Chapter 33: The Star Who Melted

Monstro stood in the living room, scissors trembling in her hand. The photograph loomed above her like a relic from a time when she was adored, radiant in her blue leotard, her smile dazzling and unshaken by shadows. She lifted her foot and kicked at the frame. The glass surrendered with a sharp crack, splinters tumbling to the carpet like frozen rain.

Her eyes didn't leave the poster as she cut. The blades hissed with each stroke until her younger face, forever frozen in a perfect smile, came free. She pressed the paper mask to her own ruined features, gluing it down until it clung like a second skin. Holes where her eyes should have been. A stranger's lips where hers no longer belonged.

She traced the mouth with lipstick, painting on the illusion of joy, and Harvey's voice whispered in her skull: Pretty girls should always smile.

The streets outside were empty. She moved through them like a shadow stretched too thin, the paper face glaring beneath streetlights, grotesque as a clown's disguise. The lipstick shimmered, a mockery of the warmth it once carried. From behind, she seemed almost weightless, carried forward by a will not her own.

The studio gates recognized her badge with a sterile beep. The assistant director didn't flinch at the mask or the trembling lines of her jaw."Ah, at last!" he said cheerfully, glancing at his watch. "We were starting to worry... hurry up, you're up in five!"

The corridor bustled with crew and staff. Their voices rose around her like a chorus: There she is! So beautiful!We love you!You're irreplaceable!

Every word struck her like a blessing. Her chest swelled; tears shimmered at the corners of her eyes. For a fleeting moment, she believed them. She believed she was wanted again. She smiled or the mask smiled for her, lips stretched wide, lipstick bleeding into its paper fibers.

Then, the sound. A single, shrill BEEP cut through the dream.

The studio door clicked open. The voices vanished.

Monstro stood alone, badge still in hand, staring into a long, empty corridor. There was no cheering crowd, no adoration, no warm welcome. Only silence, waiting.

The stage quivered with anticipation. Dancers, half-hidden in the glare of the spotlights, waited in perfect formation, their sequined costumes trembling with each shallow breath. From the front row, Harvey leaned forward in his seat, eyes glittering with the restless pride of a man about to unveil his masterpiece. Around him, the shareholders mirrored his excitement of hungry men with eager smiles, waiting to be entertained, to be convinced.

"You won't be disappointed," Harvey whispered to them, his voice low, but brimming with self-congratulation. "She's my most beautiful creation. I shaped her for success."

A hand clapped his shoulder, atta boy and the praise curled like smoke around him, feeding his arrogance.

On the massive screen above the stage, the numbers began their descent. 5… 4… 3…

Backlit by the violent stage lights, a lone figure emerged. Each step was steady, deliberate, almost ceremonial, until she reached the center of the dancers, a living exclamation point among feathers and sequins.

2… 1…

The countdown dissolved into silence.

The whispers began, first a ripple, then a shiver, and then… nothing. The silence thickened, pressing down on the room like an invisible hand. Cameramen froze behind their lenses. The red recording light blinked steadily, a single, unblinking eye.

The dancers, feathers sprouting from their bodies like absurd plumage, dared not move. Their eyes darted between one another, searching for cues, for reassurance, and for escape.

And at the center stood Monstroelisasue.

Her body was misshapen, her face a cut-out parody: a sheet of paper plastered over her features, smeared with a crude lipstick smile. She stood in the glare, absurd and tragic all at once, the grotesque jewel of Harvey's promise.

The microphone crackled with a burst of feedback, like a scream cut short. The sound vibrated through the audience, drawing a ripple of revulsion, a wave of shudders that passed row by row.

Still, she pressed on. She raised her hand, those mushy, unformed fingers and tapped the microphone twice.

"I am fo happfy to be wiff you tofight… I'fe miffed you fo mufch…"

Her voice, distorted, broken, echoed into the stillness.

And then, as if mocking her effort, the mask betrayed her. The paper slipped loose, peeling away from her damp skin, until it fell with a whisper to the stage floor.

The monstrous face beneath was revealed.

The silence deepened.

The room froze in a collective gasp. A wet, obscene sound split the silence, thrrrup — and something obscene pushed its way through the monster's eye socket. At first it looked like a swollen growth, but as it swayed on its tether of raw optic nerve, the crowd realized what it was. A breast. Pale, pendulous, dangling obscenely where sight should have been.

The horror lasted only a heartbeat before it shattered.

A scream, shrill, piercing, unmistakably human cut through the stunned silence. A woman's scream. And then followed chaos.

The hall erupted.

"THE MONSTER!" a man bellowed, his voice cracking with terror."SHOOT IT!" another shouted. "IT'S A FREAK!"

Chairs clattered backward. Dresses rustled as bodies surged toward the exits. Somewhere, a mother clutched her child close, shielding the girl's eyes with trembling hands, though the child was dressed in a miniature version of Monstro's gown, a grotesque mirror of the thing before them.

The music jolted back to life, mechanical, automatic, and grotesquely cheerful. Dancers glanced around in confusion, caught between choreography and survival. Some made desperate attempts at their steps, clinging to order, while others bolted, seizing the moment of panic to flee the stage.

In the spotlight, MonstroElisaSue staggered, her chest heaving. Panic spread from the crowd into her lungs, into her very bones.

"D-Don't be… f-scared," she pleaded, voice breaking on warped syllables. "Let me… explfain…"

But no one listened.

"Freak!" a woman spat, eyes sharp with hatred. "YOU FREAK!" a man snarled, shoving past.

