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the-voice-of-hell · 3 years ago

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Rent is Theft, part 24

Read from the beginning here, read the previous chapter here. Note: My MC is a Filipina trans woman and I am not. If you have notes on that or anything else, hit me up.

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The air was thick with heat. Was it my imagination, or was the ceiling softly glowing orange? I felt like there was a wind coming from somewhere, like what you’d imagine the wind felt like in Mount Doom that was blowing Elijah Wood’s shag around. I felt it in my ears and it made it hard to hear myself or Leimomi.

But I persevered, running through any faerie tales I could remember, and making them as baroque with silly details as I could manage. The little mermaid had a waterlogged beanie baby collection with individual names, Bluebeard’s bride stuck her sisters back together with novelty Hello Kitty duct tape stolen from his sex dungeon. I couldn’t hear a word of it outside of my thoughts. Was I making a sound? Was I even breathing?

A building ache finally forced me to face biological reality again. I had to pee. My skin was on fire, the world was on fire, but it was still an invisible flame - nothing smoking, nothing scorching, no yellow inferno roiling out of my ruined flesh. It was just a feeling of dangerous, alarming heat, dancing over everything. Were there actual heat waves coming off my skin? I couldn’t tell. Sweat rained over my eyes and I blinked it away, but I forced myself to stand up.

I felt like a wooden skeleton. No muscle, just clacking fake bones. How was I moving? I reached the bathroom, stumbled through the door and almost fell down. Instinctively I reached for something to hold onto. I grabbed a dangling hand towel.

It immediately slipped out of its perch, causing a weird floppy piece of shiny garbage to double over and splatter to the ground. It was my improvised *redacted* How had I not noticed it sitting where I left it, at any point in the last few days? Where it hit the floor, a spray of green trash slime splurted out of the midsection, onto the tiles and my feet. It smelled like a dumpster.

I was just glad I didn’t fall on the floor, either from the incident or from despair, because I knew I would have pissed myself where I lay. I turned to the toilet and laboriously went through the necessary motions. In my imagination, the flushing toilet would have blown miraculously cooled pisswater back in my face, granted a moment’s surcease from the invisible flames, but no. This air wouldn’t take moisture, and that water was probably warm enough to slow boil eggs.

I walked again, the burning wooden skeleton, clacking away. In the bathroom door I was arrested by the scene before me. There were our little beds, like funeral biers - mine empty and Leimomi’s occupied by a limpid melting Ophelia. The upholstery glistened like the sweat on her body, drenched. The lighting fixtures held a dull light as if the heat in the air was pure electricity half waking them from the slumber we’d induced. Was that blackening along the walls, in the areas nearest the ceiling? The ceiling itself was definitely glowing orange now.

Leimomi lifted her head - clearly an agonizing thing to do - and tugged a pillow under it so she could more easily look at me. Drops ran down her face, but were they sweat or tears? She was too weary to make a facial expression that would tell. “Courtney,” her voice was minute, distant, rippled the way light is rippled by heat waves. “Tell another.”

As I walked back to my bed, black curls of slow-burned posters crumbled in my wake and fell like dry leaves. I surrendered to gravity carefully, one hand, one more, my hips, rolled over, feeling like dead weight. “I love you,” I said, not hearing a word of it. I took up my water bottle again, dribbling what I could past the lips, then told another story.

Were these thoughts without sounds? Could she hear them? Could she hear them with her mind, our bodies burned away from our souls, free to listen without ears? I didn’t know.

Once upon a time there was a young gal with a bad family. Maybe dad died, leaving her in the care of wicked stepmom, or maybe that was her real mom but she liked to pretend it wasn’t, due to the pain that somebody biologically obligated to care for you just doesn’t, a way to not feel like that was her fault - that she was inherently and uniquely horrible. People called her Cinderella because she was covered in the ashes of rock star posters.

Stepmom and three stepsisters made her do all the chores and such, but you know, that sort of thing isn’t usually like they say it is in stories. It’s not like, do these chores or we cut you, you ugly slag. It’s more like, “Oh I just can’t right now, could you please? You’re so much better at that,” or malicious compliance where they do the chores so bad it makes the more responsible person stop asking.

They’d make Cinderella do emotional labor too. The girls would gab about their drama all day, say “You’re such a good listener,” but never afford a moment of reciprocation. Stepmom would get home from work and need to take a shit, but had constipation so she’d be in there a long time. At some point back when Cinderella was eleven, she invited her into the bathroom, so she could pass that time venting about coworkers she hated. Cinderella was too young to realize this was a flavor of child abuse, putting worries onto someone who doesn’t deserve them, isn’t equipped to understand them - and also making it pretty likely she’d grow up into that “amirite ladies” culture of woe and bitchery, unable to have a conversation of her own about the nice things in life, only ever able to talk about who was a bitch to whom, or who’s getting fat, or whatever.

