The girl – Issy now, Isolde one day – sat in the darkened living room, enjoying the blue-white radiance that fed her eyes as sunlight nourishes the sapling dreaming of mighty oakdom. The first ones were about to arrive.
Even hurrying to get ready, Mother was heart-achingly beautiful, making Issy hate today and wish for tomorrow. When would the gods bestow their gifts upon her, cure her of the gaunt awkwardness that made her dread the mirror?
“Dinner is in the oven for you and your brother. Make sure he eats his peas instead of wearing them. Mrs. Ranken is just next door if you need anything. She’ll look in on you later, and you’d better be sleeping!” Her voice, with its dark undertones, her hair, red like the temple flames, and her make-up, calling back languid evenings along the ancient Nile, were meticulously honed and perfected to attract prey.
“Why can’t I go with you, Momma?” Issy pleaded. Take me with you into the gloaming. Teach me to work the dark trick. Am I not the heiress of Yvaine and all her secrets?
That well-rehearsed motherly half-smile said no as loudly as the wailing of ten thousand doomed men. “Mommy needs some private time,” said Momma, who quietly embodied all the respect she had earned. Momma had been taking a lot of private time since Daddy vanished like all the Daddies before him.
“But –”
“Enjoy your show!” With that, her mother Yvaine swept out the door. She never watched. She had lived that excitement once, and that was enough.
Dinner smelled of processing and supermarkets, but it was a simple matter to serve the warm plates to herself and her little brother. He complained about the meat – “Too rare!” – but Issy ignored him.
She positioned herself in front of the screen and turned up the volume. The hosts, who were not a day above twenty-six, prattled on about how excited they were and everyone else ought to be. They anticipated “the biggest names in the fashion world and the biggest names in the music world and the biggest names in –”
Issy already knew how to be excited. She just wanted these unimportant types to shut up and get out of the way. Let the Night Gala begin!
And here they came, arriving in mile-long limousines painted a beguiling gold, a stark bone white, or a hue of black darker than a six-foot hole. One day, Issy promised herself, she would ride in the biggest, darkest car of all. Each vehicle pulled up to the entry arch leading to the central promenade. How ridiculous to think that the event inside the palladium could begin until the most important guests had been seen on the crimson carpet.
Out stepped the first mistress of the evening: Aramantha, who held her head high amidst a gathering of mononym queens. Tall she was, with enormous hair spun from starlight. Her high bosom stood ready to smash brick walls while her ample posterior could inspire a man’s lust a county away. Aramantha had just dropped her new single “Sly Beat Bae,” extolling the virtues of a woman who conquered her men then spit them out like so many melon seeds.
“Good evening, mother___s. I love you all!” Only Aramantha had the primal charms to curse the people who raised her to the pinnacle of fame.
A reporter dared rush between her and her chosen camera to ask a question. With an audible whoosh, she backhanded him off his feet, causing his head to strike the ground with a meaty thuck. He did not get up again. Issy’s gaze bored deep into the screen, searching out the inner workings of this ephemeral woman.
Yes. Yes.
The next to stop hearts at the Night Gala was the radiant Xing. She was barely older than Issy and yet she had claimed the full fury of her womanhood. No fewer than five vibrantly gay men in sleek tuxes escorted her down the carpet. And what did she do while escorted by five men? Naturally, the irrepressible blonde flirted with the male reporter. The others looked on as if they couldn’t care less. “I’m so thrilled to be here tonight. I told Auntie Min [the richest woman in Taiwan] to buy Ozymandias Chat [sponsor of this year’s Night Gala] if that’s what it took to get me invited… and she did.”
Xing was the heiress to the biggest vanity pharma fortune the world had ever seen. She lived on a solid gold mountain of promises: hairy heads, trim waistlines, and (Issy blushed at the thought) weenies proudly standing at attention. Xing could do as she pleased. Her money opened all doors and transmuted men into dogs. This enchantment was one Issy was just beginning to understand.
Ah, the men. They were such pretty nothings with their shiny suits and moussed hair and perfectly stubbly faces. They strutted and burned up the camera lens with their smoldering glances. They wore tight pants, shirts roguishly unbuttoned to the waist in order to show off oil-slickened pecs and abs. Issy really liked pecs and abs. True, some of the men were stars in their own right, but so what? Whether boy billionaires or foxy phantoms created by the media, they were replaceable. Each and every one. Only the women mattered here. And how the women shone!
Issy felt her heat rise, reddening her face. She hazarded a glance to her little brother, but need not have worried. He was lost in a world of Gundam soldiers battling zombie dinosaurs. The digital guts and gore would occupy his young mind for hours.
Back to the Night Gala. The crowds circled each of the celebrated ones. “Turn right, beautiful! Smile! Over here, darling!” barked the paparazzi, animalistic and brutal and perfectly suited to this world. The mistresses heard them, of course, but they clearly chose when to acknowledge and when to evince utter disdain.
Yes! Yes! Learn, girl. Take it all in.
