Episode 8 - Fisting Fury

La Fiamma Divina was at full Sunday capacity: emotionally unstable gays, hungover hens, and one straight couple who thought they were being “fun.”

The disco light bounced off sequins, cutlery, and poor impulse control. A drag queen in a beehive wig the size of regional debt lip-synced to “Murder on the Dancefloor” while aggressively collecting tips like rent was due at midnight.

At the center booth — prime splash zone for glitter and drama — Miles looked happy in a soft, hopeful way while Nathan looked sculpted by aviation.

Cosmo arrived like a plot twist in sunglasses. He swept into the booth, deposited a silk scarf like a territorial flag, and removed his glasses with the gravity of a man about to discuss his IMDb, “Oh! Sweetheart! Sorry, I’m late. I am not used to being in this time zone.” Or reality!

Cosmo sighed theatrically, “The shoot was transformational. I have never been so still. So present.” He glanced briefly at Nathan. Stardust of Cirque Du Soleil. Human suspension bridge with thighs like marble columns and arms sculpted by a god who clearly had a type, “I just returned from playing a standout role in a multi-episode crime drama. I play the psychological pivot in solving the murder.” He finally lowers his glasses to study Nathan. The flicker of resentment in his eyes, “Some of us evolve beyond harnesses and glitter cannons.”

“Quite right! At your age, there should be some…restraint…dignity,” Nathan smiled. A serene, yoga-adjacent smile. Cosmo almost choked on his drink. How dare he! Cosmo was only 39! “I used to watch you on Play School when I was a wee boy. You were probably my first crush…I guess that was the magic of television…making someone appear much more endearing than they are in reality.” Cosmo started to rise and unbutton the cuffs at his wrists, as if ready to fight. Miles quickly forced him back down into his seat, “I admire how fearless your career has been…those articles would have made me stop to reconsider my life choices, but not you.”

Cosmo glared at the man as he downed his drink, “Well, not all of us can put on pancake makeup and dangle from a ribbon while 48 Crash booms out of the speakers. We need range, dear. Substance beyond the physical.”

Miles winces.

Nathan nods thoughtfully, “Point taken! Though aerial performance does require years of discipline, physical risk, and storytelling through movement.”

“Clowns tell stories too.”

Nathan stared right back at him, “Exactly.” And I am staring at one right now.

Cosmo shifted his body away from Nathan, taking another glass from a passing waiter while Nathan smirked across from him. A hit! A palpable hit! Just like Strip Battleship. Finding the right move to sink someone’s underwear.

“Cosmo!” Miles has sat through enough. “This isn’t War and Peace! It’s brunch.”

Cosmo gave his hand a stroke, almost flirtatiously, “Sweetheart!” Miles was stunned. His heart quivered at Cosmo’s inappropriate touch. Those eyes were peeling back his clothes layer upon layer. “You always did love the classics.” Miles could not shake him when he was in a flirtatious mode, “The strongest of all warriors – is time and patience. You have waited long enough, my lumiere.”

Nathan, ever so gently, drew Miles toward him, breaking their connection, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” The man leaned in closer, “Socrates! You would do well to spend some time with that man rather than the parade of phallic representation of your own inadequacies.”

“Stop this now, Cosmo!” Miles was thinking clearly once more. “You’re being a bigger brat than usual.”

Nathan glanced toward the stage, suddenly becoming transfixed by the queer gymnast on stage. who was contorting and twisting her body in different poses, while two Japanese drag queens played an instrumental using a bamboo flute and a Shamisen. This was the intermission performance.

Cosmo noticed. Of course, he would. He caught the flicker — that infinitesimal slackening behind the eyes. The way Nathan’s attention leaned toward the stage before his body followed. Cosmo knew that look too well. It wasn’t nostalgia. It was hunger.

“You miss it,” Cosmo murmured, not accusing — inviting. “That moment just before you step out… when the room inhales and forgets how to breathe.” Nathan glanced at him despite himself. “The air so scintillating,” Cosmo continued softly. “The warmth of those lights finding you in the darkness. That sacred second where everyone agrees you matter. Where fear turns into electricity and your body remembers exactly why it was built this way.”

