Amadeo hadn't slept at all in over three days.  Every time he started to fall asleep the dream started and he did everything he could to wake up.  Despite his efforts he had watched himself bite the ear from the stiff body and take his clothes off to lie against it.  Amadeo was completely out of his mind.

He was afraid to sleep.  He was afraid to give in.  So he wouldn't see anyone.  Matt, who would have hated being alive in the years before all communications were carried on a single cable, years in which you couldn't see the person you were calling, had called every day.  He signed slowly incase the transmission was jumpy.  He was really worried.

Amadeo told him he was not feeling well.  He didn't want to have to say he was retiring.  Others called too.  Roadrunner said it was her turn to worry now.  She was doing much better.  It was no thanks to Amadeo.  She had called him desperately to come stop her from taking anything and feeling the first influence of his dream he had told her he just couldn't go.  He realized what he had done soon enough and called Kim to go stop her.  It was Kim who helped René through it all.  René said she had Amadeo to thank for giving Kim to her.

And his young namesake had turned out to be a real friend.  He didn't move on after he got the attention that he wanted.  He was ready to take Amadeo's place as the Queen, but he wouldn't do it unless Amadeo told him to.  And he would make a good Queen.  He had both Rubio and Wisteria in his court.

If he could just go back...but he couldn't.

Amadeo paced about his room.  His rats were making quit a racket in their gilded cage.  His two white rats were running around, one in a wheel and the other as if it was looking for something.  Only Amadeo and perhaps they could tell each other apart.  Lestat was the one looking for something and Lu Lu was running within the wheel.  He put some food in their cage.

Amadeo went down to his playroom in an effort to keep from sleeping.  The room was clean.  He turned the small monitor and its accompanying machines on.  He listened to the music before turning to see the video promo.  Another terrible pop song.  You would think with all the young Fay around  that pop music would be dance oriented or strange and beautiful.  The Fay were just the counter culture though, the alternative lifestyle.  Chart music was happy feel-good triviality, good old rock and roll after it went through the wash by accident.

And then he heard it.  He'd missed the flash of the title but he knew it anyway.  He had heard this song several times before played by his girl in L.A.  It was called "Such Joy" and Amadeo knew it well because he had written a short story with the same name.  She had always called it a terrible pop song.  Amadeo didn't see the connection to current pop music.  It was something the Rose Petal Fay would go mad for.  He stared at the promo.  There she was on the stage at The Palace Shade, a place he knew well after so many yearly visits.  It was a mysterious building belonging to a mysterious family of the name Shade.  She had a most unusual dress on, the neckline scooped down, like something on a lady in a 19th century portrait, puffy short sleeves, the high waistline, the flare of the dress from its gathers just under her breasts to the rather high hemline.  It was made of black velvet.  Her reddish-brown hair was swept back with combs and hung in ringlets down her back.  And her white face with the blackberry colored lipstick and the black eye-liner made her look very much like a Rose Petal Faerie.

And Amadeo could not believe it.  The Fay were looked down on by authority, by the public.  They were freaks.  Even groups the Fay listened to didn't speak t Fay or dress t Fay.  It was like she was saving them all, a person with enormous money and talent who could stand to make more just by making the music and not dressing Fay was on a network channel dressing t Fay.  Amadeo wondered if they were more tolerant of the Fay on the West Coast.

He saw the flash of the title.  She was using the name Velvet.  And she had an album called Within the Charm.  How was it she had not told him?  He watched as the veejay made an announcement, "Velvet will be supporting fellow alternative L.A. bands The Irreverents and Robert's Pill along with controversial singer and performance artist Toni Ciccone on the Tour of the Mysteries, which kicks off in Japan on November 10th.  There will be a special dress rehearsal concert at L.A.'s Palace Shade by invitation only October 31st.  Opium T. Smith, lead singer of Robert's Pill is quoted as saying, 'For us it's like Halloween everyday, but it will be good to have the concert on Halloween because then everyone will be dressed up like freaks and it wont matter what any of us look like.'  We asked Opium about her choice to have Velvet billed as a headlining act along with the more popular Irreverents and Robert's Pill here's what she said"

