Constant 5, Chapter 14: I Did My Best, part 1 (draft)

Chapter fourteen, the conclusion to book 5, has grown a little beyond expectations so for now I'm splitting it in two. I should have part two ready for you by the end of the week. Enjoy! As always, feedback and comments appreciated. At the moment, Book 5 is looking to come in at just a touch over 120k words.

Fourteen: I Did My Best

The fevered chanting of her name subsided at the sound of a single chord, struck from the darkness of an empty stage. She emerged to rapturous silence, lit only by a single spotlight. Pale blue jeans, silk shirt, and with each slow step an acoustic note, achingly pure, plucked from her guitar.

            The young woman curled around the instrument, alone in the spotlight and we were silent observers, voyeurs from the surrounding darkness. An audible breath, tip of tongue wetting her lips, her little smile magnified a thousandfold on massive screens now gleaming to life, and her voice rang out, tremulous and pure, a nightingale’s fall across a night sky.

            Now I've heard there was a secret chord, she sang, and her voice gained in strength, deepening with the timber of someone much older. She drew out the ‘secret chord’, smile twitching into mischievousness, sang on, her voice swelling to fill the stadium, until she reached “pleased the Lord,” and spotlights lanced down to reveal tall, muscular men in business suits, cocky grins, watches gleaming at their wrist, bold ties, sturdy shoes. They strutted forward, encircled and obscured her from the audience as she cried out with vampish abandon, and their oppressive dance threatened some violence on the now hidden girl.

            “You don’t really care for music,” Sin-DI whispered breathlessly. “Do you?”

            An eruption of light. The men fell back, and she exploded from their midst, glowing in a shimmering pink and purple bodysuit, long blonde hair cascading behind her as she pranced over the fallen men. It goes like this! she cried out, the fourth, the fifth, music swelling, pyrotechnics exploding, concussive waves of beats and ripping guitars and the crowd went fucking insane. Stuttering techno captured the refrain, hallelujah, hallelujah, repeated with heretical enthusiasm by a hundred thousand voices as Sin-DI strutted across the stage, legs impossibly long and bare in crucifix-shaped platform heels as she belted out the old song.

            Your faith was strong, she wailed, you needed proof, as silvery light glimmered across her skin. Her beauty and the moonlight, she sang, a sultry glance over the shoulder, wet lips, a toss of hair—overthrew you, and now her grin was sinister and sensual, silver shifting crimson, as new spotlights rose on a row of chairs, the kind you might find in any kitchen. Out of the cacophony of light and noise marched gorgeous women, and each led one of the suited men by their tie. Like dogs on leashes, each man was made to sit.

            She tied you, Sin-DI purred, and the men struggled dramatically against their bondage, as each of the women drew a pair of comically oversized scissors from beneath each seat. And she cut your—

            She paused, smiled wickedly and the scissors snapped—

            Hair; and each women bent down and passionately kissed her victim, and Sin-DI belted out, and from your lips drew the Hallelujah, and then, through some trickery of light and stagecraft, the men were gone, and rising from each seat was another sexy woman, lingerie clad, strutting in heels, and they all joined her in a triumphant howl of Hallelujah, Hallelujah, as the stage disappeared in a blaze of incandescent flames.

            Emma squeezed my hand, thank you, she mouthed, voice drowned by the cacophony of the show.

            I gave her a hug, and we watched as chaos and beauty unfurled on stage, reached an ecstatic heights—a blaze of light in every word—stage flaring high with phosphorescence and hallucinatory holographic projections, women writhing with epiphanic passion—and then, suddenly, gone, silence echoing as that single, original spotlight picked out Sin-DI, panting, face flushed, and alone, as darkness descended around her once more and she sang acapella, her voice rising clear and pure to the rafters:

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong….

And she turned, slightly, facing offstage and I swear, an irresistible smile overtook her, and staring at me—straight at me, though no one else could see—she finished:

I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

And the lights faded, and she disappeared into deep blackness, until the echoed final word faded and nothing remained.

            Or so it must’ve seemed from the point of view of the audience; but backstage, it was organized chaos as props were moved, automated systems seamlessly shifting heavy set pieces into place, and a small army of dancers swept through, changing costumes.

            Meanwhile, out there, massive screens projected a short video, a compilation of talking heads decrying the musician, ‘sensationalist trash,’ said one sound bite, ‘vile, repugnant,’ another, ‘hedonistic, indulgent and decadent,’ ‘filth’, ‘poisoning young girls’ minds’—and with these slurs reverberating across the stadium, lights slowly rose on Sin-DI as she was slowly lifted high above the crowd on a rotating cylinder, facing each insult flung her way until every screen lit up with no less than the President of the United States himself, a viral clip from a news briefing two weeks past: “what do I think of Sin-DI? She’s terrible, just terrible,” he said, voice echoing across the stadium. “That girl should be ashamed of herself. She’s a toxic, queer, filthy tool of the leftist agenda undermining the sanctity of family. Also, she’s a very naughty girl.”

            Sin-DI held one hand to her chest: who, me? ruby lips an ‘o’ of surprise, before letting loose with a loud girlish giggle and launching into the next song, Naughty Girl.