Miles looked between them. Nathan hesitated — just a flicker. There it was.

“The sound of the heavens opening up,” Cosmo said, almost smiling now. “Because for a few minutes, gravity makes an exception for you… wonderous and elicit….where orgasm and ecstasy bleed together…leaving your senses obliterated.” Nathan swallowed. “Touching star dust! And once it’s lived in you…” He finally looked back at Nathan. “It never really leaves.”

Miles’ smile tightens just a fraction. Cosmo sees it. Files it. Polishes it.

“I thought I was ready to give it up. Build something stable…in one place.” Miles reaches for his hand. Nathan squeezes back. But his eyes drift to the stage again. “But yeah… lately I’ve become restless. I’ve been thinking I might go back if a spot opens up on tour.”

Miles’ hand stills. Cosmo takes the slowest sip in brunch history. Ambition versus attachment. Every time, “You said you wanted roots. You were ready to commit to us. How can we do that if you're on the other side of the world?”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to be done with who I was up there…done with being Stardust. Not just yet.”

“What about me?”

“I didn’t expect that this would become a real thing. It was supposed to be for just now…now I’m not sure about anything. I’m confused.”

Cosmo leans back, “Careful, sweetheart. Nothing ruins domestic bliss like a man who misses an applause.”

Miles forces a smile. Nathan frowns slightly. Tiny fault line. Hairline fracture. Cosmo feels it like a shark smells blood in designer swimwear.

“So if Cirque called tomorrow?”

Nathan doesn’t answer immediately. Miles watches him. That pause is louder than the music, “I’d have to think about it.

Miles nods, but the glow has dimmed half a shade. Cosmo smiles into his drink. Not triumphant. Not yet. But interested.

And there it is. Not a breakup. Not a betrayal. Just a tiny, glittering splinter of doubt. The kind that festers quietly while everyone insists everything is fine.

Cosmo Farfetch does not create cracks. He simply… notices where the pressure already lives. And oh, how he loves a structural weakness in a beautiful man.

If Sunday Drag Brunch had a final boss, she had just click-clacked through the door. Pissy Galour entered like a comeback tour nobody had asked for, but everyone recognised.

No one ever quite agreed on where Pissy Galour had come from — only that she arrived already fluent in survival. One season, she simply materialised with wigs that defied physics, calves like legal threats, and whispers that suggested she’d once been present when something historical went very wrong. Some said Europe. Others said Southeast Asia.

One elderly queen swore Pissy had last been seen exiting a palace service corridor during “a period of national restructuring,” wearing sunglasses indoors and carrying a garment bag while wearing a very expensive pair of shoes. Imelda Marcos’s spirit is still trying to track her down.

Out of drag, she was Norman Chandler: stylist, fixer, and trusted accessory to women who owned too much and trusted no one. Norman learned early that when empires collapse, wardrobes do not run — and that heels, unlike men, are loyal if treated properly.

Pissy always wore shoes with presence. Not vintage. Not designer. Consequential. When asked about them, she’d sigh theatrically, “Oh, these! Darling! Left behind, hand-me-downs that carry secrets.”

Onstage, Pissy performed like someone who understood that glamour wasn’t wealth — it was escape velocity. She danced through coups, customs, and costume changes with the confidence of a woman who knew power rots, but sequins endure.

By the time she became a circuit legend, her past had reached full folklore status: unprovable, undeniable, and legally inadvisable to pursue. Judges didn’t question her. Promoters didn’t ask. And Pissy Galour — stomping center stage in heels that absolutely did not belong to her — let the applause drown out history, one fabulous step at a time.

Her champagne satin wrap dress clung bravely to a figure built in a different decade. Her wig, a towering honey-blonde construction, had the structural integrity of historical architecture: impressive, expensive, and one strong wind away from litigation.

Trailing behind her was her latest benefactor — silver-haired, monogrammed, and blinking like a man who had financed Howard the Duck back in the day and was now weary of any financial obligations that didn’t involve sex. You got what you paid for with sex, no matter whether it be unfulfilling or the greatest orgasm ever. It never pretended to be anything else.

