The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade

by Aimee Bender

  Her mother, who had butterfly wings like stained glass windows, told Cat that soon it would pass. Soon, all the loose skin on her back would form into her own beautiful set of wings and she would discover what type of butterfly she would be. But for now, she was still Cat, the caterpillar girl. High school student. Outcast.

  Cat’s high school was filled with the typical assortment of insect kids. There were the praying mantises who met after school in the courtyard every day. A tough Christian youth group, dedicated hardcore to praying and saving the country. They loved getting into sparring matches to show off for the ladybug girls how tough and pious they were.

  The ladybug girls were the rich preppy girls that liked only the trendiest clothes and popular music. They all had the same style of perfectly coifed hair, light red skin with just the faintest smattering of freckles. They always kept their nails perfectly manicured and their antennas bent at the cutest and most stylish angles.

  Then there was Larry, the stoner slug. Every day, he sat like a Buddha under the Bodhi tree in one of the few patches of shade in the desert schoolyard sorting through his Magic: The Gathering cards and eating Cheetos through his dreadlocks. Sometimes Cat ate lunch with him.

  Other days, Cat ate lunch with Paulette, the moth girl. Paulette had naturally white hair and her waifish body and big eyes made her look just like the cartoons she drew. Everyone knew that Paulette would grow up to be a famous cartoonist. She had an ongoing strip in the school newspaper about a colony of bees in outer space. She and Cat liked to talk about comic books.

  But Cat’s favorite person, her best friend, was Lilith, the spider girl. All the boys were in love with Lilith—the preps, the jocks, the nerds and even the gay boys.

  Lilith had long, slender black-and-white striped legs, a perfect ass, a tiny waist and high round breasts. No matter what she wore, she’d look amazing, but she always had the coolest styles. She altered all of her clothes herself, accenting them with punk rock embroidery and safety pins or cinching the seams on the sides of her shirts so they were more form-fitting.

  She was the only spider girl at their school. There was a stigma against female spiders because after they had sex they would usually eat their mates. Lilith definitely had been known to do that.

  When boys disappeared, people didn’t talk about it much but all the girls hated her for it. They thought she was a dirty whore. Bad news.

  Even though the boys knew that Lilith was dangerous, they still managed to get involved with her. Some of them probably even liked her because she was dangerous. Lilith called herself a nymphomaniac. She couldn’t help it, she said, she just liked sex.

  Lilith especially liked sex with butterfly boys, with their slender bodies and large colorful wings. They were usually musicians and artists. They would sneak her backstage at punk shows and buy her beer even though she didn’t have a fake ID. Sometimes she would let them paint her portrait naked or sing songs they composed for her. But it never lasted long. Lilith’s appetites always assured it.

  Cat spent most of her time reading comics and keeping to herself. Sometimes boys would act interested in Cat in order to get closer to Lilith. But Cat had never been physically attracted to any of them.

  She had lots of male friends, but she didn’t think of them sexually. They really always seemed interested in other girls anyway and only liked her because she could carry on conversations about video games, horror movies and comic books. She’d never dated anyone and thought that maybe she just wasn’t meant to be with anyone that way.

  TWO

  Cat didn’t know at first that she was in love Lilith, it just happened over time. She found herself always wanting to be around the spider girl. It got to the point where it was actually painful to be apart from her.

  Cat felt that Lilith understood her. They could talk for hours and never run out of things to say. Usually, when Cat met someone new, the person would entertain her for a while but quickly became boring. Cat found it was more interesting to read about comic book characters. But Lilith was endlessly fascinating.

  Cat tried to let Lilith know that she was attracted to her. She started dressing like Lilith and listening to the same music she liked. She dyed her hair green, so she would look less plain, and wore black and white striped stockings to cover up her pasty white caterpillar legs so that they would look like Lilith’s naturally candy-striped legs.

