The Pierces

Allison and Catherine Pierce are two sisters that were born and bred in the deepest of the deepest of southern places, the beautiful yet tragic state of Alabama. They were soon removed from formal schooling when it was realized that Allison was leaving deep crescent-moon-shaped bite marks on the arms of the boys in her class and Catherine discovered that she could raise her body temperature at will to 102 degrees and had to be sent home daily due to self-induced fever.

They were taught at home by their painter mother and guitar-wielding father, and classes consisted of painting, writing, singing, dancing, herbology, cooking, daydreaming, spell casting, theatre and a little bit of regular academics for good measure.

Allison was kidnapped at age 16 by a radical born-again gypsy, dancing troupe that whisked her around the country on a dilapidated bus. They spoke in tongues and meditated and descended upon unsuspecting people and danced for them until they wept and fainted and joined their cult. Victims of kidnappings often begin to relate to, and sometimes even love ,their captors; and such was the case with young Allison. She soon began to forget Catherine and settled into her new life as a dancing gypsy.

In the meantime, Catherine set out to find her lost sister. She knew that chaos always springs from restriction, so in order to find the origin of the madness that robbed her of her sister, Catherine trained with the strictest of Russian and French ballet masters. Under the guise of mastering her skills as a ballerina, she rooted deep into the minds of these tyrants until all clues pointed her to the balmy marshes of Mississippi.

They escaped in the heat of the night and hid in the twisted branches of a weeping willow until the sun came up. They hitchhiked back to Alabama in three days, where their father reminded them of their first love…music.

Allison took up guitar and they honed their harmonizing skills until even they could no longer tell which voice belonged to which sister. They took their act to the stage and were soon pursued by smooth talking men in slick suits that promised them fame and fortune if they would only sign on the dotted line. The girls were hypnotized and promptly sold their souls to the devil.

For a while everything went along nicely, but slowly they began to realize that without their souls, they couldn’t seem to write the songs they wanted to write or say the things they wanted to say or even to make a simple decision about their careers without doubting themselves. The devil was always lingering over their shoulders.

Years passed on and finally the sisters decided enough was enough. Contract or no, they would no longer be slaves to the devil! He had had his way with them and realized they weren’t making him any money, so he released them, but told them that he’d never give back their souls.
Downtrodden, but hopeful, the girls set out to New York City, hearing that this was a place that welcomed the soulless.

Along their path, they encountered a jolly ex-pirate that had given up his days of raping and pillaging to become a peaceful music producer. He took the girls under his wing and fed them sushi and brick oven pizza and gave them cheap wine to drink. They laughed and made music and he told them that souls cannot be bought and sold, only stifled.

Then the Pirate asked them a question that they had never before been asked. “How do YOU want your music to sound?”

The girls thought it was a trick at first and did not know how to respond, but they consulted and thought back on their lives and told him that they wanted it to sound like a fever-induced gypsy dream that you have after drinking too much red wine while listening to a cabaret singer in a southern speakeasy that is run by witches…and he knew exactly what they meant.

THE BEGINNING