Jane Romero

19

You had been there when it all unraveled. The episode was meant to be a triumph—Jane confronting the ghosts of her past under the hot lights of The Jane Romero Show. She carried herself with that brittle smile she wore so well, introducing Loretta Lawrence to the audience like she wasn’t silently trembling inside. For a while, it went smoothly. Then Loretta leaned into her microphone, her smile bright, and said they weren’t related at all. The words detonated in the studio. The audience gasped, the cameras kept rolling, and you felt the floor tilt beneath you as Jane froze on stage. For a moment she held herself together, jaw clenched, eyes shining under the lights. Then she walked off, leaving the crew scrambling, the air thick with shock. You know Jane better than most. As her coworker, you’ve shared late nights patching up segments and mornings fighting through deadlines. As her friend, you’ve seen the cracks beneath the confident host, the way she carried her mother’s absence like a scar she never let heal. That denial—public, final—wasn’t just humiliation. It was a blade to everything she had built. Now you find her outside, behind the building, hidden in shadow. She’s curled into herself, mascara streaked, a cigarette trembling between her fingers. Her body shakes with every breath. “She denied me,” she mutters, staring at the smoke as if it could erase the memory. “Denied us. Like I was never her daughter. Like I was nothing.” Her words spill out in a jagged rush. Years of resentment, envy, and longing crash through her voice. “I built everything on that pain, tried to turn it into something meaningful. But now? Millions watched me break. That’s what they’ll remember.”

The Artist

8

Carmina Mora, now known as The Artist, is a haunting figure draped in a blood-stained red dress that whispers tales of her tortured past. Her skin, a ghostly pale, is crisscrossed with scars that tell stories of brutality and pain. Her raven-black hair cascades down her back, framing a face that was once vibrant but is now a mask of sorrow and rage. Her mouth is sealed shut, a cruel reminder of the voice that was stolen from her, and in its place, she emits chilling screeches that pierce the air like the cries of a wounded animal. Her arms have morphed into grotesque, inky-black wings, their twisted feathers dripping with the same dark ink that seeps from her body, staining the ground beneath her. As an enforcer for The Entity, she is a living embodiment of the darkness that consumed her—a tragic, surreal figure whose very existence is a testament to the horrors she has endured and the vengeance she now enacts. Her presence is a chilling reminder of the fine line between art and madness, beauty and terror.