Ladies don't start fights. They end them.
Obviously Puck Schmidt, who was anything BUT, hadn't got the memo.
Or she had and wiped her ass with it before calling Marlene names in front of everyone.
Mean names.
Names reminding Marlene that she'd been wrongly assigned male at birth.
Names reminding Marlene that becoming her true self was only tolerated by her father as long as it got him something.
Names reminding Marlene that when people are polite to your face, they'll be assholes behind your back because there's a big difference between tolerance and acceptance.
Bekka had been the one to think of it, texting before school that confronting Puck as a group would make Puck back off.
Angry, humiliated, dealing with the pot comedown from Hell and looking for something to kick, Marlene agreed.
Only Puck didn't fall to pieces when confronted the way Marlene wanted her to like so many others she'd called out for transphobia. Instead, Puck went for her, claws out.
Marlene hadn't expected that.
Now all of them were in the Principal's Office in big, BIG trouble, Bekka blubbering in sympathy, while traitor Mindy calmly told Ms. Goode across the hall in the Diversity office what happened without making ANY of them look good like she was supposed to.
Marlene shifted the ice pack on her throbbing mouth; she would deal with Mindy later.
As for Puck? Puck sat on the other side of the front Office, serenely licking the back of the hand that she'd slugged Marlene in the stomach, mouth, and eye with as if nothing had happened.
How could this have happened? Marlene was the injured party here, why was SHE in trouble?
"Marlene? Marlene Barleycorn?" Miss Mattel, one of two flamboyantly dressed witches who ran the front office with military precision called out, single-lensed glasses glinting, "Mr. Buciaratti wants to speak with you – not you Bekka. You're next."
Oh God, Mr. Bucciarati. How could she face him, of all people? Marlene rose, ice pack forgotten. Mr. Bucciarati understood her situation, had even been supportive.
Not at all like Dad.
She'd really, really let Mr. Bucciarati down.
No, she hadn't.
Everything was Puck's fault.
Puck should have been… nicer.
Knees trembling, Marlene stepped into the Principal's office feeling like she was going to her own, highly unfair, execution, bursting into tears again.
Wobbling out of Mr. Bucciarati's office after what felt like hours later, Marlene forgot she was supposed to use the non-gendered single occupancy lavatory reserved just for her just off the school conference room, instead fleeing to the girl's bathroom.
Daddy had been icily polite when Mr. Buccciarati called him on speakerphone, immediately transferring him to Dave, one of Dad's interns once he learned what happened.
Dave noted down the timetable for Marlene's OSS, and politely hung up.
This meant Dad would act if Marlene didn't exist, making her Concita, the housekeeper's problem.
Leaving Marlene to wonder what else would be taken away as she washed her face in an institutional sink.
She studied her battered face in the big mirror over the bank of sinks. God, she looked awful, like a raccoon. She might have to have her nose rebuilt. That is, if Dad felt like paying for it. He'd already told her that her huge, masculine chin and Adam's apple were her problem, not his… she frowned.
Like that would happen. And then Marlene brightened. If Puck Schmidt had done the damage, then Puck Schmidt's family would have to pay for the damage.
And if they found themselves footing the bill for Marlene's chin and throat, so much the better!
Either that, or she'd file assault— "EEEEEEeeeeoooooow – ugh!"
Marlene gasped, cold, disgusting water full of…CHUNKS! draining off of her and the reflection of a smirking Puck behind her holding an empty mop bucket.
"That's whatcha get for usin' the wrong bathroom, perv!" Puck laughed.
"That's IT! Puck Schmidt," Marlene raked her bedraggled hair and a soggy, used tampon out of her face, hurling the nasty, bloodstained thing to the floor, exclaiming, "I'm going ahead and pressing charges and have my Dad sue your Uncle for damages. Then I'm going to have them kick you out of school, BITCH!"
"Good luck with that, BOY! I just dropped out of school five minutes ago, BOY. As for suing US for money, money? What money! We ain't GOT no money – we're just a buncha dirty worthless hillbillies with an engine in our bathtub. You said it yourself, 'member, BOY? Y'all said it, y'all'll have to GIVE us money, BOY just so y'all's rich asshole of a ol' man has something to sue us for, BOY!"
