Whatever Happened To Neve Davis?

If my body was the prison, hers was the asylum. She existed before the godhead. Before the silhouetted night sky. The rain down. The oversaturated earth. Crimson was her aura. The bruise, her color. Pallid and glamorous. Automated fetish. Her mouth honey-sweet but sour to the taste.

She claws herself from the early grave, 2 decades after the fact. Of all my creations, she stood the most problematic.

Funny how you insist on calling me woman, when you have never identified as a woman.

Don’t Look at Me

The bookstore is empty. No people. Not even books. Just rolls upon rolls of empty shelves. And in the center, two seats and a coffee table. A blur of black and lace rushes past me and takes a seat, crossing their legs and smiles.

“Seats don’t just warm themselves, W–“

I stop them before they finish. “No need for pleasantries, I see.” I take my seat. A breeze pushes through and the chattering begins, the background noise of other people’s conversations. Lights begin to shine.

“How quaint,” they said, now holding a cup of tea. They blow over the steam before taking a sip. “Personally, I might have gone for a record store, but I guess you’re more about books than music these days.”

“Why are you here?”

“Oh don’t be so coy, you brought me here when you Thanos-snapped the last guy.” They smirk, “Besides, I’ve always been your favorite demon. Why else would you think about me time and time again?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me that Blaspheme Baxton isn’t just a dollar store knock of me. Of what you imagined me to be, at least.”

I glanced around the store, now filled with people and titles. Each one just a fragment of time. The boy in the black skirt. The black mascara and lipstick. The grunge reject. The nail polish and glitter. Gummy and beaded bracelets. Torn jeans, denim jackets.

“What is all this?” I ask.

“A review,” they say.

Finale

The day that Neve Davis died – truly died – I opened a journal and scribbled a poem, an elegy. But what we bury in the past has the bad habit of coming back to haunt us.