He was cautious and apprehensive, aware of possible threats, mainly to his purse. He walked a little gingerly, no doubt due to the stiletto marks up his back.

Cosmo spotted her at the same moment she spotted him. Both paused. Two ageing show ponies. Same circus. Different survival strategies.

Pissy approached his table with the slow smile of a queen who had survived three recessions, four facelifts, and the death of live cabaret.

“Cosmo, darling!” she purred, removing sunglasses the size of dinner plates, “You’re looking well considering in natural daylight you usually turn to ash.”

Cosmo rose to greet her. They shared barely contemptible air kisses, “Pissy! Sweetheart! I’d say you’re looking radiant…but that would be a lie. I have promised myself no more lying before noon.”

“Oh! Darling! I have missed you so much,” Pissy clutched to her man like he was driftwood after the Titanic sank. “This is my dear old friend, Cosmo Farfetch. You remember! His ex ran off to find himself. So brave. So tragic. Like Eat Pray Leave…sadly they’re always leaving you.” She laughed, turning her gaze to Miles. “Except this one. Always the lap dog but never the husband.” She sighed, “I must have given you a bigger smack than I intended. You’ve lost all reasoning.”

“Oh, sweetheart! It isn’t you causing that…you have this clown with the big feet to thank for that.” Cosmo didn’t like anyone picking on Miles unless it was him. He stepped in front, “At least his man doesn’t come with a senior’s card and a colostomy bag like your enabler.”

The benefactor adjusted his scarf, which had personally betrayed him. Pissy’s smile sharpened, “Darling, at least he has money….you’ll be lucky to rub two sticks together hoping to produce a genie to pay for all those drinks.”

Cosmo’s expression softened into lethal sympathy, “Oh, dear heart,” he said, “Being a paid nursemaid is not the same as being wanted for your sparkling personality and your beautiful body as I often am.”

Pissy made a noise that belonged in a kettle and spun on her heel, storming off toward a darker corner of the restaurant where lighting, like truth, could be avoided. Her benefactor scuttled after her, still carrying the handbag and several regrets.

Brunch did what brunch always did to Cosmo Farfetch. It dissolved time, dignity, and several layers of decision-making.

By the time the final queen had death-dropped into a pile of abandoned napkins and applause, Cosmo had consumed enough prosecco to forgive three exes and text a fourth. Someone — possibly a go-go boy dressed as a morally flexible firefighter — had led him toward the bathroom twenty minutes earlier. There had been giggling. There had been a marble counter. There had absolutely been cocaine involved in a way that would make Melody Blaze thump a table in disgust.

Now Cosmo emerged into the afternoon sunlight behind the venue, sunglasses back on, soul slightly out of alignment.

The alley behind La Fiamma Divina was a familiar ecosystem: smokers, staff on break, one person crying softly on a milk crate into their Cock Sucking Cowboy. Glitter drifted through the air like urban pollen.

Cosmo leaned against the brick wall, patting his pockets for a vape he did not own. He wanted to look as brooding as James Dean often did in those images. Cigarette hanging loose from his mouth, walking with a disgruntled purpose. The line of coke was starting to affect him.

Across the alley, half hidden behind a stack of beer kegs, Pissy Galour was also outside — not for air, but for drama. She held a joint between two lacquered fingers, wig slightly askew from emotional exertion, muttering about “talentless brunch queens” to her long-suffering benefactor, who pretended not to hear.

She saw the car before Cosmo did. Black. Polished. Engine running. Two men stepped out like punctuation marks in suits. Not loud. Not rushed. Professional yet familiar.

Pissy ducked back out of sight, keeping her peepers on them. She hushed the benefactor behind her.

Cosmo squinted at them, “Oh, sweetheart! You’ve saved me the bus ride home.”

One of the men reached him first, firm hand on the arm. Not violent — just undeniable, “Mr Farfetch,” the man said calmly. “You’re coming with us.”

Cosmo blinked. So, not a taxi home? The second man took his other arm. Cosmo attempted dignity. It came out wobbly, “I’ll find my own way, handsome.” He sighed, breaking away from them. “Look! If this is about that bin chicken. I maintain my innocence.”

They moved faster than before. They were much more efficient. Clearly, men who did this between Pilates and knuckle dusting.