***

Two hours earlier, and the guy at the door scanned our tickets. His reader bleeped, he gave us a look-over, scanned again and shrugged. “This way,” he said, ushering us a different way. Basking in the envious stares of those further back the line, we made our way through a perfunctory security check, into a well-decorated room, with bottles chilling in ice buckets, an open bar and a pair of well-dressed waiters, one male, the other female. A few small screens turned down low played a pre-show compilation of interviews and promotional videos. Meanwhile, a small coterie of minor but recognizable celebrities hovered about, as did a few musicians, a couple of reporters, and a politician with his two teenage daughters.

            “What just happened?” Emma whispered.

            “Just roll with it, Em.”

            “Is that…?

            I laughed. “Yeah, I think it is.”
            “Do we—”

            “Chill? Hell yeah, babe, I guess we do.” The waiter, a handsome young guy who took his job way too seriously, snapped to attention as we approached the table. He offered us two slim flutes fizzing with Champagne. I took one and after a moment’s hesitation, so did Emma. I raised my glass in cheers; she bit her lip. She looked around the room, uncertain, at the other guests, then back to me. I raised an eyebrow. Brow knitted with consternation, she gnawed her lip for another moment longer. Then, she laughed. We clinked glasses and drank, deeply.

            “Oh, that’s nice,” she said and then, leaning closer, “Cindy, what’s going on?”

            I shrugged. “Not a clue; maybe some random fan club lottery?” Which wasn’t quite true: I had my suspicions but kept them to myself. “I guess tonight, we’re VIPs.” I gave her a little hug. “You’re definitely a very important person.”
            Blushing, she scanned the room and the other guests. “Oh my, Cindy, do you know who that girl is?—she won a grammy last year,” Emma whispered, picking out a lithe woman with amazing hair, wearing a long, tight and glittering evening dress. “And that woman there, she was a runner-up for a Pulitzer.” Said writer was a woman in her mid-thirties, leaning casually against the wall with a heavy tumbler in hand, piercing eyes beneath thick-rimmed glasses, classy and sexy in a navy jumpsuit, gold belt, chandelier earrings. Emma blinked. “I listen to that guy’s podcast.”

            “And you,” I said, grinning, “are Emma Williams, and you’re just as awesome as any of those people.”

            Emma’s face lit up with pleasure, which she hid behind a sip, then with mock seriousness pronounced the same: “And you, Cindy Bellamy, are also awesome.” Another sip and then she added, “you really are, you know. Thank you. For bringing me tonight. It—means a lot, it really does, it’s been a… difficult couple of months.” Her smile wavered. She took a deep breath, firmly restored a smile to her face. “But you’ve been there for me.” Fleetingly, she touched my shoulder, squeezed my upper arm. “You’re a really good friend.”

            Tears dotted my eyes, and I felt hot, and blushed. “I swear to God, Emma, if you make me cry and ruin my makeup, I’ll—”

            Her eyes sparkled with mirth. “Know what we should do?”

            “What?”

            “Get shitfaced,” she said, and led me to the bar.  

            The bartender, a tall, muscular man who looked decidedly uncomfortable in his suit, turned to Emma. “Sex on the Beach,” she said.

            I grinned. “Make it two.”

            We touched glasses, drank, looked wide-eyed with pleasure at each other at how good it tasted. On a screen above us, an interviewer—it’s him, Emma hissed, nodding towards the podcaster—sat in intense discussion with Sin-DI, something about the photo spread in Lumen several months back, questioning the morality of the imagery, the social responsibility the musician bore for corrupting young minds.

            “She fucking tore me to pieces,” a voice drolly commented. “Like lamb to the slaughter.” It was the podcaster, wearing a tux. “Max,” he said, “Max Longfield.”

            Emma blushed. “I love your show.”

            He nodded his appreciation. “The whole thing was a setup. People tried to spin it like I went after her, a right-wing crusade against this innocent young girl.” He laughed. “Innocent my ass. Don’t be fooled by that one. The whole thing was choreographed.”

She’s twenty-one, has the savvy of a fifty-year-old media veteran. For example, you know that quote from the president, the ‘naughty girl’ one? Word has it, her team pulled in some favors, got him to say that.”

            “No way.”

            He shrugged. “Apparently so.”

            I smiled into my drink, and Emma asked: “why’d you do it, let her tear make a fool of you?”
            “You kidding? I was an absolute nobody, and her agent got in touch with me out of the blue, said Sin-DI liked my show, invited me in for a talk and next thing I knew, my little interview was everywhere. My audience doubled after that show, tripled. And we’ve got this great thing going now, she keeps inviting me back to play the nasty patriarchal dickhead and she’s just this little girl who snaps back with the clever answers, and my audience loves it, and her fans love it, too.”

            We nodded, and he looked us over and asked, “and you’re…?”

            “Here on behalf of Volumina International,” I said. “Emma’s Director of Global Markets.”

            Emma coughed into her drink.

            He shook her hand, turned back to me, and added, “Has anyone ever told you that you—you know….”

            “What?”

            “Look like her. Sin-DI, I mean. Especially dressed like that.” A wave of the hand highlighted my outfit, the flirty dress and bobbing pigtails. “That’s the Lumen outfit from… Date Night, right? I thought you might be a body double.”

            “Who, me?” I held a hand to my chest and giggled. “I bet you say that to all the short, blonde girls. But no, I’m just a secretary. I do all the stuff she doesn’t want to,” I said, touching Emma’s shoulder.

