Glamour Whore

Content warning: This story contains explicit sexual imagery, graphic violence, and strong language.

Riley smashed the $1200 Fender Stratocaster guitar against the floor. It exploded into a shower of wooden shards. His guitar player, well, ex-guitar player, now, Eric, had just quit Riley’s band (and brainchild), Bathroom Head. Six years of sticky-floored dive bars, sticky-fingered, druggie band mates, and a host of other undignified rock-n-roll clichés, were all for nothing. The 4-piece, which had thinned down to a duo, was now a band of one. And this last betrayal drew blood.

“I gotta put all this music bullshit behind me,” Eric had said. (Bullshit?) “With this DUI and the 10G fine, I gotta get a job, man.” (Uggh). And, to that steaming pile of horse shit Eric added: “I’m gonna need my axe back, my Fender, so I can hock it to pay the penalty.”

That’s when Riley told Eric to screw himself, grabbed the guy by his collar and tossed him out of his apartment.

Then he shut the door and smashed his $1200 Fender guitar.

Riley looked down at the carnage in his hand. The guitar was shattered: a splintered maple neck, a fractured ash body, and a collection of sagging strings tenuously connecting the two.

He dragged the musical corpse around the efficiency, as he paced and stewed. He’d thought that Eric was his rock-n-roll ride-or-die. He'd believed Eric had the same passion, the same hunger that he did. But, as it turned out, Eric was a loser.

He lacked vision. But, Riley? He was an innovator, a dreamer with a plan. But, even he knew, every dreamer needed a lackey. And Eric was that perfect mule, tailor-made for the job. With a doobie and a few Natty Lights, he could probably get him to sell dope to a nun.

Riley sighed. There had been a version of life where the world's balls rested in his hands. Now, that dream was gone. Instant classics like “Snake Piss” and “Thank Your Mother For The Gonorrhea” would never see the light of day.

Shit. That world tour he had planned? Bye-bye. Screaming fans? Nope. Endless chicks and mountains of blow the size of Jack Russell terriers? Adios.

Thank you, Eric.

Pfffft....

He tossed the neck across the floor, the strings tugging the rest of the guitar across the tile with a grisly twang. Riley navigated his long, thin frame around the piles of dirty laundry that dotted the apartment, then threw himself on his bed.

He inhaled a deep breath. It smelled like something with legs was decomposing somewhere in the space. He shrugged. Riley pushed a curtain of black hair from his eyes and reached for the laptop that lay next to his Dr. Beats. He slid the headphones on his head, and parked the Dell on his lap. After flipping open the screen, and wrapping tattoo-covered fingers across the keyboard, Riley waited for the wifi to fumble for connection. He chewed on chipped, black-painted fingernails while he stood by, and sporadically spit his tiny hauls onto the sheets.

After some time, the TikTok logo brightened on the screen and a clip of Jez Benns came to life. The social media star was prancing on stage in front of throngs of screaming fans. He tossed a mane of wild hair back, and gave it to his audience. He was clad in a leather MC and a skin-tight, black one-piece. His athletic frame rippled under the nylon skin. He waved his guitar at the audience like a 3-foot dildo.

Riley smiled.

Jez rocked his hips. Each sway sent a ripple of energy through the fawning crowd. And the guitar, he strummed it like he was, well… fuckin' it.

Jez had that thing, that charisma, that sex-appeal that stars had, and Riley wanted it.

Riley couldn’t take his eyes off of him. When Jez looked into the camera, it was like he was looking into Riley's soul. It made Riley want to bone. He thought about the jar of vaseline and the drawer full of hand towels by his bed for a moment, but his attention was ensnared by the addition of a new friend that had popped up amongst Jez’s snaking list of followers.

He squinted at the the thumbnail.

“N’Omi?” he said under his breath. He tapped on the icon.

It was a girl… no, a spirit. She was beautiful. Covered in tattoos and dripping with sex appeal, she hypnotized him on the spot. There was a sparkle in her eyes that hitched his breath in his throat. When she sang, it was like ancient fire flowing from her lips.

Fuck if she didn’t have that same thing that Jez did.

He stared at N’Omi, drinking every movement, every flick of her finger, every shape her mouth took.

“Yea,” he whispered. He licked his lips.

Riley slid his gaze across the screen, taking in the details of his new obsession. A message in N’Omi’s comments section caught his eye. It was from Jez:

“Welcome to the club! You’re gonna love this life. Go get ‘em baby!! (followed by three heart emoji’s, a hand doing ‘metal horns’ and a red tongue sticking out of a mouth).

Riley huffed. Envy bubbled in his gut. He sat up knowing he shouldn’t check her followers count. But he did.

“Two-hundred-thirty-three-thousand?”

Riley clapped the laptop shut and flung it across the room.

“Dammit!”

When it clattered to a stop against the closet door, he held his head with both hands and grimaced.

“Riley, what the fuck are you doing??” he said. He jumped out of bed, retrieved the computer and plopped down against the ply-wood closet door to check the Dell for damage. The laptop was one of the few things that still worked in this place.

