WARNING: The following story is made for fans of modular/natural body magic/detachment/non-lethal dismemberment/etc. If you are not a member of that community, I strongly advise that you turn back now. Things will get freaky.
This story contains light guro and macabre elements. If you are easily grossed out, please turn back now. This story also contains characters with anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments. These characters are not portrayed positively and the author does not condone these sentiments, but if such depictions are a trigger for you, also consider turning back.
Final warning, this story underwent several significant rewrites, and deviates slightly from the original poll prompt. If you voted for this story based on the prompt and it's not what you expected from it... sorry about that. It had to be done, as the original idea was found to be unworkable.
-
She was on an asteroid hurtling through space. She didn't know how she'd gotten here. Taking in her surroundings did nothing to enlighten her. Space was emptier than usual, featuring only a single star amid the blackness which she seemed to be racing towards. And as if things weren't odd enough, a skeleton popped out. This skeleton was either tall and close, colossal beyond comprehension and hundreds of light years away, or somewhere in between. Judging scale against a featureless black backdrop was hard. But, whether the skeleton was just conventionally tall or spanned galaxies, its soft, androgynous, muted voice came as an unsettling whisper. In the vacuum of space.
"This is the end of Roxie." The skeleton announced, nodding.
"What?" She asked, furrowing her brow.
"Roxie's cosmic purpose is completed and is no longer a factors in the plan. I have thus come to claim Roxie." The skeleton dispassionately clarified, motioning to the growing light they were racing toward.
"Y-you're death?!" She asked. "I'm dead?!" She shrieked. "N-No, no there must be a mistake! I'm too young to die, y-you've got the wrong girl!"
"Roxie lived by human measurements 18 years and 5 months and 19 days and 16 hours and 1 minute and 23 seconds and 14 milliseconds. The plan has called for millions of deaths far younger. Roxie Music Smith is no more deserving of life than those."
"But I'm not Roxie!" She screamed. "I'm Roxy! With a 'y', not an 'ie'! You've got the wrong girl, I swear!" Roxy wailed, the star growing ever bigger and more brilliant.
The asteroid stopped. Were it operating under standard physics, it would have exploded into a flat cloud of dust as all momentum ceased to be, while Roxy continued sailing forward into the star. Instead, the asteroid simply halted, and Roxy remained firmly atop it. Death stared as much as something without eyes really could. It raised a hand, and from nowhere came a tablet of gray stone the height and width of its rib cage. It observed the tablet, running a bony finger across its surface. Its hand stopped, and it eyelessly stared at the tablet. "How did Roxie hear that?"
"Roxy! I'm not Roxie!" Roxy reiterated, annoyed.
"They sound identical." Death snapped, hints of emotion entering its voice for the first time. Annoyance and panic.
"No, one's got a y!" Roxie snapped back.
"But they SOUND the same! 'Y' and 'IE' make the same noise!" Death retorted.
"No, one sounds like Roxy, and the other sounds like Roxie!" Roxy replied.
"Those. Sound. The. SAME!" Death repeated, its voice cracking. Clutching the sides of its skull, death muttered "No. No no! How? I got the wrong one! This wasn't part of the plan!"
"It's fine, don't worry!" Roxy said, finding the embodiment of mortality a little pathetic. "Just return me to life or whatever and go kill Roxie instead!" She blinked, realizing what she'd requested. "I mean, unless she doesn't deserve to die? Like, if she's a good person, or a baby, or like... like, I don't know much about this whole cosmic plan, but doesn't it seem a little messed up? Maybe it doesn't need to kill so many people?" She reasoned. "Unless they're evil, then... look, I dunno, just bring me back to life! I wasn't even supposed to be here today!"
"Yes. Yes. I can fix this. The plan can proceed." Death said, nodding and ignoring Roxy's entire second point. "Roxy will be returned. I'll see Roxy later!" Death said, waving.
While not inaccurate, Roxy really wished they'd chosen another farewell. Still, she was relieved the comet beneath her reversed course, the light retreating as she plummeted back down the tunnel.
-
Orange. Light. Red. Loud.
Blink.
Sunset. Stage lights. Theater curtains. Screaming.
Roxy blinked.
