The Chamberlain Look

When Chris and Billy dumped pigs blood on her at her prom queen inauguration, many assumed Carrie White got her revenge via the fire and electricity and telekinesis. She did, naturally. But that wasn't her only revenge. By all accounts, it wasn't even her best.

The best revenge, they say, is to live well, to succeed in spite of others. It was too late to live well—her mother had seen to that—but that did not mean she couldn't still succeed after everything that happened.

After all, Carrie was prom queen, and everyone wants to be a prom queen. Soon it was considered the height of fashion to wear fine gowns drenched in blood. Even animal rights activists, who didn't care for the slaughter of their furry friends, found ways to ride the trend, often showing up at PETA rallies in fake fur and waiting to be doused in red paint.

The Chamberlain Look as it came to be called (so named for the small town in Maine Carrie destroyed) became an institution with its own rules. Cow's blood for winter, chicken for summer. Never wear heels. Hair down. And of course, one couldn't dump the blood on herself, for the Chamberlain look historically was not something you did, but something done to you. Blooding salons popped up all across the country, each offering their own styles and methods. The Classic Bucket, the Pollack, the Hose, the Shower, the Sprinkler.

It was a better revenge than Carrie could have hoped for, if only she were alive to enjoy it.

- Originally mailed to H. Kay of Portsmouth, England

Hidden Style

You would never know it to look at the guy, but Hansel Feinstein was a sharp dressed man. He kept his trouser creases so sharp they could cut. He coordinated his various ensembles like a special forces surgical strike. He had no fewer than fifty sets of cufflinks for every occasion and he kept a man on retainer just to keep his closet of shoes, from loafers to wing tips and every other piece of footwear imaginable, polished and ready to go at a moment's notice. He had closet after walk in closet dedicated to shirts alone with every possible attractive combination of cut, cloth, and color. His suit guy was so talented, Italian tailors imported from him. Hansel was a clothing god.

But it never did any good. His silk double breasted charcoal pinstripe, a textile work of art, never swayed a single negotiation, though its very appearance could make the hardest CEO yield to anything. His two-tone zoot suit with the white gold and pearl buttons could make the most chaste women chase him, but they never had a chance to, for they never saw it. Hansel's drive for the perfect outfit was so acute that though he wore his exquisite clothes constantly, he could never reveal them for fear that a touch of dust here or the wrong lighting there might ruin the effect and present him in an unrivaled but still inferior light. And so the world's best dresser walked the earth in a protective plastic suit, no one ever the wiser at the immaculate clothing hidden beneath that sixteenth of an inch of yellow vinyl.

- Originally mailed to J. Womack in Brooklyn, New York

The Shopping Demon

Oh the ridicule Beelzebub endured every year come late December when he haunted the halls of the uptown mall, searching for the best deals on clothes and shoes and sunglasses. The other denizens of the infernal pits would torment him for this (verbally, of course, not the blades and fire and acid sort of torment reserved for their day jobs, because who wants to take their work home for them?). Not that they had a problem with shopping. No, demons loved the infatuation people had for mindless consumption and consumerism. It was like gluttony and greed and pride and avarice all rolled into one, and on Black Friday, they could even squeeze in a little wrath. Few activities aside from genocide and DVRing Jersey Shore* could be so evil. No, they teased him for going to Christmas sales.

“I'm just shopping to over commercialize the religious holiday. Just trying to undermine the message of goodness and generosity and care for one's fellow man by spreading the enthusiasm for rampant selfishness.”

But they knew the truth. He was an amazing demon, but his shopping addiction had nothing to do with it. Sometimes a demon just wanted a stylish suit.

*Jersey Shore may not seem so evil, but it is actually a lynchpin in one of the more diabolical and secretive of Hell's nefarious schemes too complex to discuss in this post card. 