  Cat’s mother didn’t approve of her new look. She told her that she didn’t want Cat hanging out with Lilith anymore. Her mom said that Lilith had a bad reputation and you had to watch who you hung out with or you risked damaging your own. But Cat didn’t care what her mom thought. She continued to hang out with Lilith and then lied to her mother about where she was going.

  However much she tried, Cat could never look like Lilith. Lilith had the body of a ballet dancer. She was muscular and limber with strong thighs and toned arms. She liked to go dancing and mountain climbing, neither of which Cat had ever been coordinated enough to do.

  Cat was awkward and had two left feet. She could never maintain good posture, and she was always knocking things over and accidently spilling her drinks. Cat figured that Lilith would never be interested in her.

  THREE

  One day at school, the ladybugs were teasing Cat. They spit on her and called her trash. They were always picking on her thrift store outfits even though Cat prided herself on the creativity of the fashions she designed herself.

  “What are you reading, geek?” they asked Cat.

  The ladybug with the most freckles, Marsha, grabbed the comic book out of Cat’s hands.

  “Give that back,” Cat said.

  “You’re reading comic books? What stupid baby trash. Are you a stupid baby?”

  Lilith, who happened to be passing through the hall, looked over at Cat, as if noticing her for the first time. She saw what was going on, stepped over, and said to the ladybugs, “Leave her alone.”

  “Ooo, the whore likes you, little caterpillar girl,” Marsha said to Cat.

  Lilith grabbed Marsha’s hand and yanked the comic book away from her and calmly handed it back to Cat.

  “Ew, don’t touch me you disgusting witch. Who knows what those hands have been doing.” Marsha shook the hand that Lilith had touched as if it had something disgusting on it.

  After that, Lilith told Cat she thought the ladybugs were stuck up bitches. All they cared about were appearances. They judged everyone on their looks, and anyone who didn’t fit in was an outcast.

  Cat showed her the comic book she was reading; it was The Invisibles by Grant Morrison.

  “The Invisibles is my favorite comic!” said Lilith.

  “Who’s your favorite character?” asked Cat.

  “Lord Fanny, the Brazilian transsexual shaman, of course. Who’s yours?”

  “Ragged Robin, the psychic time traveling witch,” said Cat.

  “We’re going to be great friends,” Lilith said. “Like the girls in that movie, Heavenly Creatures, who bond over both of them being deformed in some way.”

  Lilith looked down at Cat’s peeling skin.

  Cat suddenly became embarrassed. She wasn’t sure what Lilith meant by it. Lilith didn’t seem deformed to Cat in any way at all.

  FOUR

  Cat ditched P.E. class to smoke a cigarette behind the gymnasium. She liked to sneak away by herself. She was always worried about getting caught, but that just added to the excitement of doing it.

  As she inhaled the smoke, she felt defiant and indulgent. She heard strange noises coming from underneath the bleachers on the soccer field and walked a little closer to see what was going on.

  It was Lilith. She quickened her walk, heading toward her. Cat opened her mouth to call out when she realized that Lilith wasn’t alone. She was underneath the bleachers with a blue butterfly boy.

  Cat had seen him around school before but she didn’t remember his name. He had a black pompadour hairstyle and wore a Sisters of Mercy t-shirt with black jeans a
nd checkerboard creepers. His wings, which looked almost too large for his body, were pierced six times on each side. A black leather D-ring dog collar circled his thin neck.

  Lilith wrapped her hands around his shoulders and jumped up onto him, her strong thighs gripping his torso. He stumbled back a little, before regaining his balance as Lilith crushed her berry-colored lips against his black lipstick mouth.

  She thrust her hips against his while he gripped her ass. Then she forced him down to the ground, his blue wings spreading wide beneath them like a blanket.

  She fumbled with the zipper to his jeans before yanking his pants down around his ankles.

  Lifting her skirt, her legs intertwined with his as she straddled him. Her long black hair veiled his face like a spider web. She gripped the back of his throat and tugged on the clasp of the dog collar, tightening it.

