by Cory Cart
I’m three hours into my Halloween shift at The Plunge, New Orleans’ longest-surviving queer dive bar, when there is a commotion at the front door.
The wig comes in first.
Tall, purple, teased to the heavens, and dipped in glitter. It walks in like it owns the bar, attached to a body that doesn’t glance left or right. No one recognizes it—not even Claudia, who has a photographic memory for wigs.
Then she sets it down like a bomb.
Not the wig. The apple.
A candy apple placed carefully on the bar, the kind sold at church fairs and old-school pageants, only this one glistens with red like it’s been lacquered in blood.
“Compliments of the Queen,” she says. Then she’s gone. Just sashayed away through the fog machine haze, through the beat of a Donna Summer remix, through the clink of cheap shot glasses, and the laughter of half-drunk tourists.
I lean in. There’s a razor blade embedded in the candy coating, just barely poking out like a warning tooth. On the underside, etched into the shell: 504-869-ENBY.
Venus’s number.
“Jay!” Yolanda calls from across the bar. “Table twelve wants more shots and less existential dread.”
“Coming.”
But I don’t move. My hand hovers over the apple like it might explode. My heart’s doing weird math—six months since Venus Envy disappeared. Six months of silence, of wondering if she was dead or just done with all of us.
I text the girls.
GROUP TEXT: THE PLUNGE INVESTIGATIONS UNIT (PIU)
Jay: just got a candy apple w a razor blade and venus’s number carved into it
Claudia: oh we’re doing that again
Missy: tell me you wore gloves!!!
Yolanda: meet after close. bring everything.
***
Six months ago, Venus vanished after the Halloween fundraiser drag show. The last person to be seen with her? Santiago Dupré—a rich-boy theater patron with a penchant for coke and botox. Two days later, he was found dead in his Garden District bathtub. Overdose, they said.
Only Venus’s gloves were found in the house. And a note, unsigned: You get what you pay for.
She ghosted after that. Vanished into drag legend.
***
We reconvene at The Plunge at 3:08 a.m.
Claudia’s got her Dictaphone. Missy arrives in a trench coat and sequins. Yolanda brings a fresh tarot deck and a taser.
I lay out the apple, now wrapped in plastic. Claudia stares at the blade like it’s cursed.
“This could be bait,” she says.
“It is bait,” Yolanda replies. “The question is who’s fishing.”
Missy scrolls through something she hacked into on her laptop. “I’ve got a ping on Venus’s number. It made a call last night. From a club in the Warehouse District.”
“Which one?”
“Something off-map maybe? Hmmmmmm. No liquor license. And invitation-only I think.” She rotates her screen to show a grainy flyer: black background, silver text, no name.
Just a time and place: Midnight. Crescent Rail Club. Tonight only.
We head out.
***
The Crescent Rail Club is a decommissioned train car lit up like a séance. Fog rolls low. Music rattles the bolts. No sign, just a velvet rope and a drag queen in full Victorian mourning couture.
“Password?” she asks.
Claudia leans in. “Envy.”
She nods and opens the door. They all exhale that it worked.
Inside, it’s mirrors and smoke, crushed velvet and bodies pressed close. Queens lip-sync from luggage racks. Someone’s burning clove cigarettes. The air tastes like danger and perfume.
We split up. Claudia chats up the bartender. Yolanda disappears into the shadows. Missy vanishes on purpose. I head backstage. There’s a dressing table with a single item on it: a red stiletto. Custom with crescent moon rhinestones. Venus’s signature heel. Inside, tucked in the sole, is a matchbook from The Plunge. Inside the matchbook, a micro SD card.
Claudia appears at my elbow, eyes wide. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What?”
“There’s a body in the bathroom.”
***
It’s a queen. Young. Face painted for filth. Wig off. Slumped against the bathroom wall with a slash across her throat.
No scream. No one saw. No cameras.
But on the mirror, written in lipstick: STAY DEAD, VENUS.
Missy bursts in with a handful of receipts. “This club’s been open for three nights, under three different names. All cash. Someone’s hiding in plain sight.”
Yolanda joins us. “The tarot says betrayal. And the blade…” She pulls it from her purse. “It’s the same kind used on the body. Same serration. Same make.”
We all go quiet.
“This isn’t just a warning,” I say. “It’s a signature.”
***
Back at the bar, Claudia examines the SD card. There’s only one file.
A video.
Venus. Sitting in front of a vanity. Same crimson beehive. Same matchbook in hand.
“If you’re watching this,” she says, “I’ve already burned the bridge. Someone’s killing off anyone who knows what happened that night. Start with the train queen. But don’t trust the one in purple.”
She leans in close. “Jay, darling—don’t try to save me. Just finish the show.”
The video ends.
***
Silence. Then Missy, “She’s alive.”
“Maybe,” Claudia says. “Or maybe this was made to make us think so.”
Yolanda places the Five of Swords on the bar. “There’s more than one enemy.”
I light a cigarette. “Then we smoke them out.”
***
We return to the Crescent Rail Club before dawn. It’s empty, except for glitter on the floor and the faint hum of a cleaning crew.
Missy hacks the DJ’s sound system. Yolanda sets a candle on the center stage. Claudia and I head backstage—and we find her.
Venus. Alive. Barely.
Curled in a makeup chair, blood on her hands, mascara streaked. Her lips move but no sound comes out.
“She’s been drugged,” Claudia says. “Get her up.”
We carry her out just as a shadow moves behind us—tall, purple wig, knife in hand.
It’s the drag queen from The Plunge.
Missy swings the mic stand like a bat. Yolanda blinds them with a disco strobe. Claudia tackles. I wrestle the blade away.
The wig falls off.
Underneath: Santiago’s sister, Mireille Dupré.
“I told her to stay dead,” Mireille hisses. “She ruined him. Took him and then tossed him like a cheap lash.”
“She didn’t kill him,” I say. “She tried to save him.”
“She ran.”
“She was scared.”
“I wanted her to feel what I felt,” Mireille says. “To watch everything she built collapse.”
“Too late,” Venus whispers. “I already did.”
***
The cops come. For once, they listen.
Mireille is arrested. Venus goes to the hospital. The Plunge opens the next night like nothing happened.
***
“She’s staying,” I tell Claudia. “For now.”
“And us?”
“PIU’s back.”
Yolanda lays down one last tarot card.
The Tower.
“Reckoning,” she says. “We’ve only just begun.”
We raise our glasses. Under the lights, in the scent of glitter and burnt sugar, we toast to the truth.
To Venus.
To survival.
To the next mystery, already crawling out of the shadows.
THE END
AUTHOR BIO
Cory Dale Cart is a queer, neurodivergent writer and folklorist who gathers stories from the red dirt roads of Oklahoma to the moss-draped porches of Louisiana and beyond. Cart often writes about food, travel, identity, and the long shadow of rural memory. Their debut poetry collection, Leather & Dust (Hot Button Press), reimagines the cowboy poetry tradition through a fictional queer lens, tracing one man’s search for tenderness and truth in Osage County. Cart’s work has appeared in Superpresent, Aurtistic Zine, The Shallot, The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food, and elsewhere. He is the creator of Dispatches from Rural Oklahoma, a monthly column in Oklahoma Living magazine. They teach storytelling and public relations at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication and are pursuing an MFA in Popular Fiction at Emerson College. More of his work can be found at www.corycart.com