"It's me!" she cried, desperation flooding her words. "It's ftill me… the same—"

And as her monstrous form tried to reason, Elisabeth's face, trapped, embedded in the creature's back, screamed along with her. Their voices overlapped in hideous harmony: It's me. Elisabeth. Still me.

Someone shoved her. She fell hard, the floor bruising her knees.

A spotlight seared her face. She raised trembling hands against it, shielding her eyes as if from divine judgment. The crowd roared, bloodlust rising.

"It's me!" Elisabeth shrieked from her fractured body. "Fue! Elifabeff! It's ME!"

She reached for the microphone, desperate for words to bridge the abyss between her and them. But when her hand touched the metal, it stuck, flesh fused unnaturally and with a sickening crack, her wrist tore away.

Blood geysered from the stump, arcing into the crowd. A spray of warmth, hot and red, painting gowns and tuxedos, speckling the air like a grotesque snowfall.

Screams. Everywhere.

She spun, panicked, blood spraying from her arm like water from a ruptured hose. Her princess dress whirled crimson.

The spray found its marks: Harvey, who gaped in horror; the circle of wealthy shareholders, their outrage smeared across silk; the innocent child, now baptized in blood.

The screams swelled, deafening.

"Let me explain!" Harvey shouted to the shareholders, his voice cracking, his pleas lost to the chaos. They only glared, running their thumbs across their throats in the universal gesture: you're finished.

"Lef' me efplaim!" MonstroElisaSue tried again, but her words disintegrated into wet consonants, into incoherence.

The answer came not in words but in violence. Someone swung the microphone stand with brutal force. The impact shattered her face, splitting it open.

Half of her head collapsed into ruin. From the wound, impossibly, a new one grew, a hideous blend of Sue and Elisabeth, fused together in a gaping, pulsing nightmare.

Staggering, bleeding, humiliated, she stumbled off the set, the fury of the mob crashing behind her like fire.

The backstage corridor stretched ahead of her like a tunnel of judgment. Every staggering step she took left a trail behind, an arterial scar painting the walls, spattering in violent bursts as if her body itself was trying to scream in red. The infamous hallway, so many times crossed in triumph or humiliation by others before her, now became her final gauntlet. Carnage bloomed in her wake, raw and undeniable.

She burst through the door and into the night air of the studio lot, stumbling into the alley. The cold air slapped against her skin, but offered no comfort. Her breaths came ragged, each one clawing at her throat. Agony drove her forward, yet beneath it all was something more ancient than pain, fear. She wanted only to be left alone. No witnesses. No hunters. No one to see what she was becoming.

The street swallowed her next. Under the jaundiced glare of neon, she wheezed as she ran, her panic mounting. She moved with a desperate purpose, like a homing animal in its final sprint, instinct locked on a place only she seemed to know. Somewhere ahead, if she could only reach it there was safety.

But her body betrayed her. Her legs buckled, joints cracking loose like broken hinges. With a wet collapse she crashed against the pavement. Blood fanned upward, splashing across glossy billboards. Once-selling fantasies now dripped with her reality.

She clawed at the ground, but her hands no longer obeyed. Her arms, her legs, pieces of her slipped away, dislocating, folding inward, melting into a grotesque, pulsating mass. Flesh became fluid. Bone became sludge. Her humanity dissolved into a shapeless, writhing body: a bloody magma of a nightmare crawling forward.

Yet even now, even in this ruin, she dragged herself on. Inch by inch, leaving trails of gore across the concrete. Her wheezing filled the night air, weaker with each gasp, but there was no surrender in it. She still wanted to reach that place, wherever it was. She still believed she could. And so, a grotesque silhouette against the indifferent city, she pressed on, giving everything she had left, until there was almost nothing left to give.

---

The star glimmered faintly beneath the glow of streetlamps, a slab of pink stone set into dull grey pavement. Its letters, crisp and cold in the night air, declared the name with quiet authority: ELIZABETH SPARKLE.

For a moment, there was stillness. A rare silence after chaos, as though the world itself were holding its breath.

Then she slithered in movement.

A torn piece of flesh scraped across the concrete, dragging itself with pitiful determination toward the polished star. Each twitch of ruined muscle seemed unbearable, yet the will inside it refused surrender.

It was her. Mush-of-Monstro-Eliza-Sue. What remained of her body fought gravity, fought pain, fought inevitability. Inch by agonizing inch, she heaved herself onto the center of the star, collapsing against the cool surface as if it were an altar.

Above her, the sky shimmered unnaturally, blooming with dazzling light, as if invisible spotlights had turned their gaze solely upon her. Gold confetti tumbled down from the heavens, each fragment spinning like a miracle, landing softly on her ravaged face.

The sounds of the street dulled, the cars, the chatter, the restless Los Angeles night, all melting into something else: applause. Not the hollow clatter of hands in a theater, but a thunderous ovation that seemed to rise from every corner of existence. With it came music, swelling, extravagant, and triumphant.

Eliza-Sue's ruined mouth curved, if not into a smile, then into something close. For in this rain of gold, in this roaring adoration, she was not broken. She was victorious. At last, she was the star.

The confetti fell thicker, veiling her from the world as her body dissolved further into a trembling puddle of blood and viscera. Her consciousness lingered, drinking in the applause, until there was nothing left of her but a dark, gleaming stain.

It could have been ketchup.

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The next morning roared in with cruel indifference. A street-cleaning machine slid into where the thick viscera was, its massive brushes spinning black and wet. Soap and steel devoured the stain, scrubbing the sidewalk of every trace.

The world moved on.

And in the wash of the brushes, in the blare of cheap, trashy music echoing like a parody of triumph, everything was gone.

                                                                        THE END