And there she was, a young lady, still not out from under the shadow of that porcelain throne. But somehow she hadn’t absorbed that particular type of damage - she still had the ability to dream, to think of things beautiful and interesting. It was worn down every time her stepmom spoke, but it still remained. She had a spark of life.

One day prom was coming - man I’m like the five hundredth person to turn this into a modern high school thing aren’t I? - and Cinderella really wanted to go. She just wanted a chance to feel beautiful, to maybe dance with somebody. There was no dream she would be loved, but just that she could feel something glittering and sweet. It went without saying then, that she was not going. Nobody had specifically forbidden it, nobody made any mention of it, but all preparations and discussion revolved around stepsisters and their needs.

The night of the prom came and those kids were out the door. Cinderella knew it was coming, but somehow spaced out on it until the last minute, until there was no denying it. As the door clicked shut, stepmom put up the legs on her recliner and turned up the volume on a commercial for the Kia Summer Sales Event. Cinderella walked upstairs like a ghost, and fell down crying in the hall.

The door to the linen closet opened, and a beautiful little figure in taffeta, purple,and rhinestones appeared, hair a beautifully piled coiff of glossy black ringlets, a pencil thin moustache on their lips. She looked up in amazement, not able to see clearly through the tears, no idea if she could trust what she was seeing.

“Prince?,” she asked.

It was indeed Prince, and he was funky. Perhaps in becoming a ghost he had lost a foot of height. But why was he appearing to her, and not to Morris Day? He said, “Yes, Cinderella. This is no dream. I was sent to make your life beautiful - but only for one shining moment.”

“Wow. But aren’t you a total *redacted* hound? How can you be a fairy godmother?”

“I might be the crown champion of boy vs. girl ball, but do I look like someone afraid to be called a fairy?”

“And you did that homophobic song about how a lesbian girl needs to learn to be straight.”

“Like I told Lisa and Wendy, we don’t talk about the back catalogue, girl.”

“Is this your punishment for something?”

“Being a Jehovah’s Witness. Turns out telling babies not to get crucial healthcare is a bad thing. But let’s focus on your problems. What is keeping you from the prom tonight?”

“My stepmom and stepsisters don’t care about me, just want me to slave away for them forever, never have a time for myself.”

“I will make them care about you, make them slaves to you, and make this time be only for yourself.” He pulled out a magic guitar, spraying sparkles across the beige carpet.

“No! I don’t want any of that.”

“But you want to go to prom, right girl?”

“Yeah. Yes, please, my lord.”

“I love the respect, but I am not allowed to be addressed as such, at this stage in my career. And so again, pray tell, what keeps you from this promenade? If you would not have me remove your problems, perhaps there are boons that can be offered.”

“Well, I don’t have a dress, or makeup, or nice hair, or a way to go to the school.”

“Crucial. I can work with this. Come.” He clapped twice above his head and led her into her bedroom. While he was unusually small, his magic guitar was full size and dragged on the carpet behind him.

In Cinderella’s room, under a silver shaft of moonlight, he did a little dance and grabbed his crotch. It was part of the magic, completely justified. Her room was basically a walk-in closet, and some of her cleaning stuff was jammed in there as well. He pointed his finger at a mop with a spray of sparkles. It transformed into a beautiful silver-white wig. He spun his finger in the air and it flew onto her head.

“Wow,” said Cinderella.

He picked up the guitar, did a spin, then played a cool riff. Her ratty sweats changed into a fuchsia ball gown with neon purple lace and a bodice covered in purple rhinestones. “It’s so beautiful,” she cried.

“You know it,” he said. “Now let’s sort out this situation.” He pointed the guitar’s head at her face like a gun and played a wild guitar solo. She could feel the ashes sliding around her skin, changing shape. Looking at a dingy mirror, she saw the carbon condense into eyeliner, eyeshadow, and glittering lipstick, leaving her skin clean and clear.

“I’m gonna cry again, I’m sorry,” she said, hand on her heart.

“Don’t ruin that makeup, girl. There is one item left to attend to. Thy conveyance. Approach me.” He turned his back to her and with a wave of his hand the window opened.

She came near to the little man, not knowing what to expect. As she drew near, he seemed to increase in size - no, the whole world was increasing in size, or she was shrinking! He scooched forward on his guitar, leaving room for her to straddle it in the back, and then it started to fly. She grabbed his little waist and they flew off into the night sky.

Smoke then, curling around my body like tendrils from incense, rising to pool and eddy at the ceiling. It intensified, white and opaque at the corners of my vision, but inverted to darkness as it reached the glowing orange expanse - a negative print of the ocean, the opposite of water.

Prince flew her to school and daintily alit to the gymnasium roof. “I’ll wait for you under the north bleachers of the baseball field. If you aren’t there at midnight, I cannot help you get home.”