            She grinned. “You know, Max isn’t half wrong. I don’t know how I never noticed it before, but you do look like her, a bit, more than a bit, like a… sister instead of a twin, if you get what I mean? Especially dressed like that, and the makeup.”

            The outfit was Willow’s idea, she’d done my hair and makeup before the show. You’ve got to take her, Willow said, Em needs the night out more than any of us. Yeah, Mel added, grimacing, but fucking hell, I wish I was going.

            You like Sin-DI? I asked, isn’t she a bit glitter and sparkle for you? But Mel laughed. Sure, just like you, princess, but I like you too. Besides, that bitch doesn’t take bullshit from anyone. Then she turned a hungry grin on me and added, also, she’s fucking hot. After that, they both insisted that if they weren’t going, they got to choose my outfit for the night, which is how I ended up decked out like some teenage wet dream on her prom night—Willow’s choice—strapped into some decidedly wicked and tight lingerie, Mel’s.

            “That’s me,” I said. “Blonde bimbo superstar.”

            “Volumina—that’s market research, right?” Max the podcaster directed this to Emma, though his gaze still lingered on my Sin-DI adjacent tits.

            Emma nodded. “Sin-DI’s looking to deepen her market penetration abroad, adapting her image to foreign mores without diluting the brand. She asked us in to evaluate the show and draw up—”

            Grinning, I left her there. She glared murder at me but kept smiling, and I wandered back to the bar.

            “She’s got a beautiful smile,” the bartender said, tugging at his collar.

            “She really does,” and I thought, I did that, I helped bring that smile back. I asked the bartender his name—John—commented he seemed a bit uncomfortable, and he admitted he’d been swapped in to replace the normal bartender, who was off sick. Normally, he worked backstage, a roadie hefting heavy gear with a side hustle in mixology.

            “Best one of these I’ve ever had,” I said, tapping my glass, and he grinned, shaking up another. We chatted for a bit, and I watched Emma until she broke away from the podcaster, and she joined me at the bar, glaring, struggling to hide a smile.

            “Cindy Bellamy,” she said, “I take back everything I said. You are most certainly not awesome. If you ever do that again, I’ll kick you in the shins.” I stuck my tongue out at her, and she laughed. “Global Markets, really?”

            “It suited you.”

            “I had no idea what to say!”

            “Didn’t look that way.”

            “I was just making it up as I went along.”

            “Emma,” I said, “everyone’s just making it up as they go along. You, that guy—even Sin-DI, probably.”

            “You?”

            I laughed.

            She thought about that for a second, then turned to the bartender. I made introductions, and watched with pleasure as the bartender blushed, and Emma stammered: “Sex on…,” she coughed, then continued: “um, bellini, please?”

            “This guy, too,” I said, “he should be backstage, but they’ve got him mixing drinks.”

            “I like it,” he said, “I get to meet cool people, like you two. It’s the suit and tie I hate.”

            We stayed like that for a bit, two gorgeous girls leaning up against the bar, in our sexy dresses, with our best makeup and hair, chatting to a good-looking bartender, and maybe it was the booze, or maybe the company, or a simmering anticipation of the show, but as we talked, and flirted, both of us, but mostly Emma, cheeks spotted prettily in pink, a warmth, both profound and pleasing, grew in me and I relaxed, giggled at John’s jokes, touched Emma’s hand, and smiled.

            So did Emma. God but did she ever have a gorgeous smile, it almost brought tears to my eyes to see her smile so easily once more; it’d had been far too long.

“What?” Her smile grew, cheeks now a deeper red from drinking.

            “Nothing. It’s just… nothing.” And then, blurting it out, “it’s just nice to see you happy again.”

            “I’m sorry,” she said, then winced. “No. I’m not, actually. I’m not sorry. I wasn’t well, but I’m getting better. But I never wanted to worry you or the others. But especially you.” I asked why, and she added, “Because I see how it gets to you. We all do, we see how much you care, how it—hurts you, when we’re hurting, as if it’s somehow your fault, even if you try and hide it, and won’t talk about it.”

            “Em—”

            “You say I’ve got a beautiful smile. But so do you, Cindy.” She brushed the side of my face with the back of her hand, gripped my naked shoulder tenderly. “We see how unhappy you are, you know. We don’t push, but—well. Hopefully you can be happy too, someday.”

            I tried to smile, failed, and tears welled in my eyes. “Goddamn it, Em, now look what you’ve done.”

            Laughing softly, she drew me into a hug, and we clung to each other like that, for an all too brief time, as that early warmth expanded and grew into a pleasant heat, both fierce and protective, and filled me to the brim. I cried. Ruined my goddamn makeup. And totally worth it as I held her and knew: she was my friend, and she’d needed me, and I’d done right by her. I did this and no matter what else happens, I helped Emma find her smile again, and that was worth something, worth as much as anything else I’d ever done.

            A gentle but insistent chime played, indicating the start of the show. Our little girly moment ended, tissues plucked from purses dabbing at the corner of our eyes, watery grins and just enough time for the toilet. Makeup fixed, hair poked and prodded into place, outfits tweaked and with a fresh drink in hand, we joined the other VIP guests as John led us backstage for the start of the show.