She was staring up at a late day sky held up by pillars of blistering white light, cast heavenward by her temporary stage's lights. To her left she saw her stage's cheap backdrop, sporting curtains that covered nothing but a wooden wall painted with a mural of, coincidentally, an art-deco inspired sunset. And then there was the screaming, distinctly male and coming from her right.
Roxy cast her gaze to the scream's source and saw Aman "The Great Ifrit", expert fire breather and soon to be second biggest attraction at their circus, after Roxy usurped him with her latest performance.
The 'Grand Arabian Sword Dance' was conceived by a Polish showman and first publicly performed by an Algerian woman in a French circus. Cultural dubiousness aside, it's a technically stunning and breathtakingly impressive display of talents, requiring its performer, traditionally a nubile woman wearing a vaguely Middle Eastern-ish jinn inspired costume, to perform an elaborate and tightly choreographed dance routine while simultaneously juggling 5 scimitars all the while performing tricks and flourishes. Even using dull blades, which most performers preferred, the routine was exceptionally difficult and dangerous. Using functional blades, the routine was suicidal for all but the most talented and brave performers in the world. Roxy was not only one of these incredibly rare talents, but she would soon be the youngest performer to ever successfully perform the act before a live audience!
Aman's continued to scream, breaking Roxy's concentration. "Aman, shut up! Like, somehow this is even harder than it looks!"
Screaming transitioned seamlessly to a horrified gasp, technically an improvement. "Y-you're alive?! H-how?!" Aman stammered, retreating a step.
Oh right. She'd met death. That means she'd died. How'd that happen? Roxy's head was still swimming from existential horror and potentially a concussion, judging by the throbbing. Why was her head throbbing? It felt like something had hit the top of it. Odd, since the only thing above her had been the darkening sky and the scimitars she'd been juggling.
Oh shit, had she dropped a sword on herself? She tried to reach for her scalp and feel for blood, but the arm she'd ordered to investigate the area wound up jabbing her in the ribbs. Upside-down and on the wrong side. She tried to look down and see what was happening, but while her neck muscles contracted all she managed was to roll onto her cheek to face Aman fully. She relaxed her neck, which now insisted it was straight even as her back said with equal certainty that it was flat against the wood and their muscles all agreed they were perfectly aligned.
"Aman. What. The fuck. Happened?" She asked, bewildered and scared and furious and a million other emotions she'd never even known about until right this instant.
Aman hesitated, looking down at the phone clutched in his trembling hand. He dragged his other, equally shaking hand across the screen, and tapped a few times. He glanced at Roxy, back at his phone, and back at Roxy. He gulped, took a few tentative steps forward, and turned his screen to her.
She remembered. She remembered Aman complaining on the phone about "What I have to compete with!". She remembered him raising his phone in her direction. She remembered the flash of his camera, brief but blinding. She remembered being at her act's grand finale, where all five blades were thrown high and she would stand in a very specific pose at very specific spot, where the blades would land all around her without so much as scratching her. She remembered... no, she couldn't remember seeing the strip of tape denoting the safe spot. She instead remembered doing her best to estimate the spot by muscle memory. She remembered a sharp and sudden pain in the neck, equally sudden and complete numbness, feeling faint, and a weaker second flash of pain as her head hit the ground. She remembered it all going black.
With the split second delay between the flash and the picture, Aman's phone captured the instant Roxy died, beneath a rain of razor sharp blades. Her picture self gazed back at herself proper, shock and confusion imprinted eternal as her severed head tumbled away from a torso already relieved of three of its limbs. Both arms were severed halfway up the bicep, their stumps so freshly made that the blood hadn't even had time to spray out. While her arms fell away from her trunk, her left leg had been mid kick when a blade bisected its thigh, inertia and momentum causing the limb to spin away and throwing its shoe off and out of frame.
According to the photo, all she had left was her right leg. She flexed the limb experimentally, and felt it roll onto its side, detached, and recognized the cool sensation of metal against her flesh. Flesh which, under normal circumstances, should not have been accessible. It was inside her, or more accurately, through her.
Death had returned her to life exactly as she'd died. As a mangled collection of parts scattered across a shitty stage.
Roxy screamed, cried, screamed some more, and cried some more, thrashing and writhing her detached pieces in a tantrum that, were it any less disturbing, would've been deeply depressing to all onlookers. The ghastly display certainly gave the arriving paramedics pause, making them debate if their oath to do no harm superseded their moral obligation to prevent zombie apocalypse.
