Nicholas had any plans of becoming a singer in order to achieve his fame, though. Not even close. Where in the hell would lay the challenge in that? These days, any old fool who found themselves in the finals of American Idol or The X-Factor or any one of the other equally inane ‘talent’ shows out there had somehow been deemed a ‘great’ singer, no matter how truly awful they sounded.
Besides, that method of achieving fame was much too pedestrian for people of the Prestons’ refined tastes, much too ordinary. Instead, according to his mother’s carefully crafted plans, Nicholas’s future lay in stripping people of their undeserved fame. People like Timmy who hadn’t possessed one iota of talent inside their worthless bodies yet got by in life simply because some cosmic force out there (or the fork-tongued Simon Cowell himself) had randomly decided they were somehow better than the rest of world. More deserving.
But that shit was about to change. In a big way. And Nicholas considered himself just the girl to change it.
Exactly how he’d do it had been another subject that he and Annabeth Preston had discussed in great detail over their countless cups of tea – just a couple no-nonsense girls engaged in a bit of small talk while the rain beat down hard against their kitchen windowpanes on stormy Sunday mornings. Afterward, they’d also discussed in great detail exactly how Nicholas would get away with his bloody crimes long enough for their plan to reach its natural conclusion, ensuring Nicholas’s name a place of honour in the roster of fame for which it had so obviously been destined. Fame that would no doubt go down as unparalleled in the history of the recorded universe.
A complete sex change – complete with perfect silicone breasts featuring his own God-given nipples and the fashioning of a vagina out of the skin left over from his brutal castration – had completed Nicholas’s stunning transformation. Thanks to Timmy and all the money he’d made in his stupid television commercials – commercials that to this day still brought in residual checks every six months or so – the cost of the operation up in Canada had been surprisingly affordable.
Estrogen treatments had eventually replaced the testosterone shots, making Nicholas’s voice higher and more feminine-sounding in addition to the added bonus of softening his skin, a feature that he maintained by applying copious amounts of moisturising lotion all over his body each night, slathering himself in the stuff until his pores could take no more. For more years than he cared to remember, Nicholas had needed to continue shaving his face and legs every day – twice a day – but the monthly visits to the clinic in downtown Chicago for electrolysis treatments had slowly removed that aggravating inconvenience from his life as well.
Now, all these years later, Nicholas was finally an honest-to-God, real-life girl. And life was certainly good when you were a girl, wasn’t it?
It sure as hell was. As a matter of fact, life was very good when you were a girl. Especially when you were a girl like Nicholas: a self-sufficient, take-no-prisoners sort of gal who could slip effortlessly back and forth between the genders without anyone becoming any the wiser.
Stylish male wigs in a breathtaking variety of colours and Ace bandages wrapped tightly around his newfound bosom allowed Nicholas to appear as a man whenever he chose – not that it was a route he chose to travel very often, mind you. Being a man was an inconvenience, after all, a pain in the ass, something to be done only when it was absolutely necessary to further his and Annabeth Preston’s wonderfully thought-out plans. And now, twenty-five years later – at the relatively ripe old age of forty-eight – Nicholas finally had a list.
Nicholas stared down at the tattered sheet of paper in his trembling hands and felt his heart sing with joy. The first name on his list had already been checked off. A warm-up act, really. By closely following the script his mother had provided him with, he’d brought down the curtains on the insufferable woman and her glittering lifestyle of thoroughly undeserved fame once and for all.
Now, four more names awaited his undivided attention:
1. Dinah Leach
2. Penelope Hargrave
3. Amber Knightly
4. Annabeth Preston
5. Dana Whitestone
Nicholas shuddered a full-body shudder as he read through the list again, a delicious quiver snaking down the length of his spine at the memory of his first kill. A woman out in