Glitter & Mayhem Read online

  When we roll out on Level 12 we find ourselves on the outer edge of the dark tower at the center. We veer left and race down the hall, backpacks, duffels and all. We roll into Locker Room 12B and the door shuts behind us and whispers, “Going up.”

  My apartment in Hastur would fit into Locker Room 12B about a dozen times, along with a day spa, a juice bar, and a deli, all of which are also in here. There’s a buffet as long as a semi trailer and a makeup artist, and vidscreens showing non–stop derby.

  “I am never leaving this place,” says Spermy.

  “All right, let’s shit, shower, and shave,” says Joan, who sometimes has delusions of being a drill sergeant. We let her get away with it. She gives the orders and I run the practices, mostly.

  I don’t know exactly how a sonic shower works, but if you have any problems with limp hair it’s the way to go. If we had sonic showers on Earth all the shampoo brands that talk about giving your hair extra body would be discontinued. It’s like a piano concerto for your hair, only lighter and fuller; it’s a harpsichord organ concerto for your hair.

  I confess that this is mostly what I am thinking about when Mrs. Danielson shows up to give us her orientation speech: I am thinking about the fact that my hair looks dynamite, and will up until the point where I stuff it under my helmet. I’m tuned out until I hear her say something about Apex Jump being a WFTDA–certified facility.

  “I thought the WFTDA was pretty much Earth–based,” I say. WFTDA stands for Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, the governing body for the DIY roller derby revival.

  “In that I’m afraid you are mistaken,” she says. “I believe the acronym takes on a different emphasis in your language, but out here it is known as the Wider Federation for the Targeted Dissemination of Anarchism. We are advocates of anarcho–syndicalism, or the cooperative self–determination of autonomous communities. The horizontal structure of a roller derby league is in many ways a prototype of anarchistic community–building.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” I say. “I studied civil engineering, not poli sci.”

  “Is this still a women’s league?” Spermy asks.

  “There are as many as thirty–one genders among the galaxy’s known species, depending upon how you count them,” Mrs. Danielson says. “But yes, the Stellar Swarm Rollergirls are all just that — girls. Would you like to see them in action?”

  She cues up tape of the Stellar Swarm Rollergirls skating against the Oly Rollers. The aliens aren’t any one species — there are lizard creatures, bearish creatures, and something that looks like a cactus that I hope isn’t quite as pointy. They don’t look that big next to the Oly skaters, but they’re fast as hell.

  “Oh my God, did you see that, that broom–thing?” Spermy asks. “It cut past Rettig to Rumble like she was standing still.”

  “She,” I correct her. “She cut past Rettig to Rumble, not it.”

  Lewdy raises her hand. “Mrs. Danielson, how many Earth teams have skated against the Stellar Swarm?”

  “Almost three hundred.”

  “How many have won?”

  Mrs. Danielson shrugs. “Oh, don’t worry about that. Just do your best and have fun.”

  “What’s the spread?” asks Joan.

  “I believe that currently it’s 170 points.”

  My heart plummets into my gut like a sinkhole has just opened up in my liver. I think back to the first roller derby world cup, just a couple of years back. Since the derby revival started in the US, we were able to field the strongest team, but the teams who came were there as much for the camaraderie as the competition. I wasn’t there — I was in Hastur, watching it streaming with some of my teammates — but I remember something that happened after the US/Scotland bout, which the US won 435–1. I remember it because they interviewed the Scotland jammer who had scored that one point, and she was fucking ecstatic to have lost by 434 points. At its best, derby is like that — you skate hard, you hit hard, but you win or lose with grace and love.

  I’m not sure I have that kind of grace and love in me. I did, before everything in Hastur went to shit. Nowadays, I’m less sure.

  “We’ve never lost by 170 points ever,” Joan huffs. “Turn it off.”

  “We’ve lost by 150,” Spermy says, which is true. The Minnesota Rollergirls All–Stars were kind enough to visit us last year, and they knocked us all over the Quonset.

