Moore

Demons & Marionettes
Savannah rose, slowly, from the small cot with only a stained, white sheet wrapped around her long frame. Eggplant Edenia—the expensive shade of MAC lipstick that was now smudged across the left side of her narrow face. Running, crimson-colored eyeliner slightly obscured her vision, but she could see well enough to realize that she was late. She had an appointment—her third one that night and she was never late. Never. “Going somewhere, baby?” the round man with the extremely pasty chest asked, rolling over onto his side to face her. “I won’t finished with you yet,” he added. Savannah dropped her sheet, rolling her flamboyantly green eyes with each sound of the man’s erotic calls. “Yes, I have somewhere to be,” she spoke dryly. “Already?” “Sure. It seems we’ve gone a bit overtime; you’ll understand if I called it a night?” She asked, positively certain that the man would agree to let her go. Despite the fact that the night had run seemingly short, she’d been entertaining the round man for over two hours. Her heart churned with relief; she was glad to be free. Savannah was completely fine with spending hours with ugly men; she was used to that. After all, it was what she did. Unfortunately, this time, the man was extra ugly, extra smelly, and his apishly hairy chest seemingly produced enough perspiration to flood the Nile. Despite his crude unattractiveness he had an admirable amount of stamina compared to some of Savannah’s other, even younger providers. Needless to say, that wasn’t necessarily a great thing. It was fixing to be over though; this made Savannah smile a little. And she didn’t smile much. She rarely had anything to smile about. “You’ll come back to me, won’t you?” the clownish buffoon asked, an eager grin wiping over his rosy face. “As long as you keep giving me the good stuff,” Savannah started, sliding an old, Balenciaga lambskin jacket over her bare torso. It was one of the few things that she didn’t sell, for quick cash, after moving to New York City. “I’ll keep giving you my good stuff.” After wiping a dozen small storage bags of finely crushed cream-colored powders into her worn, snakeskin Versace tote bag, Savannah gave the round man a quick wink. She was gone a second after. It was true—what she said about being late. Savannah Malone was never ever late to an appointment. She knew that time was money and money was something that she didn’t like to waste…

The visually painful, neon lights of a lively New York rose and fell during Savannah Malone’s rocky ride to Midtown—the place of her next appointment. The ride was shaky, because she couldn’t stop trembling. She had goose bumps, but she wasn’t at all fearful. She had great chills, but she was quite the opposite from freezing. She’d been studying the streetwalkers from the window in attempts to take her eyes away from the raging traffic lights, but that didn’t do her much good. For some moments, during the ride, the taxi would seem as if driving in slow motion. She could feel herself moving extremely sluggishly and no matter how fast she wanted to move, there seemed to be a stronger force, of some sort, holding her back. The streetwalkers on the other hand moved in a speed of rage—a sort of speed that could only be compared to the rapidness of Savannah’s ticking heart. //Get yourself together, S//, she internally demanded. She was a bit worried due to a lack of cash. Savannah never really had much cash, because she always spent it as soon as she got it. Darkness, as usual, began to set in. With each price tick of the rapidly consistent price meter, Savannah constructed new ideas for non-cash offerings. She pulled her eggplant-colored lipstick from the deep crevices of her loud, electric red Versace bag and colored her full lips, heavily with it. //If I can’t pay this man in cash//, she thought, //then, surely, I can find other means//. She took a sallow glance at herself from the suspecting driver’s mirror. The slight, nonchalant //u-//shaping of his mouth convinced her to make a move. The vehicles of New York City traffic weren’t the only things getting the green light that night. Savannah scraped dirt out from underneath her rigid, red nails, while the elevator at the Palace Hotel lifted her to the twenty-second floor. She began to impatiently ramble the junk pocket of her bag when an odd woman joined her on the elevator car. She was an attractive woman, even if Savannah hated to internally admit it. Her hair was a pale red and fell to the middle of her back, as did Savannah’s. Her eyes were a vivid green, like Savannah’s and she had on the brightest red lipstick that she’d ever seen. They didn’t speak. The woman just gazed, curiously, at Savannah in a slightly intimidating way. The doors to the twenty-second floor opened and Savannah followed the girl with the pale red hair out into the hallway. Savannah wanted to ask if the girl was following her, but then she figured it would be sort of odd being that the other girl exited the car before she did. Before knocking on the door that she was instructed to go to, she fiddled around in another part of her bag, retrieving one of the small storage baggies. She brought the bag up to her bosom as she gave two subtle strikes onto the door, as she was told. As the door to 7867 crept opened, she noticed the unwanted glare of a very intrigued bystander. The woman from the elevator was clearly fascinated by her—but Savannah knew that. After all, the mysterious Malone family had been known for their devious methods of attracting the world’s attention.

