flume

"Up next!"

She beamed, folded herself up, danced over, and clung down onto the seat like a fungal mat. Her freckles spun upon her cheeks as the fierce pink light panned across her cheekbones, and she chewed her gum, sucked at her salivary glands, blinked mud-brown eyes into the camera. The sets of lenses blinked at each other, glittered like diamonds. The shutters contracted, expanded, settled at an excellent light level as large orbs of cerulean blurred across her skin. The stage was set.

"You understand that you are auditioning for the role of Lucille for Spontaneous Combustion: A Woman to Ash?"

"Yes, yes," she murmured. She played with her lip, toyed with the rubberized layer of makeup. She chipped a corner free, frowned, felt the slightest wrinkle between her lips. That wouldn't do. She smacked them, rolled them around, covered it up.

"Your name?" the hiring manager rumbled.

"Mackenzie Whorton," she snapped between the chewing of the gum. She stretched her knees out and put her hands into the cushion and gripped it tight. And she was antsy, chewing on her gum, and she wanted a cigarette and she scratched at her skin where a nicotine patch had sat.

"Previous occupation?"

"Hair stylist, dear." Mackenzie teased her hair, which fell in spiraling curves, each like the curve of a back, each like a line traced through nowhere. She ruffled her churning locks like her hands were gunships wobbling on stormin' waves, and she laughed warmly, and it crackled like bread under hot red heat.

"Previous acting experience? And the reason for termination at said occupation?"

A blear of orange glinted in her pupils and they shrank into tiny little pinpricks. "None." She laughed, nervous, and orange blurred her vision. Why the hell did they set up a fucking bokeh set for these interviews? "You know why I was terminated, hun." She wanted a damned cigarette. She mussed up her hair and laughed again, forced it out, and little crinkles formed at the corners of her eyes, and her cheeks flushed with blossoming capillaries, and you knew that one day they'd form crow's feet, and that she'd live a long life, a satisfied life, and in her old age she'd sit by the window. And she wanted to scream. She'd sit by the window in a long, comfortable silence, and even though her life felt like it was wrinkled, and crackles, with tiny little wrinkles at the crackles, that she'd be satisfied with the slow motion of old age. She was ageless. She was entire.

"We need to hear it in your own words, Mackenzie."

She laughed again, and it was a bellow, the floom-crackle! of a furnace fed fresh air, and she laughed harder, and it was fire tongs shoved into coals, and it was this laughter, this red-hot, fierce laughter, and it boomed around the room louder than silence, tinier than God, self-satisfied and enormous, and it almost blew out the speakers. She sniffled, ran her hand back across her nose, collected the snot and wrinkled her nose. "They fired me because I was impertinent, love. I didn't come in on time, but I always got my work done, hun, so they told me to fuck it and so they can fuck it and fuck off."

Mackenzie tapped hot-red heels. She wasn't born for this age. She was restless, teeming.

"Please keep this professional, Mackenzie."

She laughed again, giggling, her muscles rippling like confetti spirals, laughing entirely selfishly, her hair flaring like flames, and she was the furnace, she was every last stainless steel panel, and she was chortling as she got up, did a spin, and rubberized fast-fashion clung to her, and her loose top rippled like dead leaves in the wind. "Fuck your professionalism," she hissed. "Her sharp fingernails jabbed into rubberized material, causing little wrinkles and tiny little cracks, and she was carried upon little sparks of air floomed between the fissures. She fidgeted, uncomfortable.

"That'll do."

She clung tightly to the red rubberized seat, bit her lip, and giggled.

"You can go now," the lead hiring manager droned.

"Did I get the part?" Mackenzie popped between her chewing gun.

"That's undetermined as of yet. We'll call you back. Go home, Mackenzie."

"Fine, fine." She giggled, got up from the seat, and her eyes lit alight. She saw a paper left in the waiting room, snatched it up, and she began to murmur with white hot teeth and a shimmery bubblegum tongue.

The roster for the role, every last name, glimmered in her hand, and she crumpled it tight like a wrapper and shoved it into her pocket. Her pupils narrowed to a point. She'd damn well make sure she got the part.

As she was leaving, Mackenzie pulled a film-man aside, clung to him, and he blinked agape at the hot form rippling down his side.

"Did you know what Sarah said, hun?"

"No," he said, sweating, swallowing, "What?"

She let a finger trail down his shirt, and it left little sparks in its wake. "Sarah's a communist. A God-damned far-flung fascist. Sarah's- she's even a eugenicist, honey."

The filmman blinked. "What?"

"A real sympathizer, really. But you didn't hear it from me," Mackenzie murmured, and disentangled, "but call me later, I'll tell you all about it," and gave him her number, and rippled down the hallway, swaying back and forth, energetic, snakelike, a bounce to her step.

She waited by her rotary phone, absently spinning the rotary dial and letting it clink back, and, later, chat they did indeed. Mackenzie coiled the handset cord around her finger like a little snake, almost dancing as he called her back. She shot up and paced around the home phone's anchor to the wall, chattered endlessly. Her heels popped upon firecrackers as she paced.

He hung up, convinced.

One fucker down, Mackenzie thought, stuck her tongue into her bubblegum and popped it.

"Do you know what Terrey said, hun?" Mackenzie's alluring murmur chasmed through the phone.

"No, no, what?" Mackenzie's sister asked. She blinked, clung it to her ear. As one sister lay in bed, fingers tracing little spirals over the rotary phone base, the other stood rigid at the wall, as if shocked straight.

"You can trust me, dear," Mackenzie murmured, "it was absolutely horrible," holding back a racketing, burgeoning giggle inside her, and she started building a lattice, "you really don't want to hear it," a brickwork and a roof of a conviction, "she said that it didn't really matter what anyone thought, but, she's really with the Soviets," and her upright sister announced a rigid gasped, and so fluttering her lashes she murmured about how "Terrey wasn't the sort of person that you'd want in a position of power, nor even in the spotlight, not after that kind of thought process, even if it wasn't acting on it, the fact that-"

"I'll look into it," the sister blurted, and hung up, heart ricketting in her chest.

Mackenzie laughed, laid back on her bed, spread herself wide like a spider preparing to die, and rang up contacts, and began to smear shit on every last competitor, again and again and again and

"You didn't get the role, Mackenzie. And, please, stop harassing the team members. We'll pursue legal action if necessary."

Mackenzie screwed up her face, pouted, and spontaneously combusted into flame.

Well, no, really, she smoked a cigarette under the porch, stared at the violet sky, and coughed roughly. She coughed harder, harder, cracked at the edges, her makeup snapping apart into little panels, breathing, and combusted into a pure white fire that left an ash-stain on the front porch.

Phoenix plume flume. Whoosh-rush-blush-flush.

"Up next!"

She felt her heart flutter upon hot white angel wings. She churned, somewhere deep inside, a mechanism creaking back, bellows crackling back open, seething in new air, and her copper eyes rattled. She laughed, laughed, and laughed again, bent over and her red hot curls cackled around her knees like a second dress. The freckles across her kneecaps burned. She blinked, stared up at a reflective window, and regarded crow's feet pulling at her eyelids, a grin creasing her gently flushed cheeks.

"Rumor has it," a meek girl next to her whispered, "they're coming back. All of those cases of spontaneous combustion, way back in the 50's, the 90's. and all the people are coming back, like phoenices."

Mackenzie cackled heavily, felt herself teem with laughter, and spilled it out over her lips. "You're a riot, hun."

Mackenzie was the sort of person that you always knew would make it to old age. Whole, satisfied, and entire. She half-covered her aging, pockmarked lips and belched a bit of snarky, red-hot fire.