Oh no, am I too short or too tall? How do I fix it? What if I go too far and wink out of existence, vanishing as though I never was in a couple of decades?
“She okay?” Deadpool asks Red Shirt.
“Oh yeah, she’s great, just drunk.”
I should tell him I’m not drunk, I’m hallucinating, but not in a schizophrenic way. In a drug way. Instead, I’m so hung up on whether I’m Alice or not that I say, “Eat me.”
Red Shirt brays, an over-excited mule, and gets behind me, effectively blocking me into the seat as he puts his arms around my waist, resting his hands on my thighs.
My thighs are bare, nothing to fill the expanse between the tops of my black stockings and the hem of my white superhero bloomers. Sotchoku is one of those characters thatdoesn’t seem particularly risqué on screen, what with her being an anime character and a superhero, until an actual human being is wearing what amounts to little more than lingerie. Red Shirt’s hand is directly on my skin in a spot only a nudge away from groping with nothing more substantial than two layers of control-top panties there, but if I was wearing jeans right now, this would be fine.
This is fine.
“I’ll eat you later if you want,” Red Shirt promises. “We all will. You can eat us, too.”
“Right, yeah,” I agree, confused. Will that balance things out? If they eat me and then I eat them, will I be a normal size again? Can I be eaten? Am I edible? I frown and shake my head. “No, I’m toxic.”
“Okay, Britney,” says Deadpool.
“No, I’m Tilly. You’re . . .” I know this. I’m positive I know this. Emerson has me locked down on the Bulletproof Cinematic Universe forever — not that I’m complaining, since it’s hard to get steady work as a costumer and it’s good money — but I know Marvel well enough. I know this.
“It’s—”
I shoot him the biggest grin and sing, “It’s Wade Wilson. You’re Wade.” I look over my shoulder at the too-close Red Shirt. “And you’re dead.”
Actually, that makes it all feel much better. If he’s dead, then he’s not touching anything. He’s not even here. He didn’t pull me down off that wall. He doesn’t exist.
“What did you just say?” Red Shirt asks, a shimmer to his voice. I swear I can see it, sliding over my shoulder and slithering into my corset, curling in my womb.
I smile sympathetically at him. “It’s okay, we all die sometimes. Can I have your drink?”
From the other side of me, Ghostface chuffs. “Oh, she’s fun. We’ll like her.”
“Are you their friend, too?”
“I’m your friend.”
I try to look closely at him, but my belly churns, and I’m not sure why. Acid makes me queasy; that’s nothing unusual. And sick was my default for so long that it’s not something I think too much about anymore, but this is a different kind of sick.
Ghostface is not my friend. I don’t know if I know who Ghostface is. I don’t think I’ve seen the movie. I sift through my brain, pushing through recent memes, pin-up shots and sexy videos of shirtless men in Ghostface masks, scrolling back to that time everyone who smoked pot saidwhat’s uuuuuuupin that obnoxious way, and that came from Ghostface, too, finally reaching the scant knowledge I have of the movie.
Drew Barrymore.
The call is coming from inside the house.
Two guys stabbing each other.
“There’s two of you,” I murmur, “but only one. I need water.”
“Wouldn’t you rather a shot?” Deadpool says.
The bar has rows and rows of bottles, most of them clear or brown, but their labels come in all different colors. I could rearrange them into a rainbow.
I close my eyes, trying to force the thoughts to clear and reset. I’m not having a good time, and that nausea isn’t the lysergic acid doing something funny to my belly. It’s an alarm. Danger, girl. The call is coming from inside the bar.
“Just water,” I whisper.
Deadpool’s hand goes on my back, rubbing the laces of the corset I worked so hard to tighten to give me the waist Iwanted my entire adult life. Just another thing in my world I got entirely by luck, more of the bad-good-bad-good luck because, yeah, I had cancer, but at least I’m thin now.
