Residual - Chapter One

This is the opening pages of my debut novel 'Residual'. Currently I'm working on fine-tuning my manuscript before submitting to publishers. On that note, anything (and potentially everything) here is subject to change.

A little backstory: This novel spawned from a discussion with one of my Hanging Ellipsis compatriots. We were discussing rape and it's use in films, and storytelling in general. We discussed the fact that all-too-often it is used as a 'motivator' or 'plot device' to give stories or characters an edgy feel. Whether it is establishing a 'strong woman' character, or showing the villain as 'truly wicked', it minimizes and insults a complex, life-spanning issue. It often suggests that revenge, or love can solve these deep seated and agonizing damages inflicted upon innocents. These stories suggests that one can 'get over it', which is not only fallacious, it is damaging.

The oft cited statistic is one in three. One in Three women will experience some form of sexual assault or abuse. That is one-third of half the population, one sixth of humanity dealing with this serious, heinous issue. They have a story to tell, and that birthed Karen. Karen is a novel that deals with the survivors rather than the perpetrators, with the fallout rather than the revenge. It is a coarse, brutal, but more importantly human tale about an often forgotten slice of our population.

Without further ado, I give you the opening pages of 'Residual', by Stephen Kloepfer:

#

I felt the hands gripped around my throat. Bile forced its desperate way upwards, unable to escape my closed off trachea. All I could think was: Oh God, I’m going to die!

My gasps – each more ragged than the last – sent searing plumes of lava up my throat. Toxic air desperate to escape as my lungs howled for a succulent taste of fresh air. My hands slapped flaccidly at the arms of my assailant. My eyes were dry. There should be tears, I thought. Why aren’t there tears?

Cold eyes burrowed into me. Cold eyes that had once seemed so warm. So warm when I met them at the bar, so warm on the street as they walked me home. So cold.

Without a conscious thought, I drove my knee up, catching him in the groin. The grunt that followed was that of a wounded, frustrated animal. The claws clamped around my throat loosened and cool air rushed down my throat to soothe the inferno within me. My lungs filled joyously.

For an instant.

Before I could speak, before I could scream his hands clamped down, harder than before and tightening. I felt my larynx crushing against my spine as he pressed me down against the ground.

I felt a calloused hand slipping up my leg…

#

She stops, shuddering. She looks around the barren gymnasium. The only decoration is a worn American Flag sagging from its sad pins on the far wall. The basketball hoops have been pulled up, impotent during the off season. The room smells of sweat and young hormones.

I wonder how many times a young girl’s ass has been swatted by some pre-pubescent boy in this very room?

She feels the same shiver run through her, and turns her eyes to the group. An assortment of women alongside a few, scant men sit on folding chairs in a circle. Some eyes are wet, others are dry, some fidget, while others sit as motionless statues. She wonders how many of them feel the same as her. They never look up, they look around. They look at their feet, at her feet, at the wall, at the flag, but never at her.

The poster mounted on the easel reads: SEXUAL ASSAULT AND THE HEALING PROCESS. It is typed in a bland, black Helvetica. An uninteresting poster for a topic easier to ignore than address.

She sighs and searches for the words to continue:

“This is the part of the story when the hero arrives, you know, the knight in shining armor riding in on a valiant steed. Or it’s the part where the damsel finds that ‘extra’ spurt of energy to fight off the villain…”

She looks down, gulping, “But this isn’t a story, is it? I wanted to press charges, but… well, the officer in charge of my case said it was unlikely. My assailant wasn’t in the system, and – I quote – ‘New York’s a big place.’

“He was right, I didn’t really expect they’d find the guy. That isn’t what got under my skin. No, what really felt like the world’s big ‘fuck you’ were the questions. I mean, they never just said ‘are you sure you didn’t ask for it?’ but they sure as hell implied it. No one said, ‘were you wearing that dress when it happened?’ but their sideways glances screamed it from the rooftops. They sneered and they skirted the big fucking question-”

She realizes she is screaming, spittle flying from her mouth, her face a bright crimson. Everyone’s eyes are no longer on their shoes, no longer on her shoes. Everyone’s wide eyes are fixed on her, with the expressions of deer caught in the glare of a highway.

