Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (32 page)

The Pretty Princess Party Palace served multiple purposes (outlined here in this handy and time efficient list).

1. A fun and fantastical escape from the harsh realities of elementary school (or so said the brochure). It, further, promised a whimsical tea party atmosphere, Alice in Wonderland theme parties, and a professional staff. It neglected to mention their shark teeth, but I digress.
   
2. An endless source of fresh recruits for its propri-etors—those heinous little bitches, the reapers. As well as a healthy crop of deviant souls right across the street. Just wipe the slobber off the pervs and they’re good to go.
   
3. A large enough facility to house a ballroom full of squealing girls, a dorm for the squadron of supernatural cleaners and several floors of a purportedly luxurious therapeutic clinic for the un-dead.
   

Never mind the décor was decidedly Pepto-Dismal, the Pretty Princess Party Palace was the cure for what ails you.

We parked on a residential street and fell in line behind a herd of soccer moms clad in high-waisted jeans,
flats in a variety of middle-class colors and—Jesus— cardigans, the lot of them reeking of a Liz Claiborne clearance sale. Wendy clutched her trench coat tight around her damaged stomach, and lurched forward on shaky legs. Her skin had gone green and necrotic. The road trip had been lousy for beauty maintenance.

“Just a little further, Grannie.” I put my arm around her shoulders.

She shrugged it away. “Shut up.”

The nearest mother tossed a glance in our direction, scanned Wendy’s shuddering figure. I sneered. “Don’t you have some private school drama you could be discussing?”

The woman let loose the kind of gasp normally reserved for catching a vagrant shitting in your yard. She clawed at her friend’s forearm, a woman with hair as white as a cotton swab, and whispered frantically, “Did you hear what she said?”

The other bitch scowled. “Bitch.”

Oh no. I wasn’t about to be judged by a walking Q-tip, regardless if she’d hit the mark on my character.

I handed off my Alexander McQueen green croc Novak bag
¹⁶⁶
and dropped straight into ghetto fabulous. “You wanna bitch? I got a
bitch
for you.” I started at the woman who squealed like the pig she was and raced into the building. The first woman simply crossed her arms and pouted. “You tell her I’ll get her after the ball.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not kidding. I’ll be waiting.”

Wendy poked me in the side. “Seriously?”

I shook my head “no.” Of course not. We’d be busy recuperating in the luxurious new clinic.

Just then, the doors opened and all the pretty princesses stampeded, followed by their mothers, each clinging to last season’s patchwork Coach, as if that could make up for the fashion travesty.

Inside, we nearly choked on the scent of bubblegum pumped thick into the room; you’d expect that kind of thing in a Vegas casino, but not in a glorified Chuck E. Cheese. The girls took to it like freshmen crackheads, bouncing up and down one minute, swaying contentedly the next. All eyes were on the hostess stand and the blond reaper, Hillary. Her head bobbed with every word, pigtails twirling like tasseled stripper pasties.

“Ladies! Attention please!” she yelled. “Are you ready for a cotton candy fantasy?”

The girls screamed, their shrill voices cried in unison, “Yeah!”

Curtains on the far wall swept back in a flashy rustle to reveal the horrific aftermath of a pink tsunami. That most egregious of colors had spread through the room like a medieval plague, infecting table linens, cande-labras and floral sprays. Even the waitstaff had been given the cherry treatment, though none looked particularly happy. That’s where Gretel came in. The brunette reaper marched through the space like a prison warden smacking a star-tipped fairy wand into her palm like a riding crop. As she passed, each of the waiters grew instantly toothsome, and of course, rosy-cheeked.

The crowd rushed the room, leaving us standing over Hillary, whose smile lost its magic and distorted into rows of shark teeth. “Amanda Feral,” she judged and looked Wendy up and down. “And your little dog, too.”

“Well that makes me a little bit uncomfortable.”
Wendy’s smile creased a bit, still somehow smitten with these little freaks.

The girl smirked, twitched and screamed over her shoulder. “Heidi! Get in here.” Then directing her gaze back at us, “Trainees. I can’t stand breaking them in. Heidi!”

Another reaper bounded from a hall behind her, with pink flats sandpapering the tile floor, and a peasant girl dress seemingly swiped from Strawberry Shortcake, who’d probably been dissected for party canapés. “Yes, Hillary.” She bowed.