Amadeo saw Opium on the monitor, white face, black hair and eyes, wearing a black bustier with the gauzy skirts of the Rose Petal Fay.  "I spoke to Martin Gore, whom you know does the speaking for the Irreverents rather well.  We're both L.A. groups and we've toured together recently, festivals mainly during the past summer.  Velvet herself is an old friend of mine and actually played on our last album, but when we went out on tour, she couldn't commit to going, so I had to ask R.J. to play bass, which he does now.  And while we were off on tour, Velvet recorded some songs.  I really liked them and finally I told her she should get in a studio, so she put her group together.  They're a new group but once people hear the album, I really think there will be a lot of people who will want to see them in concert.  And Martin really appreciates the guitar sound Velvet has that is sometimes lacking in my own songs.  The player Velvet found is called Paris and we are all convinced he's going to become a guitar legend."

And then the announcer added the observation that both The Irreverents and Robert's Pill left their major labels, after contract disputes, and joined a new independent called Seraph Recording, which then signed Velvet as well as Toni Ciccone. So there may be some simple financial motives behind this tour of the alternative groups.  The tour also boasted sets designed by radical L.A. architect, Christopher Rhodes and impressive light shows by a company who was famous for working with films.

But Amadeo was no longer encouraged.  It was a fabulous thing they were going to do and he hadn't been told about it.  It was October now and he hadn't been invited for a visit yet.  He went to L.A. every Halloween since he met them and this year, for the first time, Amber wouldn't be going with him because she was married to Trey.  He'd hardly been supportive or any fun during Amber and Trey's wedding and its preparations, what with the dreams already distracting him. Amadeo felt like the world was telling him to grow up, and he wanted to scream and shout back at it.  "No, I'll never get old, I'll never be one of those mere mortals who live day after day without wonder or passion!"

Amadeo was more desperate than before.  He wondered if any of the Fay he knew recognized Velvet as the girl in the painting on his bedroom wall.  It didn't really matter.  She was in The Palace Shade probably surrounded by a new group of admirers than those he had met last year, and he was in New York trying to resist the temptation to fuck a dead body.

It was night and it was raining but he went out, because he didn't want to sleep.  He was mad.  His life at present felt like a story he'd read over too many times...first you lose interest in everything, you desperately search for some cure, you wander about frightening people when you mention witches and Vampyres constantly and you start talking to yourself as he was now doing then you went mad and died.

He was starting to blame Vampyres for his dreams.  He believed in them.  Amadeo believed in things that most people didn't.  Even the Faeries only knew half of what went on in his life.  And these weren't the childhood fantasies of a dreamer, these were horrors he knew to exist.   Why, it might have more likely been Angels or even Opium T. Smith the Looking Glass Girl giving him nightmares.  But why would they want him to become a necrophiliac?  That is what he was.  The Necrophiliac.

And then he felt a hand on his shoulder.  He turned.  Matt was there.  "Amadeo," he said and waved a hand right in front of his face.  Amadeo shook his head.  He was having trouble seeing straight.  Matt looked disappointed.  He put an arm around Amadeo.

He felt a real shock of lust and pushed Matt away from him for his own sake.  "Stay away."  He thought he saw Matt say that he just wanted to help, but he wasn't sure of anything.

He really wanted Matt.  It was awful.  Amadeo was used to having sex more than once a day and now he hadn't even touched anyone in days.  But then he had a waking dream, not quite a vision.  He wanted Matt to be dead.  "Get away!" he screamed.  He saw himself killing Matt, sucking at the stiff dead dick.

Matt grabbed him by the shoulders.  "Amad, It's me," he said.

He couldn't push the idea out of his head any longer. He wanted him dead, dead!

And suddenly, in the middle of signing, Matthew collapsed.  He looked at Amadeo and fell to the ground.  "Matt!"  Amadeo went down on his knees.  There was no calling him back. "Matt!"  And he was crying so much he really couldn't see at all.  He had to get away, before he could be made to give in any more than he had.  Amadeo was crawling and staggering and crying.  And then everything went black.