Cosmo’s protest began as an indignant commentary and almost immediately escalated into full theatrical resistance the moment they angled him toward the open back door of the car.

“Now, wait a minute,” Cosmo said, planting his heels. “I don’t ride around with boys in cars that I do not know…I am a gentleman.”

“Mr Sato has requested your attendance…Right now!”

One man took his arm. Cosmo instantly went limp. Not unconscious — strategically collapsible. The coke was definitely at work here. And he began to sing, “I’m a dingle, dangle scarecrow with a flippy floppy hat…” Who knew his time on Play School would come in so handy?

Cosmo was once a reassuring and dependable presence on children’s television. Mothers trusted their children with this man, this straight-acting, clean-living presenter of song, dance and the occasional story time.

Until the scandal erupted, and he was no longer those things. He was now a homosexual. They saw nothing else. They had been fooled. Hoodwicked. Their children were exposed to his queer ways.

And that was the end of Cosmo’s time as a children’s television presenter. Not because he did anything inappropriate on camera, but because of what he was in their eyes.

The two men hauled him upright. Cosmo seized the door frame with both hands, clinging like a period‑drama child about to be sent to boarding school, “Now fellas! I am being cordial…but if you do not stop.” They pushed. Cosmo twisted sideways, one leg somehow inside the car while the rest of him committed entirely to freedom. “Then you’ll force me to unleash Van Damme. It is a particular martial art I trained in for this movie called Fisting Fury…or was it Fist of Fury?” A shoe came off. “Wait!…that was Prada…”

They folded him inward with the practised efficiency of men who had trapped much larger, quieter problems. Limbs everywhere. Dignity nowhere. Cosmo flung one arm heroically back toward the alley.

“I HAVE A DEPENDENT,” he yelled. “CARRIE FISHER NEEDS ME.”

The door began to close. Cosmo blocked it with his forearm, breathless but resolute, “I will survive!”

With surprising gentleness, they guided his arm inside and shut the door. The lock clicked. The men got into the front before the car pulled away smoothly, as Cosmo’s muffled voice continued from the back seat.

Pissy lowered her joint slowly. Oh my GOD! Cosmo was being abducted by Kenji Sato’s men. Pissy knew the man of old. They had issues in the past.

Silence returned to the alley. Pissy took a long drag, eyes shining with concern. Yes, Cosmo was a right royal bitch, but they were still old friends. The man needed help. But from whom?

When he came to, Cosmo found himself in what could only be described as a warehouse — or perhaps a set from one of his lesser-known films, Bad Boys Go To Mars, complete with the same budget limitations and none of the flattering lighting.

The cavernous space echoed with every shallow breath he took. Rusted chains swung from the rafters, ageing crates loomed like disapproving elders, and a cracked disco ball lazily spun overhead, casting fractured light across the concrete in a way that suggested both danger and very-poor taste.

The air smelled of oil, damp rope, and the ghosts of terrible decisions — the perfect environment for either a kidnapping or a low-rent sci-fi shoot, now both of which Cosmo had experienced.

It was dramatically unflattering, profoundly unsettling, and exactly the sort of place where Cosmo assumed the worst.

He sighed. His mind drifted off on a tangent once again. Bad Boys Go To Mars was now a cult classic. He was being asked to attend Com-Con. He even contemplated whipping out that monologue. ‘Do not fear my twin appendages, Earthling. They are symbols of unity… and, on difficult days, enthusiasm...’

Cosmo played a unisex alien in glamazonian drag with two appendages. Think face-hugging from Aliens, with tits and testicles, but the alien queen wasn’t laying eggs in the bad boys. She was depositing something else for universal conquest. Cosmo was almost nominated for a Saturn Award for his portrayal.

Yet right now, Cosmo’s imagination shifted to this sound stage, and as usual, it did not disappoint him. He pictured himself being dismembered — beautifully, of course — in tasteful sections.

Footsteps echoed.

“You embarrassed me.”

Not loud. Not angry. Kenji Sato stood opposite him, immaculate as ever, his voice sharpened into something far more dangerous than shouting.

