Trigger Warning: Gore

We all know the masterpiece of cinematic history by the name of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', right? Not only was it integral to reviving animation's golden age, the first and only time Disney and Warner Brothers' characters appeared on screen together, and the first to make cartoon and live-action integration look believable, but it also gave us one of the most iconic women in cinema, real or animated. And, of course, it spawned countless copycats, some more successful than others. One of the latter came only four years later, starring Brad Pitt as the Roger-like detective and Kim Basinger as the Jessica-like femme fatale named Holli Would. It was called 'Cool World'.

What? Never heard of it? Exactly. The movie was panned by critics and audiences alike. Bad acting, bad plot, bad attempt at recapturing the Jessica Rabbit charm and sex appeal, et cetera. Today, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who even knew Brad Fucking Pitt starred in that shitshow. But it does have a cult following.

Kinda how this bitch in front of me has a cult following. Look at her standing there with a smug smile on her face while her minions pour in and flank her like a bunch of ants around a drop of honey. Her and her layered golden blonde hair in an updo that is somehow both messy and elegant, her and her plain white choker fit snugly around her dainty neck, her and her strapless white dress with thigh-high slits on either side contouring her hourglass body. Fuck, she even looks like the cartoon woman.

But, even though Holli Would was the only thing I liked about that godsforsaken film, I'm not giving in. Yeah, so I find Aurora Beatrix attractive, so what? That doesn't mean I just forget she's any less of a Grade-A cunt and that I don't want to wring that neck like a fucking wet rag. But, remembering what I promised Aeneas, I steel myself and put on a smile. She might be Holli Would, but I'm Jessica Fucking Rabbit, and this is my party.

"Hello, Aurora. Impeccable timing, as always."

She scowls almost imperceptibly for but a fraction of a second. The bitch expected to have the first word, did she?

"I wouldn't miss your little get-together for the world," her annoyingly melodic voice rings out. (The Aussie accent she picked up last century is still there, so at least the Cuntralia nickname stays true.) She slowly circles me, her silver-white heels clicking against the stone floor and her blue eyes scanning every inch of my body. Suits me just fine; let her behave like the snake she is.

"That's great to hear," I face Iva at the altar again. Her expression has gone neutral, but I recognize the subtly pinched eyebrows and clenched teeth for what they are, even under all that drag makeup. I think I can even see her lips moving. 'Don't throw a conniption don't throw a conniption don't throw a conniption,' they seem to repeat.

Me? Can you imagine?

Don't answer that.

"Mhm," Aurora hums behind me. "I don't believe you."

"What don't you believe?"

"That it's great to hear, Lucretia."

Not many things make me flinch, but the sound of my name in that sickly sweet voice sure as all fuck does. She notices, too, for her grating laugh echoes around me. Her hangers-on laugh, too. My people, meanwhile, look as far from happy as you can imagine. Even Rhonda takes a break from suffocating her girlfriend with her mouth to glare at the posse. The other covens are either backing away or tensing up like tweaking rodents. Not that I blame them.

"Oh, don't jump like that," Aurora teases as she appears before me. "I thought nothing was supposed to scare the great Lucretia Aemelia. You can't just give little old me the honour."

This. Fucking. Cunt.

I feel my fangs push themselves out of my gums as her smiling eyes drill a hole into my nonexistent soul. Was I truly wishing she'd be here just a few moments ago? I'd rather face the Elders than this.

"Consider it a gag reflex," I say when I manage to pull my fangs back. "Turns out I'm allergic to little old you interrupting my party."

She laughs. "I don't think that's true either, Lucy."

"You think? When did you learn how to do that?"

The laughter I hear this time comes from my people, which makes me relax a bit. Yet this, too, is ruined by Aurora Fucking Beatrix.

"One hot sunny day about twenty-two hundred years ago. You know the time."

Would the Elders be mad if I take that crucifix and stick it where the sun doesn't shine?

"So that's why you're crashing this event our overlords so kindly put together. Because you're still bitter."

Iva materializes by my side before Aurora answers. The bitch spares her a glance.

"Aeneas," she nods at her.

"Aurora," I can tell Iva is trying to keep her cool almost as hard as I have to try to keep mine. My friend is many things, but someone who likes being interrupted is not one of them.

"Nice wig. Was Party City having a sale?"

