Hairspray and Switchblades, page 1
part #5 of Rewind or Die Series
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental.
Hairspray and Switchblades Copyright © 2020 Unnerving
Hairspray and Switchblades Copyright © 2020 V. Castro
HAIRSPRAY AND SWITCHBLADES
V. Castro
Prologue
The gooey pile of chocolate cake topped with multicolored sprinkles sat lopsided on its stand. It threatened to topple over with the force required to blow out eighteen candles. Magdalena’s face beamed as she presented it to her sister with a missing tooth smile.
“Happy Birthday, Maya! You’re the best sister in the whole world. I love you!”
Maya wanted to burst into tears because although they were a small family, there was a lot of love between them. But she also cried because in a few hours she would venture to the backyard shed with her mother and grandmother to accept the family gift. Some might call it a curse, but from the stories her father told her, it was a gift. Their ancestors had survived because of it.
“Since you are my best friend and the best little sister in the whole wide world, you can have the first slice!”
Magdalena jumped up and down in excitement. Their father, Miguel Jr., walked into the kitchen, fresh from the shower, hearing his daughter’s fit of laughter and squeals. “Is this a party or is it a party!” He turned on the CD player that sat on the breakfast nook table. Santana’s Maria Maria, his wife’s favorite song of late, filled the room. His hand reached for his wife’s waist, pulling her close to sway to the music. “Thank you, Señora, for my beautiful daughters.” As one hand touched the small of her back, the other brushed bangs across her forehead. She tried to look happy, but there was no mistaking the anxiety on her face. It had been there all day like the surface tension of water. Her forehead touched his before she glanced at Maya.
This display of affection between her parents gave Maya hope she would eventually meet others that would see beyond her skin, and her gift.
Magdalena continued to eye the cake while dancing in place in her Power Puff Girls nightgown. “Can someone please cut it already? I’m hungry and it’s almost bedtime.”
Maya grabbed a knife from the wooden block on the kitchen counter. “All right, here you go.” She kissed her sister on the crown of her head before heaping a slice bigger than her mother would normally allow onto a plate. Maya didn’t feel like eating, her stomach rumbling from nervousness. She fixed her gaze at the glowing numbers on the microwave. At midnight, it would be time.
—
“Are you ready, Maya?”
She stood with a towel wrapped around her, in front of her mother, Grace, and grandmother, Amparo. The cold cement floor against the soles of her feet made her legs shiver more than they already did from anticipation. A small space heater warmed and illuminated the shed. Outdoor toys and garden tools dangled from the walls and neatly sat on shelves. The scent of Amparo’s cocoa butter lotion hung in the air, smelling sweeter than usual due to her proximity to the heater. Amparo also wore a towel; she would be the one to guide Maya that night. The old woman blinked watery eyes, full of memory and concentration, before standing to allow the towel to slip off her body. Her stretch mark-striped breasts sagged to the middle of her torso, the areolas thick from breastfeeding and dark brown like shriveled chestnuts. They covered most of the tips where the remaining breast tissue lay. Soft rolls of fat and skin folded around her midsection, thighs, and back. Only her hair retained any remnant of youth. It was a coarse, deep shade of black, and slipped to just past her shoulders and parted in the center.
Maya saw what she would look like at one hundred years of age, and she wondered what the animal transformation would be like.
A low growl escaped the old woman’s creased lips. The age-spotted loose skin on her boney hands wobbled as the lines began to smooth and fill from beneath. With the help of Grace, she lowered herself to her hands and knees.
Maya watched black swatches of fur lengthen from Amparo’s pores; an itching sensation began around her mouth. She lifted her fingertips to her face, feeling around. The small—much hated and regularly plucked—hairs on the corners of her top lip sprouted in a plume of fire. They were thick wires that tore the delicate skin as they pushed through. Her small, brown, rose-petaled nipples, not yet tough from a baby’s mouth, tightened and ached as the sparse fine hairs surrounding the areola swirled in length and silkiness. Beginning from her breasts, pores opened wide to allow fur to grow rapidly across her entire body. The fur above her lip now covered every inch of skin. Her eyes were wide, watching the transformation that seemed like a dream but was real. How was any of his happening?