***

And a young man sat in a small, windowless room, deep beneath a heavy metal nightclub. He was naked but for a wide collar at his neck. Other than the faint buzz of lights overhead, the room was completely silent. He sat gingerly perched on the edge of a simple cot. The space between his thighs was completely smooth and featureless, like an old-fashioned doll’s.

            The door opened silently, and a man entered the room. His image flickered very slightly as he passed from the corridor into the room. The man had visited often since his prisoner had been brought here. Hello Quinn, the man said that first time, standing to one side of the open door. The young man had not responded. His pale skin had been bruised, a patchwork of mottled purple and yellow beneath harsh lights, bright and flat, and one eye swollen shut. Perhaps you are considering whether you could rush past me, the man continued, and escape. Yes, you can. The door, as you can see, remains open. You are free to leave as you wish.

            Quinn’s eyes flicked to the door. Thin lips curved in a sneer. What, just so your goon can have another go at me?

            No, the other man said. I promise you, Dmytro won’t stop you. Only, perhaps you should watch this first before you leave.

            A panel recessed within one of the walls glowed into life and Quinn saw the recording of the night before, his anal rape, the dildo he fellated, the cheap negligee and bright red lipstick and the tears from glassy eyes even as he whimpered, this is what I want, please, more. The footage was raw and unmodified, his face unblurred. His memory of the previous night was unclear, but now Quinn saw the night’s abuse laid bare. He clutched his stomach and gagged and made a low groaning noise.

            My name is Darius, the man by the door said. That recording is already online. You’ll be pleased to know it was one of your most successful to date. Oh, don’t worry, your face is blurred. But it doesn’t have to be.

            Quinn stared at the man. You’re blackmailing me.

            Aren’t you the bright one?

            That bitch drugged me and raped me. I’ll—

            Go to the cops? Darius laughed. Please, even you’re not that stupid.

            Behind him, the looping footage on the screen flickered: same room, same mattress, only now it was a young woman, naked, tied and gagged, eyes glazed, lying supine on the mattress; and Quinn, red-faced looming over her, forcing himself on her, laughing. His face was clear to see. The footage shrunk to one corner of the screen to be replaced by another, and another, until the entire screen was a mosaic of his sexual assaults on a dozen different women.

            I wonder, Darius mused, how the arrest, prosecution and lifetime imprisonment of his eldest son for—oh, so many crimes—would impact your father’s political ambitions? Or your mother’s standing in a charity founded on wholesome family values?

            The young man blanched.

            There’s also certain—vested interests, aren’t there, Quinn, in this service you run, individuals of some influence and notoriety?

            Quinn opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Darius leaned a little closer, what was that? I can’t hear you; and this time, his voice a dry whisper, Quinn answered, yes.

            You’ve given me a lot to work with, Quinn, names, addresses, personal details. So many people and a whole lot of compromising material. Once you’ve helped me—

            I won’t—

            Darius smiled and any earlier pleasantness was absent. Of course you will, he said.

            They’ll kill me.

            If you’re lucky, Darius said. But it just so happens I have an alternative to offer.

            That was four weeks ago, and how much a life can change in so short a time. And yet also, not at all, as during the working week, Quinn returned to his normal life. He worked at his father’s firm, and went out for drinks afterwards with the guys, wore his tailored suits and then went home to his expensive condo, though always alone, he hadn’t brought a girl home with him since that night. How could he, with his genitals sealed away beneath an application of artificial flesh bonded to his crotch that left him smooth and sexless, forcing him to sit to piss? And all too quickly, the weekend would come and he returned, of his own volition, to The Pit, passing through the special entrance that led directly to The Empyrium and returning to that small, featureless room deep underground, where he sat and waited for the night’s instructions.

            He could imagine, as he did every night but especially in this place, the slow, unwanted, gradual but inexorable transformation of his body. He felt it with creeping horror, a physical dread at what was happening to him. He saw, on the video of that first night, what had been done to him, the needle jabbed in his ass, the clear liquid injected into his body, estrogen, enough for a month.

            And last week, he’d been given the option: inject yourself with another month’s dose. Or leave. The choice was offered to him in this very same room, with videos playing across each wall, an encroaching reminder of Quinn’s violence against women. He sat on the cot and watched as he fucked a short, slim redhead, cruelly bound and struggling, clearly in pain as she cried out, and he slapped her, and roughly grabbed her tits, swearing, thrusting, mocking her, you love it, he said, you want this.

            You want this, Darius said, with an assistant in the room, watching and giving precise instructions as Quinn pinched fat and slid the needle, for the first time, an inch deep into his belly, forty-five degree and two inches laterally from the bellybutton, and injected himself: the gentle press of the plunger, a nauseatingly cold trickle beneath the skin, and then the sensation of a lump, trapped under his flesh, but seeping into his blood, his brain.

            This is a gift, said Dmytro, the man who’d been there that first night, a mountain of a muscle brimming with hostility, his very presence a terror to Quinn. You should thank us.

            Thank you, Quinn whispered.

            Four weeks, and every morning he inspected himself in the mirror, searching for those inevitable ambiguities newly inscribed in the flesh. Nothing yet, but he knew what to expect, what was coming, he’d done his research. Soon, his skin would soften, and afterwards so would his muscles, he’d grow weaker. Body hair would thin, and breasts grow. Testicles, wither. Also his brain, the effects there less measurable but he imagined himself placid, pathetic and compliant: a girl, not just in body but in mind. He shivered, then and now; always, at the thought of these inexorable changes, and fought back tears at the unfairness of it all.

