Size Zero

Condom dresses and space helmets have debuted on fashion runways.

A dead body becomes the trend when a coat made of human skin saunters down fashion’s biggest stage. The body is identified as Annabelle Leigh, the teenager who famously disappeared over a decade ago from her boyfriend’s New York City mansion.

This new evidence casts suspicion back on the former boyfriend, Cecil LeClaire. Now a monk, he is forced to return to his dark and absurd childhood home to clear his name. He teams up with Ava Germaine, a renegade ex-model. And together, they investigate the depraved and lawless modeling industry behind Cecil’s family fortune.

They find erotic canes, pet rats living in crystal castles, and dresses made of crushed butterfly wings. But Cecil finds more truth in the luxury goods than in the people themselves. Everyone he meets seems to be wearing a person-suit. Terrified of showing their true selves, the glitterati put on flamboyant public personas to make money and friends. Can Cecil find truth in a world built on lies?

In high fashion modeling, selling bodies is organized crime.

Thriller/Satire

Sample Chapter 1: 

“Think of me as your father,” the model agent said. “I’m going to take such good care of you.”

“Dads are dicks.” Ava kicked a pebble at his shins.

“I’ll be your mother then.”

Ava pointed to her so-called mother, who was leaning against their dilapidated double-wide trailer. She slurped wine from a McDonald’s soda cup. Her eyes blinked in a flurry, trying to stay open.

“Moms are worse.”

The model agent reached into a leather bag and pulled out a heart-shaped music box filled with golden-wrapped chocolates. “How about a lover?”

Ava crunched strawberry Pop Rocks between her teeth. She stuck out her tongue, and the candies let out a crackling hiss. “That’s creepy. I’m eleven.” She spat the Pop Rocks in his face. The little red candies sprayed like soggy confetti.

“Ava. Don’t be a brat,” her mother said in a drunken slur.

But he laughed it off, swiping the spit from his stubble. “Not a lover in a romantic way. I’ll care for you. It looks like you could use some love.”

She took the chocolate box from him. Golden ballet dancers were engraved into the casing, and a beautiful melody played when she twisted the lever. It was the nicest thing she had ever been given. The model agent handed her mother a small stack of hundred-dollar bills and a Ziploc bag of white powder. She gave him two plastic takeout bags. Inside were Ava’s birth certificate, three outfits, and a toothbrush. Those were her mother’s parting gifts.

“I’m not going.” Ava stomped. “You can’t sell me. I’m a person.”

“I gave you life. The least you can do is get me some money,” the mother said.

Ava dropped to the ground and curled up into herself. She put her head to her knees, and her lower lip jutted out. She didn’t have the energy to cry.

The model agent squatted next to her on the dirt path. His arm wrapped around her shoulder, breath smelling of cigars masked with spearmint. “Fashion Week is so fun, you know. Tyra Banks. Twiggy. You’ll make lots of friends. You’ll wear diamonds. And paparazzi will take your photos. You’ll make so much money. Magazine covers. Big parties at the Plaza Hotel.”

And then she noticed his teeth. They were so white they looked fake, like the plastic vampire dentures she wore at Halloween. “I don’t care about diamonds.”

“What do you want?”

Ava thought for a moment. She rushed into the trailer and came out with a McDonald’s Happy Meal box. She opened up the golden arches to reveal a fluffy brown hamster. There were miniature chairs made out of paper. And she had put popcorn and French fries inside for him to eat. “Can you get Mr. Puffles a cage?” she asked. “And some hamster food?”

“We’ll get him a castle.”

She scooped up the chocolate box and Mr. Puffles and went straight for the Mercedes. She didn’t say a word to her mother. She didn’t even look at her. The agent chased her with a childish giddiness. His feet spun out like a cartoon character’s, kicking up dust.

“I’m proud of you,” he said. “You made the right choice. Besides, modeling can’t be worse than this life, can it?”

It could. And it was.

#

Fashion Week, 2019. Ava was twenty-four.

A mirrored runway drenched the world in reflective silver, washing away all the depravity and filth of Manhattan. Snowflakes rained upon eyelashes and coated the tips of tongues, like a dusting of sugar.

The snow was real. The white peacock feathers were freshly harvested.

Everything Visage made was earthy. But it felt like a dream.

New York Fashion Week was an arctic wonderland. Dresses covered in white winter moss. Icicles frozen into flower crowns. Pine trees rose from the mirrored runway floor, sparking golden fireworks from their tips.

