Blue hair. Pale eyes rimmed in kohl. Full lips, sunken cheeks, straight nose....Dead expression.

I saw it every day, and today is no different. Maxwell Demon. I have forgotten what it was like before him, before we became one and the same and he stopped being the projection of my boyhood fantasies and dreams of stardom. My body should feel flushed and slightly sweaty with anticipation, but I am completely numb, just like every other day. I daub at my makeup pointlessly and realize I can't really hear myself when I speak some inconsequential remark aloud to someone passing by outside my door.

In a few minutes, the Space Age Rockstar will go out with a bang. I don't know why I decided to do it. Publicity stunt? Hardly. Perhaps at the time that I began arranging my elaborate "death", I had thought it was some desperate way to add excitement to my life, jolt myself back into reality and realize why the hell I'm here again. I seem to have lost that sense of belonging and meaning somewhere along the way. I buried it in pouting lips and left myself standing in the background. I watch myself in the mirror. It's no different from how I live these days, feeling as if I'm suddenly apart from it all, floating above with merely a hint of wistfulness.

Is it art, what I'm about to do? I don't even care. I once would have done anything to express myself, but what was this expressing? Nothing. There is no art within me anymore, no drive and no ambition, no life and no soul. Not now, after everything has passed and I became a star only to lose the very qualities I once defined myself by. All I know about myself is that everything I ever considered art is dead. Curt's turned into a mere shell of himself, I often hear distant tales of his trademark sudden anger flaring up in useless displays of emotion I know he doesn't really feel anymore. I'm beginning to wonder if he ever did feel anything. Did I ever feel, am I so above the judgments I pass so freely and flippantly on him now that he's gone? Who am I beneath the sparkling exterior? Or who had I been so long ago, rather. There is nobody under the costume anymore. I became a glittering facade and a vast wasteland behind it. I often wonder what happened to the entranced boy who sat at concerts and really thought it all meant something. Fuck, I miss waking up with a sense of purpose, being curious about the people on the street and theorizing on the lives and thoughts of everyone I saw, finding comfort in flesh and feeling music grind its way deep into my bones. I miss writing the emotions that spun around inside me and feeling clarity after they had been put to paper. I miss thinking that music was what made me whole. I'm too broken to ever become whole again. Music only passes the time now. I miss looking at Mandy and feeling more than a lingering, bemused contempt. I miss seeing Curt and feeling a head rush. I miss seeing him at all, for that matter. It's been some time since he walked out, and I feel his absence within myself, too tired to acknowledge it with anything more than ruminations on my emptiness. Long afternoons spent staring out the window and absently sucking on a cigarette I can barely taste these days. I miss excitement. I miss hoping.

I wake up every morning feeling hollow. Not even enough emotion left in me to hate the way things have turned out. I spend my days playing concerts, making deals, snorting whatever I can grind up, and wishing I still had something to hope for. When a person is unknown, they have two fantasies. Success, and failure. What's left to dream of when you've been successful and found it as unfulfilling as everything else?

I would dream of failure if I still knew how to dream.

Glitter used to be beautiful. The masks people wore used to entice me with mystery and intrigue. I used to dream.

I walk out on stage, fall down after a few bars as the blank is fired, and pretend to be dead. Little will they ever know how close it is to the truth.