Issy listened intently to the red-carpet interviews. Reporters flashed their perfect teeth, insisting to know as if their lives depended on it, “Who are you doing tonight?” Organizers had carefully curated the grammatically spurious and vaguely obscene phrase specially for this year’s event. It was better than asking “What over-celebrated fashion designer are you making richer tonight?”
This one had sewn Condor feathers together to form a twelve-foot cape so heavy the model could not move without the help of four assistants. Another had created a gown of molten gold. The model’s face, cold eyes fixed wide, topped the lustrous cocoon/shroud. Still another artiste had envisioned his model into a framed mesh containing iridescent scarabs of the variety the ancients believed bestowed immortality. In this case, the beetles were enriching their lives by nibbling on the trapped model. All praise the designers! Italian vowels flowed like a bottle of – Issy Googled furiously – Romanee Conti Grand Cru 2003. She would taste it some day, while wearing whichever fashion designer turned her envious friends’ faces the greenest.
And envy did rule the night. Not a word slipped from the plumped lips of the maidens of style, but it was there, in their eyes. A soft glow, barely perceptible on this side of Issy’s screen, but growing ever brighter. These women were apex predators and not likely to suffer each other’s company for long.
Just then, an agitation spread among the glistering gathering. Voices rumbled with confusion. The cameras covering the Night Gala began to sweep wildly, searching for the source of the unrest. Issy almost yelled at the screen, “Look up! Look up!” She could see what the photographers and their producers were missing. People were turning their gaze to the skies.
At last, one after another, the photographers caught on to the game. They raised their lenses to the crystalline skies. There, they found an airship, its belly encrusted with jewels of rainbow fire, circling the crowd below. Though at least ten thousand feet in the air, it boomed with a bass funk that overpowered the voices and music below. The beat bore into the chests of all who heard it, retuning their heartbeats.
From this airship emerged a figure tiny as an atom. The person was skydiving earthwards, bearing a strobing ankle light to ensure no one missed her – of course it was a her – entrance. Down she came, spinning and cackling. Close enough now for all to hear. At the last possible second, a Nightshade blossom appeared above her head. The chute slowed her, but not quite enough.
Hesperia landed with her full weight on a terrified cluster of minor starlets, crushing the breath and maybe the life out of them. Issy had read every article she could find on Hesperia, her very favorite of the gal titans. She herself appeared uninjured, most likely never feeling the impact thanks to her use of the very best drugs. Issy thought what that must be like.
Hesperia was an animal, a disruptor, a force of nature. She had branded herself onto every tabloid program worldwide, enjoying the rarest and finest breed of notoriety: fame based on nothing but fame itself. No one dared not to believe. Dressed in drunkenly mismatched clothes purchased (or more likely shoplifted) from Goodwill, complete with surplus army boots from the last war, she flipped off the cameras and stomped over to the big doors.
The Night Gala’s video director recognized his cue. The action moved inside the Grand Hall now. Gothic archways rose hundreds of feet above the coiffured heads of the elite. Row upon row of wrought iron calderas lit marble floors strewn with tiger and cheetah skin rugs. Around the perimeter, tables buckled under the weight of exotic fare: wines made from grapes now gone extinct in the uncertain climate, chilled ocelot pâté, jerk eagle served on platters salvaged from Titanic.
The guests weren’t there to eat, however. There were awards to be won, titles to be bestowed, acclaim to be eaten with platinum chopsticks.
So delicious!
Mortals the world over were watching, each timid heart cowering deep inside the bone prison cell of their chest. Issy’s mouth hung open, each side turned upward in glee. She paid close attention, studying the way these women moved and leered at each other’s awful beauty. She sensed the hunger within them and felt her own appetites growing.
The dais rose in the center of the sprawling mausoleum. The hostess, a crone from a by-gone era lured to tonight’s event with the promise of a momentary taste of relevance, announced the prizes. “Best Public Break-Up” went to the singer Fellatia for that scuffle at this year’s Super Bowl. How many people in the stands had died in the ensuing stampede? Investigators were still trying to reassemble the bits.
The crone hostess called for the next envelope, the one labeled “Most Augmented.” The winner, Lil Booty, required help making it up the steps to accept her statuette, such was the discombobulation her implants inflicted upon her center of gravity.
More prizes went out; too many in Issy’s opinion. Some were a waste of time, not the thing she’d be talking about with her friends tomorrow.
What she wanted to know, what everyone wanted to know was which of the big three would get the main trophy. It was a plain idol made of a cool green stone not found in geology books, standing atop an ermine-draped table bathed in a laser-sharp spotlight. The figure was titled unequivocally: Goddess. Issy knew it was wrong to dream of clutching it close to her heart, but she could not – no, she did not want to help herself. “One day,” she said aloud to the darkened living room.
At last, with all pomp and circumstance exhausted along with the patience of the audience, who now bordered on rage, the crone host announced the main presentation of the night. She called out the nominees. Though a secret ballot, there was not a hint of surprise from anyone. How could the list hold any other names?
