Brandi

Brandi had snakeskin lips. She wore boots of ivory leather and she smoked. Her hair was wild, dirty and blonde. When the sun hit it it glowed, drawing a golden halo around her head, ironically, because it was the only resemblance she bore to an angel. She lived in the poor part of town, with her alcoholic mother, and was fortunate enough to have those high cheekbones, the kind that could airlift a girl out of the lower class. Her mother had named her Brandy, as a joke, because that's what she'd been drinking the night she was conceived. After she'd said it a few times though, she found she liked it and the name stuck. She spelled it with an i now, Brandi did. A modeling agency had found her one day when she'd gone into the city for a pregnancy test, which, luckily for her (and the would-be baby) had come back negative. As she was crossing the street a man with a clipboard and a camera-rig approached her, impeccably dressed, with black hair and bright blue eyes, and he asked her if she had any interest in modeling. He explained that she had natural talent; it was in the way she walked; her balance, the grace in her shoulders, the length of her stride, that sharp mystifying quality her eyes had. But most of all it was her mischevious smile; the way it seemed to slither; the way it could make something in a man writhe.

Brandi was twenty-one at the time. She had developed an interest in boys and would coil herself around their hearts torturously, squeezing out every last drop of love til they were dried out. When her second boyfriend had killed himself after their breakup, she'd felt guilt not over his death, but because she'd derived pleasure from the idea of a man dying of grief over her. She had, of course, never truly been in love, and instead only sought companionship in the form of physical indlugence, chewing them up like gum until they lost flavor. And it was at the age of twenty-one when, through her modeling agency, she was afforded certain covetous luxuries; exotic travel, exquisite clothing and dresses, invitations to elite parties, the interest of rich people with money to spend.

This began to fill those around her with envy. After all, she was a woman of a very invidious beauty. The few true friends she did have were put off by her newfound habits. When they would go out to parties together they were made to feel like Brandi's dirty clothes, old used up rags cast aside and hidden behind a cabinet under the sink. They hated her feigned laughter which she showered upon her new friends, the superficiality of their conversation. Her industry friends flaunted their opulence sinfully, spending exorbitant sums on things like specialty facial mosturizers, handbags, hotels restaurants and yachts. One especially loud and arrogant man with perfectly manicured eyebrows and a painstakingly kempt quiff of auburn hair, complained how the rising costs of gas made travel in his private jet more inconvenient, but not more infrequent (he casually added). Brandi would conveniently find herself separated from her friends, only happening upon them as she was leaving the party - on the arm of another well-quiffed man. "I was looking all over for you guys; splendid party, don't you think," she'd ask, almost rhetorically. Splendid wasn't a word they'd ever heard her use in her life.

This was when her already tenuous relationship with her mother had reached its absolute breaking point. Her mother had grown jealous of her daughter's socialite lifestyle, and she was driven mad by the vibrance of her youth. She resented Brandi for her good fortune, and she feared, in time, that she would desert her (though she hadn't yet). Her mother would drink and say things like: "It'll fade - all beauty fades, princess. Look at me. I looked like you once, not so long ago," or "These people don't like you, they're only interested in you for your looks, and where will you be when that fades? You'll see. You'll see what happens to us (women)." One night, in a drunken fit of rage, her mother had taken a pair of scissors to an expensive dress that had been given to Brandi as a gift. After it had been shred to tatters, it stood as an unequivocal symbol of her mother's disdain for her, and in turn, Brandi's disdain for her mother.

Things worsened between them quite quickly. Brandi acted with spite toward her mother, parading around the house in front of mirrors while wearing designer dresses and high-heel shoes, touching and retouching her face and hair from one mirror to the next. She made an effort to pass her mother no matter where she was in the house, to rub it in. She started leaving blouses, belts and boots around the house in rumpled piles, like they were salvation army hand-me-downs, to show her mother just how much luxury she'd acquired. When she'd come home at night, drunk, she'd open the door loudly and giggle bad-intentionedly, she'd drop things and scream HONEY, I'M HOME! It wasn't that she had to go home - because she didn't - she liked going home: to show her mother that she was better than her, to show her how little she needed her now.

"Do you ever miss dad," she asked, the last time she'd gone home, when she'd stumbled in drunk at 4:30 in the morning smelling like smoke and whiskey. "Do you ever wonder why he left you," she continued, "I think it's because he knew you weren't going to get any better than you were then; he knew that eventually you'd just be an old wrinkled drunk with a worn-out pussy."

Brandi's mother hadn't replied. She just sat there looking up at the old wooden ceiling-fan, smoke-stained and spinning. Brandi enjoyed that she'd hurt her mother so deeply that she couldn't look at her. "I've decided: I'm leaving. Tomorrow. No, wait, today. I'm packing my things and moving in with Preston, to his penthouse," she said, more to herself than to her mother. As she left the room to pack, she said: "It will be splendid."

Brandi packed, completely unaware she had missed something. She didn't realize it as she sauntered out of the house into Preston's Tesla, either. She was only finally made aware of it four days later - when the smell of rot, its sillage augmented by the scorching summer heat, had alerted the neighbors.

This death upset her, too. Not because her mother was dead though, but because her mother was able to leave her before she did.