Nervousness washes over her, hanging her head she gulps out a quick: “Sorry…” and immediately sits down, with her gaze fixed on the bubbles in the wood-like linoleum underfoot.

Sandra Clark – a slightly overweight, slightly overaged Latina – gets to her feet and smiles gently. “Thank you for sharing, Karen. Everyone, let’s thank Karen.”

Applause.

That amuses Karen. A round of applause for some man – some prick with legs – forcing himself on me, taking what he wants and then discarding me sobbing in an alley, scrapes on my back, bruises on my throat. Sure, let’s give that a big round of applause! Still, she nods politely and pretends their ‘support’ doesn’t feel like them taking turns shoving a rusty dagger into her back.

As the hour drags on she listens and others share. Stacy talks about her uncle, about the years of abuse at the hands of someone who should have been loving family. The group claps and so does Karen, fully realizing the hypocrisy. Next Bryan talks about prison and shitty jokes. Not jokes directed at him, but jokes about a stereotypical experienced he happened to have lived. He is in tears as he unfolds the reality of a classic locker room gag. Don’t drop the soap! Ha. Ha. Ha. Everyone claps, but no one cares enough to stop telling the same crap joke that has reduced a hulking, tattooed, muscle bound behemoth into a sobbing mess. After Bryan it’s Donna’s turn. Donna talks about her husband, about years of abuse, neglect, and torment. She talks about finally opening up to her friends only to be told she was ‘blowing everything out of proportion.’ After all, how can a man fuck is wife without her consent. Donna relates men to pigs as she speaks, a hard edge underneath her bubbly, soccer-mom voice. After a while Sandra asks Donna to take a seat with a slight, stern edge to her calm voice.

No one says the word. Not Stacy, not Bryan, not Donna, and not Karen. They say words like ‘assault,’ they call the monster under the bed ‘assailant,’ but no one dares utter those hated words:

Rape. Rapist.

No one calls the monster by its real name. It is easier to confront the ethereal ‘big bad wolf’ rather than look into the harsh light of the world. You never say, ‘I was raped,’ so you never see the looks. The pity. The doubt. The disgust. The same emotions you see in the mirror every morning. You say, ‘I was assaulted’ and everyone nods, and pretends they understand.

They don’t understand a goddamn thing.

Karen listens as each story is told, and each story garners the same downtrodden applause. Each story reflects hers the way a funhouse mirror reflects a face: the features are distorted, the details pushed and pulled differently, but in the end it’s the same face. It doesn’t help. She knows they think it helps, and some days she even thinks it helps. Today she doesn’t, today she wonders why they come to sit in a circle and relive the same horror every week. Why they insist on digging at the same scabs that won’t scar over.

She wonders why she even goes to the meetings when a bottle of wine could pass for her kind of therapy. Besides the futility, she also loathes the location. It makes her skin crawl in all the wrong ways. The blank, white walls seem to watch her every move, and she leaves each meeting feeling twice as drained as she did before arriving. Of course, she knows it really isn’t her choice to be here. So she grins, bears, and makes do with the situation she’s been handed.

They continue digging at the scabs for another hour before calling it quits. Some hover around the ancient coffee machine and slurp tasteless black muck, some step outside for the cold comfort of a cigarette, but only Karen helps Sandra with the chairs. Sandra has never shared her story with the group, but from the way she nods, the way her eyes water at the right words, Karen knows they are one and the same.

And Karen understands.

No one speaks. The only sounds that fill the room are the dull clang of chairs, the slurping from Styrofoam cups, and the hinges of the heavy doors creaking as they swing shut on rusted hydraulics. No one says a word, no one makes eye contact.

They understand.

Without so much as a goodbye, the group dissipates. One by one they head out into the cold night. Some go alone, others by twos, but all make sure to keep their cell phones close, and keep checking over their shoulders.