  “We’ve never lost by 170 points, though, and we’re not going to start now. We’re not going to think about covering the spread. We’re going out there with the same goal we always have — to win.”

  There’s more to the speech, and it’s inspiring and all, but it’s a little disjointed and it works better in person. As Joan delivers it the girls are performing their pre–game rituals — painting their faces, stretching, cranking loud music through their earphones. Lewdy and Frida K.O. are playing cribbage. Minnesota Vice is sprawled out on a bench, napping. My own pre–bout ritual is a visualization thing. I picture the opposing team as a skyscraper, myself planting charges inside it and detonating them with a hip check in passing. It’s a simile, you dig? You may have noticed I like similes.

  A three–headed gasbag that looks a lot like a walking bagpipe reports that we have thirty minutes. I must be getting used to this place, because I just nod and say thanks.

  Five minutes out we blast the Dixie Chicks’ “Sin Wagon” on Spermy’s portable sound system, drowning it out as we sing along. Then we do our huddle and skate into battle.

  The skate dome of Apex Jump is enormous. The track looks regulation, with the benches in the infield, but the auditorium floor alone is five times bigger than our Quonset hut. We roll out between the bleachers to a sound like nothing I’ve ever heard. An airplane engine is loud, but unless you’ve heard one running in an enclosed space I don’t think you can understand the effect. This is sound that puts pressure not just on your ears but also on your entire body. If you’d ever been in a sonic shower, maybe it would make sense.

  Above the rafters there’s an upper deck, and above that more upper decks. One of them looks like it’s full of water, and all of them are full of the same Monster Manual of creatures that we saw out in the body of the station. Up above, the sun — whatever sun this is — shines down through a ceiling that filters its light in wild disco patterns. Through the crowd noise I recognize the strains of our unofficial theme song, David Bowie’s “Queen Bitch,” and I’m ready for a fight.

  We do a circuit around the track, and Mr. Kevinson’s voice announces each of us by our number and name. There are people here (if I can call them people, and why not) with signs with our names on them, in English. Something that looks like an enormous fat ladybug is wearing one of my Hastur jerseys.

  “They fucking love us!” Lewdy screams in my ear, and I smile because what the fuck is there to say.

  Then the Stellar Swarm Rollergirls appear.

  Have you ever been set up on a date by a friend, and you get to the place early, and when the person walks in you just know it even though you’re thinking, “Oh no, it can’t be them, they’re way out of my league and this is just going to be embarrassing and what was my friend thinking?” That’s what this feels like.

  “At least they’re all bipeds,” I shout at Lewdy.

  “Didn’t you hear Mrs. Danielson? She said we were in the Class Three Biped Division. There are like two dozen divisions — Quadruped, Heavy Tail, Mixed…” She keeps listing them, but the crowd is too loud, and I’m trying to study the competition, here. I’m one of the two main jammers on the team — Spermy is the other. If the two of us can’t score on these things, we don’t have a chance.

  Joan hands me the jammer star first. Derby works like this: each team has a jammer, who starts behind the pack and tries to lap the other team before their jammer can lap your team. If you’re the first jammer through cleanly, you can call off the jam any time. For every player you lap you get a point. It sounds simple, except that the other team has four
players trying to block you, slow you down, or force you out of bounds. It helps if you’re fast, which I am. It can also help if you’re small, which I am, although that can also mean getting knocked around a lot.

  The other team’s jammer is the cactus woman. She holds out a gloved hand, and I shake it. I brush across a needle as I do so, but the needle is soft and hair–like, so I should probably revise the cactus idea but then the whistle blows and we’re off.

  Oh Hell No of the Northern Brisbane Rollers has said that derby is like playing speed chess while bricks are thrown at you. There are a lot of tactics in derby, but not a lot of time to think about them, so you either have to know what to do instinctively or you have to trust your teammates to scream out what to do. Right now my goal is to get through the scrum of opponents and my own teammates and get ahead. But before I can even get around the first turn the cactus is through, and when I juke over towards the inside line to follow, one of the bears sends me sliding into the infield.