“Thank you so much, Prince! I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“All I really need is to know that U believe.” He pointed at the sky and took a tiny bow.

Cinderella found a hatch to get down from the roof. There was a ladder to a catwalk high above the gym floor, and she could see the prom below. A few people bustled to do the last minute preparations, but there was only one dim light on.

She wandered around looking for a way down and found nothing. What good was it to be at prom if you could only watch it from afar? But at last she found a rope to climb down on - one of the ropes they’d use in PR class, with knots at regular intervals. She tossed it down and started climbing.

When she got to the bottom, she realized she was in the middle of the dance floor. As party lights came on and the rest of the students came in, she was the center of attention. “Who is she?” “How did she get in here?” They were impressed.

She humbly demurred and headed to the punch bowls. A chaperone was glaring at her and not noticing somebody else spiking the punch. It was going to be one of those nights. The DJ led off with “Fight for Your Right to Party,” which was ironic because fighting for your right to party is expressly against policy at school events.

Phew, I thought. Are we alive or dead? Will this ever end? I can’t stand it. Christ.

A kinda short dapper gentleman approached Cinderella and said, “Hey babe, I haven’t seen you around the school before. Wanna cut a rug?”

“There’s no rug, but I’ll dance.”

“Let’s buff this basketball court wax to a high shine.”

They danced and chatted softly between songs, and enjoyed each other’s company. Occasionally people would congratulate the dapper gentleman on his fortune in monopolizing the attention of a radiant queen. People would smile at them and ask questions, take pics of her dress on their cellphones.

Her own stepsisters didn’t recognize her. It was a magical and glittering moment. But best of all, she was really starting to feel like a woman, like a person who could be sought after by a dashing suitor. It was the dapper gentleman that was making her feel like that, with his smooth ways. Maybe he felt the need to stay with her because he was insecure about his height, or maybe she was just that appealing to him, but he was gently affectionate and suave and cool, and he knew how to dance.

I could see myself limned in blue and yellow flames like a gas stove burner. The world above the orange glow of a furnace, the walls around cracking and blistering, the world below a whorl of charcoal and soot. In between the flesh cooked with no end.

Proms crown people, right? That’s why people make Cinderella into a prom story on Nickelodeon or whatever, so they can get the prince in there. So ceremony begins and they crown dapper gentleman and mystery girl! They say come to the stage, so we can crown thee at the stroke of midnight.

That reminds her that she’s about to lose her magic, miss her ride. But will it be worth it? No, if she was left in dingy sweats and a mop wig on stage, she’d never live it down. This was supposed to be a glittering and magical moment, but now it would end in tragedy.

She couldn’t resist, she kissed him one time, then said, “I’m sorry,” and bolted for the door. People were too surprised to react fast, and she lost any pursuers on her way to the baseball field. Would Prince be there? Midnight was so close.

At the stroke of midnight she was halfway to the field, when she saw him rise into the night sky, momentarily silhouetted by the moon - Prince, straddling a magic guitar. And just like that, the mop head fell into her hands, the ashes spread over her skin, the dress became dirty sweats.

A whirlwind of ashen scraps blew past my face and I choked on the burning trash.

There’s more, there’s more. I swear. I can do it for you, Leimomi. I can do it for what’s left of you. She, um, she went home on foot, right? Fuck, glass slippers. There’s supposed to be slippers. I forgot them.

I know, facial recognition technology. Yeah. So dapper Deandre is going through the school after that, using the facial recognition software on his phone, comparing all the girls with the mystery lady on his phone. The stepsisters are all like, me, me, but... No, that doesn’t even make sense.

She’s going to get found, like, maybe she’s the equivalent of a TA but for the janitor instead. A JA, that’s our Cinderella, and he takes a pic of her face almost by accident and it matches and he’s like, baby it’s me.

She can’t see that, doesn’t want to be known the way she is now, which the janitor thinks is lame because you shouldn’t be ashamed of your class, you know? Patrick’s a janitor. Ugh, where was I? She like, um...

Bursts of sparks and chunks of molten rock fell in random splashes around us. If any of that touched our boiling meat, it would bore a hole straight through like industrial acid. No escape was possible, only luck of the draw. Who would survive and what would be left of them?, like the movie said.

Cinderella! Dapper Deandre prom king finds her and says, “It’s OK, sometimes your clothes and your hair and stuff are gonna suck, but you’re beautiful and cute and I will never forget our night together. If you don’t wanna be with me, that’s cool, but I just hope, I dunno...” And she kisses him It’s romantic because she looks gross but he’s like. Fuck.

The world was coming apart into orbs of light raining into an abyss. Nothing remained between what had once been the floor and ceiling, and no one. There was only a heat too intense to even bother with becoming fire. It had become another state of matter, or nothing at all.

At last the light was consumed with black.

***