Her shock in this moment overrode trepidation until she buckled to a twisting pain. She squeezed her eyes shut, her mouth salivating uncontrollably with sharp bone breaking tender gums. Saliva and blood pooled at her feet. She tried to scream. The only sound to escape was a growl like her grandmother’s. She managed to look to her left through tear-filled eyes, there was no longer an old woman. How did that happen so quickly without her noticing? A large black cat with gold eyes shimmering in the glow of the heater, a mighty jaguar, sat licking its paws.
“Stay strong, mija. The outside change is not as painful as the one that happens on the inside.” Grace kneeled before her daughter with a tissue to her nose, tears streaming down her cheeks, her emotional torment just as great because there was nothing she could do to ease the agony of the first transformation.
Maya panicked; this was it. The bottom of her spine throbbed, the muscles stretched and pulled as if each individual strand was being reconnected to some other bone or ligament. A crack and clap, Chinese poppers hitting the floor surrounded her—the sound of her joints and spine elongating. The pain reminded her of the day of her first period, but the ache was not isolated to her uterus; every fiber was experiencing an inevitable change, a change it was born to endure.
“Mama!” she tried to scream as she reached a paw and a human hand toward her mother. On the inside, she was sobbing. She collapsed to the floor, its coldness now a relief as she panted from the internal heat, blood rushing in and out of a larger, stronger heart. All she could do was lay, squirming alone, allowing it to happen. She kept her eyes closed as she rolled onto her back and then again to her stomach, the sound of her insides breaking and healing as close as a dentist’s drill and just as ear-piercing. It all stopped except her panting, a heartbeat thudding. There was pressure on her shoulder. Something wet on her hand.
“Look at me.”
She lifted her head. Through sepia vision, she saw her mother stroking her coat and Amparo licking her paw.
“It is done. It is time to go,” her mother said with a reassuring look.
As soon as her mother unlocked the shed door, her grandmother sprinted out. Instinct drove Maya to follow suit. Miguel Jr. sat in his car with the backdoor open. Amparo hopped inside and Maya did likewise. Grace closed the door behind them. She nodded to Miguel Jr. before he started the engine and reversed into the empty street.
Maya’s vision was blurry, in and out of focus as they drove. Streetlights flashed by like the tails of sparklers on the Fourth of July. The noise of the outside world rang between her ears in a mangled din she couldn’t understand. She turned to Amparo curled on the seat with eyes closed, whiskers and ears twitching. Then the car stopped. Amparo’s body bolted upright.
The form that had to be her father opened the door next to Amparo. Without hesitation, the old woman bounded out with her hind legs. She galloped into the night, kicking pockets of grass and dirt behind her. Maya couldn’t believe this was the woman that said “Aye” after every step she took with care as to not aggravate her bowed arthritic knees.
“Be what you are born to be, mija.” The garbled words of her father became clear, shaving off the confusion as he repeated them. Maya stepped out of the car, now able to see through the dark that her grandmother waited for her. The glow of the moon, its dark spots on show, shined brightly upon her lustrous coat. Maya let out a Jaguar cry, then ran in her grandmother’s direction. The speed, the heat invigorating her muscles, the freedom of running and knowing there was nothing in her way—all the disorientation of the car ride vanished the harder her blood pumped through her transformed body. There was no pain, only power. She panted as she felt her muscles propelling her deeper into the open grounds of Espada Park.
Maya and Amparo frolicked through the stone buildings, jumped over exposed roots of hundred-year old trees, and explored the physical limits of her new self until just before dawn.