-
"Have you ever heard of Fineas Gage, the railroad foreman?" The doctor asked, prodding Roxy's exposed arm stump with a gloved finger.
"You mean Phineas Gage?" Roxy asked, her body reflexively recoiling from the strange sensation. It wasn't exactly pain she felt, which was a relief considering how painful getting her exposed muscles prodded should've felt, though the fact she could feel anything in her severed arm, with her head severed to boot, was deeply disconcerting. It felt... overly intimate, like the doctor was touching parts much more private than she was. This wasn't helped by the fact that she'd been stripped out of her already skimpy vaguely Arabian attire and was left only in her skin-tone bra and panties.
"What did I say?" The doctor asked, adjusting her spectacles absentmindedly and leaving a bloody smear across the bridge of her nose.
"You said 'Fineas', like with an 'F'. If you're talking about the guy who got a spike put through his brain and lived, that was PHineas Gage, with a 'ph'." Roxy explained.
"How... how can you hear the difference?" The doctor asked, nearly knocking Roxy's legs off the operating table as she scrambled to grab her notebook and pen.
"IS EVERYONE DEAF?!" Roxy screamed, her various detached bits thrashing. The only part of her not writhing was her fuming head, which some nurse had had the foresight to set in a neck pillow to keep her from falling onto her side whenever she talked. Though her dangling neck stump still grazed awkwardly against the metal medical tray she was resting on as she demanded to know "DID I GO TO SOME KIND OF HELL FOR THE HARD OF HEARING? IS THAT WHERE I AM? AM I IN HELL RIGHT NOW?! AM I BEING DEMONICALLY PRANKED?!"
Seeing she was losing control of her patient, the doctor raised her hands calmingly and said "Sorry, sorry! It's okay! You're not in hell! We don't even know if hell exists! The existence of death's personification doesn't prove or disprove any existing religion! Heck even the atheists have a theory on the science behind death!"
"If this isn't hell, then what in the hell is going on? Death fucked up and just like, threw me back like a bad fish?" Roxy demanded, knowing on some level she'd answered her own question.
The Doctor closed her eyes and tried to remember her notes, notes which she'd have to try and forget pretty soon. "Your condition is known as 'Premature Existential Termination', or PET for short. It's am extremely rare affliction, caused by death... picking the wrong person. The first properly documented Case was F-Phineas Gage in 1848, though there were likely earlier cases. While the condition remains rare, it has become increasingly common as the global population rises, as death is having difficulty keeping up with the sheer volume of people they now have to keep track of. There were 12 reported cases last year. You are case 5 of this year."
Roxy blinked. The doctor blinked. They exchanged a look, one where neither knew what came next. Roxy took a deep breath, still not sure how she could do that with a bisected windpipe or how her voice was coming out of her mouth when her lungs were across the room or how... anything. "Ok. So... why am I only learning about this now? Feels like, no matter how rare this is, it should be big news. Like, common knowledge. Has this been covered up by the government? Are you guys about to throw me in a vault next to the ark of the covenant or extract my blood for an immortality serum?"
The doctor couldn't help but giggle, and Roxy would've been furious if the cute little Korean weren't so... well, cute. She even had a hard time staying mad when the doctor started patting her lower thigh, rocking her severed leg reassuringly. "No, we don't have any plans to kidnap you. We may take a blood sample at some point, but if it's anything like the others, there won't be anything unusual in it. To tell you the truth, we don't need to keep this a secret. We don't WANT it to be a secret! It's just that death doesn't like people dwelling on their mistakes, so they kill anyone that does too much digging on this stuff or tries to disseminate the news to too many people. It's why we know so little about PET; we have no experts or treatment regimens. We collect as much information as we can and spread little bits of the info around to lots of docs so we collectively know a lot but individually know very little, but even so. We're sort of as lost as you are."
"That's comforting." Roxy muttered, not sure if she was sarcastic or not. It was deeply disturbing to know they knew basically nothing about her incredibly life altering mutilation, but at the same time she was at least relieved that there were no plans to stuff her head into a glass jar and shove probes where the sun don't shine. "So, like, now what? You guys just gonna sew me back together and send me on my way? And everyone just pretends none of this ever happened?"
