"THE GRAND DUCHESS OF EXCESS AND DEGREDATION"...

 Queen "V",  was a self-appointed queen without a throne... or the ability to get to one.  Self entitled, defiant, over the top, unapologetic, demanding, petty, shrewd and in phobic, perpetual denial.  She was very reminiscent of an older, frazzled version of character actress Lucille Benson.  She lead a spoiled, self-centered life, but after many years of ravenous excess and multiple, bizarre addictions it turned her into a home bound recluse living in filth and squalor.   (Pic above:  I explore the Grey-Gardens like ruin at the top of the tower where "V" once lived... and V surely was a "Big Edie" type, but without the trans-Atlantic accent or the charm).



Sometime in 2001...  On a visit to "The Duchess"...

"She wont eat out of a bowl". Miss V announced to me as she dumped a stinky and foul smelling can of wet, cat food on the already stained, smudged, wooden floor.   "Well...  if you leave it in a bowl long enough, she'll get hungry and eat it" I replied, still in disbelief.
  There were many other similar large, stained areas on the overly trodden, wooden floor of Miss V's macabre apartment.  It was a disastrous, hoarder's nest of hundreds of pairs of shoes, high heels and boots (many in wrapped boxes unopened, never worn), hundreds of designer bags, expensive perfumes, costly skin cremes and hosiery (also obviously never used or opened ) and an unending stream of mice that jumped out of everywhere and over piles of yellowing newspapers, plastic bags, rotten food, double-used adult pampers and dozens of glue traps laden with giant  bugs, roaches, house flies and even more mice some alive, some dead...  dead for so long in fact that only a trace of their fur was left on the gluies.


In retrospect today in Wheeling...

She disappeared one winter night... or morning (depending on who you asked) leaving everything behind amidst completely conflicting stories.  From eye-witness claims of her shouts of being robbed and screaming in the lobby spinning around in her chair like Crawford in "Baby Jane"...  to being found face down on her floor in a mess of canned cat food, mouse traps and candy wrappers...  after having "fallen" out of her chair (or "helped" out of it) Ala Olivia DeHavilland in "Caged".
 She was taken to a nearby hospital ... or was she?   No one in the building or on the street ever heard or saw an ambulance during the time of her disappearance...  Nor did anyone ever actually see her leave the building.   The only solid truth was that she was never to return,  (or leave?) to the giant mouse trap that she dwelled in or to ever be seen again.

     It still makes no sense at all today...  Miss Queen V's  disappearance that is...


 I sit here on a windy night in Wheeling pondering all of the conflicting stories, all of them bizarre and all them completely different accounts.  Anyone would doubt and question the shady cast that lived in her upscale building.  Could you blame them though?  This "Jabba the hut-Queen Bee" combo that never learned how to say please or thank you, and who's trademark phrase was grousing or croaking."I never ask anyone for anything", was very easy to dislike.  Were they all in on it together like the cast of an Agatha Christie mystery? Or was Miss V the royal toad of excess and degradation just hallucinating the events that lead to her mysterious "disappearance" (rumoured or factual).
 Someone, or everyone was lying...  but why?


The real story begins...  In flashbacks...


...  I knew something was wrong, very wrong before I even stepped into the lobby of her grey high rise tower.  It was 1:30am and we had not heard from the Duchess in over two days...  unheard of before as she was always constantly texting or calling people in a frenzy.
  I stood in the pristine, veil of heavy snowfall looking up at her 12th (top) floor lightless windows from the street where it was only 19°F and a fierce, wicked wind was trying to knock me down.  Yes, something was very wrong at the top of the tower.  I seized my opportunity running into the lobby's two locked doors behind a delivery boy wearing headphones under a hat and hood, blasting so loud that I could actually hear the lyrics of the song that he was in a deep, mindless trance over.  He did not even see me slip behind him as I shadowed him to the elevator.   My heart was beating quicker with every floor that we slowly rose above, when suddenly the door slid open with a gush of foul air that smelled of a dog kennel and the homeless.  The stench grew as I turned the corner of the high gloss, immaculate floors of her hallway.  I stood in front of her door hesitating...  The unknown taunting me.  I pushed the heavy door open with a shove as I knew that it was unlocked... she always left it unlocked.   It croaked open like a huge, hungry toad and with it emitted more clouds of foul, fetid air.  I stepped into the trashed laden foyer and stopped...   Dead silence, no parrots shouting out curse words with V's heavy New Yawk street accent, no television blasting full volume and no cockatoo screeching like a banshee.  I stepped slowly forward but my eyes could not focus in the very dim light.  I slowly turned the corner to enter her main room when six or more mice burst out of nowhere and scattered all over the odorous mess in front of me.  I noticed that a small, wall closet that appeared to have always been nailed shut before was now wide open and I could make out what appeared to be flickering lights in the tomb-like, still darkness. I froze for a minute, turned the corner into the room and then...


A Teaser-Trailer. Full Story soon...

Where the Queen (or Duchess), is exposed as not only a lady of black magic,  but also as a former, very busy "lady of the night"...