Chuck Palahniuk - Invisible Monsters

I take a big bottle of Chanel Number Five from Evie's bathroom and a big bottle of Joy and a big bottle of White Shoulders, and I slosh the smell of a million parade float flowers all over the bedroom.

The fire, Evie's wedding inferno finds the trail of flowers in alcohol and chases me out into the hallway. That's what I love about fire, how it would kill me as quick as anybody else. How it can't know I'm its mother. It's so beautiful and powerful and beyond feeling anything for anybody, that's what I love about fire.

You can't stop any of this. You can't control. The fire in Evie's clothes is just more and more every second, and now the plot moves along without you pushing.

And I descend. Step-pause-step. The invisible showgirl. For once, what's happening is what I want. Even better than I expected. Nobody's noticed.

Our world is speeding straight ahead into the future. Flowers and stuffed mushrooms, wedding guests and string quartet, we're all going there together on the Planet Brandy Alexander. In the front hall, there's the Princess Princess thinking she's still in control.

The feeling is of supreme and ultimate control over all. Jump to the day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter. Jump to the day another house will stand here and the people living there won't know we ever happened.

"Where did you go?" Brandy says.

The immediate future, I would tell her.

Jump to Brandy and me, we can't find Ellis anywhere. Evie and all the Texas Cottrells can't find their groom, either, everybody laughing that nervous laughter. What bridesmaid has run off with him, everybody wants to know. Ha, ha.

I tug Brandy toward the door, but she shushes me. Ellis and the groom both missing ... a hundred Texans drinking hard . . . that ridiculous bride in her big drag wedding dress ... this is just too much fun for Brandy to walk out now.

Jump to Evie riding her big parade float out of the butler's pantry, her hands all fisted up, her veil and hair flying straight out behind her. Evie's shouting about how she done found her butt-sucking fag-assed new husband face-downed enjoying butt sex with everybody's old boyfriend in the butler's pantry.

Oh, Ellis.

I remember all his porno magazines, and all the details of anal, oral, rimming, fisting, felching. You could put yourself in the hospital trying to self-suck.

Oh, this is dazzling.

Of course, Evie's answer to everything is to heft her hoop skirt and run upstairs after a rifle except by now most of her bedroom is a Chanel Number Five perfumed wall of flames Evie has to ride her parade float right into. Everybody cell phones 91- 1 for help. Nobody's bothered enough to go into the butler's pantry and check out the action. Folks don't want to know what might be going on in there.

Go figure, but Texans seem to be a lot more comfortable around disastrous house fires than they are around anal sex.

I remember my folks. Scat and water sports. Sado and masochism.

Waiting for Evie to burn to death, everybody gets a fresh drink and goes to stand in the foyer at the foot of the stairs. You hear loud spanking from the butler's pantry. The painful kind where you spit on your hand first.

Brandy, the socially inappropriate thing she is, Brandy starts laughing. "This is going to be messy good fun," Brandy tells me out the side of her Plumbago mouth. "I put a handful of Bilax bowel evacuant in Ellis's last drink."

Oh, Ellis.

With all that's going on, Brandy could've gotten away if she hadn't started laughing.

You see, since right then, Evie steps out of that wall of flame at the top of the stairs. A rifle in her hands, her wedding dress burned down to the steel hoops, the silk flowers in her hair burned down to their wire skeletons, all her blonde hair burned off, Evie does her slow step-pausestep down the stairs with a rifle pointed right at Brandy Alexander.

With everybody looking up the stairs at Evie wearing nothing but wire and ashes, sweat and soot smeared all over her lucious hourglass transgender bod, we all watch Evelyn Cottrell in her big incorporated moment, and Evie screams, "You!"

She screams at Brandy Alexander down the barrel of the rifle, "You did it to me again. Another fire!"

Step-pause-step.

"I thought we were best friends," she says. "Sure, yes, I slept with your boyfriend, but who hasn't?" Evie says, with the gun and everything.

Step-pause-step.

"It's just not enough for you to be the best and most beautiful," Evie says. "Most people, if they looked as good as you, they'd tread water for the rest of their lives."

Step-pause-step.

"But no," Evie says, "Here you have to destroy everyone else."

The second floor fire inches down the foyer wallpaper, and wedding guests are scrambling for their wraps and bags, all of them headed outdoors with the wedding gifts, the silver and the crystal.

You hear that butt slapping sound from the butler's pantry.

"Shut up in there!" Evie yells. Back to Brandy, Evie says, "So maybe I'll spend some years in prison, but you'll have a big head start on me in hell!"

You hear the rifle cock.

The fire inches down the walls.

"Oh, God, yes, Jesus Christ," Ellis yells. "Oh, God, I'm coming!"

Brandy stops laughing. Bigger and prettier than ever, looking regal and annoyed and put-upon as if this is all a big joke, Brandy Alexander lifts a giant hand and looks at her watch.

And I'm about to become an only child.

And I could stop everything at this moment. I could throw off my veil, tell the truth, save lives. I'm me. Brandy's innocent. Here's my second chance. I could've opened my bedroom window years ago and let Shane inside. I could've not called the police all those times to suggest Shane's accident wasn't. What stands in my way is the story how Shane burned my clothes. How being mutilated made Shane the center of attention. And if I throw off my veil now, I'll just be a monster, a less than perfect, mutilated victim. I'll be only how I look. Just the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Honesty being the most boring thing in the planet Brandy Alexander.

And. Evie aims.

"Yes!" Ellis yells from the pantry. "Yes, do it, big guy! Give it to me! Shoot it!"

Evie squints down the barrel.

"Now!" Ellis is yelling. "Shoot it right in my mouth!"

Brandy smiles.

And I do nothing.

And Evie shoots Brandy Alexander right in the heart.

My life," Brandy says. "I'm dying, and I'm supposed to see my whole life."

Nobody's dying here. Give me denial.

Evie's shot her wad, dropped the rifle, and gone outside.

The police and paramedics are on their way, and the rest of the wedding guests are outside fighting over the wedding gifts, who gave what and who now has the right to take it back. All of it good messy fun.

Blood is pretty much all over Brandy Alexander, and she says, "I want to see my life."

From some back room, Ellis says, "You have the right to remain silent.”

Jump to me, I let go from holding Brandy's hand, my hand warm red with blood-born pathogens, I write on the burning wallpaper.

Your Name Is Shane McFarland.

You Were Born Twenty-Four Years Ago.

You Have A Sister, One Year Younger.

The fire's already eating my top line.

You Got Gonorrhea From A Special Contract Vice Operative And Your Family Threw You Out.

You Met Three Drag Queens Who Paid You To Start A Sex Change Because You Couldn't Think Of Anything You Wanted Less.

The fire's already eating my second line.

You Met Me.

I Am Your Sister, Shannon McFarland.

Me writing the truth in blood just minutes ahead of the fire eating it.

You Loved Me Because Even If You Didn't Recognize Me, You Knew I Was Your Sister. On Some Level, You Knew Right Away So You Loved Me.