He opened it and the screen lit back up easily. It returned to displaying N’Omi shaking her wares on a brightly lit stage, in front of a sold out crowd, in an arena not too far from where Riley was drowning in his own miserable life.

Riley motorboated his lips and collapsed to the floor. He stared up at the ceiling.

This was bullshit. Why was he stuck on the hamster wheel of burn-out bandmates and dive bar venues? Why wasn’t he touring the world? Why weren’t his videos going viral? Where were his 200K followers?

His face puckered into a scowl. An unfamiliar feeling rushed up to his face and stole the air from his lungs. Tears burst from his eyes unexpectedly, like a river shattering a ruptured dam.

The reality that he'd spent most of his waking-hours avoiding was now commandeering his attention: he was shit. His life was shit. And he was gonna die in the suburbs of Cleveland a broke-ass nobody.

"No!" He blubbered.

He reached up to his desk, fumbling for the bottle of Wild Turkey. He gripped it and slinked back to the floor against the closet door. With his knees drawn up, and his elbows propped against them, Riley cocked his head back and downed the whiskey in loud gulps.

He took a breath. “Shit,” he muttered, looking at the bottle. “Keep it together, you dumbshit." He wiped a river of snot and tears from his face, then cocked his head back and leaned it against the closet door.

He brayed another round of sobbing tears, and, this time, the waterworks ushered in a flow of memories, dark and forgotten. They poured through him like a grim, nauseating slide show. One image featured his mother, with youth still clinging to her face. Her features were twisted into a scowl. Her eyes glowed with rage.

“You’re worthless,” she said to him. “All Jones’ boys are pieces of shit. The apple don’t never fall far from the tree.” She took a drag of her cigarette and sneered.

The anguish of her words threatened to bring his lunch up. Riley took long, deep breaths to steady himself.

Pictures of his father came next, unbidden: the man was a black silhouette at the end of a darkened hallway, holding a fifth of Jack. Riley shuddered. The rest of the memory became an ache in his bones, half-buried and unseeable. He turned his face into the grimy tile. He pounded on the floor and wept.

Riley howled for what felt like hours. He had no idea how long he’d been lying there—only that his life was the shit-roll of a galactic crapshoot. It was all unfair. And none of it was his fault. His family’s degeneracies had tainted him from birth, infecting his fate like a cosmic, contagious disease. And he had to take it.

After some time, the tears did dry up, and the pain receeded back into the corners of his mind. With a moan, Riley turned on his back and wiped the wetness from his eyes. He stared at the ceiling. The trees outside, swaying in the soft summer breeze, cast overlapping, angular shadows above him. Long breaths lifted his chest in a slow rise and fall. The room was quiet save for the sound of his breathing and the murmur of the rustling leaves that drifted through the open balcony door.

His body wound down from the fireworks. Before long, Riley was sound asleep.

***

The balcony door slammed against the terrace wall, waking Riley. After the initial jolt of fright, he shifted listless eyes towards the deck. The wind had picked up. And night had come.

Riley picked himself up off the floor with a groan, stalked through the jetsam that littered his darkened room, and headed for the terrace door. He reached out to close it.

“You’re a star, Riley,” a voice said.

Riley jumped back.

A silhouetted figure, in an overcoat that flapped in the wind, leaned on the railing just outside. His feet were crossed, ankle over ankle, as he half-sat on the aluminum banister.

Riley slammed the door and stumbled back onto his bed.

The figure eased from the railing and took a few measured steps. It rapped on the plexiglass door.

Riley’s body went ice cold and clenched tight as a fist. His voice trembled like a flame in a wind. “Who– who the fuck are you?”

“I’m you’re shot at being a star,” the figure said. His voice was warm and calm, his cadence unhurried.

A river of dread ran through Riley. He ticked through a short list of absolutes: he had definitely locked the door after Eric left and his place was on the third floor of a garden apartment building. So, what the hell was this guy—

“Come out here. Let me show you what I can do for you,” the man said. The trees behind him swayed in the breeze.

Riley peered through the murky the apartment at the front door a few feet away. The part of him that made him pull his hand from a flame, or turn away from a sudden bright light was now screaming at him to run. But, for reasons that lay beyond his understanding, he remained frozen on the bed.

Riley turned back to the figure on the balcony.

“Your instincts are right,” the silhouette said. “Life is unfair. The whole game is rigged. Let me even the playing field.” The tree tops behind the man began twinkling with lights. “The world deserves to hear you,” he said.

His words echoed amongst the trees: “deserves to hear you… deserves to hear you…” – until they faded into the rustling of the leaves.

Sweat rimmed Riley's forehead. He flung off whatever voodoo had kept him nailed to the bed and ran for the door. When he clapped a clammy hand on the doorknob, a jolt of energy rippled through him. Riley stopped cold.

A sweet, powerful melody washed over him like a bath of warm honey. He closed his eyes and drank it in.

Riley turned towards the balcony.

