Chuck Palahniuk - Invisible Monsters Remix

How embarrassing.

Give me needy emotional whining bullshit.

Flash.

Give me self-absorbed egocentric twaddle.

Christ.

Fuck me. I’m so tired of being me. Me beautiful. Me ugly. Blond. Brunette. A million fucking fashion makeovers that only leave me trapped being me.

Who I was before the accident is just a story now. Everything before now, before now, before now, is just a story I carry around. I guess that would apply to anybody in the world. What I need is a new story about who I am.

What I need to do is fuck up so bad I can’t save myself.

ump way back to a fashion shoot at this slaughterhouse where whole pigs without their insides hang as thick as fringe from a moving chain. Evie and me wear Bibo Kelley stainless steel party dresses while the chain zips by behind us at about a hundred pigs an hour, and Evie says, “After your brother was mutilated, then what?”

The photographer looks at his light meter and says, “Nope. No way.”

The art director says, “Girls, we’re getting too much glare off the carcasses.”

Each pig goes by big as a hollow tree, all red and shining inside and covered in this really nice pigskin on the outside just after someone’s singed the hair off with a blowtorch. This makes me feel all stubbly by comparison, and I have to count back to my last waxing.

And Evie goes, “Your brother?”

And I’m, like, counting Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday …

“How did he go from being mutilated to being dead?” Evie says.

These pigs keep going by too fast for the art director to powder down their shine. You have to wonder how pigs keep their skin so nice. If now farmers use sunblock or what. Probably, I figure it’s been a month since I was as smooth as they are. The way some salons use their new lasers, even with the cooling gel, they might as well use a blowtorch.

“Space girl,” Evie says to me. “Phone home.”

The whole pig place is refrigerated too much to wear a stainless steel dress around. Guys in white A-line coats and boots with low heels get to spray superheated steam in where the pigs insides were, and I’m ready to trade them jobs. I’m ready to trade jobs with the pigs, even. To Evie, I say, “The police wouldn’t buy the hairspray story. They were sure my father had raged on Shane’s face. Or my mom had put the hairspray can in the trash. They called it ‘neglect.’”

The photographer says, “What if we regroup and backlight the carcasses?”

“Too much strobe effect as they go past,” the art director says.

Evie says, “Why’d the police think that?”

“Beats me,” I say. “Somebody just kept making anonymous calls to them.”

The photographer says, “Can we stop the chain?”

The art director says, “Not unless we can stop people from eating meat.”

We’re still hours away from taking a real break, and Evie says, “Somebody lied to the police?”

The pig guys are checking us out, and some are pretty cute. They laugh and slide their hands up and down fast on their shiny black steamhoses. Curling their tongues at us. Flirting.

“Then Shane ran away,” I tell Evie. “Simple as that. A couple years ago, my folks got a call he was dead.”

We step back as close as we can to the pigs going by, still warm. The floor seems to be really greasy, and Evie starts telling me about an idea she has for a remake of Cinderella , only instead of the little birds and animals making her a dress, they do cosmetic surgery. Bluebirds give her a face-lift. Squirrels give her implants. Snakes, liposuction. Plus, Cinderella starts out as a lonely little boy.

“As much attention as he got,” I tell Evie, “I’d bet my brother put that hairspray can in the fire himself.”

here had to be some better way to kill Brandy. To set me free. Some quick permanent closure. Some kind of cross fire I could walk away from. Evie hates me by now. Brandy looks just like I used to. Manus is still so in love with Brandy he’d follow her anywhere, even if he’s not sure why. All I’d have to do is get Brandy cross-haired in front of Evie’s rifle.

Bathroom talk.

Brandy’s suit jacket with its sanitary little waist and mod three-quarter sleeves is still folded on the aquamarine countertop beside the big clamshell sink. I pick up the jacket, and my souvenir from the future falls out. It’s a postcard of clean, sun-bleached 1962 skies and an opening-day Space Needle. You could look out the bathroom’s porthole windows and see what’s become of the future. Overrun with Goths wearing sandals and soaking lentils at home, the future I wanted is gone. The future I was promised. Everything I expected. The way everything was supposed to turn out. Happiness and peace and love and comfort.

When did the future , Ellis once wrote on the back of a postcard, switch from being a promise to a threat?

I tuck the postcard between the vaginoplasty brochures and the labiaplasty handouts stuck between the pages of the Miss Rona book. On the cover is a satellite photo of Hurricane Blonde just off the West Coast of her face. The blond is crowded with pearls, and what could be diamonds sparkle here and there.

She looks very happy. I put the book back in the inside pocket of Brandy’s jacket. I pick up the cosmetics and drugs scattered across the countertops and I put them away. Sun comes through the porthole windows at a low, low angle, and the post office will be closing soon. There’s still Evie’s insurance money to pick up. At least a half million dollars, I figure. What you can do with all that money, I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll find out.

Brandy’s lapsed into major hair emergency status so I shake her.

Brandy’s Aubergine Dreams eyes flicker, blink, flicker, squint.

Her hair, it’s gotten all flat in the back.

Brandy comes up on one elbow. “You know,” she says, “I’m on drugs so it’s all right if I tell you this.” Brandy looks at me bent over her, offering a hand up. “I have to tell you,” Brandy says, “but I do love you.” She says, “I can’t tell how this is for you, but I want us to be a family.”

My brother wants to marry me.

I give Brandy a hand up. Brandy leans on me, Brandy, she leans on the edge of the countertop. She says, “This wouldn’t be a sister thing.” Brandy says, “I still have some days left in my Real Life Training.”