            Tonight, there would be further ignominy. They might make him dance, all but naked, in a cage suspended high above the floor, skin gleaming under hot lights with shimmer lotion and sweat for the heaving crowd below. Or he would squirm and struggle, locked in stocks, his ass thrust high beneath a skimpy skirt, or framed in leather pants, face masked, as passing patrons paddled him at their pleasure. Perhaps he might serve, scurrying in heels in which he could barely walk, in the tightest of long leather skirts, arms chained to his side, bearing drinks to wealthy customers; or as some fetishistic maid, trapped in an avalanche of petticoats and crinoline.

            Already, he’d recognized a few patrons as friends of his father’s, and then he was thankful for the disguise, the incongruity of his appearance to his real self. But inside, he died for shame, to find himself serving these men and women that knew him as an equal, and shuddered to think they might know him, tell his parents, and that the punishment might continue even at home.

            Every week, there would be the removal of the strips of synthetic skin between his legs, the resetting of the catheter and then the careful reapplication, forming a new smooth front, a fleshy chastity belt that meant he had to sit down to take a piss, and hadn’t attended the gym for a month. During weekend days, lessons and practice in walking and sitting and how to hold your hands, each reinforced by the collar at his neck, or the occasional drip of the drug collected from his apartment, all to ensure compliance and successful learning. Makeup. Shoes. Demeanor. Gradually, week by week, Darius lay the foundation for a certain kind of girl, a sexy, showy, submissive girl, precisely the type Quinn admired and despised in equal measure yet found himself slowly becoming.

            The door opened. Darius entered, accompanied by Dmytro. The large man carried a small box, and Darius smiled. Quinn’s stomach twisted and sank, to see that smile.

            I come bearing gifts, Darius said.

            Dmytro placed the box on the cot. His face was an angry scowl, the look he cast in Quinn’s direction resentful and dark. But following Darius’ instructions, he opened the container. Inside of the box, submerged in some clear but viscous liquid, sat what looked like a pair of pale grey lumps. It took a moment for him to recognize them for they were, disembodied tits, large and shapely.

            For you, Darius said.

            Quinn gaped, stumbled back against the wall. No.

            Most certainly, yes.

            I can’t hide those—

            They’re not for hiding.

            You can’t—I can’t—at work, the office, at work they’ll see—

            Hmm. And I wonder, Darius said, those girls you hurt, when they went back to work, did others see the bruises on their arms and legs, their faces? Did they see the videos you published? The girls you raped, could they hide from the knowledge of what happened?

            Quinn’s face contorted, he grimaced and he bared his teeth, cursed and swore revenge, clenched his fists and threw himself against the wall, stalked to the door, blanched, collapsed the floor, gagged and cried and then, eventually, he submitted.

            Good girl, Darius said.

***

Bare-chested dancers, sweat and shimmer. A detonation of glitter, the final lyrics of Tramp echoing, and then lights and silence fell. Then cheering, the rising crescendo of ‘encore,’ ‘encore’ out of a sea of flickering lights, tens of thousands of digital LED armbands held high. Pilgrim’s Progress, they shouted, Want and eventually the singular chant for Broken Flowers.

            Backstage, I read the latest update of Darius’s revenge. Quinn’s prosthetic tits swelled against the constraints of a blood-red bikini, the color a match for painted lips forced into a rictus of a genuine smile. A second photo showed him masked, bounded and gagged, on display in one of the Empyreans’ BDSM playrooms. Grimacing, I slipped the phone back into my clutch. I didn’t agree with Darius’s methods of punishment or rehabilitation. I know that Anna didn’t either. But in a way, it was out of our hands. Just so long as the video of Emma no longer existed.

            She was off somewhere, talking to that roadie-turned-bartender, John. He’d brought her a cocktail during the show. Last I’d seen her, she was red-faced with drink, flirting outrageously, the happiest I’d seen her in months. That John guy seemed okay. He looked like the kind of guy who’d treat her well. He’d better. And she certainly didn’t need a third wheel hanging on. I was glad she was with him, enjoying herself. I missed her, though.

            To one side, the final round of performers found their position as stage pieces shifted into place. Everyone efficient and professional, the air humming with the anticipatory energy  as silence fell, the deep breath before the final push.

            A flash of gold, green and pink, flawless makeup and hair, her costume team were amazing. She stood almost within touching distance, Sin-DI herself, lips moving wordlessly, perhaps working through the coming act. Absolutely gorgeous and up close, yes, I saw it now: there was more than a passing resemblance between us. Out on stage, the final pieces moved into place and a single light grew once more, a callback to the start of the show. A stagehand handed her a guitar, a classic Gibson, familiar relic of decades past. It’d been his guitar, once, Harry Longman’s.

            Let’s go, whispered a woman at her side, clipboard in hand.

            Sin-DI nodded. She took a deep breath and then for some reason glanced to the side. We made eye contact. She stopped and suddenly we were blonde reflections in shimmering outfits. Her eyes glittered, and wet ruby lips curved in a broad smile. Hey, she mouthed, fingers fluttering in a greeting.

            I grinned. Hey, I fluttered back.