The shadowy figure was joined by two new silhouettes. One was a woman with her eyes twinkling in the dark. She held one hand against the plexiglass and sang to Riley. The other dark shape was tall and athletic, also with eyes that gleamed. He had an arm wrapped around the whispering man's shoulder.

The tune carried Riley easily back across the apartment to the terrace door. When he reached it, he recognized N’Omi and Jez.

N’Omi ended her sweet singing. Her eyes sparkled. “Let us help you, Riley,” she said. She reached out a hand to him. “Let us make you a star, like me and Jez.”

Riley looked over at Jez whose smile shone in the dark.

He hadn't noticed it, but he had pushed the door open for the strangers. Riley was holding it against the wall.

A wind blew across the deck, as a tear formed on his lashes. He was coming undone. The hair across his body was standing on end, while dread seared his belly in ever-hotter circles. Yet, over those gut instincts, a numbness gathered and began muting every impulse in him.

“How can you make me a star?” he said. A tear streamed down his face.

“Come,” she said.

He nodded absently, took her hand and led the trio into his room. N’Omi pushed him down onto his bed and straddled him. Jez swung around to the near-side of the bed. His long, wavy mane draped over his face. He leaned over Riley, his smile still a dim glow in the murk.

“We feel you watching us, Riley,” he said.

“Yea, we feel your eyes roving over our bodies.” N’Omi ran her hand between her legs and up along her belly, where she brushed against a turquoise belly button ring. “We feel you moving with us when we’re performing.” She licked her finger then ran it across Riley’s lips. “It's so sweet, Riley.”

“Do you want it?" Jez chimed in. "What we have? The spotlights, the fans... the devotion?" Riley stared up at Jez. Terror shuddered through his limbs. "Well, it’s yours," Jez said. He leaned in and sniffed Riley from chest to hairline. “So pure,” he whispered.

Fingers tipped with long, pointed nails creeped along Jez’s shoulder like a bony spider. The hand grabbed Jez and pushed him aside. “Let me look,” the man said. A grotesque face ascended like a horrific sunrise over Jez’s shoulder. His skin was ashen and leathery, and his nose was up-turned resembling a pig's snout, but pointed at the tip. His eyes shone like embers in a fire.

Riley's insides sunk. They screamed at him to get up, but his limbs wouldn't move. Though free, they were heavy, like sandbags soaked with rain.

N’Omi jumped off of him with the nimbleness of a cat. The man took her place, pouncing and straddling Riley. The ghoul waved his head in a slow arc above him, sniffing the air.

“You are pure,” he said. “Do you want what they have, Riley?” he whispered.

Riley’s mouth trembled as he attempted to answer.

The man’s eyes flashed and smoldered. “Do you want to be a star??” he bellowed.

Riley’s mind split from terror. In one reality, he was at the police station, hunched in a chair, recounting his harrowing tale. In the other, he was paralyzed and staring into the eyes of something that was never meant to be encountered.

As the man hacked out breathy guffaws, the lights that had hovered in the treetops floated from the foliage and streamed through the open door. They circled Riley’s bed like a radiant whirlwind. When the glowing eyes settled around him, dark bodies formed. They stood over Riley.

“Do you want to be a star?” one of the specters hissed. N’Omi began chuckling. She held a hand to her mouth.

“Here, Riley, let me give you what you want," the man said.

With his eyes burning and his breath heaving, he leaned in. The man bared long, white fangs and bit Riley on the neck, sending a sharp, sweet pain coursing through him.

Jez, N’Omi and the others leaned over his body and took turns feeding.

***

London’s O2 arena was packed. The crowd was rockin'. They were chanting along to “Snake Piss”, Bathroom Head’s new hit-single. On stage, Riley's long frame crept in and out of view under the undulating theatrical smoke. He stalked the stage, sweaty and shirtless; his hair slicked back from his face like a wave of black, matted chic. A Fender guitar hung seductively from a shoulder. His 4-piece rock band raged behind him.

He leveled a cheeky sneer at the crowd and his pupils sparkled. The throng of diehards roared when Riley sent a surge of glamour shooting through the arena.

The animal allure was his now. His glamour devoured the will of anything with a pulse.

He soared towards the song's climax, slamming on his guitar and glaring into the lens of the camera. He ensnared hundreds of souls on the other end of the livestream, bound in his otherworldly magnetism. He could feel them, the empty ones: desperate and aching to be saved; yearning to be delivered from the soul-sucking abyss that was their lives. His glamour weaved through them like a serpent on the prowl, each one of them helpless in its eternal and irresistible pull.

The souls called out to him.

He chose.

Hannah Chandler. Of Hampstead. He pulsed another stream of glamour at her and it splashed along her body like a wave carrying dreams and aching desires.

He could feel her. She rubbed the ancient spell across her chest and waist like a warm, delicious lather.

She opened herself to him.

Riley banged on his Fender Stratocaster, striking the final, sumptuous chord, the fans undulating to his sweeping arm.

He caressed Hannah’s inner most parts, parts where she dared not go, parts she had buried long ago.

The crowd howled. Riley howled with them.

She was his.

And he was ready.

Hampstead would be a quick flight in the night.