“I don’t give a shit about the slack Gretel or Gretchen give you. When
I
call I don’t expect to repeat myself. Please make a note of it.”

The girl shrugged, a wide grin of razor sharp teeth spread across her chubby face, making it impossible to look sheepish, which was undoubtedly what she was going for.

“No. I mean make a note of it.” Hillary drew letters in the air with an invisible pen.

The girl nodded, swept her curly red hair behind her ears and pulled out a little pad of paper, scribbled something and then slipped it back inside the folds of the dress, again nodding.

“Now, Amanda and her friend Wendy are frequent clinic customers. They never miss a chance to trip over something or get themselves into trouble as you can clearly smell.” She waved her hand in front of her nose. “Uh, can you say, ‘ripe’?”

“That’s a tad dramatic, don’t you think?” I asked.

She dismissed my words with an eye roll and turned toward a massive stone staircase. “Follow us, zombies, and please … watch your step. If you fall in here, you won’t be getting a discount.” To her protégé, she mumbled,
“A couple of real oxen, those two, and clumsy as hell.”

“I can hear you,” I said.

Without turning around she responded, “Oh … I know.”

At the top of the stairs, a waiting room was filled to capacity with the bored and damaged. Battered zombies shared space with elves carting their severed limbs, probably after some sort of bar melee—elves do love a good brawl. Faeries with broken wings sputtered around gimpy yetis, headless horseman and the odd wheelchair-bound mummy.

Wendy groaned, clutching at her stomach all the more. Good girl, I thought, play it up.

“You needn’t bother acting, either. You’ll be going right in. Nothing but the best for our best customers.”

The waiting room erupted in sighs and arguments. One particularly incensed gargoyle shuffled over dragging a cement leg. “But, I’ve been waiting three days! You can’t treat me like this.”

Hillary stomped her foot and spun on the creature, her pigtails slapping the sides of her contorted face. “Sit your ass down and shut your mouth. You should be used to waiting, you lazy rooftop layabout, and just for your little outburst, I’m tacking on an annoyance fee. ’Cause guess what?” She poked an angry finger into the gray flesh of his chest. “You’ve just annoyed me.”

The demon’s face crinkled, his tail literally tucked between his legs, and he limped back to his seat, grumbling.

“Come on, ladies,” she tossed a glance our way. “Quit dragging balls. Keep up.”

The girls led us down a hallway and into a sparsely furnished room. An uncomfortable looking table stood
in the center opposite a black fleshy trunk, strapped and buckled, and undulating and puffing as though containing a set of lungs.
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We’d seen the trunk before, as Hillary would surely point out, if you ask. But each time, a different curative was employed.

“Open the chest, while I take a look at this piece of meat.”

Wendy’s mouth hung open. She clicked a warning with her jaw. Apparently, they weren’t so cute anymore.

“You must be joking. Open the trench and let’s see what we’ve got.”

Wendy untied her belt and let the coat slide to the floor, revealing the gaping hole in her abdomen, now oozing with a brackish green slime. The reaper approached, staring into the chasm.

“Come here.” She whistled to her trainee. “Look at this.” She lifted her hand and stuck it into the hole, passing her entire arm through Wendy’s gut and wiggling it out of her back. “This is what you call a cata-strofuck.”

She looked up at Wendy. “Get on the table and relax. You don’t mind spiders, do you?”

“What?” I shivered. I’m not afraid of much—poverty, loneliness, blemishes, Ethel—but spiders were at the top of the list. I couldn’t imagine what one of the godawful creatures would have to do with fixing Wendy and I didn’t really want to find out.

“Yeah, what?” Wendy recoiled, reaching for her coat and drawing it around her like a security blanket.

Hillary grinned. Heidi crossed the room and began searching inside the trunk.

“I’m afraid it’s the only way.”

The trainee turned toward us; a hairy black tarantula-thing squirmed in her hand. Wendy screamed.

I passed out.

Three hours later, we were freshened and on our way. Wendy’s skin was bronzed and healthier than I’d ever seen it. She even remarked that the spider kind of tickled as it wove her flesh back together. I wasn’t sure what they’d used on me, but my face was flawless and my pores tighter than a priest’s ass. Regardless of what you think of the reapers—evil devil children, Satan’s little abortions, whatever—their work was astounding.

And so was their bill.

