"Insecure"
Thursday the Twelfth finally arrived. The full moon emerged with its silvery light and accompanied by the dead stars. A dark procession outlined the Carmen Hills in the west of this damned town, and led to the rusty gates of Chateau Briand, the shunned house that became a shadow over the centuries. Goths all over gathered together as a cult of mourning. The men's leather coats flapped like thunder as the cynical breeze failed to compel frets upon the stovepipe hats on their ratted hair. The gems on their eyebrows, nose, mouth, tongue, ears, anywhere, sparkled through the eerie fog, and their heavy boots struck like the hoofs of steeds on the ground with a four-footed trampling.
The women were no worse. Their gowns were so ruffled and ribboned, tinged with scarlet and purple jewels, had skirts widened with metal grid inside and corsets buckled tightly though the ribs. Their hair stood up higher than that of Marie Antoinette, and their make-up turned them into porcelain dolls with blank eye sockets. As for me, I wore a black wig adorned with golden chains and a head-band with a cobra head. My slim gown was full velvet that squeezed me so tightly from my chest to ankles. I adorned it with a belt that cut off my breath from the diaphragm. Lastly, I complimented it with a chiffon cape. And my make-up was inspired by the painting of Nefertiti. I was invited inside the mansion, while the posers had a promenade of their own outside.
I was enjoying another round of absinthe and a symphonic metal song of Ramses's band, until, my best friend finally arrived. But she didn't come out of the car her posies used to drive her around. In fact, her posies were already here before her, and they're at the lawn. She stepped out the car, and first we saw her stilettos, with heels so high that they made her stand on her toes. She wore a bikini armor inside and a fur slim gown outside that extends to two feet on the ground. She had peacock tails on her shoulders and back, a stuffed dead cat around her neck, a long leather coat with bell sleeves and sharp diamond earrings. And that huge eye lash curler of hers did its best work, while her dark eye shadow made her pupil looked white compared to it.
Everyone outsidde wanted to kill her. Then, we saw what she had dragged into the gala as her date – a skinny freak with bug eyes, a dork waiting to get beaten up. And yet, he's like any goth guy in the ball. He wore black combat boots, black leather coat, black pants, black double-tailed shirt, black crucifix pendant, and black gloves. His dark hair was backcombed, and his eyes, those bug eyes, those soulless eyes, shadowed by dark emotions and a thousand sleepless nights. He's really good in pretending he didn't want to be there. The two held hands as they marched through the crowd of deathly fakes. There was a grave-like silence.
Suddenly, the mummers started to murmur. Anne Gwish and especially her guy felt the insults like daggers stabbing their back. Anne no longer could stand with her precarious stilettos. The murmurs became louder. My boyfriend, Ramses, and his entourage who were still kept outside, approached the wimpy stranger, and began to push him around, toss him to and fro. Everyone laughed at the shameful spectacle. Anne Giwsh did it again. She totally set this guy up. Well, that's what I thought at first before seeing her fading out into the shadows. If she's the Bitch I knew, she would have laughed at the stranger and blow smoke at his stupid face. But she didn't. Finally, Ramses held the twig's wobbly head and pushed it down to the ground.
But their laughter disappeared when the stranger got up slowly, and held out a knife. He cut off the limbs of one of Ramses's entourage, and stuffed them onto another one's chest which the stranger sliced open. He beheaded another and shoved it into another guy's anus. Lastly, Ramses was horribly dissected to get his intestines and choked him to death with it. Flight was universal, and in the clamor and panic several fell in a swoon and were dragged away by their madly fleeing companions. It was the night with the most expletives screamed out at the same time. But the gates were already chained and locked for the ceremony. But, the goths inside the mansion, the real goths, calmly stepped outside to confront the psychopath.
To keep my cool image, I had to follow them. The psychopath was about to get more victims, but we applauded for him and the Elder One invited him inside. What he had just done made him into an honorary member. The psychopath happily accepted and left Anne Gwish outside with the posers. As for me, I saw my dead boyfriend up close. I ran to the outhouse that served as the lady's room and vomited violently. After my innards were flushed, I heard Anne went inside, "Slings and arrows! Slings and arrows!" She was talking to someone. I peeked out and she was talking to the stuffed dead cat on her shoulder. To my surprise, the eyeless cat moved by itself and actually talked.
"You failed, Anne, for being the perfect one the society acknowledges you to be. Why didn't you laugh with them, at him? Why didn't you join their ridicule? Why didn't you smoke? Why didn't you dance the same dance everyone else does? This dreary world demands you to do those things. Yet, you were pathetic."
"I stopped caring, Phoebe. I mean, why do they care? Why should I care? As if, my life is ruined."
"But it is, Anne. You see, you started as a goth snob and that becomes your perfectly normal way, and everyone acknowledges it now. But changing it is a mistake, and mistakes are bad for this world could not swallow such blunder. And y'know, Anne, this dreary world, these people, are always watching you, looking for a flaw. Now, they had found one, and this they will remember for the rest of their pointless lives. They will laugh at you forever, haunt you even you hide. You can't turn back in time to change everything. You don't even have amnesia dust to erase the memory of your mistake. But there is one way to stop these witnesses in spilling out, to clean up your pathetic act, to regain your reputation this world ordered."
Then, the cat disappeared like smoke. Anne got something from her ponytailed hair; it was a pocket knife. She pushed the button, and that little knife turned into a long scythe. She ran outside and through a window, I watched her make a massacre and carnage out of those trying-hard mock-ups in the goth scene, worshipping Death but they could not even welcome him with open arms. After a few minutes of glorious gore, the grave-like silence came back. "Hey, Cleo," Anne Gwish said, "God! I need a smoke." I smiled because the Bitch is back. Her date came out of the house, eating a bloody slice of pizza and oblivious of what happened outside. Anne Gwish only said to him, "Let's go some place else, Nny."