            Then she was gone, striding out across that massive stage on her own, into a singular spotlight cast on a simple stool. She strummed her guitar, as though about to begin, and then she smiled, and looked up, finding the camera.

            “I hope you don’t mind if I go a little off script,” Sin-DI said.

            The crowd cheered. The stage director groaned, clapping one hand to her forehead.

            “Broken Flowers was my first big hit,” Sin-DI said. “And it’s crazy to think this whole thing, it’s only been happening for less than a year.” Cheers from the audience, a few loud voices crying out, ‘we love you!’ and she grinned, wistfully. “There’s been a lot of interviews, a lot of talk about my songs, what they mean, if anything, who they’re about, what inspired them. But I’ve never talked about this one. Broken Flowers is just too close to me. Every time I perform it, it hurts a little, like reading out loud a page from my personal diary. And I think it’s fair to say that without this song—or maybe I should say, the one who inspired it—I wouldn’t be here, tonight, on this stage.”

            She paused, took a deep breath.

            “Tonight, that person is here, in the audience. This song is for her.” Her eyes flicked my way, magnified across a dozen screens, larger than life. “I owe you everything,” she said. “My life, my name, my song, my love. This is for you, my broken flower.”

            The performance was simple, pared back to the basics of young woman, guitar, a single beam of light. Not the official release or one of the remixes, with their earworm hooks, the chorus and bridge, the catchy beats. Nor were there dancers or pyrotechnics: at first, just her voice, pure and unadorned and beautiful, simple and small yet strong enough to fill a stadium. She sang of a single quiet night in the moonlight, and the light falling on her was like moonlight, soft and glimmering. Lilac smell on early spring winds, and the faint gleam of lips. Of two damaged souls finding each other in the darkness, then parting, never to meet again:

            Lip gloss and lilac

            And the moon

Sin-DI’s voice pulled me with her, nine months from then to now. And I can almost smell it, like I’m there again, goosebumps rising across bare arms and then his touch. Cicadas in the night. Warm light spilling from the bar—what was it called—Bacchus, yes. I was still a man, then.

Early flowers under a February moon,

Cold as promises

And those ladies at the Clinic, they’d gotten me ready. Crafted my look for the night, a whirlwind of giggles and encouraging words as I stood there passively, seething with resentment but also—eager—because I wanted this, wanted to present the best possible Cindy for him. It’d been important to me, that he meet Cindy that night, that I played the girl for him, properly. Suspended between that night and now, the song and its inception, it suddenly occurred to me that it was on that very night that Cindy was—no, not born, not yet; but the seed of her was planted. For him, Harry, the idol of a forgotten youth. Crop top and pleated skirt, thigh high stockings and heeled sneakers, hoop earrings, and of course:

            pink lipstick and push up bra

—she sang, and I chewed my lower lip, broke out into a hot sweat across the back of my neck as I remembered the sheer humiliation of tight and clingy clothes, and makeup, the farce of a thirty-nine-year-old man playing at girl. Giggling at his jokes, the flirtatious glances, licked lips until we sat outside, together and he must have known, seen through the disguise. And yet—

            You said nothing,

            But the wind touched your hair.

            It spoke for you.

—his hand, deft pressure at my shoulder, trailing down an arm, elbow, fingers lightly clasped between his. Hair, cheek, then resting on my smooth knee, rubbing; a touch at breasts disappointingly no longer able to feel anything. A confirmation of forced disguise, strange circumstances, but this wasn’t forced, no, I allowed this man his intimacy, eagerly. First, his confident touch; then, a kiss. Deeply, too, squirming at the memory of first, his lips, and then, a man’s tongue: familiar now but not then, God no, with his cheek rough against mine, a smell of leather, his hand caressing the back of my head, fingertips dabbling the nape of my neck.

            And for some reason in reliving that moment I pictured myself standing at the door to a large house, one in which there were many rooms, and that many of those rooms had never been open, left to dust in the dark. But a faint light flickered in the cellar, and another shone brightly towards the back; and for the first time, a little light glimmered to life in the attic. And these were all just fleeting impressions riding the coattails of Sin-DI’s music. Beauty and the moonlight. Whirling memories of a kiss in which a girl called Cindy lunged forward hungrily with an enthusiasm that surprised us both.

            Where did she come from, the girl who kissed the man? She’d been nothing more than a moonlight shimmer of a girl cast over the reality of the man beneath. A sketch of a human being in a dossier; no deeper than the veneer of makeup that summoned her to the surface. So much more real, now, an inversion of foundation and patina.

            At that time, Cindy overcame my revulsion at another man’s touch so that I could kiss him, because Harry Longman needed the kiss of a pretty girl who understood him in ways most pretty girls couldn’t. Or at least, that how I understood it.

            But then—

            Touching your hand,

            The tremor of another’s name.

            I dreamed of dying.

You dreamed of being seen.

— roused the memory of another embrace, hers. Radio murmur in the background, whisper of silk pooling at her feet, not mine, though I too wear dresses now, have felt them slide over rounded hips and slip to the floor. She stood resplendent in dark lingerie not dissimilar to what I wear now. A small lamp shed its faint light in the corner. Persephone’s eyes glittered darkly.  The lacy things she wore were inky black, her skin the palest ivory; scars stood out in sharp contrast, as did the intricate pattern of tattoos across her body. I’d never seen a more beautiful woman. She led me to the bed and took me in her mouth and I ran my fingers through her short black hair and now I’ve taken men in my mouth and felt their fingers through my hair, too.

