A vanity lined with fluorescent bulbs illuminates the sad excuse of a dressing room on the second floor of Thrust. Music from the dance floor below vibrates the heels of a dozen drag queens crowded around the mirror. 
“How can they expect us to paint a full fantasy without some decent fucking lighting?” asks ChiChi DuVeighn, in a short, purple dress that lays on her curves as if a second skin. She flicks her long black hair over her shoulders and sucks in her cheeks to brush a line of deep brown contour on each of them. “We’re drag queens, honey,” replies Liv N. Tennant, a shirtless queen with broad shoulders and a bald head, as she shaves the stubble from her chin, “we only come out at night.”
Angelica Davis, a sleek and slender queen, paints her puckered lips pink.
“The lean and hungry type,” she sings, getting raucous laughter and finger snaps from a few queens, enough of a chatter to drown out the bass pounding below for a moment. 
With her makeup done, Angelica can pass alongside any bombshell from the neck up. She gives Mother You-Know-Who a run for her fracking money. Angelica pushes her fingers up through her blonde hair to tease it, turning her head side to side to admire her finished look. 
Elbows bent, hands lightly curled and held up by her shoulders, she stands from her seat in one of two chairs in front of the mirror, heading to the back of the room in only her underwear. ChiChi takes the empty seat, leaning in close to the glass. The chair beside her holds a seasoned queen who takes her time applying makeup, knowing that if she were to rise, her seat would remain empty until her return.
“Nothing is new, I’ve seen her here before,” Angelica continues the song, swaying her hips as she slinks to the back corner of the dressing room, behind a folded paper privacy wall. She shimmies out of her boxer briefs and picks up a roll of tape from the waist-high, three-legged table beside her. She rips off three strips of tape, sticking the ends of them to her shaven forearm as she widens her stance.
“Watching and waiting,” Angelica sings to no one but herself, the other queens too enamored with their reflections to listen to anything behind them. She takes one strip of tape off her arm, attaches it above the base of her dick, pushes the flaccid organ flat against her body, and stretches the tape over it. She pushes the tape flat against her taint, running her hand back and forth along the length to get it to stick to her skin.
“She’s sitting with you,” Angelica adds the second piece of tape, stretching and smoothing it down, squishing her dick and balls back in between her ass cheeks. The third strip finalizes the tuck. Angelica looks down at her pelvis, admiring the completed female illusion. 
“But her eyes are on the door.”
Without putting her underwear on again, she swings around from behind the paper wall, one hand gripping the edge as she drapes herself against the frame. Angelica raises her voice to demand attention.
“Wo-ah here she comes,” she struts toward the queens at the mirror. 
“Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up,” Angelica spins on the balls of her feet to flash her ass at the small crowd of queens who break into laughter, stomp their feet, clap, snap, or toss their hair in raving approval of their sister’s nude performance. 
Standing on her toes, Angelica whips her head down, bending at the waist. The queens wave their fingers in the air or walk a few steps away before circling back, unable to contain their thrill.
“Wo-ah here she comes,” Angelica tosses her head up, snapping the blonde locks of her wig behind her, and looks over her shoulder. “She’s a maneater.”
“Biiiiiiiiiiitch,” ChiChi’s voice cuts above the cries of the other queens around her, “that tuck is cunt!”
Angelica laughs and drops the act, trotting to her bag on the far wall to grab her heels.
“Isn’t it, though?” She plucks silver stilettos from her Jansport, slipping them on and clicking over to the aluminum rack where her red dress hangs alone.
“Girl, I don’t get how you can beat your face without a tuck,” Lu Brie Kant chimes in as she adorns her lace-front. Visibly one of the youngest among them, Lu Brie adjusts and readjusts her bobbed brunette wig. She’s wearing what can only be described as a knock-knock-knock off Keith Harring inspired black and white body suit. Think—trying for art and ending up shart. 
“I need to feel like a woman before I can paint myself like one, and I need my dick out of the picture for that.” 
The laughs this comment receives are deadened by the slap of skin as ChiChi whacks Lu Brie’s arm with the back of her hand. 
“Have some fucking awareness and common courtesy, girl,” ChiChi’s usually playful tone drops into heated defense. “Shit. Read the fucking room.” 
ChiChi flips her hair dismissively away from the chided queen and sits back down to begin gluing on her eyelashes. Lu Brie deflates in recompense and runs a hand through her hair self-consciously. 
“Shit, sorry, Sylvia,” Lu Brie addresses her apology to the queen seated beside ChiChi. 
