by J. M. Frey
Liquid shivers at the end of the needle. It’s clear, vaguely blackish in the way that the curve of the drop reflects in the low light of the dimmed pot lights, and enticing. I have no idea what it is, but I do know that it’s deadly.
Terry wouldn’t be offering it if it wasn’t.
“No,” I say. “I’ve… I’ve changed my mind.” I move to get up off the edge of the tub, but Terry’s hand is on my shoulder. She doesn’t push, she just presses her nails lightly against my bare skin. A thrill rushes up my spine, chiming inside my brain, filling my ears with the addictive hum of songs that have yet to be written down.
Terry laughs. It’s like a hundred strings being plucked together. Sometimes it’s heavenly when she laughs, orgasmic joy in the pizzicato ripple of a sound wave, perfect, delicate harmony. Today it sounds like a toddler mashing a piano keyboard.
“You can’t change your mind,” she says.
“But I have. I have!”
She sighs, put-upon and patronizing and even that makes my fingers itch for a pencil and some staff paper. “Okay, fine. You can change your mind. But that won’t change your fate. You signed the contract. We have a deal.”
She waves the syringe at me, and the droplet splashes onto the pristine tile. The movement of her arm is a glissando against the air. Her toes tap beside the poisonous splatter, a barefoot drumming in perfect four-four. I spare a thought for the poor hotel maid who is going to find me. I suppose that thought should be one of charitable pity. Mostly, it’s fury that some poor hotel maid is going to find me at all, and I can’t stop it.
“I kept my end of it,” Terry says. “Your turn.”
“But I don’t want to. Can’t I just… can’t you just take it back?”
“You think you’re the first one to try to bargain on the precipice?” Terry snarls, anger flooding her classic features briefly before melting away, leaving her face statuary blank. “You think Kurt didn’t whine? You think Dickie, and Leslie, and Alexandre didn’t suddenly decide that they’d rather be has-beens?” She purses her pouting lower lip, tapping the syringe thoughtfully against her flesh, a small white indent against shiny strawberry-flavoured gloss. I want to kiss her so bad. I want to everything her so bad, so bad it hurts in ways that no one else can ever understand. Well, no one who hasn’t had a contract with Terry would understand. No one who hasn’t had her skin burn their palms. “Jimi, though. Jimi went with his pride intact, head high. Good man, that Jimi. Kept his promises.”
“I was a kid!” I try. “What was ten years of fame to a teenager? I didn’t realize that I’d want the rest of it, too.”
“Greedy,” Terry admonishes. She leans down to lick the side of my ear. Whole albums of melodies pour out of her sigh. “You’ve lived more in a decade than most people do in a lifetime, and you want more? More cars, more vacations, more booze, more concerts, more groupies to fuck? More designer denim and designer drugs?”
“But there’d be more for you too. wouldn’t there? A hundred more—”
“Ringtones and compilation records and parody songs? No. I’ve sucked all the art out of you, my darling. You’ve got nothing left to give.”
“But I do!” I should be ashamed that I’m crying. Thick, wet sobs, mucousy, desperate and disgusting, no accord between my choking coughs and the clench of my fists in the fabric of her trousers. But I’ve never had shame in front of Terry. She stripped it all away, all the confusion, all the self-loathing, all the awkwardness. She made me swagger. I gave her everything in return. All of it. Anything she asked for. Everything she asked for.
Except this.
“You don’t have any more. You’re a husk.”
“I can hear it. When you touch me.”
“Those aren’t for you.”
“You goddamned tease.” I try to push her away, to shove past her, but Terry isn’t the kind of person that you can just shove away. She is the earworm that nibbles at your brain until you go mad with it, mad for her. Mad for her breath against your neck, her legs around your waist, her hair, the pluck of her fingertips as she plays your spine. “Why show it to me if I can’t have it?”
“You can have this.” She holds up the needle.
“No!”
She sighs again, adagissimo, petulant. “Really, my darling, this tantrum is getting ugly. You made the deal. It’s even signed in blood, you theatrical little thing, you. I’ve used you up.”
“So just go away and leave me alone.”
Terry laughs like a chorus of silver bells, a rolling roulade against the empty glass and cold ceramic that embraces us. “Oh, no. If you live, then everything else you’ve done up until now becomes meaningless. You do understand that, don’t you? That’s been the whole point of our little living arrangement. For your work to feed me it has to be respected, treasured, rare. There can’t be any more. No slow slide into ignominy. No gigs at has-been clubs for lusting cougars. No embarrassing reunion tours. It all has to be gone. Completely. And in an instant. And for that to happen, you have to be dead.”