            After I came, I returned the favour until my tongue ached, something no man’s ever done for me. My hands found hers and pinned them over her head. This, men have done to me. I entered her. Her fingers clawed at my back. She bit my shoulder and cursed in my ear. Her eyes flashed and her legs locked around me and held me close. I had never been that close to anyone before. I had never known another person’s body so intimately. My kisses tasted salt on her cheek, blood at the edge of her mouth. My hips moved and she cried out and her voice was mine, I’ve cried out too at the feeling of someone moving within me, too.

            When I finished, she made a sound between a sob and a howl. Persephone held me close. This one time she held on to me. Arms and legs even as I slowly shrank inside of her. A man shrank inside of me too, once, beat my back with his fists as I held a pillow over his face. But the way she held me so tightly, as though she might never let me go, it made my stomach lurch, for fear, for joy.

            “Not yet,” she said. We stayed together like that for some time. Slick sweat between our bodies, cooling. I played my fingers along the top of her stocking, traced the line of a suspender, a familiar sensation, men’s fingers stocking tops and goosepimples rising. When I eventually slipped free, she groaned softly. I lay next to her on the small bed. My hand rested flat, palm against the warm, wet curve of her pussy. Her fingers splayed across my chest, over my heart. I opened my mouth to speak.  Don’t, she said. Her eyes were wet with tears.

            I love you, she said, and the radio

            and Sin-Di, sang:

            Both of us,

            flowers with broken stems,

            brittle blooms in the dark.

We made love again. When we were done, we sat next to each other on the edge of the bed. Yellow light from the bare bulb overhead and the smell of sex heavy in the air. This was our final time together. We didn’t speak. There had been nothing left to say.

            Only, I never said ‘I love you,’ in return. I was nineteen and ached to tell her, but didn’t, because she knew already, I thought, but also because withholding those words made me feel powerful, as though it gave me an advantage over her. Another wave of shame, strong enough to suck me down, the stupidity of a young man playing a game he never understood.

            The bed creaked as I stood, crossed over to my pile of clothes on the floor. A moment later, the bed creaked again. She came up behind me, silently. I turned to face her. The memory stuttered. Because this is where the nightmares take over. A door opening onto nothingness.

            Sin-DI sang.

            The lilacs are gone.

            But the moon’s still out there,

            and I’m still here too —

            do you still shine in borrowed light?

A long pause, Sin-Di and her guitar and an empty stage, her cheeks wet with tears, and so are mine, it’s true, we really do look alike. She takes a ragged breath, and so did I. She breathed the chorus:

            There was a girl:

            Lip gloss and lilac

            Beneath the moon.

And I hugged myself tight, wished for Emma to be there, thankful that she wasn’t. A brief lull, the deep echo of silence and of a hundred thousand people watching a young woman weeping softy on stage, alone. Slowly, the rising murmur of voices—turning to cheers—a rising tide of euphoric applause—the cathartic release of another’s suffering—and voices calling out—as the lights fell and darkness fell across the stage.

            In that brief lull, a pretty young woman approached me deferentially. Sin-DI would like you to come see her, she explained, after the show, if you like? May I tell her you’re available?

            Not trusting myself to speak, I simply nodded. A moment later, the stage shattered into brilliance. A geyser of glitter and radiant luminosity, a rainbow of colors, a flood of dancers and pyrotechnics. Lights and sound, a glorious celebration of excess. Bared flesh, raw sensuality, sweat and sex and sheer indulgence swirling around this girl in the middle, Sin-DI, rising high above the stage on sequined wings, and how the hell did she change costumes so quickly, the impossible corset, bared tits, a flaming sword flashing brightly in the air, howling with laughter as she belted out the finale, Crossing the Alps.

            I followed the young woman to a waiting room. Thankfully, a man brought me a drink as I waited. I needed it. It took some time for the shaking to subside.

***

An abomination in a glass box within a large, windowless room. Bright lights buzzed overhead. Other than the lights and the near-silent exhalation of air cycling, the room was almost entirely silent. Thick slabs of transparent polymer blocked all other sounds from within the room. But within the glass cage, the breathing of the woman sounded wet and labored.

            A woman, with long, lanky hair heavy with filth and sweat, and a narrow waist, curving hips and full breasts. Her proportions bordered on feminine caricature, a barbie doll made flesh. But then, the penis between her thighs, thick and dangling, a redundant tube seeping a pale, thin fluid. Her breasts hung heavily, all seven of them, patinaed over with a thick crust of flaky skin. They erupted like a tumorous cluster, pendulously distending from her torso, each one topped with an engorged nipple, raw, red, and oozing yellowish colostrum.

            Misshapen limbs emerged with violent, irregular symmetry from behind shoulder, back or belly, or writhing between hanging teats. One, a boneless, slug-like leg that dragged across the floor, left a faint, glistening trail; another, not so much a hand as five finger-like bones fused in twisted parody, grasping and distending her belly from within. Most of these malformed limbs hung limply; a few twitched and spasmed against the glass with a wet, smacking sound. From beneath her bulbous flesh, the damp gurgle of heaving breath, her skin shinning with the sluice of puss and slime.