  I check for breaks, I ignore the burn in my legs, and I get back up. I manage to slip between a pair of defenders right around the second turn, but my opponent laps the pack and scores four points before calling off the jam.

  And that’s how it goes. Spermy gives up nine points to the broom woman. I take the third jam and manage to stay close, but they still take three. Frida takes the next jam and gets called for a track cut penalty; while she’s in the box the Swarm bring the score up to 41–0.

  Lewdy sits down next to me, panting. She’s a big girl but she’s in condition; these creatures are knocking us flat. “I didn’t even know their jammer was there until she was past me,” she says.

  The penalty runs out, and Spermy puts us on the board, taking two points to their four. I start to notice that the Swarm isn’t moving quite as fast either, and I manage to take a lead jam, four points to none. Our blockers are learning our opponents, making them work harder to get through. But they’re still getting through.

  At the half it’s 102–17. The crowd is still enjoying it, apparently, but when we retreat to the locker room my legs feel like rubber. A very nice lady with six arms and twelve eyes hands us some kind of sports drink. I take a sip and immediately feel human again.

  “What is this stuff? I feel great!” says Minnesota Vice.

  “It doesn’t matter,” says Spermy. “If they gave it to us, they gave it to them too. They’re going to come out just like they did at the start.”

  “Did you see that block I put on the one with the shell?” Lewdy asks. “I hit her as hard as I could, and I was the one that got knocked out of bounds.”

  “They’re good,” Joan says. “Let’s end that train of thought right there. What do we have in our favor?”

  “Gravity,” I say. “The gravity isn’t as strong here, is it? Has anyone else noticed that?”

  “We’re not exactly floating up towards the ceilings,” says Spermy.

  “No, but you know those jumping drills I’ve been making you do? I think we should be all over that.”

  As game strategies go it’s a bit one–note, but it’s worth a shot. It’s not going to do any more than even the odds a bit, but for the sake of pride we need to have a better second half than we did a first.

  I put myself on the line for the first jam, again. For a moment I remember that the crowd is there and that this is the biggest venue I’ve ever skated in and probably ever will. Then I settle into myself and focus on what I’m doing.

  Apex Jump isn’t just the name of this roller derby space utopia, it’s also a derby move. You can’t cross out of bounds with your skates on the floor, but at either end of the oval, where the track bends, you can legally leap from inbounds to inbounds, passing over a section of the infield, without being penalized. That’s an apex jump, and that’s what I do when I catch the back of the pack.

  There’s a Prince song playing on the speakers as I take off — “Let’s Go Crazy,” I think it is. A good omen for a Minnesota team. The crowd noise is pressing down on me, but I feel it under my feet too, buzzing through the ball bearings and the soles of my skates, surging as I catch air, at least a foot higher than I’ve ever managed at home. I’ve got the light of a distant red sun shining off the sparkles in my eye shadow and all day today not a single person has asked me whether I was a boy or a girl. I still get lonely sometimes, and there’s still a Hastur–shaped hole in my heart, because when you love a place it lives in you just the same as you live in it. But I’m with my friends and an alien with an enormous tail went all fangirl on me a couple of hours ago, and I’m going to nail this jump and I’m going to skate my tits off.

  §

  We lose, of course.

  The final score is 170–54, and I’m proud as hell. The Stellar Swarm take most of the second half to adjust to our new strategy, and by the end we’re almost gaining on them, but I wouldn’t give us better than an 80–point spread for a rematch.

  So the Swarm do their victory lap and then they skate over and slap hands and hug us, and the crowd gives us a standing ovation. If you were the sort of person who wanted to believe in things like universal love and sportswomanship and compassion, you might get a little teary standing there in this moment. Maybe.

  I’m weeping like a faucet, myself.

