CHAPTER ONE

 

 

Trixie loathed her penis.

Vile epidermal licorice that dangled between her stick-figure legs.

Painful to look at, alien compared to the rest of her body, an unfortunate and unavoidable sight whenever she was naked.

No matter how much she skewed her vision, the aberration remained.

Taunting.

Tormenting.

She despised this piece of herself with such intensity she wished it could be banished from her body. Even better, if she could crawl back into the womb and somehow have it retroactively removed. Revisionist Reassignment Surgery. She’d have to look into that.

For lonely months on end, she had kept a dull box cutter in the top drawer of her dresser, hidden between the unorganized piles of underwear and socks. Now her slightly overlarge, unalterable hands clutched the hilt at a crooked angle, applying pressure to her shaft. The blade left a temporary and near-painless indentation. No blood was yet to be drawn. Though she had been tempted many times, Trixie could never summon the courage—or stupidity—to follow through with her threats against her own body.

She was only successful at convincing herself it was just useless meat.

And meat is temporary.

Meat is malleable. Edible. Organic matter on the road to eventual rot.

Trixie stole the blade away from her sex, let it drop to the ancient linoleum floor with an echoing clang. She caught her fractured reflection in the full-length mirror and tried her best to ignore it. A reflection was a keeper of secrets. It could either be one’s most trusted confidant or most venomous enemy. Tonight this distorted version of herself was a fair-weather friend at best.

Still, the tiniest bit of positivity poked its way into her thoughts. Between the taped-up cracks, and around the edges of spotted glass, she was able to force the traces of her true self to come out of hiding. If she shifted her body just right, one of the largest cracks in the mirror obscured her view of the awful appendage. And Trixie felt picture perfect.

As a girl, her male genitals were just a technicality, a sick practical joke played by that bitch Mother Nature. A beautiful contradiction, Trixie had become an expert in the art of lying to herself.

Self-critical as she could be, Trixie still tried to convince herself that, on her best days, she looked rather fetching despite all the hell-in-heels she had been through. Pale, velvety flesh without an ounce of sun damage. A hairless, smooth form like an unfinished marble statue, just a few chips away from impeccable completion. Almond eyes and auburn hair with awkward bangs. Her pillow lips assured no men ever batted their eyes in disbelief when they gazed in her direction. Even without her mastery of hair and makeup, there was very little about her that was noticeably male anymore. She was quite passable as a woman.

Not stunning necessarily.

Not supermodel gorgeous.

Definitely attractive enough to be someone's third-place trophy.

She honestly didn't turn heads on a daily basis, but blending in as just another woman in the crowd wasn't the worst thing in the world. Closer to a blessing, really.

Trixie plucked two heart-shaped pills from a plastic baggie. Sweet Candy. The convenient, affordable solution for avoiding one’s problems. She pinched the pills between her fingers and came close to tossing them into her mouth, but decided at the last second that she would skip the high tonight, save them for when she really needed them. Money was tight and she couldn’t afford even a weekly dose of this artificial heaven. She placed the Sweet Candy back in the baggie and shoved it into the cabinet beneath the sink, in the dank space behind the toilet paper and drain cleaner.

She put on a top and some jeans and decided watching TV was a better option than wallowing in self-pity. As she entered the living room, the familiar bleating of car alarms and screams from intoxicated thrill seekers trickled in through the open window. Federico, her near-gaunt calico cat, was perched on the sill, facing outdoors. Same as most nights. He mewed a primal tune, calling to the rodents of the deceptively vapid city of Sweetville. Tacky fluorescent lights from the clubs, all-night delis and convenience stores below—streams of which could be seen even from the third floor—added to the low budget feline music video.

“Rico, baby,” Trixie whispered. “What's got you so riled up tonight, huh?” She stroked the coarse fur behind his ears and he relaxed, letting the weight of his head lean lovingly into her hand. She gently nudged the cat, he hopped to the floor and Trixie closed the window. “Sorry, hon. I know that’s your favorite spot, but I really don’t want to listen to all that business out there. It’s depressing.”

Federico offered a strange, long purr, as if in agreement. He squeezed between and around her legs in his patented figure eight.

Now with the cacophonous sounds of the city muted, Trixie became acutely aware of how loud the television was. A re-run of Bill Clinton’s inaugural address from the night before. Boring. She searched for the remote control, found it wedged between the couch cushions and changed the channel. A helmet of feathered newscaster hair filled the screen. Somewhere in the vicinity of that coiffure was a mouth, a voice following along with the teleprompter.

“…today marks the two-year anniversary of his passing. Since then, disciples of the late Dr. Dorian Wylde have been roaming the streets of Sweetville in an attempt to convert the general public to their peculiar cause. Wylde, a former plastic surgeon, later became the widely acclaimed creator of the miracle diet drug Witherix. With strict rules regarding weekly fasting...”

Trixie changed the channel again. More news. This time the newscaster was a woman whose makeup was so thick her face was nearly devoid of honest expression.

“…yet another victim of a violent crime referred to as ‘curb stomping’ has been discovered in downtown. The victim, whose name has not been released, is currently in critical condition at Sweetville Mercy. A local fascist skinhead youth gang is suspected of…”

Trixie shook her head and clicked the television off, opting for the bedroom and the more soothing sounds of the Cocteau Twins instead. She grabbed the Heaven or Las Vegas CD off the top of the speaker and inserted it into her disc changer. She plopped onto her bed, just a mattress and box spring with no frame. The ethereal dream world of “Cherry-Coloured Funk” immediately calmed her.

Federico now tiptoed along the edges of an antique vanity table, the only piece of furniture she owned that was worth more than a garage sale haggle. She had fallen in love with it when she spotted it in the window of Auntie Teek’s Furniture and Curiosities and spent an entire week’s pay on it. She went a little hungrier than usual that month, but she did not regret it in the least.

The CD had been playing for God knows how long when a crash echoed from the living room.

“Rico, sweetie? Where are you?” she called out in a groggy voice. She whistled, made clicking sounds with her tongue and teeth. Still no answer.

The apartment was only a hair above 500 square feet, so it wouldn’t take long to track him down, unless he had managed to discover yet another hiding spot. Under the couch, inside a cupboard, curled in a shoebox in the closet. She wasn’t really in the mood for feline games, but would humor him for a few moments if that’s what it took.

Trixie entered the living room and felt a wintry breeze that caused her to shiver. She glanced over to the window and saw it was again wide open, the curtains writhing. The noise outside had died down considerably, most likely having moved inside the nightclubs, and Federico was gone.

She glanced out the window and could only see the clusterfuck of nightlife traffic below. Federico always returned faithfully if he managed to escape, but Trixie still couldn’t help but worry. A street cat by birth but house cat at heart, he at least still had his claws and could hold his own in a fight. Federico mauled mice like an abstract artist attacked a canvas. Sometimes his homecoming included the broken body of an unfortunate rodent. Not exactly a pleasant work of art.

Trixie closed the window three-quarters of the way, leaving just enough room for him to squeeze through when he returned. She spun around on one foot, felt for the light switch and flipped it on. One of the old bulbs in the ceiling fan made a brief POP as it perished—the third one this month—and she made a mental note to have her landlord call an electrician.

She heard a scratching sound coming from somewhere in the center of the room. Once she focused her eyes, the fan’s remaining dull bulb illuminated something that made her skin crawl.

Someone was sitting on her couch.