Sylvia Castello, the only drag queen in the room who doesn’t stop being a woman when the night ends, holds her eyelid open as she traces it with eyeliner. She sets the pencil down when she finishes, tilts up her chin, and brushes her fingers down her neck as she admires her reflection in the mirror. 
“Sorry for what?” Sylvia asks, her tone sizzling the backs of the other queens’ necks. “Sorry for that ratty-ass, Dollar Tree excuse of a wig? Or for the shapelessness of your silhouette in that body suit?”
The queens hold their tongues, sensing in the chill of her voice that Sylvia has only begun to read Lu Brie Kant for filth. 
“Or maybe you’re sorry for thinking you know how to match your foundation to your skin tone, Little Miss Pumpkin.” A few queens can’t help but laugh at this, fueling Sylvia to turn and face her target. “Or perhaps in your legions of philosophical research you’ve finally understood what an assault on your fellow woman that Beetlejuice-tablecloth onesie you writhe around in on stage is, and like any good grad student you’ve decided to grovel for a speck of human decency.” 
The queens wail and exclaim in high-pitch singular shouts. Some repeat their favorite lines from Sylvia’s read to Lu Brie, who shifts from one foot to the other during this cacophony, hands on her hips, trying not to show how much it stings and failing.
Angelica zips up her red Dior imitation gown and stuffs padding into the bodice as she remembers the first time Sylvia read her for filth. Almost every hot shot with a wig and high heels who steps through these dressing room doors gets put in their place by the Queen of Thrust, and they love her for it. Angelica squeezes her fake tits and jiggles them so they’ll sit correctly against her chest and stay in place for her performance on stage. Her look complete, she steps back to the vanity, far enough away to get a full-length view of herself in the mirror. 
Sylvia stands and smooths down the front of her blue sequined ball gown. With her hands clasped in front of her regally, she scans Lu Brie from heel-toe to wig. Clicking forward in slow, easy steps, she approaches the younger queen. Sylvia brushes her fingers lightly down Lu Brie’s hair in a gesture that threatens more than nurtures.
“I wouldn’t have made it this far if I let myself get upset over every little comment someone made about what makes a woman,” Sylvia says as she drops her hand to Lu Brie’s shoulder. “But let this be a lesson to watch your tongue in the presence of a lady.” 

❋

“Oh, the children are gagging tonight,” Sasha Divinity, the master of ceremonies at Thrust, says into the mic, her voice droll and sardonic. “Yeeesss, we are living, children, we are living.”
Sasha pulls the microphone off to the side and sticks a finger in her mouth, projecting the sound of an exaggerated choke. She wears a strapless, black, floor-length gown with a piled-high, black beehive wig, the image of a voluptuous suburban mom from the sixties, very John Travolta in Hairspray, but actually giving. The stage she stands on is a box twenty-five feet wide, twenty feet deep, and two feet off the ground. The painted red wood sits flush against a brick wall behind it.
“I am literally fucking gagging at all of you straight bitches,” Sylvia says. She shields her eyes from the stage lights to get a view of the crowd, “Wooow, look at all the straight white girls. Straight white girls in the audience, let me hear you make some noise.”
The shrill of drunken sorority excitement rises from the floor, produced by various groupings of three or four young women, predominantly white, aged from eighteen to twenty-two, their skin the clothing of choice, fabric seeming to be an afterthought. They make up almost a third of the hundred-and-fifty-ish people in the club. 
The crowd stands on a black tile floor. Color-changing lights roam about their heads, encouraging movement and liveliness. Stocked full of thirsty and broke patrons, the bar is manned by two sweaty, pacing bartenders in t-shirts and jeans. A balcony from the second floor supports another two dozen audience members watching from above. Behind these onlookers sits another bar, not as full of people as the one below. The bartender prepares a tray of tequila shots for already-wasted Phi Mu pledges. Patrons up here lean on the wood patiently, more interested in talking with the person to their side than watching the show beneath them. 
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Sasha says and shakes her head, “what has this world come to? Isn’t this a gay club? Where are all the fucking gay people? Are there any faggots in the audience tonight? Faggots, let me hear you.”
She holds the microphone out to the rest of the crowd, the easy majority, made up of skinny white boys with their hands tucked in each other’s back pockets, lipstick lesbians clutching the arm of their butches or being held around the waist by their flannel-clad bisexual girlfriends, middle-aged leather daddies in biker hats and shoulder straps having their chest hair played with by their booty-shorted, crop-topped, nineteen-year-old twinks, women wearing a dress for the first time in public holding hands with their partners who defy gender categorization, skinny-jeaned black boys with their arms around each other’s shoulders, stealing kisses when the roving lights shine away from them, Latino boys squeezing the ass of their black girlfriends whose dick they suck eagerly every night, men with rubber cocks in their boxers and tape wrapped around their chests, all of them drunk on booze or the flashing lights, swimming cerebrally in the strobes and lasers, some of them rolling on poppers or ecstasy and touching their partners unceasingly, some of them fucking in the bathroom without protection, though condoms pour from containers at every doorway. All of these queers break open their throats and release their voices, shaking dust from the bricks around them.
