Invisible Monsters

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

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.