Chapter 1: Clogged Hourglass

AUDREY

Tonight it was all going to happen, all her planning and plotting would finally fall into place. One simple maneuver might spell either the start or end of everything. Audrey Grace Hampton buzzed with excitement, both of her feet pattering against the carpet of her bedroom. She was a young, vibrant woman of only twenty-five, yet despite all of her heretofore accomplishments, it was not until the very night in question that her real life would commence in earnest. It had only been a month prior that summer when she cemented “Audrey Grace Hampton” as not only her real name, but her official name as well. Fixing the unsightly “M” on her license would be another escapade. But she finally had the confidence to know that she would figure that out too. That was not her concern tonight, though, for the thought of another bureaucratic misadventure was the furthest thing from her mind. No, tonight something much more crucial would be taking place. It was something she had been mulling over for months on end. Tonight, Audrey would finally ask her best friend Laura to be her girlfriend.

Growing up, Audrey never stood out as popular, cool, or athletic. She was a self-isolating nerd who liked to draw concept art for stories she never wrote, and those she did were meandering fantasy tales. Month after month she would dream up elaborate worlds full of enchanted cities built so high that they would scrape the moon. What scant few friends she could muster up kept on guard for an earful. It was in seventh grade English that she met Laura. Audrey stood up in her baggy jeans and black sabbath shirt to filibuster about her short story project near on ten minutes. Their teacher had given her the evil eye before her abrupt silence. Laura then came to her after class in order to hear more about the squirming, bloated ghouls that arose from the rusted lake every equinox to engage in their fetid bacchanals. They forged an iron bond on the spot. For the rest of their teenage years, it was rare to spot Laura without Audrey in her immediate vicinity. Unlike Audrey, though, Laura had bloomed early and had many friends and admirers who would seek her approval. They needed Audrey’s first to even get a shot. Behind their backs, some speculated that Audrey was Laura’s “boyfriend,” or that she was tutoring Laura in social studies. The crueler ones considered her Laura’s personal lapdog. Audrey didn’t care. If a beautiful, confident woman saw it fit to keep her around, then Audrey did not search for the reason. She only longed to please her.

Perhaps it should not have been such a kidney stone in Audrey’s brain. Over the course of the past three years, Laura had certainly taken notice of Audrey’s transformation. She had scarcely gone a day without Laura alluding to her reciprocated attraction. Even to begin with, Audrey never conformed to any stereotypical masculinity, she shaved diligently and shirked the company of men; yet, prior to her transition, her self-perception had been largely androgynous and sexless. She had a soft alignment with asexuality in those days, offering that in place of her genuine attraction to women, because she absolutely despised the prospect of being a straight male. Once prescribed with spironolactone and bleeding the testosterone from her body, Audrey had already initiated her metamorphosis out of her old, molted skin. Through Laura’s assistance, she gained a modicum of proficiency with makeup and the ordeal of matching clothes to construct an outfit—before that point, it had simply been a matter of putting on whatever could most efficiently conceal her body. Then, after a few brainshaking months on estradiol, Audrey began to transform more and more into the woman that felt most like herself. She envisioned the process as akin to Michelangelo chiseling away at a block of stone to unearth the statue that made up its essence. Somewhat ironic, then, that she gained some weight as the sculpting took place, though it was simply extra clay to pad out her hips, her posterior, and to build up her breasts.

The first time Laura had directly complimented her appearance, Audrey was caught completely off-guard. Of course, her being Laura, she had to cluck her tongue at brunch and opine. “Damn babe, I see the squats have been paying off.” Audrey had given a double-take, choking up her mimosa as she spat up on her half-eaten dulce de leche pancakes. This had been the first arrow in a barrage of such comments, steadily accelerating as Audrey developed her self-image and started perceiving herself as a genuine sexual being. No longer condemned to the life of a reluctant voyeur, neither guilt nor envy could sting her for admiring the forms of other women. She had blossomed into a goddess of equal standing.

