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