Backstage was not as pretty. Ava’s fellow models were hunched over in makeup chairs, a halo of golden branches keeping their innocence intact. Cigarette smoke hung in the air like smog above them, as artists masked the jaundiced hue of the girls’ cheeks, the shadows around their eyes, and the baby fat that clung to their young faces. Their plush cheeks were swaddled in fur scarves, shielding their faces from prying eyes.

A model’s face never mattered. The bodies were all that had value.

The girls couldn’t text. The agencies had confiscated their phones. But the few who borrowed the stylist’s cell managed to text their families: “Te amo,” “I miss you,” “Je t’aime,” “Ik hou van je,” “I love you.”

But Ava was not covered in golden glitter, flower crowns, or fake snow.

She woke up in a dark closet backstage. The room cocooned her, roughing her elbows with gritty brick. Her hands were invisible in the blackness. But handcuffs weighed heavy on her wrists.

She kicked up her legs, and a chain rattled. She was shackled in the room.

The smell of body odor and hairspray seeped under the door. Her head throbbed, and her fingers traced over the blood pooled at her hairline.

When she tried to scream, her breath got trapped inside her chest. Her ribcage heaved up-and-down. Stars flitted before her eyes, marring the darkness. But there was not even a glimmer of light dancing on the broken glass embedded in her neck. An air vent kicked on with a rumble behind her. As the cool gust blew over her body, she realized she was naked. Three minutes until showtime.

A thumb stroked her shoulder in lurid circles. She wasn’t alone. Ava shrieked, but the commotion outside made it impossible for anyone to hear her.

Two minutes until showtime. The door cracked open just enough for Ava to see someone holding a Visage dress bag, the perfect size to fit her body.

She thrashed and writhed, hands tied in front of her chest. When she tried to stand, her body was crushed to the floor. A needle found a vein in the crevice of her arm, and a numbing warmth shot through her.

A slimy leather coat slid onto her back as she tried to fight through the nausea.

She had never smelled anything worse than that cape—a decaying animal splashed with gasoline, the fabric moist against her naked skin.

When the coat’s hairy hood dangled securely on her head, she was pulled to her feet, and the door opened to the runway.

Sweet tones of Vivaldi’s “Winter” played, accompanying the ballet of champagne glasses and hors d’oeuvre that sashayed through manicured fingertips. Ava held her breath as the room spun, Crevier crystals blinking mockingly at her in Technicolor.

There was the runway, glimmering and calling to her like a skywalk.

#

In the audience, the elite fashionistas sat like cameras with open shutters, passively watching life drift across their lenses.

Golden sparklers shot up around ice sculptures of cranes and jaguars. Feathers on white gowns floated as they moved, threatening to fly away, as white fur glimmered with a golden hue beneath the twinkle lights adorning ice.

Tazia Perdonna, designer of the luxury brand Visage, sat with her eyes closed behind Lazard sunglasses, rose-gold hair rippling down her back.

One model after another strode down the runway with quick stomps, wearing scowling disguises to make the audience feel inferior. Their bones jutted out like toothpicks under chicken skin, the simultaneous embodiment of youth and death. They were modern art, bodies galloping in a straight line with no destination.

But the thunderous stomping came to a halt. There was an abrupt pause in the mannequin parade. A mistake.

People shot sideways glances at Perdonna. Camera crosshairs flashed at a violent pace, the photographers excited to catch a void Visage stage. Though the silence did not last long. A shrill scream echoed from the corner of the room. And Ava Germaine stumbled onto the runway, wearing a corpse coat bleeding red onto the mirrored glass.

Some in the audience covered their eyes. Others clapped, hoping the skin coat wasn’t real. They prayed it was Perdonna’s idea of deconstructionist art, a grander statement about society.

Ava collapsed to her knees in a splash of blood, and a grayish eyeball rolled down the runway, stopping directly before Perdonna. She removed her sunglasses, revealing vicious red scars and clouded eyes of her own.

That was the moment the front row knew the skin coat was real.

A flayed human body was made into a coat. Purple beads and evergreen sequins were embroidered into skin. Human hair was braided into a bun on the hood. And one dull eyeball remained stitched into the human face. A gas mask, a condom dress, and even an animatronic T. rex had debuted at prior Fashion Weeks. But never before had a dead body.