BAD GRACE - quantum witch © 2005
see Prologue for warnings, rating, and summary
In which two further Sins are awakened by another Sin, and bad puns ensue.
5:05 – WEIRD SISTERS
QUEEN KOGANE WAS ENTERTAINING AGAIN, one of her favourite things to do. After her initial fortune, she knew how easily people could be bought and sold. With an entire country's wealth at her disposal, it was almost obscene not to do so.
Still she kept herself dressed graciously and simply so as not to appear the spendthrift, wearing only her smallest of diadems in public. Her people already adored her. She was young, pretty, and personable, frequently speaking to the public and hosting fund-raising galas for charitable causes around the globe, which attracted hordes of the rich and famous.
Her country, while already fairly wealthy from natural resources, trading and tourism, was now the hotspot to see and be seen. And to this end, the queen would select one or two people each time there was an event, those who became the elite of the elite because they got to stay in the palace itself.
She had been watching a certain two persons on the television in recent months, and had sent private invitations. They would, of course, be unable to decline. One was already a huge celebrity, the other an up-and-coming news reporter. Both responded instantly to their RSVPs. And now Kogane sat back and waited for them to arrive.
IONA McDERMOTT HATED POPULAR PEOPLE. Ever since school days, she had resented and despised those who acted like their shit not only didn't stink but smelled like prize-winning begonias. There were so many people in the world with fame and money, and only about a tenth of them had talent to back it up. The rest didn't deserve their grandiose lot in life.
Cheerleaders were her very first hate. All through school, they'd teased and laughed at the little nerdy girl with glasses. They didn't even have the decency to do it behind her back most of the time. One had stolen her only boyfriend away, just to prove she could, then dumped him. Iona was left alone for junior prom night. She vowed revenge.
Which she got after befriending the daughter of the cheerleader's mother's maid, who gleefully gave away secrets. And those secrets got out in the form of anonymous letters left in every locker of the school, pointing out other people who had been hurt by the haughty bitch until there was no way the secrets could be denied. In short order, she tearfully confessed to her friends who then abandoned her, and eventually she begged to be sent to private school in Europe. Rich-bitch got that wish granted but only after mass devastation, all based on her own real sins. Iona walked away without a whiff of suspicion in her direction. Everyone simply believed it was justice or karma that had paid a visit to the other girl. And it stayed that way.
Yes, Iona had a gift, and gifts were meant to be used and enjoyed. So she was utterly thrilled by Queen Kogane's invitation.
Iona was an international news reporter now. She'd been carefully, subtly, and coldly undermining her fellow reporters for years, and was so adept at exposing their weaknesses that no one ever thought to blame her when suddenly a piece of scandal leaked and a career was ruined. While Iona was the soul of sympathy after such events, still she moved one more rung up the ladder. She had risen to the top like the last good apple in a barrel of fermented cider.
All of this was because she had an uncanny knack for getting people to trust her implicitly. Perhaps it was her winning smile, just a bit crooked in a fetching way. It could have been her open and inviting gaze, coupled with stunning and surprising eyes like dusky amethysts. Her typical reddish-brown 'anchor woman' hairstyle spoke of a simple and honest young lady. And her very slight Southern accent, gained from living most of her life in Louisiana, aided in soothing nerves and encouraging conversation. The real winning touch was when she put on her darling little glasses to read something up close, and when her makeup was just thin enough that the freckles across her nose began to show through.
Of course, everything she did was coolly calculated to persuade others to entrust her with their deepest secrets. This technique had ensured the most exclusive interviews with the hottest, or the most reclusive, or the biggest of the wigs. She was now, in her own way, a star.
Yet it wasn't quite enough. She might have stormed over the ranks in her own profession to reach the pinnacle. But she wouldn't rest until she had trashed the reputation of someone at the top of their game, all without looking the least guilty. She wanted to give someone a length of rope and an instruction manual, and videotape it while the world watched a self-induced public hanging.