Eventually, only Karen and Sandra remain. Sandra leans back to stretch her tired, overworked back. The back of a social worker.

“You good to lock up from here?”

Sandra nods and smiles at Karen – who is already making a beeline to the door. “See you next week?”

Karen shrugs, “Is there anywhere else to go?”

The door closes, its dull echo ringing throughout the gymnasium. Only then does Sandra allow her faint smile of hope to flicker and fade. Her legs give out as she half-collapses onto the last remaining chair.

There Sandra sits and mourns in solitude. In peace.

#

The being does not know how old it is, nor does it care. It cares no more, and no less than an infant cares for the date of its conception. Still, it remembers.

Its first memory is the spring of ’67: Cassie Hermana and Dylan Sharon were in the showers. They had been going steady for about a year, but this time it was different. This time she screamed that she didn’t want it. The being did not understand the concept of ‘it’ at the time, but it still knew the feelings.

The pleasure was boring, bland, but the pain, the anger, the hate, those were exquisite.

Beneath the other emotions lay something even deeper. Something that dripped delectably with power and agony. The being did not know the name of that feeling. It had learned of pain, of rage, it learned of sex and force. It learned as the women in Sandra Clark’s group told their tales, but undercutting all those words lay another. It was deeper, rawer, indescribable.

It remembered feeling the undercurrent for the first time. It remembered the screams and moans that were followed by muted whimpers. It remembered choking gasps and the trickle of blood swirling a drain, mixing with spent cum and hot sweat.

All these words it knew. But it never knew the word.

It wants to taste that feeling again. That is why it never tries to leave its home. The feelings permeate the hormone addled room with its hardwood floor, hoops and sweat-covered basketballs. The feelings intermingle with the mold covered towels and the stench of week-old gym socks. The beings sustenance growled beneath every catcall, every ass-slap, every leering gaze.

The wafting smells of its dinner.

Years after the first memory the Fat Bitch had started the meetings. They came with her, starting small but growing over time. Before the being knew it, a buffet was open for the tasting. Some tasted better, some tasted worse, some had near-stale remnants of its favorite flavor dancing underneath the usual underpinnings of pain and rage. But it never tasted quite the same.

It never felt like the first time of agony and ecstasy.

Now, it watches from above. It stares down at the sobbing figure of Sandra Clark as she sits on the solitary metal chair. It tastes the feelings wafting up through the rafters. The pain – numbed but never gone – the fear – not crippling but ever present – and underneath lurks the word. It lies hidden under a tempest of swirling emotion, more powerful than the ones whose names it already knew.

It doesn’t care to know the word’s name, but it cannot wait to taste it again.

#

As her footsteps click down the concrete walkway, Karen’s hand is planted in the lining of her purse. Her shoulders are tense enough to bounce a quarter off of them. Night walks like this always petrify her, ever since…

No. Don’t think about it.

Inside her purse she clutches her mace in a white-knuckled vice-grip. Peppered spray sits right beside her sheathed knife. Eight serrated inches of cold steel, sharp enough to skin a deer with ease. Or to gut a creep. These two items never leave her purse, and she never leaves home without her purse.

She casts a nervous glance over her shoulder to see a dark figure approaching from behind. Heinous images flash in the back of her mind, cold eyes staring down as calloused hands work their way up… She cuts the images off, forcing herself to turn her eyes back to the road and pick up her pace.

The heavy footsteps behind her move at a breakneck pace, intent on overtaking her. Trembling, her fingers tighten around the canister, one tense finger sitting atop the plunger.

The figure slams into her from behind, knocking her off balance. She tenses, ready to fight, ready to scream.

“’scuse me,” comes an apologetic, masculine voice as the figure keeps marching down the street, not breaking stride for a second.

Not a rapist, just an asshole! A wave of relief pours over Karen. Her fingers loosen on the canister of mace, but do not release. Her shoulders sag an inch, but don’t lose tension. A flicker of a smile wavers across her face before reverting to taut stoicism.