“You cost me standing among my peers. Men I do business with do not appreciate their investments… escaping into traffic.”

“They were very determined birds,” Cosmo muttered.

Kenji regarded him coolly. “I brought you into my home.”

There it was! The real wound.

“I told you things I do not tell people,” Kenji continued. “I trusted you with access to my anus that I do not grant lightly. And while I slept beside you, you chose to make a decision that humiliated me.”

Cosmo lifted his chin. His voice softened. A beat. Silence stretched between them. He knew he had done a bad thing to do something good: “I don’t often do things that I am proud of…but those roosters were being treated atrociously.”

“That was not your judgment to make.”

“No,” Cosmo agreed quietly. “But I made it anyway. And I did owe something back to the bird community.”

“I was hoping to reduce your involvement, but when I tried to locate Ms Fusion, she seems to have vanished…like snow in Summer, gone so quickly it leaves no proof it was ever there.”

Kenji studied him for a long moment, as if measuring how much of what stood before him was performance and how much was man.

“I know, sweetheart,” Cosmo added, forcing a thin smile, “you have to do something hideous…but not the face. Dr Bombay is away on vacation…you see, and my face is my money maker after all.”

Kenji gave the slightest nod.

The warehouse lights shifted. A section of the concrete floor rose with a hydraulic groan. A circular platform emerged — scuffed, stained, ringed by low metal barriers. An arena.

Cosmo stared, “You’ve redecorated.”

“Mr Farfetch, this is not for roosters,” Kenji said. “This is for my other enterprise…fight club… for humans.”

“Is Brad Pitt here? Oh dear! Am I going to be on camera with him!” Cosmo could always use his mouth and utter gibberish to delay matters. “Finally…my prayers have been answered.”

“You will be fighting…but not such a reward as Brad Pitt…this is a punishment.”

A side door opened. Another man was led in — powerfully built, silent, watchful. Not theatrical. Not monstrous. Just solid, dangerous, real.

Cosmo eyed him, “I’m fighting a fridge with a pulse.”

Kenji stepped closer, a slender black cane in his hand — elegant, polished, with a blade emerging from the bottom of it. He didn’t wave it. Didn’t threaten wildly. He simply let the implication exist as it danced before Cosmo’s face.

“This is not an execution,” Kenji said. “This is restoring balance. You took my roosters, now you give yourself in place of them.”

Cosmo held his ground, though the brunch bravado had fully evaporated now. Along with the coke. Kenji lifted the cane with precise control and sliced cleanly through Cosmo’s jacket sleeve. Fabric fell away. Then another cut. And another.

Not chaotic. Not frenzied. Deliberate.

Each layer of flamboyant armour — designer, dramatic, carefully constructed — reduced until Cosmo stood stripped of persona as much as clothing. Exposed in the stark warehouse light, goosebumps rising in the cold air, suddenly just a man with a good body and suspicious decision-making in a pair of Calvin Kleins.

Cosmo looked down at himself, then back up, “Well,” he said, voice tight but steady, “at least I look good.” His mother always told him, Never leave home without clean underwear.

Somewhere, Cosmo’s mind decided this counted as a montage moment for his autobiography someday. He rolled his shoulders, shaking out the last of the brunch and the cocaine and the belief that this could be talked through.

“Right,” he muttered. “Van Damme…it is.”

The other man approached without urgency. No taunts. No theatrics. Built with intent. He had the quiet confidence of someone who had never lost a fight.

Cosmo lifted his hands. Not correctly. But enthusiastically.

The first charge came fast — a grab meant to crush and end this quickly. Cosmo yelped and dropped straight down, not as a strategy but as a reflex, slipping out of the man’s reach as he had once slipped out of contracts, one-night stand bedrooms, and tiny nightclub bathrooms.

He scrambled sideways, popped back up near the ring’s edge. A ripple passed through the watching men.

Cosmo measured an invisible box around his body, “This is my safe space, refrigerator. Enter if you dare.”

The man lunged again. Oh, he dared! Cosmo screamed — high, operatic, unnecessary — and spun out of the way in a loose, dramatic twirl that looked stupid and irritating, but it worked.