  The afterparty… if the station was like a bacchanal when we first skated onto it, the afterparty is like a saturnalia. The girls that drink get drunk, and the girls that get high have plenty of options. I mean, we’re all athletes, but we party. The Swarm are fearless and hilarious and they are full of stories of all the other Earth teams that have visited Apex Jump. I start taking notes but then I lose my pen and then I’m making out with this furry little mama from some planet I’ve already forgotten the name of. Her lips taste like apricots. Then at some point we end up at Mr. Kevinson’s place, and I’m trying to get him to sing “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love” while I sing “Breakfast in Bed” and Lewdy is laughing so hard she can’t breathe, and that’s about all I remember.

  When I wake up Mr. Kevinson is ready to drive us back home, all of us except Spermy, who is dead serious about never leaving and is planning to try out for the Stellar Swarm.

  “You should stay too,” she tells me. “You hate it there even more than I do.”

  I don’t know what to say. Do I hate it? My home planet? I hate Hastur, and I hate transphobic assholes, and I hate evangelical Christianity, but there are just as many things that I love. I love Tilda Swinton and pasta with pesto and Istanbul and the New Pornographers and The Vampire Diaries. I love dogs and thrift stores and swimming in lakes and bonfires and Lewdy’s laugh. Goddammit, maybe I am in love with Lewdy. That complicates things.

  “I’ll come and visit,” I tell Spermy, “but I’m going home.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Tell my mom I’ll call her tonight and explain. I met this plasma cloud last night who works as a long distance carrier.” She’s playing it cool, but when I hug her she loses it.

  “I’m not dying, I’m just twenty–nine light years away!” she yells, and we laugh, and we get on the bus, and we’re gone.

  Not only does Mr. Kevinson pay us seven grand for the bout, a couple of days later a new sign shows up outside the Quonset. We don’t know what powers it or what it’s made out of, but I’m pretty sure that the words “HOME OF THE DOUGLAS COUNTY ROLLERGIRLS” are visible from space.

  With Her Hundred Miles to Hell

  Kat Howard

  I HAD BEEN DREAMING OF HONEY. Golden, like the sun. Thick and sweet, late summer distilled.

  Then. The numbness and burning of the sting. Skin that swelled around the poison beneath, too–hot and ill–fitting. Breath that wheezed through a closing throat, and death, just on the other side.

  I woke up. Honey, sweet on my lips, and an echo of buzzing in my ears. A crackle, a rustling, and dead bees spilled from my sheets to the floor.

  That wasn’t even the strangest thing.

  When I touched the bodies, I dreamed of flight. A
waking dream, but sun and wind and the hum of the hive just the same.

  The last dreams of the dead bees.

  Change, like death, tends to happen in only one direction, and is not lightly undone. The death of the bees was only the first dreaming death. It was not the last.

  §

  You could go to Hades six times. That was the rule. There were reasons for it, as anyone who knew anything about mythology would tell you. The Erinyes guarded the door, and they would remember your face, and your sixth night there, dancing in Hell, that would be your last.

  I’m not kidding about the Erinyes. Or the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, as the people who thought they could bribe or talk their way through the doors one more time called them. And sure, Cerberus would have been the more usual thing, but a slobbering three–headed dog draws a different sort of clientele than fiercely sexy women in miniskirts and boots.

  If you ever saw the snakes they wore, just beneath their skin, you had bigger concerns than getting turned away at the door.

  Aside from the Furies who kept the riffraff out, Hades was invitation only, the invitations small red pips of a pomegranate, made from glass, the name of the club etched onto them. Invitations were coveted: everyone, it seemed, wanted to go to Hell.

  Hades was full of the beautiful and the damned, and there was exhilaration, there was glory, in thinking that was who you were, too, even if only for six nights. Most people who walked through the door would have gulped down an entire pomegranate, condemned the left–behind world to an eternity of winter, if it meant only that they could stay.

  “Hello, Morain,” Tisiphone said. She kissed me on the cheek, then waved me past the line of people waiting to get in. Hades was where I worked, so I needed no artful invitation, nor was I bound by a six night limit.