The doctor's soothing stroking of Roxy's halved thigh stopped with an awkward cough. "Uh... kinda... you see, we can't actually... do that here. Today. A surgical procedure like that, pinning your bones back together and reconnecting your muscles and suturing your skin... takes time. A lot of time. And close observation. So much time that death would probably kill whoever was putting you back together if they tried to do it in one sitting."
Roxy's blood froze, as it should have done hours ago when she was first killed. "I'm... are you saying I'm stuck like this?"
"N-no!" The doctor said, watching Roxy's belly as her borderline naked and fully dismembered torso began to dry heave in panic. The notes hadn't told her which hole any vomit would come out of and she wasn't about to risk her life finding out. "No, of course not! It's just that, we're going to have to do it piecemeal. Bring in a lot of different surgeons over a protracted period to do small bits and pieces of the procedure. That way no one person does enough to get themselves killed. You'll be fine! Good as new! It'll just take... a while."
Roxy locked eyes with the now nervous nurse. "How. Long?"
-
"A FUCKING YEAR." Roxie repeated for what had to be the billionth time. "I'M GOING TO BE STUCK LIKE THIS FOR AN ENTIRE FUCKING YEAR!"
"Not exactly. If I correctly understand, you will be undergoing a series of surgeries over the course of the year. In that time, you will be in various states of disrepair." Ar countered, tugging at the freshly sutured nylon straps. "And would eternal oblivion be a preferable outcome to this year of separation?"
"Really? You're going to lecture me on the bright side?" Roxy asked, scowling from her vantage on the mantel at her exceedingly slender, pale, gender nonconforming goth coworker and new roommate. "I am a literal mantelpiece and a pile of fish bait, and you're gonna tell me it's not so bad?"
"My question wasn't rhetorical. I haven't gazed upon the other side as you have; I know not of its wondrous terrors." Ar said, a snakelike smile spreading across their narrow lips as they glanced up from the sewing machine at their newest curio. Despite Roxy's protests, her head really did look amazing up on Ar's mantle, between the taxidermy badger and the novelty incense burner shaped like a blunt smoking skeleton. She tied the entire spooky room together, and if nothing else it gave her plenty to look at, including the TV. Plus, assuming Roxy didn't murder Ar for the objectification, the set up was only temporary. Once Ar finished her rig, and she got used to maneuvering in it, Roxy would hopefully be able to move to the guest room, and eventually move back to her own trailer.
Roxy sighed, suppressing her existential dread in the hopes of knocking some of the wind out of her goth roomie's sails. "Like I said, I didn't make it to 'the other side', I was in purgatory or whatever. It was boring as hell."
"Ah, the maddening hell of boredom! Truly the most terrible of punishments, for even in damnation, at least the mind is occupied!" Ar mused, shaking with excitement much to Roxy's chagrin. "But enough tally, my empress of undeath, for your new clothes are ready!" They announced, lifting the heavily modified rig up for her head to see.
As their circus' premier aerialist, a high flying death defying acrobat, Ar had plenty of full body safety harnesses they'd once used in training. Of course, Ar's skill had long since surpassed the point of needing such equipment, and the death-positive goth never enjoyed such second-chance safety nets to begin with. As such, they were more than happy to hack up and re-stitch and otherwise cobble together a few of their dust-gathering old harnesses and some other miscellaneous pieces of circus equipment into a "hold Roxy together" contraption. It had taken a few days and a few false starts, but finally a workable prototype seemed to be ready.
"Looking good!" Roxy said, smiling for the first time since her accident as a faint glimmer of hope glistened in her eyes. "Now Strap me up already so your queen has a leg to kick your ass with."
"With pleasure, m'damned!" Ar joked, bowing before the booing head. Ar approached the wide but quite squat coffee table, where Roxy's lithe, freshly washed, and completely nude pieces had been laid out like a Frankenstein awaiting construction. Running her fingertips between the cleanly cleaved gap in Roxy's right thigh with the same tenderness a lover would use when running their hand through the gap between both thighs, Ar mused "Such beautiful wounds! What great shame it is that we must hide these sinfully sexual scars from the world..."