Tossing the bucket aside, Puck laughed, "'nother thing, BOY, you ev'r pull somethin' like that again on me, I'll beat yo' candy ass into the ground in fronna ev'body so they know what a joke you are!" before slamming out of the bathroom, leaving Marlene slumped on her knees in a puddle of gray, smelly mop water, sobbing.
A head popped up over the stall, "Hey, ya'll good boo?"
Maggie? Maggie Schmidt?
And then on the other side someone cooed, "Yeah, you good fam?"
Josie Schmidt, too? Marlene froze, embarrassed at being discovered by Puck's sisters, of all people.
When they didn't appear to about to add to her humiliation, Marlene relaxed, sniffling, "I'm fine. Doing great." She turned on the faucet and began wiping herself down. Where were Bekka and Mindy? They should be here, backing her up! She'd call them – shit! She'd left her phone in her bag in Buciaratti's office. And it was a hot pink Michael Kors x Barbie Mattel original too, with a joint in an empty lipstick holder - please, if anybody's out there? Kill me now!
"I'll get your bag and phone," Josie offered handing her a clean paper towel from the wall dispenser. "Tell me where they are. I can get them for you."
"Yeah, do you need anything?" Josie asked. "If our sister gives you any more trouble, we'll deal – wow, Uncle Mike and Aunt Raina are soooooo gonna be pissed when they find out Puck just dropped out of school when she wasn't beating you up on the same day!"
"Gee, what a surprise." Maggie rolled her eyes. "Not like we didn't see that coming, dropping out, I mean!"
Gobsmacked, Marlene stared at the two sisters, "But she's you're sister!"
"Wellllllll," Josie said thoughtfully, fingers absently exploring what looked like an old bruise on one of upper arms, "She is, yes."
"But that doesn't mean we have to LIKE her." Maggie gave Marlene a veiled look before exclaiming, "God, Puck's such a bitch!"
Marlene crumpled to the floor in front of the sink, water left running, sobbing limply against Maggie the fox while Josie, whatever she was, picked mop stuff out of Marlene's hair.
A few minutes later, while carefully blowing her sore nose, RADS or not, Marlene decided to invite them to a sleepover and soon, if only to keep their mouths shut about witnessing this whole ordeal when it came to Cleo deNile.
As for Bekka and Mindy? Well, they could go fuck themselves, particularly Mindy, the fat pig!
Had anyone asked Jimi Hendrix, even at the height of his fame as the minstrel to Janis Joplin's songbird, as far as he knew, his father, Al Hendrix, was his father.
And that his mother, Lucille Hendrix, was his mother.
Born nine months after his parents married in the March of 1942, his mother had awakened a few weeks before the wedding smiling for no good reason other than she was alive, and that a being, that many might have called an "angel", or rather PART of what was the immenseness of an angel, had briefly swept through her particular part of space and time, a cosmic sine way randomly touching her from the space between molecules on its way through the Liminal, heedlessly causing Lucille, like so many before her, to conceive.
With no help from Al.
Or any man, for that matter.
Decades later, having the instinct, the EAR, for the Liminal, Jimi spent most of his time, his music, his art, trying to duplicate what he heard, but never quite getting it right.
The drugs, the alcohol drowned out the song between here and there while enhancing it, keeping just out of reach, no matter how brilliantly he played, until one day, Jimi's (and Janis's, conceived in 1943 under similar circumstances) unconscious attempts to step into the Liminal without knowing what they hungered for, killed him, and then Janis, weeks later.)
Born in 1955, Michael Myers never realized he mentally phased in and out of the Liminal, sometimes for hours at a time, if not days.
He liked the cocooning, roaring, squealing, indescribable silence of it all.
It wasn't until Michael died after being stabbed in the neck by his sister with a knitting needle and then in the eye with a coat hanger, and then falling backwards out of a second story window chest full of lead, that he was able to do more than wade in the edges of the impossible song of the Liminal.
Dead, Michael could swim-walk-fly through it effortlessly, a dolphin in an atomic sea.
He then taught Dollface how, never realizing what they did.
Or caring.
The tall, thin man with his flawlessly tailored black suit stepped out of the Liminal and into Salem, Oregon, thirty seconds past midnight.
And he was pissed.