Aramantha. The word rang back from the marble columns, ancient syllables of unassailable strength. Xing. Her name silenced both word and thought, so powerful was her will that a single glance could slice head from body. Finally: Hesperia. Of course. Here was chaos rushing at the gates of the holy place.
Hastily moving to depart the dais and the Grand Hall itself, the crone hostess spoke into her microphone the most somber words of their realm: “Choose among you who is worthy, and mercy be damned.
All three goddesses who would be the Goddess rose from their tables and moved toward the center dais. For a moment, they spared no look to each other. Then came the terrible transformation, heralded by a bestial scream emanating simultaneously from three throats. The primal alert turned blood vessels to icy channels of red.
Ever closer the three women moved, zig-zagging like panthers through the crowd. Any who would not move fast enough they struck down with bolts of light borne of purest blinding self.
“YES! YES!” Issy squeed in delight.
Aramantha’s fingers crooked into talons, flying forth and rending Xing’s finery from her lithe body. Pearls and scraps of silk flew in all directions. From nowhere, a pit crew of men sprang into fabulous activity, stripping Xing and replacing her tattered ensemble with a gown even more splendid than the first.
Wasting no time, Hesperia clomped toward the ermine-draped table and the prized statuette, at the same time reaching into the folds of her oversized coat. She drew forth an 18th Century Irish flintlock ducksfoot pistol. Already locked and loaded, the thing had four finger-like barrels splayed wide. The lethal artifact belonged in a museum of the macabre, but its age had not diminished its capacity to instill fear. Well-dressed living targets dove for cover where they could, and where they couldn’t, they grabbed someone else to use as a shield. Hesperia laughed and fired off a deafening quadruple round, killing three and crippling one. She had practiced.
In a voice less heard than felt underneath the skin, Aramantha beckoned forth for her sword, the sensuously curved Vindicator. She charged towards the dais, where Hesperia was already climbing the few steps between herself and her glory, the statuette. Hesperia raised again her preposterous flintlock. Issy had missed it – when/how could she have reloaded all four barrels?
CLAKK-FNUK-PAPP-TAKK went the gun! Aramantha was faster than the rounds fired at her. She raised Vindicator and deflected the bullet meant for her, sending it into the head of a scoop-hungry reporter who had gotten too close to his story.
In that very moment, Xing changed and fell to the floor, becoming claws, ruddy scales, feathered tail, and lethal purpose. She immediately sprang serpentine at the other two women, faster than Hesperia could reload… but not faster than Vindicator could swing. Where there had been one dragon flying at them from a sumptuous gown, there were now two half-dragons flipping and tumbling madly in the air. Teeth and claws flashing to no avail, the segments of Xing fell to the cold marble floor. True, her halves reassembled, but the humiliation proved too much for her. She returned to her lovely human form and slunk off out of sight.
By the time Aramantha turned back to her sole remaining rival, Hesperia had dropped her pistol and claimed her prize in both hands. She held the Goddess statuette high above her head for all to see. The crowd responded with ooohs and aaahs.
“Behold, I am now your Go–”
“No, you are NOT!” Aramantha’s voice boomed out even as Vindicator began its comet-like swing at the pretender.
Issy watched in rapt bliss, using her special talents so as to miss nothing. Now, as the motion on her screen appeared to slow to the speed of a tectonic plate, Issy heard the thoughts of the two women.
Hesperia was laughing. “Fool! I hold the Goddess. I AM become the Goddess. This small statue can thwart any attack.” Her hands appeared to move in real time; that is, faster than anything around her or indeed anything in the world just then. Hesperia moved the Goddess statuette into the path of Vindicator. Her eyes glowered with faith that the blade must shatter into infinitesimals.
Amarantha expelled not an ounce of her strength on rancor. She calmly stated the fact she knew. “It is you who are the fool.” With these words she twisted her wrist in a manner not possible for most, bypassing the stalwart statue and slicing cleanly through both forearms of the woman who held it.
Stunned, Hesperia stared dully at her severed limbs, saying only, “Well, s___,” as Amarantha snatched the precious green idol from the air and held it aloft.
“You will know me now as Goddess,” Amarantha declared to the amazed elites.
“Respect,” said Issy, kissing two fingers and touching them to her heart.
The surviving members of the audience shot to their feet and applauded wildly. Issy watched the cameras sweep the entire Grand Hall, flying over thrilled guests and bleeding corpses alike. The music and credits rolled up from nowhere.
It was done.
Issy sighed. She couldn’t remember a better Night Gala in all her thirteen years.
She turned off her screen and hauled her brother’s limp form to his bed, somehow got him into his rockets-and-flying-saucer pajamas, and kissed his forehead. “Sleep, little fool.”
The girl – Issy now, Isolde soon – ran the tip of her tongue along her line of teeth. Were they there? Yes, she was certain. Nestled in amongst the top row, two sharp nibs were just beginning their preternatural descent. Isolde giggled. She could hardly wait to try them out.
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I hope "Night Gala" has cast a spell on you and you'll check out Goody Celeste:
https://www.amazon.com/Goody-Celeste-Chris-Riker/dp/1665307072