"Dude, you know I know you're ace, right? Stop pretending to perv just for stupid goth points or whatever!" Roxy teased, her leg reflexively kicking away from the ticklish sensation and rolling out of position. Yet again, Roxy marveled at the incredibly implausible set of fortunate coincidence that landed her a caretaker with no sex drive and wouldn't get weird about seeing her naked. Well, wouldn't get any more weird than their baseline weirdness, anyway. If she didn't know any better, she would start to suspect Ar secretly was death and was performing some sort of test with her to see if Roxy deserved a second chance. But of course, that was impossible. Ar was so damned jealous when they picked Roxy up from the hospital, even with her pieces shoved into 2 undignified duffel bags with the hospital's logo on them, they'd spent the entire car ride home complaining about how lucky Roxy was and how it should've been them. Roxy quietly agreed.
Before beginning with the harness, Ar took Roxy's parts and one by one stuffed them into a full boyd leotard, inserting each limb into the appropriate hole before stuffing the body in to fill the center. The leotard had been their collective plan A on temporarily reassembling Roxy, but it quickly proved impractically fragile and limiting. Roxy couldn't raise her legs or arms more than a few degrees without their weight causing them to slump out of position, she was precariously balancing her torso on her legs and her head on her neck at all times and even the slightest bump (like the slight bump of her own footfalls) caused her pieces to misalign and collapse into a heap. A contained heap, but a heap nonetheless. They'd need something with more structure, something that held her together more firmly, and together they'd come up with the idea to compliment the leotard with a binding rig.
Maneuvering Roxy's squirming, ticklish, surprisingly powerful bare body parts into the leotard and then the rig proved something of a challenge for the slender acrobat, who received a fair few kicks to the face and slaps to the side without a word of complaint. Roxy, however, complained enough for two, as her parts continued to fall off and bang into the table, slip out of position in the leotard, get uncomfortably squeezed in the tight, chafing harness, and get uncomfortably accidentally (she assumed) groped by the asexual acrobat. But after twenty long minutes of finagling and cinching down straps, Roxy's body was fully suited up. "And now, for the pièce de résistance!" Ar announced, approaching Roxy's head and gingerly lifting her off the mantel in a pair of hands so calloused from stunt work it felt like sandpaper on Roxy's cheeks. Spinning on their heels, Ar pressed Roxy's neck stumps together and held her in place with one of their knees, before securing the homemade collar and neck supports tightly around her neck. Roxy coughed at the tightness, but metaphorically bit her tongue this time as she recognized her head was the most fragile piece of her human jenga tower and the most liable to fall off. "Now then, arise, my masterpiece!"
Roxy huffed, rolled her eyes, and obeyed, slowly lifting her back off the table an inch at a time. She felt her head worryingly shift back a few degrees, but to her relief it remained secure. Her arms too stayed in position, and placing them on the table to give herself a push to the seated position, Roxy was delighted to discover they actually took on some weight without falling out from under her! She could feel their fragility, but fragility was a definite step up from literal uselessness. Seated in an upright position, Roxy raised her arms slowly, feeling the rigging strain but hold. Looking over at the full length mirror beside the door, Roxy raised her arm and attempted a wave. 'Attempt' being the operative word, as while her muscles worked normally in spite of their severance, attempting to twist the arm from side to side with a breakage in the middle just resulted in the two stumps wriggling against each other with an unpleasant squirming sensation. She could, however, raise her arm and bend her elbow up and down and swing her should out side to side, which was so many steps up from what she'd been stuck with for the last week that she in spite of everything, tears of joy welled in Roxy's eyes. She'd be stuck moving around like an action figure with limited points of articulation for a while, but she'd be moving. "Holy shit, Ar, thank you!" She said, with trembling voice.
"But of course! It's what friends are for! Picking us up, and putting us back together." Ar said, gingerly placing their hands on Roxy's hip and shoulder and assisting the once nimble dancer to her feet.
"I'll fucking kill you for that pun and you'll deserve it." Roxy said, with a voice that held nothing but the most sincere gratitude. Ar slowly released their grip on Roxy, their hands retreating only a few inches and ready to catch the girl at a moment's notice. For her part, the dancer did her best to ignore the bizarre squirming sensation of her thigh cuts rubbing together, each involuntary twitch of her muscles sending a chill up her spine that threatened to topple her over. But, crucially, she remained standing, and with her finely honed sense of balance, Roxy was able to achieve the impossible.