No longer focused on the dark figure marching towards her, she takes stock of where she is. Two blocks north is home and one block west is her favorite bar. Denny – the kindly, old owner – would be behind the counter tonight. He always poured her a double. He always wanted to know the stock of her day, for good or bad. He wanted to hear if she was writing anything new, he’d probably mention that award winning piece she had written ages ago. He simply wanted to know. I wonder if he still would?

After six months frequenting his place, Denny had opened up one night. He had told Karen about losing his granddaughter. ‘She’d have been about your age…’ he wasn’t able to get any farther. His throat swelled up and choked off the grieving man’s words.

She wonders how Denny is doing. She hadn’t gone to his place since…

Stop.

She keeps walking down the dark, dingy streets of Manhattan. Her mind is now fixated on Denny’s granddaughter. Where would she be now if she hadn’t been swept off the face of the world far too soon? Would she be here, in New York? Would it have been her in that alley instead of…?

Don’t even think it!

Maybe I should stop in, I could use a familiar face, she thinks, but can’t bring herself to take the turn. She can’t bring herself to walk down that particular alley, or to face the kindly old man who saw her leave with him.

Instead, she keeps to her course, walking on tired legs to the old brownstone that she calls home: Absalom Plaza. It isn’t much to look at, far from pretty though not quite an eyesore. It is always a little too cold during winter and a little too warm during summer. Rats scurry in the basement and pigeons roost on the roof. Dingy or not, it is home.

She walks up the steps and pulls open the creaking door to the lobby. The room is bland, covered in wood paneling that went out of style decades prior. Derek – the owner’s son – sits at the front desk; snores at the front desk would be more accurate. It’s not the highest level of security but she can’t blame him for snoozing. Who’d want to break into this shithole anyway?

She tip-toes past the snoring man casting him a sideways, albeit amused glance. Only then does she feel safe to remove her hand from her purse.

Home.

She gets into the old elevator, pulling open the sliding gate with a loud kerchunk! Stepping in, she breathes a long, relieved sigh. The day is over and once more she is able to release the façade and be herself again. She closes the moaning gate and depresses the circular button, watching it dimly light beneath her touch.

Floor six, coming up.

The ride is slow as grumbling gears and pulleys lift the elevator upwards on its sloth-like ascent. Below she can hear the furnace rumbling as it fights a losing battle against the brisk autumn air. The same furnace where she burned…

Dammit, stop!

The seconds grind on until she reaches her floor. The lift rumbles to a jerking halt and she pulls open the squealing gate. Her footsteps bounce down the claustrophobic halls of floor six, a dull echo that fades into nothingness.

Apartment 610 is blaring his music again. Screamo, loud screamo. It was the one genre Karen could never quite wrap her head around. The resident is college age and seems nice enough, though a bit of what kids would refer to as a ‘neck beard.’ Either way, he always had the time to help her with groceries or strike up an idle conversation, once he even helped her fix her bathtub’s drain when the super declared himself ‘too busy’ napping at his desk. But goddamn she hated that screaming noise.

The next door she passes is 615, belonging to a ‘pervy old bastard’ named Simmons. He always has a look or a comment of some kind, one she’s sure he thinks ‘sly’ and one she knows is not. She holds her breath and tip-toes past his door. It always seems like he has her schedule memorized, waiting like a hunter, salivating to catch a glimpse of his prey: ‘the fine dame in 620.’ She hopes with a rising desperation he isn’t waiting for her.

Her heart sinks as she hears his door-bolt click. She puts it into fifth gear and powerwalks toward her door. Towards sanctuary.

She hears his door swing open and soft, slippered footsteps move out into the hall, intermingling with her own determined pace. A low, gravelly voice calls after her, “Hey there, toots. You’re lookin’ mighty-”

Karen throws open her door and slams it hard behind her, cutting off the jerks comment.

With a long sigh, she leans back against her weathered front door, cracking a faint smile of relief.

It is good to be home.