Kandy Fontaine

Sigil in Silk

The nanospiders arrived at dawn.

Kandy Fontaine lay sprawled across her velvet-drenched mattress, one thigh draped over a copy of Hand of Doom, the other tangled in a pair of shredded fishnet—last night’s ritual, pushing the outer limits of flesh, where pleasure and pain collapsed together like a quantum waveform.

Her lipstick was smeared across her cheek like blood. The air was thick with absinthe vapors, strawberry incense and the faint metallic tang of sex magick.

She blinked awake to the sound of clicking—tiny, rhythmic, a thousand stilettos tapping across her hardwood floor.

They were everywhere. Crawling across her notebooks. Her vinyl collection, hundreds of rare pressings of Deathrock and Goth classics. Her altar of broken glam figurines, Rozz Willliams in a bondage harness, Gitane Demone in bandages, and melted candles. Self-archiving nanospiders, sent from some future where memory was currency and every orgasm a data point. They skittered across her skin, whispering in binary, recording her dreams, her moans, her whispered curses.

She didn’t scream. She arched her back and let them nest in her hair. They skittered through her Siouxsie-style bed hair and seemed to be enjoying themselves. She felt the first rising “thwang” of gorgeous blood in its lakelet surge towards her pussy. 

One of them paused on her inner thigh, just above the sigil tattooed in ultraviolet ink. It pulsed once—softly, like a heartbeat—and then the mirror across the room lit up with a message etched in acid green bile:

“The Horror Clown is coming.”

Kandy sat up, her body aching in all the right places. She lit a clove cigarette with a match struck against her nipple ring and stared at the message. The Horror Clown. Not a man. Not a myth. A woman named Miranda Vex, once a promising horror novelist, now a greasepainted stalker with a vendetta and a cracked psyche.

Miranda had sent her lipstick threats on torn Fangoria covers. Had left voicemails reciting Sylvia Plath in a helium voice. Had once mailed her a dead hummingbird wrapped in a rejection letter.

She believed Kandy had stolen her career. Her voice. Her soul.

Kandy exhaled smoke and whispered, “Let her come. And not in the good way. Although…” 

She dressed slowly, deliberately. A corset laced with barbed wire. Thigh highs held up by safety pins. A trench coat made from repurposed Cradle of Filth merch. Her lipstick was black cherry, her perfume was called “Funeral Kiss,” her boots blessed by a drag priestess in a condemned church.

The nanospiders followed her, crawling into her purse, her cleavage, her hair. Her witnesses. Her archivists. Her familiars.

Outside, the Hollywood sky was bruised purple. The Rainbow Bar & Grill glowed like a haunted jukebox. Kandy walked past the ghosts of glam rock, past the alley where Lemmy once pissed on a paparazzo, past the mural of Wendy Dio that someone had defaced with glitter and semen. 

She felt the presence before she saw her.

Miranda Vex stood across the street, face painted in cracked white, eyes smeared with rage. She wore a tutu made of rejection slips and carried a balloon sword that pulsed with psychic venom.

Kandy smiled. “You’re late.”

Miranda didn’t speak. She raised the sword.

And then the hearse pulled up.

Joe Oroborus at the wheel, eyeliner smeared, cigarette dangling. Reynaldo, the World’s Smallest Circus Bear, in the passenger seat, sipping absinthe from a thimble and muttering Latin hexes.

Kandy didn’t resist. She let them bind her in neon duct tape, gag her with a vintage tour shirt, toss her into the velvet-lined coffin in the back. And leave her there, twitching, moaning and drooling. 

She was aroused. Beyond fucking belief. 

This was ritual.

This was revenge.

Inside the hearse, the air was thick with patchouli and static. Joe played a bootleg cassette of Magica backwards, letting the reversed riffs summon something ancient. Reynaldo lit a candle shaped like a severed tongue and whispered, “She’s watching.”

Kandy writhed against the velvet, her body a sigil, her breath a spell. The nanospiders crawled into her bloodstream, activating the glyph etched into her thigh. Her orgasm built like a thunderstorm—slow, electric, inevitable.

Outside, Miranda Vex followed in a rusted ice cream truck, its speakers blaring distorted readings from her unpublished novel The Clown’s Gospel. She believed she was the chosen one. She believed Kandy was the devil.

She was half right.

Kandy came like a cathedral collapsing.

The sigil detonated. The nanospiders pulsed. The hearse shook.

Miranda screamed from the street, clutching her balloon sword, her face melting in the heat of psychic backlash. She saw every phantom enemy she’d ever invented. Every imagined slight. Every silenced scream.

She collapsed, twitching, her career ended not with a scream—but with a whimpering laugh.

Joe lit a cigarette. Reynaldo toasted Kandy with a thimble of blood.

Kandy Fontaine walked away, heels clicking on broken glass, nanospiders trailing behind her like a bridal veil of vengeance. She was already writing the next chapter in blood and eyeliner.

The Horror Clown was gone. The archive lived. And Kandy? She was just getting started.