—
Amparo slept most of the day, but Maya’s hunger clawed at her belly. The sizzle of bacon and eggs cooked in leftover pork fat wafted from the kitchen. She needed to eat.
“Good morning!” Miguel Jr. plated breakfast at the stove before placing it in front of Maya. “You will start with this and probably eat all day.”
Maya rubbed her neck; it felt like she’d slept on it wrong, the muscles kinked and sore. “We need to talk about all of this. I have so many questions,” she said as she cut into runny yolk.
He waved her off with a spatula dripping in animal fat. “There is so much for you to know, but if it’s one thing our kind have, it’s time.”
Magdalena walked into the kitchen rubbing her eyes with her little fists and holding a Power Puff Girl doll and a Britney Spears CD. “Time for what?”
Chapter 1
This remix sometimes made her want to cry because it reminded her of Santana’s Maria Maria. Now was not the time for tears that would slice through bronzer and loosen fake eyelashes.
Fingertips toyed with the strings dangling on either side of her hips, ready to make a heart-shaped noose that fit every neck in the house. The way she moved made it hard not to imagine how it would feel if that body was making a meal of you.
The more she sweat, the more intoxicating were the pheromones released from her pores. Tendrils of invisible animal musk of sex and desire rose from her skin like a mist rising from a body of water in the early hours of the morning. This kept her audience captivated, compelled to give the dark woman in the leopard print G-string whatever she wanted.
It was a Saturday night. The beats would be hot because Jimmy was at the turntables offering real music and not that shit the lazy day shift DJs played, unfit for even a spin class. Jimmy was all about those old school sexy sax and guitar solos made for thinking about fucking. All the dancers tipped him good to keep those beats pounding.
The air-conditioning, always a few degrees too cold, held nipples standing at attention. Once you were in, it was impossible to know how much time had passed, a place where there were no windows or clocks. What the dancers really loved about Jimmy was Jimmy had no interest in any of them. Everybody wants to brag they fucked a dancer; rarely do they want to announce they are dating the dancer. You don’t bring that freaky girl to mother—Rick James said that.
Jimmy’s partner, Tyson, was the house mom, backstage making sure everyone was waxed and spritzed before they got their hustle on. Saturday was the day for big money with all the bachelor parties coming through, ordering shots by the dozen. Get a sucker drunk enough and like Tony Montana, the world is yours.
She reached between her legs to simulate masturbation because they loved that—really loved it. Maya licked heavily glossed red lips and made eye contact—charcoal liner, fanned out on the sides to accentuate the feline curve of her lashes. Make the fantasy as real as possible. The ecstasy wasn’t difficult to feign because all that cash felt good. Cold hard cash was more satisfying than a hard cock. Her sister’s tuition would be paid, the fridge would be full, bills would be in the black instead of red, but more importantly, she would have enough green in her bank account to keep the judge satisfied to retain custody of her sixteen-year-old sister who was on her way to a full math and track scholarship.
Magdalena would be the first in their immediate family with a bachelor’s degree, hopefully a doctorate one day.
Maya had the knowledge of hustle, which she put to work at night, leaving her days to iron school uniforms, do laundry, take business classes at the community college, or whatever else a parent needed to do. She was only twenty-six years old, but felt so much older. Once Magdalena had her degree, that would be it.
She scanned the room at the pre-evening crowd for potential dances, but right then it was mostly pockets of women chatting with drinks in hands. It was already a no from the dude at the front of the stage lounging in his seat like he was in his own living room. This wasn’t personal because he did the same with all the other wandering bikinis. There was a guy greedily dipping greasy hot wings in blue cheese sauce with two empty beer bottles next to the plate. That would be a fuck no because he was obviously getting more action from his snack by the way he slurped and sucked on each morsel of meat. That smell of cheese, buffalo sauce, and beer when she leaned in might cause her to puke. She could tell he was probably a mouth breather by the way he ate. The mere thought gave her heartburn and gas. It would be a waiting game until after the dinner crowd.