That was all well and good, but Audrey could speak enough to her own perspective to understand that she and Laura had hit a stop-gap. Audrey felt that she had made it abundantly obvious that she desired her bestie in every meaningful sense of the term. That had proved insufficient to spur Laura into action. Moreover, Audrey had done her darndest to restrain both her eros and agape for the sake of providing emotional support to the very target of her affections. It had only been a month since Laura’s breakup with her longterm girlfriend Marianna. Since her Sapphic awakening, Laura had been with a dozen different partners, all in various different configurations that rarely survived more than a year. Marianna had been different. She had been with Laura the longest, since Laura was a freshman in undergrad. Marianna was her anchor, the woman she could fly back to no matter where she went or who she had slept with. Marianna was her wife in all but name, and she had shown Laura the ropes (quite literally) and pulleys in the life of a sexually active lesbian. It was thus an unthinkable shock when Laura came to Audrey in tears, lamenting that Marianna had simply left her in the night with scant explanation. Audrey knew that she could have capitalized on Laura’s emotional vulnerability and that, as Laura’s oldest and dearest friend, she was the prime candidate for assuming Marianna’s place. Consequently, the fact that she knew this was exactly her reasoning for why Audrey was at no liberty to confess her feelings. Though she loved Laura and wanted nothing more than to be at her side, she could not accept their relationship if it was predicated on her own monstrous act of manipulation.

Tonight would make all the difference and she was ready for it. Laura was finally in a stable enough headspace where she could decidedly make informed decisions about love. Alongside that, tonight would be the night of Laura’s grand unveiling for the new art project she had deemed her magnum opus. Audrey was invited alongside their friends Dove and Marcus. Laura insisted that they all attend, going so far as to reserve a room at the city library for the sake of her reveal. Audrey smiled at herself in her full length mirror, finishing up her one hundred and fortieth stroke of her brush, the whites of her teeth and her eyes formed into a mischievous Cheshire grin. She knew that her Laura was capable of living up to her own hype. If she felt that she had created a masterpiece, then it was damn well clear to Audrey that it would be a masterpiece. She would bask in the magnificence of Laura’s work and finally ask her out. Hopefully sealing the night with a kiss.

DOVE

Dove Wilson sat scrunched up on the subway as they considered the spectacle they would soon have to endure. Dove and Laura were friends, sure, but the kind of friends that would not seek eachother out in different circumstances. More accurately, Dove was Audrey’s friend, and Audrey hung off Laura like a lovesick puppy. They knew that Audrey and Laura had been pals since middle school, and Dove was more than observant enough to render Audrey’s confiding into a prudential formality. They were just along for the ride. It then seemed weird that Laura would hound Dove specifically about this supposed “magnum opus” of hers. They opened up their messaging app and mouthed the contents to themself:

It is true that Dove was an artist, a visual artist, and they enjoyed stencils and prints and most tactile art forms. Laura, on the other hand, had always been a writer. A writer who was particularly haughty and rarely deigned to share even a snippet with Dove, let alone debase herself with their opinion. It made sense, though, that the only way Laura could ever admit she needed her friends’ assistance would be through some gaudy gesture. That was just her style. It must be nice, really, having the inheritance necessary to put on such a show for your no doubt masturbatory novel. Dove sold commissions to make rent and Laura got to live out her lesbian princess fantasies.

Alongside all of that was the whole “mother mary” line. Two of the scant things Dove and Laura actually had in common were their catholic upbringings and their estranged families. Of course, even those venn diagrams only had slim overlap. Laura had her first kiss with a preppy girl in a crisp plaid skirt and crucifix. Dove got their first black eye when a linebacker punched them into the tarmac. Laura liked to act edgy, dark, and jaded, but it was all just a smokescreen for her fragile ego. That’s what Dove typically thought… except, something had changed about Dove’s demeanor in small, gradual increments. Like an hourglass, the sand slowly drained from one end to the other, and only in retrospect could you see the pile become a heap. Tiny quirks turned into red flags. She was going to do something stupid and dangerous and it was only a question of scale. They had yet to warn Audrey of these fears. She would have to learn before the relationship became official. Dove did not want to see goth dyke Jeffrey Dahmer turn their friend into a sex zombie.

They folded their right leg over their left, their leather jacket resting atop. The summer was getting serious. The once cool nights were now humid and sticky. Dove was a bit too stubborn to change up their outfit before inevitably soaking themself in sweat. What they wore beneath was reasonable (tanktop, jeans, sportsbra), but going without their jacket was practically going naked. It was adorned with numerous patches of their own design. Their personal punk technicolor dreamcoat. On the left shoulder blade there was a hand with black painted nails that clasped a dripping heart. The inscription underneath read “Pumped.” On the opposite shoulder was the conjoined mars, venus, and combined symbol with an anarchist A stabbing through the middle. A scattered few more represented their favorite bands and one small patch was a painstaking recreation of Majora's mask. The centerpiece of it all was a scene of two feminine figures lunged against one another entirely nude, their chests abreast. The more muscular of the pair has her hair tied up in a bandana and is biting her lip as the other, a lithe woman with an erect and curved penis, kisses her lover’s collarbone. In her offhand, the second woman holds the disembodied and bleeding head of bluebeard by the hair, the position meant to invoke Judith beheading Holofernes. The reaction Dove got from onlookers to this piece could immediately tell them who they were and were not willing to speak to.