  His indigo eyelids fluttered, his long eyelashes tickling her cheek. She kissed him on his lipstick-smeared mouth and he let out a deep moan and slid his hands up her firm belly to stroke her breasts underneath her shirt.

  Cat had never seen two people have sex before. It made her feel weird, but while watching the two of them she found herself wondering what it would feel like to kiss Lilith.

  She inhaled smoke slowly from her cigarette and let it roll around on her tongue imagining it as a kiss.

  The boy closed his eyes. Lilith pushed her stomach harder against him and extended a long pointed appendage from her abdomen. Without the boy being aware, she gently pierced him in the chest. A thick red liquid pumped through the sharp tip and under the boy’s skin.

  Cat stood there motionless. The ash on the end of her cigarette grew longer and then dropped off and landed on the top of her boot. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from Lilith. It was the most intimate thing she’d ever witnessed. She wasn’t grossed out or afraid, even though Lilith’s body was covered in blood. Lilith wore a smile unlike any Cat had ever seen her make before. There was an ecstatic look in her eyes, her skin glistened.

  The blue boy’s chest heaved as he struggled to breathe. His chest pulsed from navel to neck. His massive wings withered.

  His body started to shrivel, drying up as all of the liquids were sucked out of him. His life drained away, into Lilith’s abdomen. His eyes bulged out of his head. A thin line of dust outlined where his wings had been, a small husk like an empty chrysalis where his body was, his clothes in a heap.

  Later that afternoon in Biology class, Lilith walked in and took her usual seat next to Cat. Lilith was neatly dressed, her hair was pulled back and she looked completely back to normal except Cat noticed a glittering blue piece of butterfly wing stuck to the bottom of her chin.

  It hung there for a few seconds before Lilith scratched her chin and it stuck to her finger. She discretely wiped her finger on the edge of the lab table and, when she noticed Cat watching her, she gave her a conspiratorial wink.

  Cat felt embarrassed, as if maybe that wink meant that Lilith knew Cat had just seen her have sex behind the bleachers.

  FIVE

  Cat wanted to tell Lilith about her secret crush but was too shy to actually articulate how she felt. She was also terrified that if Lilith knew that Cat was attracted to her, she would stop being her friend. So Cat started a game. She passed Lilith a note in class that said, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

  Lilith smiled at the note and said, “Anaïs Nin?”

  Cat nodded her head.

  “I like it,” said Lilith.

  “I’ve left you another note in the library.”

  “Where?” Lilith asked.

  “That’s for you to discover,” said Cat hoping that Lilith would be able to figure it out. Cat thought the idea of Lilith reading erotica was romantic. She had always liked playing games like this. There was only one book in the library written by Anaïs Nin: The Collected Works of Erotica.

  Lilith checked out the book and inside it found a note that said “Henry Miller had an affair with Anaïs Nin.”

  Lilith had never heard of Henry Miller so she looked him up and discovered he had several books in the library. She searched through each one and in a book titled Tropic of Cancer she found a note in Cat’s handwriting that said “Tag! You’re it.”

  Lilith took the cue and left a note of her own inside Tropic of Cancer for Cat to find. When the note was answered in return by a new note appearing in the Anaïs Nin book, the game had been established and the two girls exchanged quotes and messages in between classes this way on a daily basis from that point forward. Cat left Lilith notes inside Tropic of Cancer and Lilith left hers inside Anaïs Nin’s book of erotica.

  They always joked about how funny it would be if someone actually checked out one of those books and found their notes hidden inside.

  SIX

  “It’s not that I don’t feel bad about it,” Lilith said when Cat asked her if she ever felt bad about eating the boys she had sex with, “It’s just, I can’t help it. It makes me feel so alive—I just lose myself in the moment, you know?”

  Cat nodded her head, even though she didn’t know. All she knew was that this made her feel alive, being with Lilith this way, weaving her long black hair into tiny braids, painting their toenails matching colors, staring up at the stars while lying in the grass next to Lilith. These were the things that made her feel alive.

