The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women

by Stephen Jones

  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 makeup 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 have 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 sandalwood 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 Ninth 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 neighbors 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 makeup 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 makeup 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 favorite 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 sessio
n 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 neighborhood 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 cafés 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 newsstand 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 armor-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 twenty-four-seven, 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.