Originally mailed to M. Wilkes in Ridgeland, Mississippi

Super Model Dinosaurs

Life as a super model was almost everything Edmont and Cera had ever wanted. The work was easy. They went to the gallery and posed from sun up to sun down, while everyone, men, women, and children, fawned over them and took their pictures. Their pictures beamed, bright and glossy on billboards and magazine covers and promotional items for their managing museum. People came from all over the world to see them. They were magnificent, and they knew it.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, however. They didn't get to travel as much as they would like. They didn't get to travel at all, in fact. They would never see Paris or New York or Milan. They would never share the Fashion Week runways. They never got to wear the best designers. For that matter, they never got to wear anything at all. They were only ever hired for nude work, and some days it took all they had not to feel degraded. Most of all, however, they disliked the diets. It was not uncommon for models of their fame to look emaciated, but for fear of being replaced, Edmont and Cera felt compelled to eat so little as to remain down right skeletal.

Still, they were stars. It had taken a long time—sixty-five million years to be precise—but they were finally famous.

- Originally mailed to P. Wilkinson from Vancleave, Mississippi

Serious Sideburns

“Too wiry,” said one judge.

“Agreed,” said another, “and the hairs go in every which direction.”

“I don't know,” said another. “I like the swoops. Sideburns aren't meant to be tamed house cats. They're wild face beasts. I give it a solid eight.”

“Wild face beasts? Do you even hear yourself?” cried the first. “Look at the shape, the way it arcs away unevenly from the ear!”

“And who even knows how even the outer trim is!” agreed the second with a very serious high five.

“The arc is distinguished. Besides, real mutton chops have a curve to them. Why shouldn't facial chops?”

“Don't be so literal,” said the second. “You can't possibly think this is a good sideburn. Look at the uneven, almost abrupt shift from thick and dark to scruffy and light! If you give this sideburn a high rating, it compromises the integrity of the entire World's Best Sideburn competition, and then where will we be?”

“It will be chaos!” cried the first.

“Anarchy and chaos!” cried the second.

But the third would not budge and his eight stood.

Twelve hours later, WWIII broke out. Nineteen hours after that, it went nuclear, and by the end of the week, man had been reduced to a pack of irradiated savages picking at the bones of civilization. Centuries later, historians would misattribute the end of civilization as we knew it to strained relations between the US and China.

- Originally mailed to M. Krell in Horn Lake, Mississippi

Balding Security

After pre-natal genetic customization became commonplace—albeit at a steep price—the beautiful became far more beautiful, genetically flawless in fact. The wealthy had their health, their looks, their brilliance, athleticism, and ambition all guaranteed from birth while the rest of humanity was forced to rely on the traditional crapshoot that had been genetic heredity for the past dozens of millennia. With every genetic and monetary advantage stacked against them, the lower class became more resentful than ever, until soon the world existed in a state of precarious balance, just barely avoiding civil war. The Beautiful People paid their guards and servants in single genetic enhancements for their children. Of all genetic modification, from eye color and skin complexion and bone structure and teeth straightness, the hardest to perfect—and the hardest for the poor to fake—was hair. There were too many variables. Sheen, shape, shade, volume, bounce, density. The odds of someone being born with “perfect hair” without genetic manipulation were astronomical. As such, security systems on both sides no longer cared to pinpoint faces anymore. Instead, they pointed their cameras straight down on the hair, searching for receding hairlines, implants, dye jobs, or split ends. The natural part could tell friend from foe better than any interrogation.

- Originally mailed to S. Sartin in Atlanta, Georgia

Saturday Night Trooper

They called him the Saturday Night Trooper, the Sequined Sargeant, the Disco Commando. They teased every time they raided a rebel outpost, saying his sparkling helmet would attract blaster fire, that his three piece suit offered no protection. He gave the usual replies, that a blaster clipped right through armor and maybe being lasers, the beam might be deflected by the sequins and glitter. His dancing skills and fancy footwork certainly helped him dodge his share of heavy enemy fire, and no one could argue that his sense of style often put him front and center of any post-battle victory photos. In truth, he didn't mind the friendly ribbing, but when a disco convention on Coruscant saved him from the first Death Star explosion, and suspension without pay for countless uniform violations spared him from the second he found he could no longer stomach the jokes about “Stayin' Alive.”

- Originally sent to B. Nowell from Newport News, Virginia