The man that Savannah was meeting was, surprisingly, even more attractive than the glamorous suite that he’d paid for. It had been quite some time since a man with good looks supplied Savannah. And this man’s looks were far better than good—he looked magnificent. Daniel Wentworth is what the man in the red tuxedo vest called himself. As pretentious as it may have been, it fit him extremely well. He was a fairly tall man. //Must be a least six feet,// Savannah thought. His eyes were stern and appeared a cold teal in the fluorescence of the room. His shoulders were broad and Savannah could tell that there was a nicely ripped, probably hairless, body underneath that thousand-dollar Alexander McQueen suit. “Speechless, my dear?” Wentworth, as he liked to be called, softly took Savannah by the wrist and led her to the kitchen of the suite. “Need a drink?” he asked suavely, his mouth creeping into a faint grin. “No,” she said simply. Regardless of how attractive the man was, she just wanted to get the whole thing over with. “Well, I’ll certainly have one.” “Where’s your restroom?” Savannah called. She was getting all jittery and broke skin on her arm, because she’d begun digging into it with her fingernails. In the restroom, Savannah pulled the bag of substance from her bosom. A mixture of tears and perspiration began to cloud her vision. Feelings of vertigo and exhaustion overtook her, causing her to simply crash onto the floor of the elegantly decorated bathroom. //Savannah, Savannah.// Whispering—someone was whispering to her. She looked around the dark bathroom, but she couldn’t see much, aside from the figures of fabulously crafted décor. Soon, everything began intertwining—the urine in the toilet transformed into the bright blood that filled the tub. The dirt that she so desperately tried to scrape from her nails seeped out and onto the floors, completely covering it in a matter of brief moments. Everything was so dirty; the lights were so deceiving. They’d be strikingly bright white one moment and a freakish red after an eye’s blink. “Join us Savannah. Give us your troubles,” the girl in the mirror grinned at her. “Speak to me, your secrets. I’m the only one that will listen.” The whispering—a witchy, grotesque voice that seemingly called out from her reflection in the bloodstained mirror. Savannah stood to see herself; only she wasn’t herself. The girl in the mirror was almost like her. She was the same height, she had the same face, but her eyes were darker. Her body was slightly contorted, maybe due to the mirror’s imperfections. While Savannah’s hair was pale and blond, the woman in the mirror had flaming locks that might have even glowed when the lights went dark. “I’m sorry. I don’t know you,” Savannah said, forcing her drained body to its feet. She felt heavy, almost like the force she’d felt in the car. Stronger, even. Yes, much stronger. “Y-you-you,” Savannah’s speech began to slur. Like the rest of her physique, her lips seemed to be under control by someone else. Someone that was not herself. “You’ve seen us.” “Us?” Savannah whimpered. “We’re everywhere. I suppose you don’t remember when we first met, at those clubs in the City of Angels. Remember, you used to go to those with your friends.” “Friends?” “You used to have those. They gave up on you. You don’t remember?” The fiery figure in the mirror began to pace back and forth from on the top of the glass and then to the right of, even sometimes exceeding the boundaries of the rectangular glass containment. “But they all gave up on you after you stopped listening to them. We made you feel better. We convinced you to move here, in New York, away from your family and your friends to find yourself. They didn’t deserve you. They couldn’t take care of you—not like we could.” The woman in the mirror smiled malevolently, her face twisted with all types of horrific expression. “I’ve never seen you.” “Oh, but you have. We’re everywhere,” the woman in the mirror said once again. “We’re behind every Brooklyn street corner, we’ve been hiding in the alleyways. We’ve been watching you…like on the elevator.” “No, no, no,” Savannah felt herself falling, but she didn’t have the strength to hold herself up any longer. “I don’t even know your name,” she cried. “I have many different names Savannah. But one is two, they’re all the same.” “What do you want?” “That’s an easy one.” //Savannah stop.// //Don’t do it Savannah. Savannah!// Savannah’s thoughts began spiraling on their own. Like the dirt underneath her nails, they began finding ways to escape her. They all leaped out and onto the surfaces of the shadowy, red room. “We want you,” the girl that looked like her finally said. “We just want you.” //We’re coming for you.// The girl began to control the thoughts inside of her head—talking to her outside and inside simultaneously. “We want your happiness. We want your heart. Most importantly, we want your soul.” “You can’t have me!” Savannah shouted. “I won’t let you have me.” “It’s too late you foolish girl! We already have you. We’ve made you do things that you’d never even heard of or dreamed. Lying to your mother when she asked what you were doing out on those late school nights. Stealing money from your dad’s bank account so you could support your habits; we have you. We let you go the first time, but you came back to us Savannah. You came back to us and we’ll never let you go.” //We’re gonna get you. You know we’re gonna get you.// The whispering inside got louder and louder—the voices more vicious. “You knew this would happen, many times you were told.” “But I challenged your power and decided to be bold,” Savannah could see clearly, now. She understood and she knew in her heart that it was far too late. She could never part away from the demons that she danced upon all those many years of her life. The woman in the mirror smiled. “Just go away. Just make it all go away. These voices in my head, please make them go away.” “Fear not,” the woman said, reaching for Savannah’s hand. The woman was no longer just a reflection in the mirror, but crouched directly beside Savannah. She wanted Savannah; she was there to help her escape. “You won’t ever have to worry about me leaving you like your family and friends have. We’ll love you forever, even carry you to your grave.” “You promise you won’t ever leave me?” “I cross my heart and hope you’ll die. You’ll see us in your dreams; we’ll have you screaming in your nightmares. Come with me.” The woman that was once a figment of her imagination became the reflection of who she’d ultimately become. With the taking of the woman’s head, Savannah rose to her feet, a calm overtaking her renewed body. The lights that were once to bright became darker. Until eventually, there was no more light to be seen in the quiet bathroom of suite 7867.

[|"Voodoo Doll"] Lyrics by Fergie

[|"Voodoo Doll"] Audio