The girl had what people called dead eyes: blank, hollow and as lifeless as stone. The look was the same as an animal, kicked and beaten into submission until kindness and hope were less then a memory. The dead eyed ones lurked in the backs of clubs and on street corners. They used their cold hearts and warm flesh to suffocate the cities in dangerous temptations. They could be seen on corners selling their bodies in order to bleed their veins dry with heroin-needles and razorblade kisses.

Every neon night they breathed deep the sickness that permeated the air; the decay of indulgence and human waste sinking into their very skin. The diseased air took root in hearts too long hardened against pain to care.  All the little rejections served to strengthen their walls; trapping out the hurt and trapping in the anger, letting it smolder and grow within their fortresses of will. It built inexorably below the surface; a steadily swelling storm of hate behind every pair of dulled eyes.

The corner-inhabitants held their cigarette to burnt lips and watched as the smoky wisps traced ladders into the sky. Their dreams took wing on these cigarette ladders, following the paths forged by dying fire to meet Diaspora among the stars. There they died, and slowly the heavens became the burial for so many lost hopes; a multitude of faded glories and dimmed wants that comprised the lives of every whore and heroin-addict still held capture below.

Gradually, from amidst these broken hymns came the truths and fears repressed for so long inside the cold hearts and hard eyes. Somewhere deep within themselves the prostitutes nursed secret wounds and the junkies silently mourned the price they paid for the fire-blood in their veins. Inside they cried, and no one but the stars heard them calling. Though not even the stars would grant a boon to such sinners.

The undercurrent of hatred strengthened within their bones until they ached with its pressure. Day by day it clawed its way to the surface, burning to release its smothered rage on every tormentor beyond the shell it endured within. At last it burst through the shields around it, destroying the ones that had borne it for so long.

The kingdom of cold multiplied, its vast imperial glory a light and a warning to all those who harbored hopes within themselves. It told them never to dream, never to want, for The Queen was waiting to desecrate those dreams. They were her substance, her life-force. She fed on dream-hopes and sucked them dry, until only the bones of sadness and grief remained.

They named this Queen their need had borne them, and that name was Desire. She was lovely and cold as stone in her kingdom of decay. Desire ruled her court without mercy, black heart wanting all things and unable to care how she attained them, and when she beheld the offerings of her servants, she had dead eyes.