my porno queen by idolatrie It is strange, you think, how years later it is the smallest detail that you remember. Elena had a scar behind her left ear, a dip in her skin the length of half a finger that just hugged her hairline. You knew this because it was your bicycle she had fallen off and your driveway she had bled on all those years ago. You knew this because when you braided her hair on sleepovers, your fingertips would touch that scar, tentatively, not wanting to draw attention to the single imperfection marring your friend. And now you're drowning yet another night in yet another club, when the strobe lights flashes and you see that face. You see her standing there, on the edge of the dance floor, drink loosely clasped in her hand, and all you can think of is how that scar felt under your fingers. In that moment of dark before the lights pulses on again, you already push the hands you welcomed a moment ago off your hips and are moving through the molasses of bodies crowding the floor, Elena's name half-formed by your lips when you remember that she is dead. That she had died years - it was years already? - ago. The light flashes again and the face, her face is still there. The small portion of your mind that is still working logically tells you it's just a stranger with an uncanny resemblance; after all, there is more than one blonde-haired blue-eyed girl in the world. But the rest of you pushes you towards her, led by your hands that suddenly need to trail up the column of her neck, circle behind her ear and card through her loose hair. You're beside her now, your breath close enough to stir her hair. She turns to look at you, eyes clear and assessing, interested. You take her drink and finish it in one long swallow. She laughs, a breathy chuckle. "Alright, you have my attention," she says. You close your eyes for a moment because her voice is a tone higher than Elena's, making the illusion waver. "Caroline," you answer, an introduction and an offer. She inclines her head. "Katherine," an acceptance. You lift her hand to your mouth and run your tongue across her palm. It smells of nail polish and tastes like a woman after she masturbates. You swipe your tongue again. Her eyes burn as she pulls your linked hands to her, fastening her mouth to your wrist. She bites you, not a playful lovers' nibble, but fucking bites, and you feel the blood seeping from the indents left by her teeth. Your heart is beating faster than you ever remember as you watch her tongue circle over your wrist and you know you should be disgusted, should be terrified. But instead you're wetter than you've ever been and you pull her closer still, ignoring the strands of hair - yours, hers - that get tangled between your mouths as you try to crawl into her, into the warmth, the wet that her body promises. "What do you want?" she asks, lips outlining the shell of your ear. You bury your hands in her hair, thumb stroking the smooth skin behind her left ear. You tell yourself you aren't really disappointed that there's nothing there, that you knew it wasn't Elena, but you can't help it. You've been looking, hoping, for so long that delusion is like an old friend these days. You pretend to ponder the question. "Bigger breasts, a room with a view" you say, "oh, and world peace." She laughs on cue and moulds her hands to your chest. "They're big enough, can't do much about the world, but my apartment's got a view." And just like that, you're leaving together. She's got you pinned against the inside of her door, sandwiching you against it with her body. Her mouth is on your breasts, scoring her teeth across the plane where they begin to slope out. She bites down hard and fuck it hurts, but somehow it feels better than anything else and you're moaning, loud and throaty, even as you feel your blood running over your nipples. "What do you want?" she asks again, turning her bright eyes on you. Your fingers trace the outline of her mouth, smearing the blood like lipstick. "More," you say, "take me home." "Why?" You think of telling her about Elena, about the girl who shares her face. About how you're so alone, now that all of them have left too. But there's only one truth she'll understand, that she'll deny, so that's all you give her. "I'm dying," you say and she just shakes her head. "I don't care," she says, not asking if you have cancer, or AIDS, or if you're just a hypochondriac with the flu. "I don't care," she repeats, and her eyes are burning, throbbing, as she asks, "the question is, do you want to live?" You stare at her, pinned still by her burning eyes. You think of Matt who died breaking up a fight, the two gangs he was trying to separate turning on the police instead of each other. A machete sliced him open, from neck to crotch, and you were at the hospital when they tried to sew him up, but no-one really knows how to stuff a person's guts back in. You think of Bonnie who was as young and beautiful in her coffin as she wanted to be after the funeral home had cleaned all the vomit she had choked in. You never knew if she meant to overdose or not, but she had been off ever since she discovered Meredith's body. You think of Meredith then, killed by her own grandfather in a fit of insanity, her body torn apart by something with inhuman strength. You think of Elena, beautiful Elena, tossed about till she was limp and broken in that car crash. Her death had started it all. It was the Fells Creek curse, to die before you had a chance to live. You'd lived too long, longer than the others. "No," you reply. And you know you'll be happy knowing it's her face, the face she shares with Elena that will be the last you'll ever see. Her tongue is relentless against your clit, pushing and swirling until everything is reduced to that one bundle of nerves and your breath squeezing in and out of your throat. Her hands are gripped bruisingly tight against your hips, stilling their frantic thrusting. You're coming, once, but she keeps on worrying away and another orgasm is following hard on the heels of the first. You're sure you would be wailing now if only you could get enough air in your lungs to manage it. Her mouth is back at your neck, working the skin back above where you can feel your pulse throbbing. You don't ask what she's doing, or why. You stopped asking questions after no-one would tell you the reason Elena was dead and you were alive. You know that something's going on here, something you don't understand. You pull her head up and her eyes are so dark as they stare down at you. You're laughing, laughing so hard as you thrust your fingers into her mouth, tearing them against the sharp teeth you find there. "Everything," you whisper, "don't leave anything, my lady," that's what you used to call Elena because together you were always royalty. Duchesses, princesses, queens. Your fingers steal down to stroke her legs apart, sliding into her. "My queen," and you're giggling again, because you never did this much with Elena, "my porno queen," you correct. You feel light-headed, dizzy. You're lying on a stranger's sheets as you bleed into her, and all you can think of is how Elena hadn't gotten that scar by accident. Two little girls had fallen off your bicycle that day, you had first and like Jack and Jill, Elena had come tumbling after. Because back then, nothing could separate the two of you, not even an unshared scar. She had untangled the bike where it was trapped under your legs, rode it around where you lay, then threw herself off. Her head had bounced on the pavement, her blood smearing above the stain yours had already left. And that was that, blood-sisters, and there was no line marking where you ended and she began. No, not until that night when you heard about the crash, when you found out that Elena had left you behind. But now she was taking you back, you could feel her coming closer with each throbbing moment. So you lift one hand to the scar behind your ear and use the other to press that blonde head harder into the open wound of your neck. It is strange, you think, but then you're not thinking anymore.