The Shimane-Sugana queen had risen to glory amidst tragedy, The king, her father, had lost his wife and only other child in an accident that also robbed him of his health, mere weeks after the future queen appeared at his palace, and mere days after she was acknowledged as his first child. Barely two months later the king himself had died. There had been no evidence of a connection in these events, but Iona's inner shark scented blood in the water. She wanted to be the first to win the truth from the situation. She could easily cuddle up – figuratively – to someone in the palace, if not the actual queen herself, and get the dirt. A breaking news story of such amazing scandal would put her right on the top for certain.
Iona knew that keeping up with the Joneses was pathetic and a sign of an empty soul, that the constant battle for the spotlight eventually led humanity to the darkest places in their souls. People craved to be something they weren't, something someone else was, so badly that they spent their lives and money emulating the famous. They begged and borrowed themselves into poverty just to own things that made them look popular, hoping it would fill the void. How they could stand to look in the mirror every day knowing they were nothing and always would be, that they were insignificant motes in the eyes of a blind, uncaring world, amazed Iona.
She also knew it was ironic how she wanted to be the person others envied for her fame. She wanted to be loathed and reviled and copied. She laughed at herself, for wanting to loll about in her ill-gotten fame and laugh down at the masses. But if she could have that, then she would use it. If the world couldn't bear to be in her shadow, then they deserved to be swallowed by it.
And best of all, she didn't have a single skeleton in her closet that others could pull out and use to damage her. Because bones are very hard to dig up when they are in another dimension existing only in a person's mind.
SAFFET YESIL WAS A VERY MODEST young lady. Though no one believed it upon first glance.
This was because she was a megastar and all her talents were very real. She sang like an angel º, danced more gracefully than a nymph, played five different instruments, and even on a bad hair day she was more beautiful than Aphrodite. She had hair like a pale golden primrose, skin of clover honey, and eyes as green as sunlight through fresh spring leaves. Her heavenly voice held a trace of Mediterranean accent which made people swoon, if they weren't already in a dead faint over the rest of the package.
To say they'd broken the mold when Saffet was made, is insufficient. It was as though she was a priceless work of art and the maker had, immediately upon finishing her, been killed so that another of her kind could never be made. She had a beauty so potent it should have been illegal. But she lived in Amsterdam so that was all right.
To the world she was the most perfect, most desirable woman alive, in this or any age. In private she was the princess of planet Hoth.
As was to be expected, she had briefly dated nearly every male celebrity available, going though them like tissues in flu season and leaving them just as ragged. She didn't do relationships, nor did she do casual flings. What these men found out almost instantly was that a kiss, a hug, a beautiful woman clinging to their arm for public appearances was all they got. And it wasn't them, she explained, it was her. She simply couldn't do more until marriage. Thus she had been engaged, briefly, fifteen times in the last six years. And of course, long before there could be a marriage, she would catch her significant other in flagrante delicto with another woman who didn't say 'no' so readily. An excuse to break things off was virtually guaranteed. Nevertheless, many of her fiancés and hopeful hangers-on were still devoted to her.
Saffet was disgusted with human physical desires. Because she had been raised where men felt they were the masters of the world and all they saw within it, who reached out their filthy hands and took whatever was in their line of sight and claimed it and ruined it. Women were among those things. And as she grew up, her beauty became her danger. Men eyed her covetously and she knew she must escape or be owned.
So she stole what she could for passage to another country, and busked for her meals. It wasn't long before she achieved the typical performer's dream. She was 'discovered' and rode the rocket to fame, though she despised the phallic metaphor.
And now she was the peak of perfection and everyone's most powerful desire. Which was, of course, the same as it had always been. Men just had to be more polite about it or her bodyguards (who may well have been eunuchs) would teach them the number of ways a person could be in pain and still live.
It was such desires, the sort that stopped the brain and the heart from working, in order for the body to possess and ravage and toss you aside when the next pretty thing caught their magpie eyes… that was the sort that was unmaking humanity.
