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ABIGAIL MANGIN 9
In the audience, the elite fashionistas sat like cameras with open shutters, passively watching life drift across their lenses.
Sparklers shot up around ice sculptures of cranes and jag- uars. 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 mir- rored 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 gray- ish eyeball rolled down the runway, stopping directly before Perdonna.
She removed her sunglasses, revealing vicious red scars and clouded eyes of her own.