She took two steps forward, rotated clockwise 90 degrees like a tank, and took a sidling sidestep back to the right. All without coming apart! "I could really use a cane or something to spread my weight out, but other than that..." she trailed off, admiring her own athletic build in the mirror, perfectly complimented by the form fitting leotard and the tight straps wrapping around her body like "OH MY FUCKING GOD IT LOOKS LIKE BONDAGE GEAR!" Roxy yelped, hopping back in horror and sending her barely standing body into a tumbling freefall. Ar grabbed her before she could hit the deck, though the shock of the sudden stop did dislodge her head from the straps. Roxy hissed as her head landed on its cut with a wet thud, leaving a bloody imprint of her neck's cross section like a stamp on the hardwood. "Shit, Ar, I can't believe I didn't see it before! It totally looks like I'm wearing fetish shit! I can't be seen at my fucking sister's wedding with this shit poking out of my dress!"
"You could just tell them that it's not fetish gear." Ar pointed out, lowering Roxy's body to a seated position and lifting her head up. "This is vital equipment to assist with your present disability. I doubt they would poo-poo your fashion choices if they knew why you chose them."
"Dude, you do NOT know my parents. There's a reason I literally ran off and joined the circus, and have gone no contact since." Roxy said, frowning at the unpleasant memory and unpleasant sensation of having her severed head forced back into her rig and having the neck piece further tightened. "They're like, insane Jesus freaks. Had a fucking meltdown when they found out sis was dating a Ms, kicked her out of the fucking house! If they found out about my PET, they'd probably try and exorcise me on the spot! Send me right back to hell or purgatory or wherever the hell I'm gonna go!"
"Hmm." Ar hummed, nodding solemnly. "And they will be attending the wedding?"
"Only until they make a scene. They didn't get an invite at first, but when word of mouth reached them, they begged and promised to behave. They WON'T behave, because they're horrible bigoted assholes, but they did promise, and that was good enough for my sis and her soon to be Mrs to take the gamble." Roxy explained, a little hoarsely, as her constricted throat fought to shove the words out. How she could talk fine as disembodied head but struggled to speak when strangled seemed absolutely arbitrary, but she decided not to question it. Lest she get moved up death's list for thinking too hard on the topic.
Ar thought, then nodded. "Well then, I have a plan. To conceal one condition with another. Have you selected a plus one?"
Roxy chuckled. "Inviting yourself to my sister's wedding? I'd say you're starting to sound like my parents, but honestly I'd take you over either of them. What's the plan?"
-
"ROXYYYY!" Squealed a towering, tanned woman of statuesque proportions in the flowing white dress, who bounded across the grass like she was about to tackle the comparatively tiny girl in excitement.
"LAYLAAAA!" Roxy Music Smith answered, in the musical cadence of the Eric Clapton song for which her sister, Layla Eric Smith, was named. Right as her really big big sister was about to throw her arms around her and hoist her into the air, Roxy held up a hand and said "Whoa whoa, take it easy, sis! Gentle! The cane ain't for show!" Roxy said, briefly lifting the sliver headed hickory walking stick before theatrically wobbling and setting it back down, leaning into it with overcompensating overacting. "I fucked up my back royally two weeks ago. Turns out I I haven't perfected my routine as well as I'd thought I had!"
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! You came all this way with a bad back?" Layla said, covering her mouth with both hands as her big brown eyes set to watering with almost superhuman speed. "Why didn't you tell me, I coulda rescheduled!"
"What, a third time? Please!" Roxy said, waving her hand dismissively. "That's why I got my special little helper here!" She added, motioning to the non-binary individual to her right. "Layla, this is Ar! THEY are my new FAVORITE Coworker!" She said, placing heavy suggestive emphasis on key words and winking in time.
"Charmed to meet you, your sister speaks very highly of you!" Ar said, extending a hand for Layla to shake. "Says you... inspired her to be true to herself."
Layla blinked, her face going blank. She looked at Ar, then at Roxy. She looked at their matching black suits. She met Roxy's gaze, her sister returning a smile and a stiff bowing nod of confirmation. "EEEEEE!" Layla squealed. "Oh. My. Gosh! I am soooo happy for you! Oh my gosh I just... Oh my gosh!" She said, lost for words and shaking Ar's hand hard enough that they almost feared it'd be ripped off before Roxy's.
"It's alright sis, just breathe!" Roxy said, placing a hand on her sister's to calm the shaking.
Layla took a few deep breaths, re-centering herself. Then, her eyes snapped open in a panic. "Dude, mom and dad are gonna flip the hell out!"