But it was also such desire that kept her in business. The world focused on sex. It sold products through every medium. It was in your face at every turn. Her appeal had sold records, concerts, magazines, perfumes, clothing, cosmetics, shampoo, jewelry and cars. Her deep limpid eyes had convinced the men of the world that she looked into theirs and saw their undoubtedly beautiful souls. She was the face, and cleavage, that had launched a billion fantasies and fulfilled none.
And she was willing to keep doing it until she was old enough to need plastic surgery. After that she would literally change her entire face to be unrecognisable and become someone who could vanish into a crowd.
She hoped, with this invitation by Queen Kogane, that she might find someone who understood. The queen was in control of her own world, where men were secondary. Perhaps she could gain refuge, at least for parts of the year, in a society that let her relax.
IONA AND SAFFET WERE SITTING IN THE queen's private drawing room, waiting. Each was dressed in their finest, the newscaster in lavender silk, the star in emerald green brocade. They clashed. In more ways that one. Iona would have killed for an interview with the star, and Saffet would have gladly killed the reporter to make her go away.
When Kogane entered the room, she saw the sparks in the air. Though both were immensely civil and smiled warmly, there was a powerful storm cloud hovering in the aether.
"My friends. Welcome," Kogane said graciously, offering them both refreshments. They accepted, and she dismissed her servants. "We have much to talk about before the grand events taking place tonight."
"Oh, your majesty? What sort of things?" Iona asked politely, though her inner bloodhound was baying eagerly. "Will it be possible to conduct an interview with you later?"
"Perhaps so, though it will of course be scripted by myself and slanted to make me look good," Kogane grinned, quite playful but serious. "I know you believe you can make me trust you, but I know something about you that no one else does…"
Iona was momentarily taken aback. The queen was bold as brass, and very worrisome. What could she possibly know that Iona hadn't buried deeper than the earth's core?
"And my dear Ms. Yesil," Kogane said, turning her attention to the beautiful but silent star. "You, too, I know your secret. Which, if Ms. McDermott were to have her way, would also be on the evening news."
Saffet froze, her expression betraying little but inwardly she shivered upon her icy pinnacle. What could this woman be talking about? And why was she so frightened?
Kogane rose regally from her seat and approached them both, a smile of kinship on her face. "My friends, you meet your destinies tonight. I knew who you were months ago, and now you are here, and together we shall rule the world. Very soon. True, we have to share it with a few others of our ilk, but… it shall be ours, nonetheless."
They both were beginning to doubt the queen's sanity. Saffet wanted away, and Iona wanted a microphone.
"You know, deep inside, you both know…What you are…" Kogane reached them and placed her hands upon theirs.
And the sparks rent the storm cloud over them, savagely tearing through their bodies and souls, leaving them charred inside. They both cried out almost soundlessly then went silent as death. When the metaphysical smoke cleared… two Others looked out from their eyes.
They smiled slowly at Kogane. Iona-Envy spoke first, "Hello, Sis, long time no see. So… does this mean you'll share the palace with me?"
"Consider it your home. Fame is now yours, so you can freely take down the highest. Except me, of course," the queen smiled.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Iona winked.
Saffet-Lust laughed gleefully, free of her own frigid chains at last. "Oh, it's wonderful to be here again." She stretched and ran her hands up and down her perfect body. "You know what I've been needing for years?" she asked coyly.
"A really good lay?" Kogane laughed. "Well, I have… someone I can share with you both, if you want him. He's dumb, but he's a demon in the sack."
The three cackled in delight like witches over their cauldron, and began plotting the ways they would ruin the world. They only had a few years to work on it, so the sooner the better.
º This isn't to say that a singing angel was the epitome of bliss. Sure the highest choirs could harmonise all day long, bringing an overwhelming feeling of love and peace, and tears to the eyes of whomever heard it. But after several hundred years of that, it rather tended to grate on one's nerves and send the hearer fleeing to Hell or earth just for a break. The point is that though an angel can sing or even that they sing well, it's not necessarily a good thing. So what people should have said about Saffet's singing was that she sang like an angel who knows when to stop.