The Portrait of a Beautiful Abomination

When I was a child, I remember a light. It was a good and gentle light. I think the light is where we came from. I'm behind the stage now getting my face and body done, soaking up the muffled reverberated screams of thousands chanting the name I gave myself after my brother and I escaped from mother's nest. None of us were all that happy there. I guess you could call it a typical broken home scenario. Radius wasn't as sure about the exit strategy as I was - always the skeptic, always the politician. Mother would come into the nursery once a day to tap on our glass wombs, give us a smile, then inject the daily feed of nutrients into our respective goldfish bowls. Sometimes I smiled back. I think I might have been her favorite. When I was a little older, mother would visit late at night, turn a two-way speaker on and read me bedtime

stories. I loved those stories. For a time, I even loved her, but I still wasn't happy. My crew smears the regular psychosomatic fluid over every portion of my naked body, the link is felt, and I hold the image of the goddess in my mind's eye. The ugly girl once again metamorphoses into the celebrated international fashion model and pop icon, Iva Vouise. I feel whole again. A stage hand shouts as I snort a line of black chroma off of my petite hand mirror, "ten minutes now, Ms. V." The stories mother used to tell were always about the rich and famous, the lives they lived, the relationships they were in, the art they made, the gossip they attracted, typical prince and princess material that any curious child would be attracted to. Eventually, I began to crave those stories, and I looked forward to the time when mother visited late at night with the latest issue of Urizen magazine tucked away in her briefcase or fashionable handbag which of course was never the same model every week, no, she had more class than that. When me and my brother were grown enough, we left the glass wombs and I started to read the stories for myself. Maybe I should have feigned dyslexia, because that was also when mother stopped paying much attention to me. But it wasn't just that, I knew she thought I was ugly. I could read it inside of her just like I read everything else. I still can't help but read things, even if I don't want to, but the chroma helps. It's not a very nice or healthy habit to have, especially if the press ever got wind, but mother designed us to last. If they knew just how much I went through in a week, they would likely come to the conclusion that I died a long time ago and a pretty hologram took my place. Now that I think of it, that's not too far from the truth. Yet, I remain as a living fairytale, someone who's become more image than flesh. My

face is pasted up on billboards and in magazines all over the world. Sometimes I wonder if Iva might be more real than the ugly girl that invented her. Ugly - I knew that's how she felt, even when she told me that I was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen, that anyone would ever see. Deep inside the honeycomb structure of masks that made up her every thought, mother secretly hated and feared us. As my eyes grew sharper and my intuition like the edge of a razor, I began to see just how shattered the person behind the title of mother really was. Joan Warren was a twisted network of contradictions and artificial patchwork, held into place by a series of automatic gears that seems to have been placed there by a foreign hand. I began to pity her, so I made it my secret teenage mission to put all her puzzle pieces back together. While her and Radius were going through his lessons, I would intently stare at her, delicately moving one piece to a fitting corner and bind it with my ability to do so. It was a fun game to do, and even more fun because I knew that I was healing her. Except one day, I find a piece of the puzzle that I couldn't put my ability on. It was a black metal vault inside of her head, segmented from the other strands that were trying to reconnect. Whatever this impenetrable safe contained, I got the distinct impression that it had something to do with our father. It was something that they never wanted our mother to ever revisit. Later, I also came to realize that it had something to do with a person, idea or phenomenon called Zerox. So the ugly girl kept trying, and bloodied her imaginary hands on the surface of this artificial thing until her special ability was full of aches and pains. Try as she did, she just couldn't break it open or help her poor

mother, but she was able to accomplish one small thing. She found a loophole deep inside the mind of Joan Warren that had to do with resonant wave patterns that were being transmitted and upheld by a capsule she took every morning. She rewired a small connective portion of this wave function so that it linked ever so thinly with the black vault. Even if she couldn't do anything about it now, if mother had ever altered her capsule intake, then maybe she might be allowed to open that metal sarcophagus once again. The ugly girl was proud with herself, but she knew that no one could ever find out, especially mother; it had to be kept a secret. Mother would sometimes catch me smiling to myself as she passed by, and asked "what's so funny today?" "You'll see, mama", the girl used to say. She didn't know that in reorganizing her mother that she was partially responsible for a new set of siblings that she never wanted nor cared for; the two black sheep and new favorites of the tribe, Keys 5 and 7. I slip on the perfect outfit that my managers suggested over a pair of perfect tits and apply the last foundation of light-sensitive makeup to my perfect face. Five minutes. The crowd is going wild. I always like to lock the door, sit down and look in the mirror before the start of a show. I like to contemplate what my role in the grand scheme of it all might be, if I'll ever see her again, or any other member of the extended family outside of my all-toobusy twin brother, Radius. I know I'm not like the species I was birthed from and brought into, and that I'll never be able to live the life I used to read about in magazines. We're at the top of the world, and fundamentally alone. There's no changing that. Still, during moments like these, I can feel them out there in the world, working towards an equation of unavoidable events set into motion by a series

