The Newspaper Article
The newspaper article was not long enough for what had happened.
It did not get into all the details. The middlings. The middlings, Lena Cook thought, were the most important. The newspaper article just gave the grand arc. Wedding crasher, wearing bridal gown, arrives with BB gun, shoots seven people in the feet. That was not it. That was not even most of it. Did the article mention, for instance, Lena's face?
"I spent the engagement months perfecting the face," she muttered, reading the article for the eighteenth time. Her hand wandered to her cheek, which was textured with scars, burnt and cut. Each scar had a story and each scar took time. Each scar was art. Did the newspaper care about that? No, the newspaper did not.
The newspaper didn't mention her ritual of coming home from work every day in the spring and pulling out a different tooth, until work finally let her go because work believed she was insane. It didn't mention that she then pulled out a tooth every day at 6pm, as to keep a semblance of ritual in her life. It didn't mention the time she mailed all the teeth to Court in a padded envelope addressed to "You Impotent Little Fuck." Perhaps, Lena relented, it was never delivered, in which case, she could not blame the newspaper.
Court had left her at the altar twice: nine years ago and eight years ago. The newspaper did neglect to mention that. Court neglected to mention that, to anyone, ever. Lena wondered if he even remembered loving her, if he even remembered that time, if he ever thought of her at all except to shake his head at what had become of her.
Of what he had made her.
The years directly after Court she spent in many beds. Man beds, woman beds, lonely beds, jail beds. Hospital beds. Sideways in beds, right side up in beds, but mostly diagonal in beds. The years directly after court she spent very skinny. Then she joined the circus. She walked on glass. She swallowed swords and she turned tricks. She sailed Lake Superior, ran a marathon, climbed a mountain, drove a truck, dived Scuba, married a multi-millionare, survived him, married a butcher named Vincent, divorced a butcher named Vincent and every day she woke up a mite less mad.
Until the day she learned, by chance, Court courted another. The girl Court courted was Carly Cook, Lena's second cousin, a Texan perm-monster with big teeth and big tits and a bulimia problem and not much else. The newspaper listed their engagement announcement first. Lena, when she saw it, quivered with rage in her gaunt frame, pulling at her long black braids until her head hurt.
The indignity! The shame! The rage! The injustice! The embarrassment! The vile! The hate! The huuoa! The hoouueaahho! She vomited and stared in the mirror for a good long while. Her eyes were bloodshot and she looked like a monster.
Then she knew what she had to do. She had to become a monster for this.
She set out to do it with the gusto and the panache for which she hoped she was known. She warned the men she fucked and warned her mother and warned her friends and warned her neighbor and warned her landlord, and though they all coagulated into a mass of detraction and though they all convened for an early intervention, it was to no avail. Lena was going to be a monster.
First there was the matter of the face.
The face took time. The face hurt.
There was also the matter of the wings. She wanted wings, black feather wings, lined with tar and other oozes. She spent weeks making wings from molded wires and sewing them to the wedding dress from her first marriage. "Poor Magdeleno," she whispered, remembering her first husband. He was an angel.
There was the matter of the green body. She wanted her entire body, save her face, green. It had to be green. Gross green. Splotchy green. It could not be paint. The tattoos took the entire engagement, which was the longest, rudest engagement, according at least to acquaintances who spoke to both Lena and Court. Rife with pre-parties and post-parties and mandatory giftings and forms of tackiness so hideous the pain of Lena's project almost paled in comparison. Luckily, at least in the tattooing realm, Lena lacked copious amounts of flesh. The newspaper even failed to mention that: "the deformed interloper, though green and clearly a monster, was at least fifteen pounds skinnier than the bride."
The day arrived and Lena prepared. She had a BB gun. She had the wings. She had the dress. Her face was no longer recognizable, save for the eyes, were were as black and furious as always. She had no teeth. She was entirely green from the neck down. The wedding dress was in shreds. For shoes, she wore orange fuzzy slippers. She stormed into the church during the vows. Court and Carly fell silent, their mouths twin caves of disbelief. Lena marched up the aisle. No one tried to stop her. As she was almost to the altar, she tripped on her satin train and fell, mottled green legs splayed to either side, the gown a gathered pool of satin around her waist, her underwear, printed with goldfish and surrounded by a week's worth of untrimmed pubic hair, on display.
She still held the gun. She pointed it at Carly's right foot, crammed sausage-like into a strappy white sandal. "I hate you,"she said. She fired. A scream. She aimed at Court's right foot. "I hate you even more,"she said. She fired. A scream. She aimed at Court's left foot. "I hate you twice," she said. She fired. A scream. She felt arms on her shoulders. She felt arms wrap around her waist. "I'm a monster!"she shrieked, and before she could be stopped, she fired at the feet of the entire wedding party. Bridesmaids fell to the floor. Groomsmen cried in pain. Court bent over Carly, who was curled into a ball on the floor. Lena felt herself be carried out of the church. She heard shouting but she wasn't listening. "I hope I've ruined your lives," she screamed.
Days later, out on bail, thoughtful, she penned an angry missive to the newspaper. Accuracy, she felt, was the least she had earned.