Cosmo blinked at himself. “Oh my God,” he breathed. “Thank Miss McGovern’s ballet school for my footwork.”

He didn’t wait for any more self‑reflection. He flung a handful of leftover brunch glitter from his hair straight into the man’s face. Not powerful. But surprising.

The man recoiled just long enough for Cosmo to dart in, slap both hands over his ears, and scream at full diva volume, “Jumpin Jack Flash…It’s a gas, gas, gas..”

The man staggered back, more confused than hurt. Laughter twitched at the edges of the room. It died quickly. Kenji did not laugh. But he watched.

The fighter adjusted, annoyed now, and drove forward low, catching Cosmo around the waist and slamming him to the concrete. Air burst from Cosmo’s lungs. For half a second, it looked over.

Then something clicked. Van Damme always fought badly first. To throw people off. Now it was go time.

Cosmo hooked a leg, twisted sideways, and rolled them both over in a move that was less technique and more drunken dance‑floor physics. Momentum, chaos, commitment. They broke apart and scrambled to their feet.

Cosmo’s chest heaved. His hair was wild. His eyes burned now — fear sharpening into something feral.

The man charged again, angrier, smarter. Cosmo ran straight at him, screaming. Not words. Just sound. Something he picked up from the Himalayan Whistle kids.

At the last second, he dropped flat, sliding on the dusty concrete between the man’s legs like a sold‑out encore. The fighter stumbled, lost balance, and crashed to his knees.

Cosmo popped up behind him, grabbed his shoulders, and shoved him forward into the metal railing. The clang rang out like punctuation. The man slumped, dazed.

Cosmo swayed, adrenaline shaking his knees. Silence. Then the man rose again. This time, careful. Controlled. No more underestimating.

“Oh,” Cosmo whispered. “Please! Give it up! This is becoming inconvenient for me.”

The fighter advanced slowly.

Cosmo backed away, hands up, circling, keeping his face angled out of reach — a lifetime of avoiding consequences finally paying off in footwork.

The man lunged. Cosmo stepped into it. He ducked under the arm, twisted sharply, and his shoulder cracked into the man’s ribs. The impact rattled them both, but Cosmo didn’t stop moving — pivot, elbow, knee. His elbow slammed into the collarbone. The man staggered.

Cosmo surged forward, suddenly furious, “I am woman…hear me roar…”

Suddenly, above the noise of the jubilant crowd, the sound of a motorbike could be heard on approach.  There was a half‑second where Cosmo held his breath before chains began rattling, lights flickered — and then the shutter buckled inward as a motorbike tore straight through it in a spray of sparks, corrugated steel folding like cheap foil.

Miles rode the bike like a man with nothing left to negotiate. Helmet gone. Jaw set. The engine howled in protest as the front wheel bounced over debris, and concrete dust exploded through the space.

Bolted to the side was a battered sidecar, rattling violently — and in it sat Pissy Galour, upright, immaculate, wig secured with industrial confidence, one arm raised as if arriving mid‑number. She wouldn’t miss this escapade for all the shoes in Imelda’s closet. She also knew where Kenji’s properties were located.

The impact chain‑reacted. A support beam sheared loose. Crates toppled. The disco ball finally gave up on life and shattered, sending fractured light and glass raining down like a judgment.

Kenji turned just in time to see his controlled little universe collapse — the falling debris catching his leg, then his shoulder, pinning him beneath twisted steel and concrete with a sound that ended the room’s authority in one sharp, final punctuation mark.

Miles skidded the bike sideways, abandoned it still smoking, and ran, “COSMO! You’re alive!”

“Somebody sit in my chair and ruin my sleep…” Cosmo sang, from the ring, bruised, bare-footed and heels crunching on rumble. “And make me aware of being alive…being alive.”

“Oh, dear god! Not Company!” Pissy climbed out of the sidecar, surveying the wreckage with professional satisfaction. “I love that musical. Now you’ve ruined it for me.” She clocked Kenji trapped beneath the beam, bent slightly, peered at him before turning back to Cosmo, “If you learnt how to hit the right key, not stumble around like a defective foghorn, you might have received a standing ovation.”

“Oh! Sweethearts! Let’s all hail the queen of the auto tune and her illustrious wisdom.”

