Chapter 72
The future looks bright for my fellow Pansgender!
castmates. Daisha is on her way to LSU for pre-law, looking forward to a bright career in Congress, where she'll butt heads with future President Sutter Breedlove.
Darren's going to Rice to be a pharmacist, where he hopefully won't mix anything up with his mom's melatonin again.
Sweet Mike will probably win prom king and Mr. Congeniality next year and marry his high school sweetheart and have a million kids.
Meg has been crowned leader of the resistance against IntegriTruth and will raise hell next year.
IntegriTruth is already on shaky ground after Brandon resigned in shame.
The day we meet in the woods to take the photos for the Pansgender! article, I meet Taren Shaye, who walks up to us from their rent-a-car and gives us a big wave. Everybody introduces themselves to Taren, and they take one look at me and say, “You must be the infamous Wade!”
“Better known as Spider-Dick,” I reply.
They giggle. “I wasn't going to say it.” They've got a blue-dyed pixie cut and tattoos all over their arms. Their face is a little wrinkled. They look older than the pictures I've seen.
“But no publicity is bad publicity, as they say,” they continue, pulling out several awards from their bag, “and I've brought all my Tonys with me that you guys can hold while we take photos!”
We spend an hour taking silly pictures. There's one where I'm chasing Byron, who's hiding behind a tree. I've drunk a million gallons of water because it's so hot, so at this point my bladder is ready to explode.
“Is there a bathroom nearby?” I ask.
“Number one or number two?” Mike asks.
“One to the power of five million,” I say. He tells me to just go somewhere in the woods.
I walk deep into the woods for some privacy and come across something that looks like a camp.
Empty beer cans and bean cans are littered across the ground.
There's a makeshift tent, covered by a curtain.
Behind it, a big cooler or refrigerator is lying on the ground.
I open the curtain and see men in makeup plastered over the cooler.
It's Clint's KISS coffin.
I gulp and tiptoe backward until I'm yanked and thrown to the ground. Two men appear above me.
“What the hell are you?” a man with a gruff voice asks.
“What are you doing in our camp?” the other asks. After a few blinks, I realize it's Kidtal.
I push myself up with my elbows. “I just needed to pee.”
“Why are you dressed like a gay dinosaur? Why do you have glitter on you?”
“It's just a costume,” I say.
“Somebody sent you,” one guy says.
“Let's take him to the boss!”
They pull me up and drag me by my arms farther into the forest to Clint, who's knee-deep in the toxic, iridescent water. “Are you ready, my brother?” he asks a nervous-looking balding guy who nods and joins him. Clint grabs him and dunks him under.
“With this water, I baptize you. You are reborn.
A phoenix from the ashes. Your ex-wife can't hurt you now.
All the women who said you weren't enough, your mom's years of criticisms toward you, that high school girl who betrayed you for her five minutes of fame in the mainstream media, are all washed away. Pecos!”
“Pecos!” the men repeat. They clap and whistle as the newly baptized rejoins them on land. They shout, “Welcome!” to him.
“Clint. We caught a spy,” one of them says. I retract my head farther into my costume like a turtle.
“Why are you here? Who sent you, you rainbow monster?” Clint asks.
I can't talk or he'll know it's me. I wave my arms like this is one big misunderstanding.
“Men, I told you this was coming. They know we're out here building our own society off the grid. They know we've turned our backs on their feminist, misandrist way of life and they can't handle it. They want to force us back in. Who sent you?”
I flail my arms some more. A guy kicks me in the gut and I scream.
“Wait a damn minute,” Clint says. He opens the crocodile mouth and pulls my head out of the opening. Kidtal points and shouts at me.
“I knew it. Men, we have in our presence a boy who was warped by the very society I'm talking about. I tried to save him, and he betrayed me. Didn't you?”
“Clint, I just wanted to pee, I swear. I didn't know you were out here.”
He turns and looks at his followers. “His whore aunt cucked me after I lifted her up from poverty into wealth. And she stole everything from me.” He kicks the dirt in front of me. I flinch.
“Don't worry. I'm not about to bash your brains in, you little twatsqueak, even though you deserve it. No, I'm gonna help you, because that's who I am. I am magnanimous. I am all-loving. Help me!”
He and two other guys drag me into the water.
“You guys, I seriously have to pee,” I insist.
“Wade, from here on, you're going to be a new man, if it's the last thing I do. Renounce your lifestyle. Admit you're a product of a sick, decrepit society. Join me.”
He dunks me under the water and holds me there until it goes into my nose. He yanks me back out.
“Admit it. Civilization has failed, but you don't have to,” he says, dunking me again.
“Stop it. Let him go,” I hear Byron shout from underwater. When I'm pulled back up, I see him and the others being held back by the men.
“Admit it, Wade,” Clint says, and shoves me back under again.
He's trying to drown me on purpose. Nothing except brown, murky water surrounds me.
My breath starts running out. My body panics and my legs kick like a propeller to push myself above water.
The weight of the costume and Clint holding me down sink me.
I can barely see anything except the sunlight above the surface of the water.
Pew-pew-pew-pew-pew!
Clint pulls me back up and I hear the sound again.
“What the hell are you doing?” Clint says. It's Byron, making the alligator call.
Pew-pew-pew-pew-pew!
“Who the fuck do you kids think you are?” Clint screams.
“I am Captain motherfucking Hook, and I am summoning the forces of nature on your ass. Voilà!” Byron says as Clint dunks me back into the water.
Thwack. Something slams right into us at the speed of a car, pushing me out of Clint's grasp, and he goes flying. I boost myself up and explode through the surface of the water, heaving for air. I fall under once again and push myself back up to collect more air. I pan around to find Clint.
Something is pulling him and thrashing him.
I paddle away as hurriedly as I can as my soaked crocodile costume tries to pull me deeper into the water. The Pansgender! cast haul me out by my arms and shoulders, dragging my legs and tail through mud. There I can see Ruby tearing into Clint as he screams and fights her.
“Help me!” he yells. The men stand there and look at each other.
“Help him, guys!” one of them shouts at the others to no avail.
“Don't fucking stand there, you cowards!” Clint begs.
“Damn, Texas is fierce!” Taren says.
Right as Clint sticks his finger into Ruby's eye, she death-rolls him. His bones snap and he lets out an agonized howl as he disappears under the water.
A prolonged, eerie silence follows. My castmates and Clint's disciples stare at each other, waiting for somebody to lead the way for whatever you do after you see a professional con man get pulled under a lake by a giant alligator.
Closer to the shore, the surface starts to bubble.
Clint pops back up, gasping for air. His followers hesitate by the water, too afraid to step into the lake.
He stands and stumbles out of the water a few shaky steps at a time.
He looks at the men with disgust and spits at them before collapsing.
His right arm is missing. His left hand has been bitten off.
“Yikes! There goes his only sex life,” Sweet Mike says.
Kidtal stands near the shore, rubbing his chin. “How much you think that alligator is worth?”