I’ve been arrested for assault before, but I’ve never hit Terry. That’s why it surprises her when I ball up my fist and crack her across the jaw. Con Bravura. Even the most loyal of dogs fight for their lives when they’re backed into a corner. Shock gives me the opening I need to dart past her. I am out of the bathroom and slamming down the hotel corridor. I expect to hear an enraged scream, or a crescendo of laughter echoing after me.
All I hear is some stupid gaggle of tourists gasping. “That’s—! Omigod, I can’t believe it, that’s really—! Did you see!?” their voices screech, allegretto vivace. They raise their camera phones, sway forward, catch themselves, suspended in their self-surprise for a long heartbeat, then press back against the wall. They are caught in that beautiful magnetic metronome that makes them shy away from celebrity and yet grasp for it at the same time. The three-four waltz of attraction.
I used to love that dance. The seduction, the slow smile, the gesture— plucking one of them out of the safety of their numbers for a night, making that one special among his or her peers, just by laying my hand on theirs. Transferred divinity.
I’ll never do that dance again.
The slam of the fire door against the concrete wall of the staircase rattles in my ears. Blood rushes to underscore the sound of my feet as I run down the stairs, a harsh counterpoint in the arching suck of air whooshing in and out of my lungs. Music in everything I do, even as I flee.
I swerve when I hit the lobby, take the back way out, past the paparazzi parked by the valet stand. I always dive straight towards the cameras, that’s my habit, living life con force. Breaking habits might save my life. If Terry can’t anticipate what I’ll do next, maybe I can…
Night air slaps my cheeks. Terry is standing by the side of the service road. Waiting. Smiling. Arms open, hands empty. No syringe. My heart splutters into a caesura, silent indefinitely, until it ratchets back up, pattering in cut time.
As if I could ever outrun her. Silly me.
I slow to a jog, then stop beside her. “Terry,” I plead. “Please.”
“If you didn’t intend to keep your end of it, you should have never signed the contract.”
“I was a kid. It was my first gig. You fucked me in the coatroom. How could I say no?”
“Human weakness is not my sphere of influence,” Terry says with a shrug. Unfeeling bitch. “It’s time, my darling.” She takes my hand, and I can’t fight the automatic muscle memory that makes me curl my fingers around hers.
“Please.”
“It’s less tragic, but this will do,” Terry says. She sounds regretful. “I did so want something a bit nobler for you. You could have gone out like Jimi.”
She pulls me forward, right to the edge of the sidewalk. Around us, the streetlamps spark and crack, plunging this section of the roadway into dangerous darkness. I am wearing black. I never wear anything else. Appearances are everything in this business. And no one but me can see Terry.
She cranes her head to the left. The lights of a lone delivery van bobble along the road.
“No!” I dig my heels into the edge of the kerb, struggling against the coda. “They O.D.ed! All of them! All the rest! That’s how it’s supposed to go! Not like this, Terry. Please!”
“Don’t be silly,” Terry breathes, her breasts hot against my arm. “Don’t you use Wikipedia? If it isn’t drugs or booze, it’s usually an auto accident.” And then she shoves.
The pain is so fleeting that I don’t bother to catalogue it. The crunch is loud. I don’t know if it’s coming from inside my own body or if it’s the sound of a windshield fracturing. Hitting the tarmac drives the air out of my lungs. It takes an inordinate amount of time to drag more back in.
Legato, dolce, a quiet slow hiss in the rest between movements.
The horn blares, the driver shouts. It’s some poor stupid roadie who is probably going to sue my estate for millions for the emotional trauma. That’s fine. I don’t need my millions any more. I don’t need anything.
Except, maybe… Yes. I think I am allowed to want that. One last time. It’s the least she can do.
“Terry.” I turn the ruin of my wrist, pulp of a hand palm up, fingers cupped, like she taught me. I reach towards her as a supplicant. Praying.
Terry smiles softly, colorless eyes sparkling. She crouches. She takes my hand.
Nothing. Silenzio.
The music is gone.
“No.” I think I say it. Something burbles in my chest, wet and red. It might come out sounding like the word. I bet Terry understands, anyway, so I try again. “Not fair!”
Something is wrong. It’s not working! For the first time in ten years, the brush of her otherworldly skin against mine makes no sound at all.
That hurts far more than getting run over ever could.
I scream.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you—” Terry warbles into my ear. Al niente.
* * *
J. M. Frey is a actor, author, and fanthroplogist. She is the author of Triptych (Dragon Moon Press); Hero Is a Four Letter Word (Short Fuse); The Dark Lord and the Seamstress (CreateSpace); “Whose Doctor?” in Doctor Who In Time And Space (McFarland Press). This is her first horror short.