"Nice lack of manners. Did you learn that from your Orangutan roommates at the Sydney Zoo?"

"Nice heels. Do they make you feel all tall and scawy?"

"Nice nose! Can I break it?" Rhonda yells as she rolls her sleeves up. One-legged or not, I don't want to be at the end of those appendages.

I stop her with a hand gesture and a warning glare. It doesn't take a genius to see that Aurora is provoking us on purpose. She wants me to piss the Elders off, but why? Even if it would get me in deep shit, they wouldn't let anyone here off Scott-free. Certainly not her. What is she planning?

"Back off, Aurora," I warn her. "I'm asking you nicely."

"Nicely?" she scoffs and looks over at one of her cling-ons. "You hear that, Maria? She's asking nicely."

The woman in question laughs, her ankle-length black hair rippling as she does. "That sure sounds familiar, Matriarch."

I feel my fangs slide out again as I stare at Aurora's stupid face. Don't throw a conniption don't throw a conniption don't throw a conniption.

"I think I know what you mean," Aurora smiles. "Yeah, I remember now. That time in Cabo when—"

Alright, that's fucking it.

I lunge myself at the cunt. For a split second, I see her triumphant smile and know that she has won. She got what she wanted out of me to whatever end she sought. But before disappointment in myself could settle, I feel my growing claws pierce the skin of her breast with a satisfying schlunk, and sweet euphoria overcomes me as I lace my fingers through her ribcage and tear through the smooth flesh of her lungs.

I slam her against the wall and her head bounces off of it like a basketball as the stone cracks. She snarls as she bares her fangs, the veins on her face bulging and the whites of her eyes turning red. She lands her foot in the middle of my chest and sends me flying across the basilica into the opposite wall. Something snaps as my back meets it, and can't move my limbs to prevent my face from hitting the stone floor. Instantly, she lifts me by my throat, her veined face scowling at me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see others fighting. Thankfully not all, though, and I think some of those moving are trying to break it up. I see Aeneas's wig flying across the room, but I can't pick him out in the commotion. Very clearly, however, I hear Rhonda's yells: "How do you like them tampons, bitch?" and "I blew Nazis up, you think you glorified mosquitos can take me?"

"She's a feisty one, isn't she?" Aurora drawls. "Maybe I'll kill her last."

Now, logically, I know there's no way she could mean that. I know this is all meant to provoke me further. One thing, if anything, that you should know about vampires is that as our thirst for human blood exists, so does our aversion to breaking our tenets. The idea disgusts us like digging through a ten-foot-high pile of shit with your bare hands disgusts you. And, unlike you humans—some of whom can have pretty weird preferences—this is a unilateral trait. Not that we couldn't do it, but we'd rather set the whole world on fire than break a single one of our tenets. So, logically, I know that Aurora doesn't mean it. But I don't always act logically.

My spine fully healed and my mobility restored, I grab the hand around my throat, jerk it away, and drop-kick the bitch, landing on her chest as she falls. With her arm in my hands, I press my heels into her chest, twist, and pull the limb off. Like mozzarella cheese, it detaches from her shoulder socket with stringy tendons. She screams as I swing the bloodied thing and send it crashing through a stained-glass window. Right through that fucking glass priest's head.

I don't have much time to revel in my Olympic hammer-throwing accuracy, though. Because, right away, five claws slice through my back, ruining my Gaultier dress and enclosing my spine. I'm spun around like a hammer of a hammer thrower before slicing through the air and landing in a wet, sticky, but delicious waterfall. The blood fountain breaks under my weight and falls onto the hand-woven tapestry, splattering the crimson liquid all over its white background. By the time I recover, Maria appears from behind the broken window with Aurora's severed limb. I speed towards the bane of my existence and squeeze her neck, my claws tearing through her velvet choker. Maria lunges at my back, but she's not strong enough to knock me over. Instead, she tears at my dress and skin. Red fabric, sequins, and strings of flesh fall around me like confetti. These fucking whores. First my friend's speech, now my fucking haute couture dress. What is this world coming to?

"Stop. Ruining. My fucking. Birthday."

I straighten the clawed fingers of my free hand and slice Maria's head off. Her long hair splits at an angle, and her limp body lands on its knees with a thud before falling to the ground. Her head, meanwhile, rolls a few times before coming to a stop. Aurora's eyes follow it as her fury builds. Cry me a fucking river, bitch.

