Madam Chartreuse

Madam Chartreuse was born to a woman we know little of today. What we do know is that she gave birth to Madam with her boots and spurs still on. The baby girl emerged into the world bloody, screaming and clinging to the silver spurs on one of her mamas boots. Mama took the baby, wrapped her in a silk gypsy scarf and placed her, with the spurs still clutched in tiny fists, on the doorstep of a church and was never seen in those parts again. Madam Chartreuse grew up long and tall, a wanderer, she sucked knowledge, traded skills and licked her hands after devouring hearts everywhere she passed. And when she arrived in New Orleans her soul finally sang, a deep throaty growl, deep and dirty like the Mississippi, low and sweet like the magnolias, jasmine and honeysuckle that line the streets, old as live oaks. The glorious decadent rot of the Crescent City welcomed her with sticky fingers and drew her in, more a mother and father than any mere human could have been.

With a whip in each hand, blood in her teeth, a knife on each thigh and a smirk on that relentless face our Madam Chartreuse met the Morningstar on the banks on the river of filth and life that courses through the city. He was playing a solo trumpet, sweet and mournful and unforgiving to the heart. They shared words, shredded skin and made promises that can't be spoken again. When she awoke on a bed of Spanish moss and tears, the world had changed. Ever more herself, Madam Chartreuse stood straight at her full 6 feet 9 inches and screamed to the antebellum mansions and moist air, "I will set your soul on fire!"

She hasn't stopped fulfilling that promise she made in the warm wet of a Louisiana sunrise, and I'm betting she never will. -Shadow Angelina