Dante stared in disbelief at his best friend of thirteen years as she proudly held up a sign-up forum for a local amateur drag show. Sherri's perfectly manicured nails pinched the bright pink sheet between her long thin fingers. His black framed glasses slipped down his nose, slowly as if they were afraid to be caught like a child sneaking a cookie after they had been denied, as he tried to form a coherent sentence.
"You would be so perfect for this!" She all but purred out as she shoved the forum into Dante's limp hands.
"No, just no. I am never doing drag again, I did once it for Halloween. Never again." The words tumbled out from between Dante's lips before he even knew what he was saying, as soon as Sherri registered what had been said her face fell. A pout started to form on her purple painted lips and her once animated hands dropped limply to her sides. "Why not?" She whined earning a snicker from her boyfriend Nathan, a muscular asian boy that towered above nearly everyone. He sat across from Dante sipping his mocha latte, the small coffee shop they were in buzzing lowly with business. As Sherri sent Nathan a withering glare Dante took the time to look at the forum more closely. He grimaced when he saw that the competition was two days away.
"Sherri I can't do this, it's too late. I don't have enough time to put an act together or even get a dress."
Sherri waved a petite hand dismissively as she turned her attention back to her best friend." I got that all handled, all you need to worry about is being pretty."
Dante rolled his bright green eyes and ignored his best friend as she gushed over her ideas for his costume. Unlike the beloved stereotype of the average gay man; Dante didn't worship RuPaul as he personal lord and savior. Nor were "Sissy That Walk" and "It's Raining Men" his hymns that he started and ended his day with. No, Dante was a wallflower who preferred to stay hidden in the overgrowth of sun starved people. The one time he ever left his wall was in high school.
Dante had dared to venture into the room for the LGBTQ/STRAIGHT Alliance back in his freshman year. He wasn't ashamed to admit he had hated it at first. To him it was terrible, the room itself was a dimly lit poor excuse for a english class that had been abandoned and the only other people there were Sherri and Nathan. Nathan Liu being the straight part of the alliance and Sherri Patterson, who was still known as Sheldon at the time, was the LGBTQ half. Sheldon was a loud, in-your-face, flamboyant, gay, black Jewish boy. Everyone at their high school thought he was the gayest little thing to walk the halls of their high school, earth even if they really spoke their minds. At first Dante held Sheldon at arm's length not fully trusting the young man he had just met. But that changed when Sheldon confessed to Dante that he was indeed a she and he was soon starting his estrogen shots after Dante found him bleeding from a busted lip in the classroom they called their own.
Ever since then the two had been inseparable. Soon after Dante was able to call Nathan a friend as well and not soon after he made the change from he to she Nathan asked Sherri out. Sheldon became Sherri, a model like girl with barely budding breasts and long braided hair that she kept coiled atop her head like a Nile princess. Well that's at least what Sherri thought she looked like. Dante himself was a slim lithe young man with warm brown skin and wavy hazelnut locks that were kept swept back. A small beauty mark on his left cheek always brought attention when he smiled, showing off twin dimples on either cheek. Sherri loved to call it his cutie mark, reasoning that because Dante was so serious he had to have a little bit of cute.
The Sinner watched in barely masked disgust as that thing climbed into the lamp of the tall Asian heathen. It was an insult to watch that display of spurious love and The Sinner couldn't wait to shine the truth of the Lord upon them. The hand of the Lord hated the way the laugh from the fag made his stomach flip, he long ago believed that his righteous father had beaten those unholy desires out of his weak body and now here was this temptation to stir them awake. The Sinner wanted to scrub himself clean of the filth of the world, to cleanse his soul and of those around him. A smile nearly broke the harsh line of his mouth when he heard about the drag show. Prefect, was the single thought The Sinner had before he threw away his trash and walked out the small cafe causally.