I ram my clawed hand into her stomach only to feel something warm and sharp squeeze mine. I look down, seeing her up to her forearm inside me like I am inside her. At once, silence falls all around us. We just stand there for a moment, arms clenched around each others' internal organs. All eyes are now glued to me, Aurora, and the headless body. A panicked Aeneas calls out to me, but I ignore him.

"What is your fucking problem?" I snap at the bitch instead.

"What do you think?" her blue eyes meet mine. "You are."

"Why?" I growl. "What did I ever do to you?"

She laughs as her stomach spasms in my fist.

"Twenty-two hundred years, and you still haven't figured it out."

The look in her eyes is equally painful and pitying. It simultaneously pisses me off and stabs me harder than her claws did. But, most of all, it leaves me baffled. I had no idea her hate stretched that far back. What the fuck could she possibly mean?

"Okay, that's enough!" Aeneas appears between us with Maria's head under his armpit. His wig is gone, leaving only a tattered bald cap in its place, his emerald dress has a sleeve missing, and his smudged makeup makes him look like he just made out with Bigfoot. "Let go, both of you."

"You let go!" Maria's disembodied head wriggles in his arm. "Put me back on my body or I swear no amount of tucking will save you from—"

"Shut up, Maria." Aurora snaps.

"But Matriarch—"

"I said shut up."

We don't tear our eyes from each other. I'm still racking my brain about what she told me last. Though she still looks like she wants to tear my head off, her glare turns more resigned by the second. Moreover, it's as if none of this is new to her. It doesn't take her long to retract her arm, and I follow suit.

"Put her back, Aeneas," I say as I pick Aurora's detached limb off the floor and hand it to her. She takes it without another look at me. That hurts, for some reason. I feel dumber than a bag of rocks—like there's a picture the size of a Times Square billboard which I'm missing here. Or maybe I'm not missing it; maybe she's just toying with me; maybe I just don't believe it because what I feel is too insane to be real.

Aurora holds her severed arm between her thighs and tears a hole in the healed flesh where it used to be. Then she fits the ball of the detached limb into the socket of her shoulder joint and holds the appendage there as her flesh regenerates. A couple of seconds later, she flexes and rotates the newly-reattached limb.

"Jee, fucking thanks," I turn to the reassembled Maria who's checking whether all her limbs work properly.

"Be glad I didn't sew you on backwards, whore," Aeneas scoffs.

"Be glad?" she holds up a handful of her hair from the floor. "Your mommy destroyed decades of my work you invalid cross-dresser!"

"Calm the fuck down, Rapunzel," I snap at her. "You're immortal, you have literally all the time in the world to grow it back."

Not to mention that maybe screwing her on backwards would've been fitting, judging by her priorities. She opens her mouth to say something, but Aurora cuts her off.

"Enough, Maria. We're done here."

There's a finality to her tone—the old Matriarch voice which I, myself, am no stranger to using—that the black-haired bloodsucker is powerless against. So she clamps her mouth shut and nods meekly at Aurora.

I, meanwhile, feel dread creep up on me. They're done here, they got what they came here for. It, of course, being my loss of control. We would have to face the Elders, now. I don't need to think too long before my imagination tells me—in vivid detail—how royally pissed they will be. And I have to be wary of how Aurora's gonna spin this. As I catastrophize, she barks orders at her coven. They begin to file out with glares and snarls at mine. She and the recently-headless one are the last to turn to the exit.

"Maria," I call out to the latter before she bolts. She turns to me as I glare at her. I see Aurora pause out of the corner of my eye as well. "If you insult my friend like that again, I'll make you wish the tenets had room for an exception."

Instantly, her face grows as white as Aurora's dress—before the bloodstains, of course. I always liked reminding people just who they were dealing with, and this is no exception. Being thusly reminded, she belatedly nods and disappears out the door. Aurora's mouth quirks into a ghost of a smile, but I can't pay it enough mind to be properly surprised. As I see her silhouette—so reminiscent of that fucking cartoon—disappear into the night, I'm overcome with a nauseating terror of what awaits us.

"We'll need a lot of lube," Aeneas says.

"Why?"

"It'll hurt less when they fuck us in the ass."