On many days, when we can pull ourselves away from the pressures of work, relationships and celebrity, Wendy and I enjoy haunting the patio overlooking the drive-through lane at Starbucks. It usually begins with me purchasing two double espressos and Wendy securing good seats. From there it’s all about sniffing the thick pungent steam from paper demitasse cups, gossiping with alacrity and hunting for dinner.

“So how’s your mom?” Wendy snickered, leaning back and rolling up the legs of her shorts in a vain attempt at energizing her dead melanin.

“Let’s just call her Ethel, okay? That woman bears only a passing resemblance to my mother.”

“She’s changed then?”

I thought about her transformation, her new life as the
de facto
ruler of Markham’s Bottoms empire, how she and Gil spend so much time together, how, back when I was in high school, she glommed onto my friends as if they were her own. “No. Not at all.”

“But she’s happy,” Wendy said.

“Whatever.” I shrugged. “The topic of my mother is
never going to be light Starbucks banter. I’d rather leave it for the sequel.”

“Oh yeah. How is the book coming?”

“It’s coming, just kind of difficult to schedule a time to write, between functions and work.”

“Dude. What about Scott?” Honey flopped down in an oh-so-stylish black silk organza dress by Chanel, over skin-tight jeans and black flats.

“Dude.” I pinched the single gossamer sleeve. “Been raiding my closet much?”

“Do you mind?” Her face dipped into a sheepish grin. So cute.

“Of course not. But you’re going to have to ask.”

“Got it.”

It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to figure out that Honey’s living with me now. After all, I kind of feel responsible for her—um … condition—or am responsible, as the case may be. We haven’t discussed it really, but sometimes I catch her staring at me and wonder if it’s resentment in those smoky MAC-smudged eyes.

Kimmy hasn’t mentioned anything, but he wasn’t angry that I’d turned his sister, just sad that it was the only way to keep her around. Two months have gone by and he’s just begun to give the girl some privacy. Having him in the house is a little bothersome, particularly now that he’s developing some new talents. Changing the TV channel is his favorite and our biggest point of contention. Have I mentioned I’m not a fan of the couch commando?

If it happens again, I’ve threatened an exorcism.

Wendy’s another story. She’s writing copy for Feral, Inc. now. Our road trip had an added cost in the form of Wendy’s job. Her editor at the
Undead Science Monitor
wasn’t having any of her missed deadlines and left
her a message saying so on her cell. Too bad she’d forgotten it at home on the night we escaped the city. She didn’t find out she’d been fired for weeks. Still, she wasn’t the least bit upset about it, half the time she called in those crap pieces anyway.
¹⁶⁸

“Are you avoiding her Scott question?” Wendy asked.

“No. No. He’s still in the picture. I just haven’t made up my mind about him. On the one hand the sex is
très
animal.”

Wendy and Honey giggled, so I paused, naturally.

“On the other, he still thinks he’s in a porno movie. There’s only so much kink I’m willing to endure.”

“At least it’s just talk,” Honey said, looking around for a lurking Mr. Kim. “I had this boyfriend that got off watching me pop balloons with my bare ass. Made him freak out. It was nauseating.”

“Well, I’ve got you both beat. I was with this one guy—” Wendy’s voice dropped into a clandestine whisper. “Who wanted me to fart while he went down on me.”

“Ew.” Honey and I screamed in unison.

“Did you do it?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Dude, that’s nasty.” Honey shook with laughter and reached for a cup to sniff. “Makes me want to clear my sinuses.”

“So are you gonna keep the nice officer in your stable?” Wendy cocked her head.

“I don’t know. Too early to tell.”

Wendy fished her cell phone out of her purse. “Shall I see what Madame Gloria predicts?”

“You better not.” I reached for the phone. She tossed it into her other hand, held it out of my reach. “I’ll tell her you’re a pottymouth. I swear to God.”

“Whatever.”

I mean, Scott was going to be around until he got tired of me, or me of him. I wasn’t particularly concerned either way. I needed to change the subject, quick. “Isn’t it about time to eat?”

A black Range Rover pulled into the drive-through queue, its owner shouting some harsh eastern European language into an iPhone. His face was sharp and angular. His eyes were secreted away behind Ray-Ban Aviators.

“How about something from the Borscht Belt?” Wendy pulled her sunglasses down and peered over the bridge.