of equally unavoidable actions, and my hands are just as dirty. Nobody gets out of this alive. Three minutes. The Technicolor mechanical goddess stands up. She's everything she ever wanted to be. The excitement of the crowd is enough to penetrate the shut and locked soundproof room. "Ugliness is only skin deep, but beauty lasts forever", I say to the girl in the mirror. I take in another thick line of chroma and go to unlock the door, when they appear inside of my ability. Five and Seven are up to something. I see blood, I see panic and I see apocalypse. I see Zerox in the flesh. I see the world that I've wanted to be a part of for so long go up in flames. No more pretty dresses, no more makeup, no more masks, no more designer shoes, no more stories told to special children about how the rich and famous live their lives. No more Iva Vouise. But I do hear music, and that's good enough for me. You only live once. It's time to give the people what they want. I look in the mirror one last time, and send a response back to my distant siblings, "I'll be there." The stage is a drug-induced fairytale of mutational form and color, an unconstrained infectious hallucination of inhuman landscapes and terrible abstractions. Then again, so am I. The crowd explodes in an uproar as I enter the stage, "IVA VOUISE, IVA VOUISE, IVA VOUISE!" I came up with that name after we ran from the core and into a world where everyone was expected to make something of themselves, to be unique, to have a voice. I've got a voice, and even if they can never know what I really am, I get to live the stories that kept me company for so long in that dark, cold place where the natural turned into the supernatural, where humanity turned into something a little

extra - the Keys. I don't feel ugly anymore, but I don't necessarily feel real, either. It's true that perfection by its definition doesn't exist, but I might be the closest example that anyone will ever see. The beat kicks in as I sing the first line of "Not Her", my latest single, when my ability picks up a message from Radius. I start on the second line as I move around the stage, but my deeper eye is elsewhere. "Did you feel the ripple?" Radius sends. "I got it. Can it wait? I'm right in the middle of being fantastic." "Go easy on the chroma, we have to be alert. It's about mother and father." Radius sends. "Any sense of where five and seven are?" I send. "They're both undercover at the People's Church of Virtue as we speak. Matthew Combs is about to die. It will make international news, but it's not just that. We have a new family member." Radius sends. "You don't mean?" "Yes, they were successful. Zerox walks. Both items may draw attention to Vouise and Null if we're not careful." "What about variable X?" I send. "The subject is being held in a mental institution. I have to go; I'll be expected to hold a press conference after it happens."

"Radius? I don't feel well. Are you receiving?" My ability drops the call. We're at the second chorus now when my nose starts to bleed a dark liquid. I finish on the lines, "you can believe in me, you can believe it yourself, but I'm not her, not her, youre gonna have to let me go." And for the first time ever, the invincible fairytale that is the mechanical goddess drops to her knees in front of the cheering masses. Stage hands rush in from the left and right as she lay there, inhuman blood dripping from her perfectly symmetrical face, and utters the beginning of what she feels has been a long time coming. "Beautiful children, forgive me, but I am not what you think I am." No, she's not what they think she is. She's not what she thinks she is, because it's all a sham, and she's quickly beginning to realize it. The ugly girl's microphone is cut as she's dragged off stage and propped against a wall in the back. Her masters wipe her nose and inject adrena-18 into her arms in order to counteract the dangerously high chromalaxymine content. The center stage throbs with a deep repetitive techno beat to keep the crowd placated until the gears of the goddess are oiled with the appropriate fluids, and she's good as new. The dream must go on. "I'd like to dedicate this next song to everyone out there who thinks this world is all they'll ever know." says the goddess. The crowd is responsive, but perplexed. Thousands of miles away, the blood of Mathew Combs is spilled on the steps of the United People's Church of Virtue.

"Because all strange dreams must come to an end." says the goddess. Key five and seven take the podium to announce their war against humanity. "And whether the next is a world of gods or monsters, you can be sure of one thing, baby." The introduction chords for "Wave Goodbye" fade in. "That it will blow your fucking mind."