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.'
