It’s a sick, sad world we live in, friends, and violence & grief are hotter than ever this season– just like in “Armed & Fabulous!”, David X. Wiggin‘s brutally satirical short story from our Fall 2015 issue.

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LAST YEAR’S TREND WAS THE DEADLIEST IN DECADES, transforming the fashion world from a familiar Sodom into a post-apocalyptic nightmare, littering the runways with corpses and earning Madison Avenue the title of “most dangerous street in America.”

It began with the brutal murder of supermodel Alison Abigail.  One sweltering July evening, the nineteen-year-old Calvin Klein model went clubbing with her friends, her honey-colored hairs twined in those famous pigtails.  According to reports, she left Club Gonzo shortly after 2 A.M. on the arm of an unknown man.  Her disappearance, a national tragedy, became national trauma when her mutilated body was found floating in the Hudson two weeks later, pigtails chopped off.  Right away people blamed the industry.  Alison was branded a martyr in nearly every circuit of the media. Shows were picketed.  Bottles of the perfume she represented were shattered on the street outside the Calvin Klein offices.

While its tasteful battlements shook from the onslaught of a hysterical country, the fashion world was being torn apart from within.  Models withdrew from the public sphere for fear of the uncaptured killer.  A popular designer quit the business altogether out of remorse.  Nearly a third of the clothes designed that year were black.

Eventually the one-year anniversary of Alison’s death rolled around.  In a move of brilliant marketing, crass Calvin Klein produced the Alison Abigail Memorial Fragrance.  This perfume did not tingle with the gentle scent of flowers or fizzle with the electric dry smell of the sea.  It burned and blasted like wrathful mace.  It was in fact wrathful mace stored in a heavy steel spray-flask, itself a suitable accessory for bashing in the head of a blinded mugger.  First produced only in limited edition quantities, the Alison Abigail Memorial Fragrance was a surprise hit.  Sentimental fashionistas swept them off the shelves and wore them on chains or clipped to their belts.  It didn’t matter that the flasks were heavy and hideous—everyone was proud to wear them.  They provided a sense of solidarity and empowerment.  Here was an item both chic and deadly.  And because the A.A.M. Fragrance was technically a perfume, it was perfectly legal.

Not to be outdone, Donna Karan produced a silver commemorative dagger.  A good three inches longer than the legal limit, the curved blade was designed by a famous silversmith and inscribed in delicate cursive with the banal phrase: “NEVER AGAIN.”  It was the sort of tasteless knick-knack you’d see at the Alamo—only these knick-knacks were sharp enough to castrate a horse.  The day after the dagger went on the market, stabbings in New York City quintupled.

Continue reading “Armed & Fabulous!” – Fiction by David X. Wiggin →