  SEVEN

  Cat wanted to do something special for Lilith. Lilith’s favorite band, Chainsaw Millipede, was coming to town. Lilith had been talking for weeks about how much she wanted to see the show but said there was no way she could afford it. Cat skipped buying lunches and babysat for her neighbor’s bratty crickets so she could scrounge up enough money to buy tickets for the two of them to go to the show.

  The night before the show, Cat was hanging out with Lilith in her backyard. They had made snapdragon cocktails with homemade sour orange liqueur from Lilith’s mother’s liquor cabinet. The air was warm and smelled like mesquite. They sat on the swings in Lilith’s old swing set looking up at the stars.

  “When’s Chainsaw Millipede coming to town again?” Cat asked.

  “Tomorrow night,” Lilith said. “Why did you have to remind me? I am so bummed out that I can’t go.”

  “What if you could go?”

  “What do you mean? Do you know someone who could get us in?” Lilith’s face lit up.

  Cat held up the two tickets and Lilith screamed.

  “Oh my god! How did you get these? These tickets cost like a fortune.”

  “I have my ways,” Cat said, trying to sound cool.

  “Ahh! Are you for real? This is so amazing. I have always wanted to see Chainsaw Millipede live and they hardly ever tour the U.S.”

  Cat was beaming. She and Lilith went out together all the time to the mall and the coffee shop. But this would be different. It would be the first time that Cat had ever been to a show. Before this, Lilith had always gone to clubs with butterfly boys.

  The next night, Cat made up an elaborate excuse for her mom about why she needed to borrow the car and she picked Lilith up like they were going on a date.

  Lilith opened the door to her house dressed in a black leather corset that made her already tiny waist look even tinier. She had her hair up in a messy bun and wore a black knee-length pencil skirt that hugged her hips, accessorized with black stiletto ballet slippers which pointed daintily at the ends on her black and white striped legs. Cat thought she looked like a sexy secretary.

  Lilith eyed Cat’s outfit—a tutu skirt, striped stockings and a baggy Bauhaus t-shirt—and said, “You’re not going to the show looking like that, are you?”

  Cat looked down at herself, suddenly self-conscious.

  Lilith said, “Come in, I’ll get you fixed up,” and took her inside.

  Cat had been in Lilith’s bedroom many times. One time she had even spent the night and they stayed awake until morning watching Japanese anime and reading Francesca Lia Block books aloud to each other
. But this time, when Lilith took Cat into her room, she felt different.

  “Stand still,” Lilith said, brushing out Cat’s green hair with an oversized comb.

  Lilith styled Cat’s hair with gel and hairspray so that it stood up on her head like a hornet’s nest. Then she stuck out two little black butterfly barrettes on either side of her temples. She drew spider webs around Cat’s eyes with black mascara and painted her mouth with the same berry lipstick as her own.

  The lipstick felt sensual, like a kiss, as Lilith slowly applied it to her top lip and then her bottom.

  When Lilith was done with Cat’s hair and makeup she opened a secret compartment at the bottom of her dresser, revealing a stash of clothes Cat had never seen before.

  “This is my collection of corsets,” Lilith said, as she pulled them out and arranged them on the bed. “I don’t bring them out on just any occasion because they are very expensive and mean a lot to me, but tonight feels like a special night. And I just know that one of these is going to look great on you.”

  There were different shapes and colors. There were under-the-bust styles and over-the-bust styles, waist trimmers, and fancy brocaded corsets lined with silk and trimmed with lace.

  Lilith picked up an oily black leather corset with steel boning and a silver zipper on the front.

  “I think this is the one,” she said to Cat, holding it out to her.

  Cat took the corset from her. It was smooth and almost felt warm to the touch. It smelled like velvety mocha and peaty campfire. She wrapped it around her torso over her t-shirt and fumbled with the zipper, unable to connect it in the front.

  “I don’t think this will fit me,” she said.

  “Oh darling, don’t worry. It will fit you. These things are designed to hold you in,” Lilith said, waving her hand in the air, dismissing Cat’s fears.