Twiddling their fingers and scrolling through social media feeds, Dove cursed themself for neglecting to eat anything before this late night excursion. The news was grim. The pigs had shot another climate activist, this time in his own home and in front of his young child. Their blood boiled beneath their skin, but they brought it down to a low simmer for the moment. Taking their mind off it, they sent another quick message asking Marcus if he had gotten to the library. His lack of a timely response was uncharacteristic. They really hoped that he wasn’t going to blow it off, ‘cause they had a sneaking suspicion that Audrey was going to be a bit too absorbed in her own machinations to hold a half-decent conversation. Marcus always had some new fixation to gush about and he had a knack for making it passingly interesting. If he wasn’t gonna be there, then why was Dove going? The truth being that they did not have much else going on for them after losing their last job. Life felt sick and sad and painful. Laura was also sick, but at least her sickness had some glamor to it.

They were almost at their stop now, just a block or so from Gilman avenue, so they planted their feet and slipped back into their jacket. Dove was not exactly intimate with this part of town, so they steeled themself to rush to the library as quick as can be. There was no indication that this part of town posed significant danger. But, aware of their own appearance and attire, Dove got anxious anywhere they went that didn’t have a designated safehouse they could slip into. They would probably have to bug someone for a ride home once this whole affair was finished, so they prepared themself to be on their best behavior.

MARCUS

He sat in the car. The Ford pickup he often borrowed from his sister. Marcus Graham considered the landscape image on the phone held in his trembling hands. Him and his friends stood next to each other behind a haphazard campfire and before a backdrop of red maples. It was dusk at Ambrose forest. Audrey’s younger sister had taken the photo for them. Audrey held that wide smile of hers. The one she had admitted to practicing. It was pretty and new. Marcus was happy that his friend had finally found her smile. She was tall and chubby. Her chest was a little smaller than when he had last seen it. Her usual smooth, pale complexion had burned in the heat of the late spring sun. Their hike earlier that day had left her cheeks the shade of an envy apple. Her hair was long and terminated just above her waist in a mess of raven curls. A few strands caught in her askew glasses. She had made the unfortunate decision to sport a white t that was now saturated with sweat and a pair of distressed jeans cinched too tight with a leather belt. Dove, the tallest of the entire group, stood next to her. They wore their silver-dyed hair in a short-cropped undercut. They smirked through their snakebite piercings. They draped their signature jacket over a red blouse and a pair of leggings stuffed into their dad’s old brown boots. He really liked that jacket and was tempted to get his own, but he didn’t want to crib Dove’s thing. Though it did occur to him that maybe they could probably match. Dove was his best friend. He only came to their chest standing beside them, pockets stuffed into his hoodie. He had his patented dirty blonde hair that came down to the nape of his neck and wide rim glasses. Last in the lineup was Laura. Laura was tan and a bit skinny. She wore a long black smock. She had her auburn hair in a messy bun. She kept a pen balanced behind her right ear. Marcus thought he liked Laura. But it was becoming clearer and clearer that he didn’t know her at all. He wanted to see what she had planned. He did. She was grimacing around her lit cigarette. That was a habit she had given up in the past month. That thought made him anxious.

Marcus was the only man in their friend group. Unlike Audrey and Dove, he had not started hormone replacement therapy. This was not for lack of trying. Marcus did not resent any of his friends. He did feel a bit stunted. Until a year ago, he and Dove had both identified as non-binary, but he didn’t think he needed hormones. He was scared of what they would mean for him. Now that he knew that he was a man, he was more scared that the chance at owning his own body had already passed him by. He still lived with his parents and had never finished high school. He did not want to dwell on that. Marcus closed his eyes. The problem was this nebulous anxiety. It felt like it kept building. Pulsating. Expanding further and further.

