oneshot collection [ kaylor ]

paper doll, tear me up

You were turned on your 16th birthday, back when monarchs still ruled with iron fists and spiritual townsfolk whispered about ghosts and demons and witches. You've been at this for a long, long time.

// Being a music idol is hard when your blood-red lipstick might not be just a metaphor, and you take your Bloody Marys literally. //

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Trigger warnings: lots of mentions of blood. Because, you know, vampires.

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Head up, bright smile.

Pose with the fans.

Sign autographs until your fingers cramp up.

Breathe.

Don't let them get close to your chest to feel your heartbeat and how slow it is.

Smile but don't let your teeth expose themselves, don't you fucking dare.

The mantra repeats over and over in your head, buzzing like television static as you rapidly sign autographs and smile and hug fans with shirts stitched to portray your face or lyrics from your songs. You feel tight and trembling with panic the entire time, your heels wobbling haphazardly on the pavement. It's not that you don't love your fans, no.

No, the problem is that it's been almost three months, and all of them when they're so close don't smell like their perfume or shampoo or August sweat. No, they smell like hot blood pumping below skin, warmth slithering between flesh that's so thin...

Your bodyguards guide you inside, finally.

The air conditioning slaps you across the face and it's enough to calm you down. Your hands stop shaking. Your gums stop tingling with the effort of holding your teeth back. The sweat around your collar starts to dry.

When you enter the news studio, you're set in a chair in the back of the room where someone can paint your face with makeup, hide your translucent skin and the dark circles hugging your lower eyelids. They can hide the way your cheeks have thinned so the bones look like shelves.

You stare blankly in the mirror while they work, and one, a young woman with hair the color of plums, asks you in a bird-like voice, "Miss Swift, are you okay?"

It's spoken as she dabs at the damp hair clinging to the back of your neck.

"I'm just tired from all of the album promotion. Thank you for asking, though," You tell her.

Head up. Smile. Enunciate in the right places.

The mantra is hard to focus on when the veins in her neck sit so close to your mouth the monstrous thing inside of you can almost taste the blood there.

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 "You probably need to think about doing it soon."

Tree speaks the words to you in the car, crisp tone clipping past carnation-colored lips. You don't look at her, and instead at your hands curled into fists on the pink skirt covering your lap, "Why? The interview went perfectly fine."

"That one did, but we can't say the next one will," Tree points out, and she doesn't sound accusing. Just honest. You close your eyes tight, and your mouth aches with the effort of holding it shut, "I'm good at my job, but I don't know how well I'll be able to cover you diving across the table to feed from an interviewer on the NBC morning news."

You've been at this for years. You were turned on your 16th birthday, back when monarchs still ruled with iron fists and spiritual townsfolk whispered about ghosts and demons and witches. You've been at this for a long, long time.