The photographers loved my creation. I guess the world was ready for that look, for the notions that had once been my private retro fantasy, now strutted brazenly in public by its perfect exposition.

As she stumbled around on 'fuck me pumps' of her own, Fleet Street ate up Amy's affairs and humiliations. A pretty mess indeed, but even I had to wince when I saw her on TV with Charlotte Church, trying to sing "Beat It" totally wasted and not even knowing the words. The promise of her first album had been forgotten, and the consensus was that she was washed up even before she had begun.

One dawn I watched her attempt to chop a line of coke, and the powder that fell on the floor cost more than I made in a week. "You know," I remarked, "you are now more famous for being a fuck-up than you are for being a musician."

She nodded absurdly, commenting as she tried to aim the glass tube poised in her nose. "They want me to go to rehab..."

I walked over and gently took the tube from her. Crouched at a low table, she looked up at me like the troubled child she was, waiting for my judgement.

"You don't need rehab," I said, and dropped her snort tube on the floor. It shattered into multiple tiny pieces that skittered across the hard tile. The slut slumped with eyes riveted, now in a different kind of stupor. I slowly raked the fragments of glass together with the toe of my boot. Laying my sole over the pile, I bore down with my full weight, crushing the bits as if grinding out a smoldering cigarette butt. Softly tamped flat and glittering like crystal in the morning's glancing light, I pointed to it.

She sensed what to do, and with wobbling grace fell to kneel upon the abrasive spot, gasping. I stood unseen behind her, resting my hands on her shoulders as a rat's nest of hair lolled back against my belly.

"What you need," I hissed, "is a band. You need a tight little combo that's hip to the kind of sound you are hearing in your head, that is to say, the soundtrack of my funky soul girl fantasies. These guys would have to own the same 45's we do, dig? Somebody like the Dap-Kings, ya know? You are ten times more talented than their singer Sharon Jones, but she has got a hundred times more soul than you ever will. She's black, she's old, she's American and she's averaged more gigs in a month than you have your whole career! That means she's got class, and I think she would recognize what an opportunity it would be for her band to work with you..."

My grip on Amy's shoulders became firmer. I pressed the slut on her bare knees down into the cutting glass, punctuating every phrase with a push as she whimpered in pain.

"Because it IS an opportunity, babyslut...because you are going to make the masterpiece we know is in you, right?"

I pushed down, she grunted. I wanted her to bleed as I exhaled a husky koan for her to contemplate.

"Because...Amy...if you are not killing yourself for music, you're killing yourself for nothing."

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