"Oh, fuck them!" Roxy said, waving a dismissive hand. "They're gonna flip out no matter what! Might as well get it all out at once!"
"I guess..." Layla said, nervously rubbing her elbow.
"Hey! Bride the second! You're not supposed to be visible yet! Get back in here before bride the first sees you!" Called Layla's best friend of ten years, the girl who took her in when her parents abandoned her, and who was now serving as her ring bearer to Roxy's silent and slight annoyance, a best friend whose name was... escaping Roxy right now.
"Right!" Layla hissed, remembering the traditional wedding etiquette her soon to be wedded wife had insisted upon. "Coming, Rhonda!" She called back, saving Roxy the embarrassment of having to ask for a reintroduction. "See you again soon!" Layla said, jerking her sis's head to the side and kissing her on the cheek. She thankfully turned around and bounded back to her prep trailer before she noticed Roxy's head was stuck facing right hard left and was slowly tipping off.
Ar grabbed Roxy's head and twisted it back the correct direction, reaching into the high collar of her suit to readjust the straps keeping her head on. "She seems very nice." Ar commented. "I don't see the family resemblance."
"Yeah, mom and dad always joked that her growth spurt used up all the inches in our gene pool." Roxy said, pointedly missing the point of Ar's joke and instead focusing on the 9 inch height difference between herself and her 6'3" sister. "You're a genius, by the way, with the suits and the cover story. Thanks for being my beard for the day!"
"I prefer to think of myself as your death mask." Ar commented, patting Roxy's bicep as a subtle way of checking the straps concealed beneath her suit were holding up.
"C'mon, let's find our seats. Hopefully they're far, far away from king bastard and queen bitch." Roxy said, scanning the crowd for her parents.
Layla had wanted a very low key and informal wedding. Her wife Regina, flamboyant in every sense of the word, wanted to go big and classic. They'd reached a compromise, a huge and well organized ceremony with a casual vibe. While the ceremony was being held in park rather than a church, which probably chafed the hell out of the Smith parents, it was about as big as any classic church wedding. A hundred chairs had been assembled in neat rows in the grass, with dozens of tables set up beneath sun shields flanking the rows of seats. Caterers and bartenders stood at pop up stations, doing their best to keep up with the swarming sea of giddy guests. At a raised platform before the seats stood a casually dressed man of the cloth, a younger guy in a short sleeved button up who looked like the kind of new age priest who'd say the kids say he's down with the gays!
"Roxy?" Came a voice too close for comfort.
Rotating in place, unable to turn her neck, Roxy slowly brought Erika and Gene Smith into view, the husband and wife standing with an arm each interlocked with their partner and glistening wedding rings on almost ostentatious display across their stomach.
"Hey, nice to see you!" Roxy lied, forcing a smile onto her face in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, they'd really had a change of heart about the non-straights and wouldn't cause a scene.
"Roxy, why are you...?" Gene trailed off, motioning at her suit.
"And who is...?" Erika trailed off, motioning to Ar.
Roxy gulped, feeling her straps cutting into her neck as she did. "Mom, dad, this is Ar! They're my plus one! We work together at the circus!"
Erika blinked, and scanned Ar's matching, masculine outfit. "And is this... Ar... what's his role?"
"I'm an acrobat." Ar said, extending a hand Erika slightly but noticeably recoiled from. A painfully awkward moment passed before she took the hand in a limp wrist, shaking it only long enough to be considered a shake.
"And... your dress?" Gene asked, pinching a cuff of Roxy's suit and gently tugging it.
"Heh, well, since neither of the brides went with suits, there was one left over!" Roxy joked, silently cursing herself. That joke seemed much less tense when she was practicing it in the mirror.
"Two, evidently." Gene said, scrutinizing Ar. "Assuming you're a... What are you, if you don't mind me asking? Boy or girl?"
Ar smiled the sort of sickeningly sweet smile one reserved for use on the truly contemptible, and answered with the sort of measured tone one used when they're repeating something they've already said a hundred times to a hundred people. "I am Ar. My pronouns are they and them, thank you!"
"Of course they are." Erika whispered, loudly enough for everyone to hear. She opened her mouth again, but didn't speak immediately. She was clearly debating whether or not she should speak now or hold her peace for another hour or so, when she could do the most damage to the sinful ceremony. She looked her dapper daughter over, taking in the suit she chose to wear to this wedding and the tightly braided hair tucked neatly behind her head, making her look from the front like she had a short, masculine haircut.
