The Blank Chain

They say in the algorithm that every rising star casts a shadow the same size as its light. Jaydan Armour's light was enormous - curly hair, a mouth that never stopped grinning or sticking its tongue out, a torso inked from collar to wrist so densely the skin looked like parchment left out in the rain. And the shadow fell straight down onto one woman. The fan accounts that survived him called the blank gold chain at his throat the first warning, but they were wrong; the warning was the absence. There was no girlfriend, no girlfriend's hands on his waist, no "she" in a caption. There was only Mama, and at the end, the chain got a name at last.