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