Now seemed as good a time as any to have her meltdown. "You just... you can't... what EXACTLY did we do wrong? What was it? Where did we fail? Tell me! Tell me, damn it! Tell me where we fucked up!" She demanded, grabbing Roxy's bicep and shaking.
"Well this right here isn't the right choice, I can tell you that much." Roxy said, trying to shake her mom off without falling over.
"Can you not see the cane?! Let go, you'll hurt her!" Ar said, trying to shove themselves between Roxy and her mom and yank the older's arm off rather than the younger's.
"Get your fucking hands off my wife!" Gene roared, grabbing Ar's slender shoulders and bodily pulling them out of the fray. Every head in earshot turned to see the commotion, which given Gene's booming voice was every head in attendence.
This was the worst possible outcome for Roxy, who was yanked by her mother, shoved by her father, and bumped by her beard all at once, forcing her pieces simltaneouslt in three different directions. Were she a whole person, this would have fucking hurt. As a someone with a bad case of PET, it was disasterous. She twisted and toppled to the left, twisting one thigh out of position as she crumpled sidewasys with her leg still facing forward. Likewise, with Erika holding her left arm in a death grip, the weight of her falling body pulled her torso out of her binding and allowed her arm to slide up and out of the leotard as she fell, leaving Roxy's stunned mother holding her daughter's detached arm. If that were the worst of it, Roxy could've played it off as having lost an arm and a leg in a horrible circus accident, which was technically true, and that she'd recieved state of the art prosthetics, which was the lie. But, of course, visibly losing an arm and having a dangling limply out of her pant leg about a foot lower than it should have been, was not the worst of it. No, that was having her head dislodged by the impact and rolling across the grass several feet, coming to a stop only when the back of her head hit one of the the guest chairs.
When everyone stopped screaming, there was a second or two of silence as they collectively tried to figure out what the fuck just happened. Roxy considered playing dead, but as the incredibly long second or two came and went, she realized that faking her own death would probably ruin the wedding more than revealing her condition possibly could, and so she called out, loudly and clearly "I'm okay! Nobody panic! I'm alright. Just... could use a hand getting put back together, if you wouldn't mind."
The silence continued, the crowd debating whether or not they should trust the decapitated head that just spoke to them. Finally, Ar made the choice for them, by storming up to Ericka and yanking Roxy's arm from her grip.
"What in God's name is going on?" Ericka asked, eyes wide with terror. "What have you done to my precious little girl?"
"I helped her." Ar said, bending down and hoisting Roxy up to her one leg, supporting her weight on their shoulders. "Everyone!" They loudly announced, attracting everyone's attention. "This is Roxy. She's Layla's little sister, and she has a medical condition known as Premature Existential Termination. It is like any other disability, and while it may make her different, in no way does it make her lesser! She's a human being, and is owed all the respect entitled to one!"
"Uh, yeah, so like, can one of you pick up my head, please?" Roxy added, much less confidently. "Maybe my leg while you're at it?"
As if on cue, the young priest leapt from the stage like an action hero and bounded down the aisle towards Roxy's head. She let out an adorable yelp as he scooped her up, and marched to Ar's side. "I can vouch for all of this!" He announced, holding Roxy's head high in the air for all to see. "I have heard many stories of my fellow clergymen being summoned to exorcise the sufferers of this disease, but I assure you that there is nothing unholy about this ill! It may appear unnatural, but I assure you that this woman is just like any of you!"
"Great. Super. Glad we cleared that up." A new voice chimed in. Everyone turned their attention to the woman now holding Roxy's severed leg by the ankle. "Hi everyone, it's me! Regina Vincenzo! Hoping to be Regina Vincenzo-Smith in about an hour! So... if you didn't know, weddings are, generally speaking, supposed to be the bride's big moment. And, not to be a diva, but I feel like you're kind of making MY entire wedding entirely about you. So..." She handed the leg to Ar, who tucked it into their pit like a rolled up newspaper. "If y'all could wrap up this whole scene and stop stealing my spotlight, I'd really appreciate it." She turned to her bride to be's parents. "And I'd also appreciate it if y'all could fuck off with your whole deal."