Miles ran to Cosmo, checking he was all in one piece. He was surprised the man had escaped unharmed.

Miles slung his arm over his shoulder, and together they ran — past the ruined ring, past the stunned men, past the fallen disco ball — as the warehouse groaned behind them, defeated not by force, but by theatrics done better.

The motorbike coughed, then roared back to life. Pissy settled into the sidecar, adjusted her wig without looking, and smiled. Cosmo slipped in behind Miles, reaching around for safety, which titillated Miles somewhat.

And Miles gunned the engine.

And behind them, the warehouse finally gave in — collapsing inward on itself, swallowing Kenji Sato’s empire whole, as the sound of an engine and unrepentant laughter disappeared into the street.

Cosmo’s apartment had the hush of a place that had learned to hold its breath. The lights were low, deliberately warm, flattering even to bruises. Costumes lay folded on the backs of chairs, their sequins dulled by dust and fatigue, as if they too were recovering from something they preferred not to name.

Cosmo stood at the kitchen bench, still sore, still wired, carefully tending to Carrie Fisher’s cage. Yes, his pivotal story arc role had paid for her new cage.

He topped up her water, measured out her food with the precision of someone who needed at least one thing in the room to behave predictably. Carrie Fisher watched him with solemn intensity before accepting a sunflower seed, retreating to gnaw it with quiet determination.

He cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear as it connected. Patti Moscopane answered on the second ring. Cosmo could hear the lighter immediately, then the long exhale of smoke, “Dear! Is this a call enquiring about my welfare, or do I need to engage our legal department again?”

Her legal department was a ballbuster woman called Tonya Bird. A former government analyst who taxidermies her deceased pets and practices primeval chanting.

“Sweetheart! Not this time,” Cosmo answered patiently, “I’m home, intact, and have horizontal freedom restored.”

That seemed to steady her, though she continued smoking as if catastrophe were a mere moment away, “Then why are you interrupting my stories? I am waiting to find out whether Brooke and Ridge are back on again… Deacon, enough with the sluts and harlots…get some self-respect!” Her stories just got interesting.

“Well, sweetheart, I just think it is a damn tragedy to see someone that exquisite made smaller to fit into a domestic frame. All that discipline to craft such a chiselled body that was built for elevation, to defy gravity with such artistry.” He paused, for a moment, hoping to drive home his pitch, “This artist has a name…Nathan Barstow…Stardust in Cirque Du Soleil.”

“Oh! I saw that show! A dream boat! Rock Hudson of the silks! So, you want your new crush to find representation?” Patti shifted her focus away from Bold and the Beautiful, “You know, he would be perfect for this audition I have coming up. Could we get him?”

“Oh! No! No! You’re my agent! If anyone is going on an audition, it is me!”

“I’m afraid, you alone, do not keep me in pearls and Champagne.” And house boys named Pedro.

“I was wondering if you have connections to the producers of Cirque Du Soleil. Nathan is missing the stage…he’s aching to be back in those tights and tassels. He so wants to soar now his body has been grounded. Stifled. Stunted.”

There was a long silence while Patti smoked through the implications. When she spoke again, her voice had turned motherly and sharp, a warning wrapped in affection, “I know some people, but I can’t make promises. I’ll get back to you.”

Cosmo smirked. Now we’ll be done with that clown with the big feet. Miles can dick dive with someone less threatening.

Unbeknownst to Cosmo, Patti did call her contacts, but to find Nathan’s particulars. It wasn’t long before she had booked Nathan for a lead role in an action movie shooting in Prague.

So, yes, Cosmo was responsible for breaking up Miles and Nathan’s relationship, but in doing so, lost out on a bigger opportunity. Sometimes, karma really did kick people up the backside for being a shit.

Stay tuned for further misadventures of Cosmo Farfetch. Big Merv is ready to sing his Aida in exchange for Cosmo’s heart. Coming soon.

#CosmoFarfetch #ALifeLessFabulous #QueerComedy #SatiricalSoapOpera #GayCampFiction #QueerStories #FunReads #FictionOnTheNet #LGBT #Fiction #QuickReads

Daz James

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