance to Mona's voice and when she pulled her hand free, she held a fistful of crumpled letters.
The apparition before her clutched at the gaping hole in its chest, dried rose petals falling from between its fingers. The thing's face began to lose detail, its imitation of Mona's dark eyes melting into twin holes, lipsticked mouth splitting into a reptilian slash.
Grabbing a wrought-iron candelabra from a low table (Mona remembered buying it in a second-hand shop, a gift for Victorine's nineteenth birthday), she thrust the five burning candles into the monster's softening face.
A scream that was like two voices woven together and as one faded, the other swelled until Mona thought her eardrums would burst. She squeezed her eyes shut, vertigo filling the cavity of her skull and coursing through her belly. She felt as if she were suffocating, choking on the stench of burning. When she was able to open her eyes, she saw dull orange flames swathed in black smoke. The sagging old bed was burning, careful piles of letters swallowed by the greedy flames and Victorine was screaming, beating at the fire with her bare hands. Her ratted hair caught in a burst of carnival colour and her screams became more frantic as she spun round and round like a flaming angel. In that moment, she was beautiful again and Mona remembered what it had been like to love her.
It must have been Mona who was screaming then when she sprang up and ripped the velvet curtains from the window. Throwing the heavy cloth over Victorine, she tackled the shrieking angel, knocking her to the floor.
The flames had begun a slow creep across the walls, tasting the photos and finding them good. All around them, the remnants of Diva Demona were being devoured one by one.
Victorine fought fiercely as Mona struggled to drag her out into the hallway, all the while ignoring the soft, reasonable voice in her head that whispered, Leave her. Let her die if she wants it. Let her die and Diva Demona will die with her.
It was all so preposterously B-movie-esque, monster and mad creator die together in the flaming ruin of the collapsing laboratory while the credits roll serenely over the destruction. But Mona knew that it could never be that simple. Diva Demona was a part of her and always would be. Victorine's patchwork version was gone, her festering obsession cauterized, cleansed and scraped clean. Letting her die now would be selfish and unnecessary, like shooting ex-lovers to avoid the uncomfortable experience of running into them at parties. Throat rough with ash and determination, Mona half carried, half dragged the girl she used to love out of the past and into the uncertain future.
There were already fire trucks outside the building when she staggered out into the street. Someone official took the struggling burden of Victorine from her arms and although she was still mostly covered by the singed velvet, Mona could see the skin that showed was shiny and lobster red, split bloodlessly in some places and charred black in others. Mona sat down on the kerb, light-headed and dizzy with blood pulsing and churning in her throat. She hoped that she had done the right thing.
"One more time, Mona," the low voice of the producer suggested in the intimate space inside her headphones. She turned slightly and saw Minerva giving her the thumbs up from the board. Then the music filled her head and she listened intently, waiting for her cue.
This new version of her old song was a little slower, more muscular. Nocturna and the new guitar player had both brought their own strange twists to the familiar notes, giving it a life of its own.
Mona took a deep breath and came in soft over the driving bass, her heart beating hard in her chest.
As she sang, she found herself playing around the sounds more than she ever had before, weaving in and out of the spaces between the notes.
"Do you remember how it used to be," she sang. "When you and I were one. Come home to me, my long-lost sister, and embrace the damage done."
And somewhere between her memory and her mouth, the old words gained a kind of rich melancholy that seemed to transform the simple lyrics into a love song to a lost era. It felt so good, so cleansing. When she was through, there was a sheen of tears in her eyes.
Minerva burst into the booth and pressed a wet kiss to Mona's forehead.
"That was fucking inspired!" she said, yanking one ear of the headphones away from Mona's head and then letting it snap back.
"Ow, hey!" She pulled the headphones off and smiled.
"Come on." Minerva took her chilly hand. "Don'tcha wanna hear how fabulous you are?"
Sitting in a folding chair behind the science-fiction glitter of the mixing board, Mona listened to herself. In her own ears, her voice sounded almost alien, like a living thing. There was an edge beneath the words, a rough tenderness that she had never heard before.
"There's a whole lot of living in that voice," the producer said, pushing brittle hair back from his eyes. "The old version was too pure, y'know. I don't go for that ethereal shit. You want to hear ethereal go to a fucking church. But this new version, it's meatier, more honest. I like it."
Minerva leaned in and handed Mona a pair of cassettes. One was new and unlabelled and the other was black and silver, labelled with her own handwriting.
"Why choose, when you can have both?" she said.
Mona turned the old demo over in her hands, fingers tracing the little silver roses she had drawn years ago.
"Where the hell did you dig this up?" she asked.
Minerva grinned. "You can't dig up what isn't buried, honey."
Mona slipped the tapes into her pocket, thinking of the past, of letters and lost love and the indelible images they leave behind, burned into the skin of history.
"I'll remember that," she said.