Fame Monster Act l

prologue

What was most surprising about the death of Sapphire Taylor was that it hadn't happened sooner.

The actual case - suicide - wasn't actually what the world expected. A heroin overdose? Alcohol poisoning? A heart attack caused by cocaine? Those were what everyone waited for. Nobody expected suicide.

Because the tragedy of Sapphire Taylor was like something out of a movie. It was surreal. Her life was surreal. It was lived out in public, in front millions of people, since the age of eighteen. She was twenty six when she passed, but still acted as if she hadn't aged. As her sappy, melancholic songs reveal, she suffered deep psychological issues that went undiagnosed.

Sapphire Taylor was very much a product of her time. A troublemaking, witty girl from Manchester. With his hints of softness and sorrow, her boyfriend, Jack Kaynsee, who would stay with her until the end, is her archetype; her relationship with Jack, as detailed in Doll and Oh Boy, is like a parody of her mother's relationship with Sapphire's father, Geo, who Sapphire would later recall as 'a worthless scumbag with no sense of reality and/or responsibility.' Yikes.

She was talented to the point of genius. Sapphire was so highly intelligent that she was one of those kids that couldn't fail their classes if they tried. It was obvious that English was her favourite subject. She was a natural born writer and it shows in her lyrics.

She stood out from a lot of people during that time. Sapphire always thought in England looked the same. She dyed her hair blush pink for the first time at the age of eleven and hadn't stopped since. It became what she was known for. If Sapphire was to go missing, the first thing you'd use to describe her is the colour of her hair. It didn't stop there, either. She always wore men's T-Shirts (if it wasn't that it was a turtleneck), plastic black bracelet, checkered vans and black or purple lipstick. It was her look. Everyone thought it was badass, and if you saw it for yourself, you'd think so, too. By the time she was sixteen, she was a heavy smoker with three small tattoos in places her school teachers couldn't see, and had a recognisably sick taste in style.

For if Sapphire Taylor was representative of her times, it was because of the manner in which she was killed by celebrity culture, the laughing stock of the music industry, with the paparazzi constantly camping outside her house. Initially, Sapphire didn't mind it because she was outgoing and they didn't seem to be causing any harm, even if the things being printed were disgustingly false. But then it took over her life.

However, things were completely different for her twin sister, Julianna. She was doing just fine. Just fine to everyone else. However, things were just plain crazy. In October 2004, she had fallen in love with one of her assistants. She was eighteen turning nineteen, naive, and damn ditsy. He was twenty seven, married and had a new baby boy. Oh God. Keeping this away from the public would be more difficult than she expected, and by December 2004, all anyone wanted to talk about was the Twisted Twins. The twins who were strange and shady, yet awfully intelligent. Something about these girls were beyond off. This is their story.