The feeling sat deep in her belly, stiff like a splinter and aching like she was testing how deep a laceration can go before it stops being a papercut. The purple bulbous feeling bloomed at the base of her spine, coming out in tendrils behind her fingers as she drummed painted nails against the steering wheel. The theatre in front of her raged on, behind its four brick walls and beneath the neon sign radiating today’s screenings into the air around it, the audience laughed, indifferent to the comedy playing behind the silver screen, an electronic mist to replace the velvet curtain of her days.

Emmeline Sheeran straightened her spine against the cold leather of the seat behind her. She leant back and let the icy upholstery cup her head, golden curls falling like a cushion around her. She ran the tip of her tongue over her teeth, fangs sharp enough to nick the delicate skin, pink and slick as it moved beneath the blanket of her pursed lips. She pulled out, and the billboard gleamed back at her with a vicious smile: an old photo, her smile rendered in twenty first century Hollywood gloss, tastefully cropped to hide the disaster that lay beneath the cut. It had been her last performance, seconds running down to her final break from that sweaty, velvet lined cabaret club, so close she could taste the cool night air against her neck as it trickled in through an open window, neck craned, moments before the club’s doors had been blown clean off by old Jerry, the boss, owner and director of her shows and body. He had planted the bomb to go off at midnight exactly, the last second of her contract, to consign her body to his possession even in death.

It had disappeared, of course, and resigned her to the history books full of tragic figures of mysterious artists, sex symbols and feminine artefacts until a century later, her face now public domain again, had been picked up and swirled in with a lethal dose of revisionist progressivism. In her biopic, she had been rendered as a femme fatale, a suicide bomber, a rogue figure who forced mortal liberation upon herself and every other club-goer there that night. She trailed her fingers across the car’s body as she exited: the final remnant of her savior, a young woman named Amelia Burkhardt who had dug her blast-mangled body from the rubble and blessed her with that undead kiss, the cervical mark of a centuries long curse, as Emmeline made her way into the theatre.

Tonight was the night of the premiere, and the director just so happened to be old Jerry’s great grandson.

Emmeline trailed into the theatre with her head held high, making her way towards the teen at the desk and smiling with a practiced grace.

"One ticket please," she said, keeping her voice smooth. "For The Sheeran Story."

The girl behind the desk stuttered: "Oh, m'aam, I'm sorry, that's an exclusive screening today, I can't--"

Emmeline held a hand up. "I have a ticket."

The girl stared at her, dumbfounded, as Emmeline produced nothing from her pocket, peering at the thin air in her hand as if reading something incredibly complicated. "Yes, uh, my apologies, m'aam. Right this way. Screen 1." She pointed to a door behind Emmeline.

"Thank you, child. One popcorn please."

The girl behind the desk started shovelling small yellow kernels of puffed maize into a paper bag as quick as she could.

Emmeline sighed and stood to the side to let the girl work. She pulled from her pocket a mobile phone, a piece of technology she had grown quite fond of, and tapped away at it with her long, red nails.

Amelia: Em, where are you?

If you're at that fucking theatre, I swear to God

Emmeline: It's okay, baby. I've got it.

Amelia: No, Stay there. I'm coming to get you.

Emmeline: I'll be discreet.

Amelia: This is the opposite of discreet, Em. Don't be stupid.

Amelia's contact photo popped up across Em's entire screen, obscuring the text conversation from view as she tried to call her. Em sighed and declined the call, turning the phone to silent before slipping it into her pocket again. She took the popcorn from the trembling girl with a small nod of thanks and turned toward Screen 1, the paper bag warm against her cold fingers. The lobby smelled of butter and carpet cleaner, and somewhere beneath it, faintly, of her own past. Old smoke, she decided. These carpets hadn't been cleaned since the 1970s. on in a hundred years.

She paused at the door and checked her reflection in the dark glass of a poster case. The image staring back at her was doubled: her own face, pale and precise, layered over the airbrushed photograph of herself from the film's marketing.

Inside, the theatre was near empty, save for a handful of invited guests scattered through the first few rows, industry types in blazers too warm for July, murmuring to each other over paper cups of wine that didn't belong in a cinema. Emmeline drifted along the back row, unnoticed, choosing a seat with a clean sightline to the front, close enough to the aisle to leave without ceremony.

Her phone buzzed once against her hip. She didn't look at it.

Below, at the front of the room, a young man was climbing onto the small stage in front of the screen, tapping a microphone that let out a shriek of feedback before settling. He was tall and awkard like a man who had grown into money before he'd grown into himself. Emmeline recognized the set of his jaw immediately. She felt the feeling in her belly stir again, uncoiling slowly, patient as rot.

"Thank you all so much for coming," the great-grandson was saying, beaming at the room like he owned it, which, in the sense that mattered, he did. "This film has been a passion project for our family for almost a decade now. Emmeline Sheeran's story is one of tragedy, yes, but also of power: a woman who refused to let anyone else write the ending of her own narrative."

A woman standing near the front let out a small, appreciative sound, the kind reserved for TED talks and eulogies.

Emmeline's fingers stilled on the popcorn bag.