Sasha smiles and nods her head in slow approval. 
“That’s what the fuck I’m talking about,” she says into the microphone. “Let’s get this party started, shall we?”
The sound guy in all black clicks the space bar on his laptop to start the playlist for the show. The twisting melody of the beginning of “Toxic” by Britney Spears wheedles out of the speakers, prompting every audience member under thirty-five to squeal or yell in delight. Andy pushes the volume up to ensure the queens in the dressing room above him will hear their musical cue to head down to the stage.
“Birthdays!” Sasha exclaims into the microphone, boosting her voice out of the speaker to vibrate the ceiling in the hopes of rushing along the performers. Drag queens, as a people, are notoriously late.
“If you’re out tonight celebrating your birthday,” the drag queen emcee speaks with easy control of the room, “get your ass on stage, you’re all gonna do a shot.” 
The audience shifts as some of its members push forward to the stage. 
“And you bitches better not be lying just to get some free booze,” Sasha says, pointing an accusatory finger at the half a dozen people climbing onto stage. 
A desperate shriek of terror slices the air a second before the unmistakable punch of an assault rifle. Blood sprays onto the members of the audience standing closest to the stage as three of the people climbing up for free shots fall dead to the floor. A second round of bullets rattles into the backs of the other three, killing them before they can process the sound of the attack.
But the crowd understands what’s happening. 
Everyone breaks into zips and flurries of limbs dashing wildly in whatever direction finds itself movable. More bodies fall to the floor, either shot, or tripping over the dead, or huddling in fear on the beer-and-blood-stained tile. Boots and tennis shoes slam into the faces of the fallen, living or not, as the survivors stampede to the exits. 
Sasha rolls on the floor of the stage, holding her hands over the place where two bullets invaded her belly. 
“Turn the fucking music off!” she yells over the chaos. “Jesus, cut the fucking music!”
The automatic rifle shouts again, tearing into the last moving body on stage. 

❋

“Oh, there’s our cue,” ChiChi says as she squeaks lipstick off her front teeth with her middle finger. 
Angelica lets her hips loosen and wiggle to the twiddling strings at the beginning of Toxic, her arms reaching up like a snake-charmer’s, her knees bending as she shifts the fulcrum of her movement to her ass. She freezes a beat before the lyrics kick in, extending her arms horizontally from her shoulders, her palms facing out.
“Baby can’t you see,” she sings along, twirling her wrists and scooping her hands to the rhythm.
The thud of the assault rifle shatters her performance, making her and every other queen jump, a flashing exclamation point above each of their heads. 
“Holy shit, was that—” the second round of gunfire cuts off Liv’s question. 
“Holy shit,” Lu Brie says, covering her mouth.
The rifle shots continue in a steady sequence. The queens scatter. Liv and four others scramble out the door without a word; two run to gather their things before booking it; one dives underneath the vanity, leaving Angelica, ChiChi, Lu Brie, and Sylvia standing in the dressing room. 
“Oh my god, it’s happening,” ChiChi’s voice rises into hysterics as the realization hits her. “It’s happening here!”
She digs her fingers into the back of her head and bucks under the weight of reality, shoulders coming down to her knees, chest pressed against her thighs, heels flush with the wood. 
Sylvia rushes to her side. She lowers herself, tries to lift ChiChi onto her feet.
“ChiChi, baby,” Sylvia speaks in low tones, “you’ve got to stand up.”
ChiChi shakes her head, rasping air down her throat and exhaling before it reaches her lungs. Sylvia rubs up and down her spine to bring the girl back into her body. 
“Baby girl, we have got to get the fuck up out of here. And to do that, you’ve got to stand. Now, come on.”
Sylvia hooks her arms under both of ChiChi’s and stands, raising the queen with her. 
“That’s it,” Sylvia whispers.
ChiChi brings a hand to her forehead, inhales until her chest expands entirely, then exhales shakily. She shifts her weight onto her own feet. 
“Thank you,” ChiChi whispers back, brushing a hand over her hair to straighten it.
Sylvia turns to scan the room.
“Lu Brie,” Sylvia says, locking eyes with the queen behind her, “call 911.”