            Behind an eruption of pustules, her mouth stretched wide under the weight of abscesses in her cheeks, or errant teeth piercing the skin. She was left drooling behind fleshy polyps and the emergence of half-formed organs. Thin veins, pale and blue, webbed the surface of unseeing eyes glazed milky-white and pulsing softly as if breathing. A cluster of fleshy protrusions may have been ears, a nose, further eyes swollen shut and weeping. Agony twisted her visible features, a low, constant moan between each ragged breath as she lumbered within her captive space.

            Her name had once been Adam Fosters.

            Now, she was ‘that thing,’ the ‘monstrosity,’ an experiment, the first human trial of an experimental procedure that left her body in a constant state of rapid regeneration, repairing imagined damage. She’d been a man, before. As a child, she’d hurt others for fun. As a young man, she’d killed for her government. As an adult, she’d hurt and killed for money. So, yes. A man: and a very bad one at that; some might even say evil. This wasn’t something she’d learned in this prison underground. She’d always known what she was.

            No. The lesson learned during her months of torturous imprisonment was entirely different. She wasn’t sorry. Certainly, she hadn’t learned repentance. She didn’t seek forgiveness. Not even in those earliest weeks when rage gave way to annihilation terror and she’d begged for death. Then, she would throw herself with all her considerable strength against the confines of her cage and leave the walls smeared red with blood, until the release of invisible gas dropped her to the floor, insensate.

            The gas still came, on occasion, though she barely felt it. She knew its flavor, though, the taste of it, and knew when to drop, how to pretend. Because she no longer sought death.

            No. Her time in the glass box had started with pain and darkness that eventually gave way to light and understanding. This was not punishment. This was a gift: and in the long days alone an abiding love for her body had taken root and blossomed, unliked any she had ever known.

            Every few weeks, her riotous regrowth became too much. She was at that stage now, a glorious apogee of flesh. Soon, the doctors would come, with scalpels, with industrial lasers and cauterizing irons, to carve away the excess meat. They would sever the superfluous limbs, snapping fragile bones, the tremulous wet pop of cartilage. Her exuberant flesh, rudimentary organs and vestigial growth would peel away, some placed in sealed containers for later study. She imagined them as extensions of herself, these nodules of her body unwillingly removed, semi-quiescent in the quiet dark, waiting for to her.

            They would seal her lesions with heat and incinerate the excess they had no use for. The sickly-sweet smell of her own charred flesh would cling to her skin for days. Or so she liked to imagine. When they returned her to her prison, her body would be a patchwork of raw wounds, so lighter and supple it left her feeling hollow. She felt the loss of these extensions of herself as one would the loss of children. Sometimes, she would weep for hours. Other times she lay there in sullen silence, internalizing a deeper and harder hatred.

            Within a day, her wounds would heal. Then she could stand tall with her radiant beauty on full display. Raven hair, long and lustrous; her skin clear and supple; large breasts and bright eyes, full lips, lithe legs, wide hips. For one, sometimes two long, almost unendurable days, she would remain this way. But always by the third, her anticipatory glee would curdle into divine certainty.

            It began as an itch, a vibrating tension beneath the surface. This would soon deepen into a thrumming heat, a localized pressure of hardening tissue in the deeper, softer places of her body. The desire to scratch and hasten the inevitable, and release the pressure, was almost insurmountable. But, no. The wait—yes, patience—brought pleasure in itself, in the long, quiet hours left alone in her cage. She could turn inwards, focus on the secret language of her body. Listen to its whispers, and feel the slow, gradual and insistent engorgement taking place beneath the surface.

            Then came the first push from beneath the skin, not painful, but exquisitely, insistently present. She would feel a spot on her back or thigh or neck tighten, then swell, the emergence of the first pinhead-sized nodule, pink, wet, and acutely sensitive. She would explore each new protuberance, gently sweeping the soft pad of a finger across every one. She would shudder with pleasure at the potentiality each contained. Each one, a new life, and new flesh. Soon, her perfect, flawless skin would tear and she would be reborn anew as something new and glorious, and she would cry out in ecstatic relief to feel herself erupt beyond the feeble limits of her renewed self.

            But first, he would come, the doctor, the man who made her this way. He would order her to dance. And he would watch. Before, he made her hide the appendage between her legs, the atrophied remains of the man she’d been. Now, they simply removed it with all the other unwanted meat. It usually grew back. But without it, the doctor could be more creative with his fantasies, and would watch as she enacted them, as he played with his own pathetic flesh and dreaming of touching her glory.

            He would talk to her, often cruelly, occasionally with curiosity, once or twice in sadness. You used to be a man, he said. Now look at you.

            Yes, she purred. A very bad man.

            This is your punishment.

            She would conceal her laugh.

            You will die here, he said once, when very drunk. And he had been correct, for that was the night Adam Fosters died and she was born.

            Once we have no more use for you, the doctor continued, we’ll burn you, too, with the rest of the trash.

            You can’t kill me, she thought, for my flesh has already left this place, you carried it with you. I exist beyond these walls. My cells are everywhere. You study them for the blaze of light you know exists within, the glory you wish for yourself.

            But she said nothing, an abomination in a glass cage deep underground beneath a secret medical facility.

            Waiting for the inevitable.

***