She needed to sit down for a minute and readjust the tongue in her boot that dug into her ankle. Laces too tight again. The friction between sweat and plastic left red welts that never seemed to fade before it was time to put those heels on again to walk from one horny wallet to another. She headed to the DJ booth to check the time and fix her shoe.
“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?” Jimmy, dressed in a red Kangol bucket hat and baggy tracksuit, like a Mexican LL Cool J, looked up from his phone when she poked her head in.
“What time is it?”
He tapped his iWatch. “Does it matter? The place is empty. Not even close to rain-making time.”
Maya unlaced her shoe with a groan. Only a few more years of aching knee joints that would surely be arthritic by forty from all the squatting, crawling, and kneeling. She hoped to retire those shoes that squeezed her toes into an impossible position. Bunions were already beginning to form. Besides all of this, it was becoming dangerous.
The papers called the killer stalking the streets The San Antonio Stripper Ripper, but this was only part of the story. The details were the stuff of trashy novels, or a CSI or SUV episode. The kill list included two dancers and two prostitutes, both bound with their lingerie then dumped in random locations across the city without witness or conclusive forensics leading the police to any known offenders on release. None of them sexually assaulted, however, the perpetrator had a penchant for flexing their knife skills; the mutilations done with a steady, precise hand. The coroner’s report stated the victim’s blood showed traces of a drug to keep them alive but incapacitated while the killer removed parts of their anatomy. One didn’t have a scalp. The skin from the hands of another victim removed so delicately it appeared the murderer wanted them for gloves. Buttocks and breasts taken from a prostitute, cauterized with something the coroner couldn’t determine. Everything pointed to premeditated murder with no clues.
Maya always kept a switchblade tucked in her pocket, but with this new terror lurking in the dark, she had an extra blade at hand. Magdalena was too young to be left without family. The bouncers did their best to keep an eye out for dancers leaving after closing, however, they typically had their hands full with rowdy, drunk customers. Management didn’t want to bring in extra security to “spoil the experience.” Limited choices filled Maya with a bitterness she drank like that shot you didn’t order on a night out that turns out to be one too many. It makes your head spin and that greasy junk food that was good at the time, just a toxic lump of pig snouts and rat tails in your bowels. There were times that were a complete blackout of anger at the world. Those nights, Maya cried herself to sleep thinking about those whispered humiliating insults masked as dirty talk from men that smelled of beer and potato chips as she gave private dances. All she could do was play along.
At least Magdalena would have as many choices as she wanted, graduating from a Catholic high school with top grades. The world would be hers.
Maya tried not to think about it, but by this age her father had promised their own garage. He’d stopped college with an Associate’s degree because his business was more than lucrative. As they worked together tinkering over a car or motorcycle during her summer breaks, listening to classic rock, he would recount his life. They would’ve been partners until his retirement.
“You know, Maya, one day we are going to cross the border to find the rest of our clan. It will be the road trip of a lifetime.” He’d shaken his head and squinted while he wrenched on metal guts. “We need to restore our former strength. I fear for the bloodline because together we are stronger.”
“Why don’t you pick up the phone or send an email?” she’d flippantly retorted.
He’d stopped and stared at her as if she’d blasphemed Christ, his face pained and sad at the same time. All the creases of his age came to the surface even though he was always mistaken for a younger man.
“Because our blood deserves better than that. Face to face. You see, before Texas was annexed, our people roamed this vast land. It is by our blood that our great, great ancestors in Mexico were immune to the diseases of the colonizers. We crossed the river, living in harmony with the indigenous tribes. There was no pinché border. Then the Mexican-American War happened. It is by blood that we could hide in plain sight during the war, all the human wars. But it is that war that tore our family apart. Your mother’s and my ancestors stayed to fight with the Americans and the others fought on the side of the Mexicans. It is a wound we need to heal in person because now we are all that remain in Texas. When I retire and before you take over the business, we will go.”