He opened the car door into the fresh air. He took a few deliberate breaths as his therapist encouraged. In and out. In. Out. His heart rate was still too high. His chest ached from the insistent beating. He knew that this was all irrational. He locked the door behind him and made his way up the library steps. Something bad was coming. The doors of the library were tall and wrought iron with goal plated handles. The metal chilled his hand as he grasped it. He opened the door. The librarian waved at him. She had a big, toothy smile on her face. She was cute. Her cat-eye frames sat on a nest of freckles in her caramel face. He waved back at her. Something bad was there and he was walking right towards it. He asked the librarian where Laura had reserved the conference room. She gave a polite point to a door in the middle of the south wall. He thanked her. Something bad was going to happen and he was involved in it. Instead of heading to the room, he ducked into the women’s restroom. He threw open one of the stalls and vomited into the bowl. Something bad was going to happen. Something bad was already happening. It was far too late to do anything about it. Maybe if he had never gotten out of his sister’s car, trusted his instincts and drove away, then he might have prevented it. The moment he entered the library, passed its threshold, he could tell that it was too late. He knew through some mad, terrible intuition that everything was now past the point of no return. Rather than helping him, it seemed that the fates were taunting him with this knowledge. Even if he ran out those doors right now and drove miles out of town, it would not change anything. No matter what he might think, no matter what he might try, he was destined to be a participant at midnight.

LAURA

She sat at the end of the conference table, her spindly fingers packed together before her like an open can of sardines. She felt giddy. The anticipation was like hot molasses pooling on flat cakes, but she would not take a bite. She was determined not to reveal herself until the moment of truth. At the center of the table was a cloth emblazoned with her crest. The four-pronged wheel of infection, which you could perhaps mistake for a “metal” bastardization of the eightfold path, the noble route to escape samsara. Laura supposed that was a little appropriate, it did represent its own kind of enlightenment. The four prongs of the wheel pointed towards each fated participant in her ascension. The black of the wheel resembled black ink near perfectly. That was until you deigned to touch it, at which point it clung to your skin like a viscous snot. In order to paint the ritual catalyst, Laura had to use thick goatskin gloves that were now gradually disintegrating in the room’s waste basket. The nasty scab spanning from her right shoulder to the small of her back was proof enough that the ichor was potent. It stung to think about it. Something was festering in the wound and she quaked at the prospect of leaving it unintended, but she would not have to concern herself with that after tonight. Her ma-... mentor was confident in her potential, so there was no point in doubt. Dove had their suspicions, but they were nascent, it would not beat out their curiosity. Her precious Audrey was loyal and true, and Laura could sense another motivation behind her attendance. Marcus was dangerous, he could already see farther than she could manage, even if his human eyes were blurred. She had contingencies for that. A sharp pain in her wound signaled that Marcus had passed through the threshold. He was bound to the library until the ritual reached its completion.

In all honesty, beyond the delicious ambrosia of triumph, Laura could still taste the bitterness of shame. The lies and half truths she had been forced to tell Audrey pierced her deeper than any nail. She had never obscured the passion she felt for her love’s magnificent form, but she had hid from her the true nature of those feelings. The hunger that it awoke in her. Audrey was intelligent and disposed to philosophy. Laura was sure that her love would appreciate the fruits of her labor. The others might need some time to really understand, but she didn’t mind, time was just one of the many gifts that they would receive tonight. Despite how her mentor spoke of them, they were not just lab rats of random selection. Each of them clearly wanted this too, even if they were incapable of imagining it. She was just the one who was given the tools to conduct this symphony. The world was going to be better. No one could gatekeep the means to transcend the limitations of your own body. None of them would be outcasts. None of them would be powerless. All the old hierarchies would crumble before pure savage might. Audrey would be loved, not just by Laura, but by everyone blessed enough to lay their eyes upon her. All had their own niche in the world she had planned.

And what did she, Laura, get out of all this? Satisfaction, for one, that she might spit in the eye of her family’s greatest achievement. More than that, her motive was altruistic. If humanity were to continue as it was, under the control of its same incompetent masters, then those masters would simply lead the innocent and guilty alike into a mass extinction. Such cockroaches paled in comparison to her mentor. She saw the true beauty in human life and the need for evolution, both for the sake of individuals and the entire species. She could liberate them from the tyranny of death and those who wield it. This would be her boon. A pale hand floated into her periphery. Laura winced when she felt the icy grip on her open gash. She could not bring herself to look upon the figure who towered over her. Not while she was still incomplete.

“Prepare yourself,” out came the satin voice of a queen, “my sweet daughter.”