#PixiPocolypse E-Book

Tami Veldura

• Herausgeber: Story Prism Studios
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

#PixiPocolypse

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

#PixiePocolypse

About The Author

Copyright

#PixiePocolypse

By Tami Veldura

Melissa sipped her sweet, overpriced boba tea, flicking the tapioca balls that had collected at the bottom with the end of her big straw so they bounced up to the surface, their dark, round shapes peeking at her through the clear lid like a wink before floating back down. Flick. Bounce, wink, fall. Flick. Bounce, wink—Anahi’s shoulder brushed Melissa’s arm and she glanced up, but the line hadn’t moved, Anahi was shifting their weight.

Melissa shifted, too, rolling her shoulders to move the thin-strapped bag the convention had given her. It dug into her skin, weighed down by the con map and schedule, a handful of cheap goodies, and a bottle of soda, also overpriced. Anahi had warned her about bringing her own backpack, and now Melissa understood. They’d spent eighty percent of their time here in the past two days waiting in a line for hours to talk to someone for thirty seconds. The strappy shoulder bag wasn’t cutting it.

The line shuffled forward like a caterpillar, inching in groups of three or five as the next set of fans moved to the front to get their book signed or their blank comic cover drawn on. This line was for Anahi to have their big omnibus comic signed by both the writer and the artist, and they’d been standing here for only a half hour. By the look of things, it would take another hour. Melissa shifted her shoulders again.

It was a lot like Disneyland. The rides were the cherry on a sunday. The rest of the ice cream was spending the entire long weekend with her best friend immersed in their particular niche fandoms where other people celebrated those same esotera rather than calling Anahi an alien or Melissa a nerd.

Melissa sucked a tapioca ball up her straw and chomped on the chewy treat. Anahi took the worst of the bullying between the two of them. They had a weird name, and they were nonbinary—what did that even mean—and Melissa wanted to punch some noses when it came up, but she was never confident enough in the moment. Anxiety always wrapped her heart and chest in a vice and made her lightheaded.

Anahi’s hand on Melissa’s elbow jerked her out of her thoughts. Anahi looked up at her, their eyes clear and attentive. They had pulled their hair back for the conference, showing off a close-trimmed undercut that had been pasazzed with a shaved design of stars. They wore star earrings to match.

“You ok?” Anahi asked. “You’re really chomping on that boba.”

Melissa swallowed the demolished tapioca and grinned. “Just picturing rude jocks under my teeth.”

The line shuffled another few feet forward.

To the left, a chorus of whooping broke out with a flash of light. And fire? A flamethrower! Was that even allowed? A tall woman dressed in a distressed t-shirt and covered in grime wielded an oversized flamethrower with a shoulder bag for the fuel. The classic Ripley cosplay from the Alien franchise. She waved someone over and they both posed together while a third person took a picture. On cheese Ripley pulled the trigger on her flamethrower, a brief fireball for the camera. People oohed and aahed and gave her a good berth. A line had already formed up to take more photos.

The hallway was wide enough to handle crisscrossing lines, moving people, the cosplayers and their fans, but the conference had sold out in a day and the crowds were getting going. An entire nine-person squad of Halo cosplayers following a woman in a pepto bismol pink suit of future special-ops armor slipped into the shuffling masses on their way from one venue to another. Coming from the other direction, a small team of four men found room in the hall and ripped off their shirts—Spartan soldiers led by Leonidas. All four of them shined in the conference lights; they’d oiled up and flexed their spray-tanned abs for photos.

The line shuffled forward. Melissa stepped in something that made her lip curl. She adjusted to avoid the spill, but her shoe had already become tacky and now it stuck to the cement floor with every step. Peeling off like an aggressive sticker. She tapped her foot around in an arc, trying to un-stick the sticky with a wrinkle of her nose. Someone had dropped a soda, and the comic-signing line was dragging the tacky sugar across the floor. Ugh.

A burst of celebratory welcome music jammed out of the venue on the right, where the line had snaked in front of the open double doors. Anahi jumped and Melissa steadied them with one hand on their shoulder, leaning forward to get a better look. “I can’t see whoever is on stage,” Melissa said.

“It’s something to do with Supernatural,” Anahi replied, digging into their backpack for the schedule. “That was the opening song for the TV show.” They skimmed through the listings for Conference Room B. “Yeah, here it is. Some announcement about a new thing, doesn’t say what though.”

A good crowd had packed into the room. If there were seats, Melissa couldn’t see them. People standing had filled the center isle and all the extra space in the back, spilling out the double doors. She grunted. “Huh. Didn’t the TV show finally end?”

“That’s probably why they kept the announcement a mystery on the schedule.” Anahi folded the paper back into their backpack. “To keep it exclusive to the conference.”