Lu Brie dashes to the back of the room, dumps her bag on the floor, frantically shuffles her hands through her belongings until she finds her smart phone. She tries three times to unlock it, the home button rejecting her sweaty thumb, until she smashes the words “Emergency Call” on the lock screen. Inhaling shakily, she tucks the hair of her wig behind her ear and looks over her shoulder.
“Someone’s shooting us,” Lu Brie says into the receiver when prompted by the operator to state her emergency. “Thrust, the club, we’re—”
She gasps as the rifle punches again, screams of the crowd breaking through the floorboards. 
“Oh god,” Lu Brie shudders and hugs an arm around her middle. “Um, we’re at two-seventeen Texas Street. I-I don’t know, we’re on the second floor, he’s on the first.” 
Angelica stands in the same spot she was when the shooting began, her arms frozen in the air. Her eyes remain on the open door. Hearing nothing, she does not respond to Sylvia’s call. She does not flinch as a hand touches hers, does not relax the suspended arm until it’s lowered to her side. Angelica blinks, turns her head as if in a dream. Her eyes struggle for a moment to focus on Sylvia’s face, then cut through with perfect clarity. 
Incontestably, she states, “We have to stop him.”

❋

Angelica, Sylvia, ChiChi, and Lu Brie crouch at the edge of the staircase, behind the chest-high wall that fences off the balcony on the second floor of the club. Recruited by their side, spaced out along the length of the balcony wall perch the queen who hid under the vanity when all hell broke loose, the bartender, and five patrons who hadn’t the nerve to run. In their hands, they hold glasses from the bar. Dirty-dish tubs loaded with more glasses wait in between them. Three songs from the unstopped playlist have passed without interruption from gunfire— “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” and “Coconuts.”
Angelica turns over her shoulder to check each face for preparedness, settling lastly on Sylvia’s. Sylvia cups her hand on Angelica’s shoulder and gives her sister a nod of reassurance. Angelica takes a moment, draws in a steadying breath. She faces forward, a hand wrapped around the edge of the balcony wall. She breathes once more, then sneaks her head around the wall to look down into the club.
If not for Sylvia’s hand resting on her shoulder to calm her, Angelica would scream. Thirty bodies or more litter the black tile floor, twisted, broken apart, illuminated in waves by the roaming, colorful lights. Immediately to her right, the bodies of the queens who ran lay tumbled down the staircase. Angelica wills her eyes away from the dead, searching among the shadows below her for the man with the gun. She spots him, locks his position in her mind, then pulls her head back behind the wall. 
“I see him,” Angelica whispers to the queens beside her. “He’s standing on the bar.”
The queens telephone this info down the line of glass-holders in hushed tones. 
“Once we start this,” Sylvia keeps her voice below the level of the music, “we don’t stop until he’s down or all of us are.”
Angelica, Lu Brie, and ChiChi nod in one accord. 
“Okay,” Sylvia says, “here we go.” 
She raises her hand as high in the air as she can without having it show above the balcony wall, her index and middle finger extended. She silently counts to three, then slices her hand down in quick signal. 
The glass-holders jump to their feet and hurl their ammunition at the bar below them. The glasses explode into shards upon impact with the floor, with the bar, with bottles of booze on the wall behind the shooter. Clear fragments rain down onto his shoulders and ricochet up into his face. He covers his eyes, cut and bleeding. He sways and stumbles as shards dig into his calves. The chorus of queers assail him continuously, throwing glass after glass, providing cover for the queens as the next song on the playlist begins.
Angelica, Sylvia, ChiChi, and Lu Brie bolt down the stairs, keeping their centers of gravity low. Their heels weave between the bodies of their sisters on the steps, their soles wetting red. A charging drum beat and the rapid smashing of piano keys drown the sound of their footfall. The harmonies of a choir rise into crescendo as the shooter wipes his eyes of blood and looks up.
“Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods?” Bonnie Tyler’s voice blasts out from the speakers, oblivious to the carnage it serenades.
The man raises his rifle level with his hip, the stock pressed in between his ribs and his elbow. He rips back the action of the rifle, gripping his hands around the magazine and trigger guard.
“Where’s the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?”
Heels smack onto black tile. The four queens rush toward the bar in the formation of a diamond, Angelica and Sylvia in point, Lu Brie and ChiChi diagonally behind them.
“Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?” 
The gunman pulls the trigger, releasing a spray of bullets at the queens. Glass bursts at his feet, distracting his aim. The queens leap over the bodies of the fallen crowd.
“Late at night I toss and I turn—” 
A final flare of the rifle cracks through strobing lights, silenced by a four-woman tackle.
“And I dream of what I need!”