"The Bulwark's Shadow" - A Novel in Progress via Steemit (Part I, Chapter 12)

(From Salon Magazine)

I'm posting up the chapters of this uncompleted book as I hope the Steemit community might offer up its criticism (which would, in turn, force me to finish it, honestly). Started in 2008, this was my first foray into novel writing and was my undergraduate thesis required to graduate. The story is about an executioner in the not-too-distant future. Executioners are highly trained individuals with extensive educations built to help them execute their prisoners in the exact same manner that the prisoner's victims died. This is called the law of retaliation or lex talionis; you may know it better as "eye for an eye."

Because I was also getting my degree in philosophy, I wanted to explore the ethics involved. While I feel I'm a better writer now and could certainly expand most of this book, I also really enjoy criticism as I'm usually too close to the work to see what's working and what's not (though in this case, there's plenty that I feel is not working). So please...feel free to criticize the work if you'd like, but be constructive about it. Simply saying "this part isn't good" doesn't tell me much; don't hesitate to tell me why it's not good or offer up possible alternatives to make it better.

Thanks in advance!

Previous Sections/Chapters:

She had put on weight since we last saw each other, but every head in the place rubbernecked its way around to catch a glimpse. Perfection in a miniskirt and curves of delicious poison, she strutted slowly to the bar making sure everyone saw her before sitting next to me. She was wearing the same perfume from our first night and I was instantly transported into a moment long gone.

She ordered a drink before acknowledging I was there. We both stared at each other through the mirror behind the bar, never looking directly at each other. I had my bourbon, she had her pinot and we sipped in silence for awhile. “So how are you,” I asked. “It’s been a few weeks since we’ve talked.”

She gulped down her glass and ordered another, playing with the bar napkin. The careful choosing of her words was cute before, but now seemed torturous. It was a simple question, I thought. I wasn’t asking her to find the square root of our friendship. “I’ve been busy. Just…working. Hard. Long hours and then with Demetri at home…the sitter left without saying why. I’ve been better, Brein, how are you?” She turned and forced a weak smile at me.

“Having a weird month is all. I mean there’s more to it than that, but, I really just wanted to see you. I’ve missed you and you stopped returning my calls. I grew concerned.”

She swiveled her head to look at the rest of the bar to avoid my staring. “Yeah, sometimes the time just flies by so fast and I forget to check my machine.” She had pretty eyes and a dirty mouth. A horrible liar to the end, but her lies had always left butterfly kisses on me before, a soft tickle that resonated everywhere for a moment, then faded. My skin prickled when she spoke quietly and would take forever to return to a normal state. She was silver-tongued and her gene therapy treatments had gone better than most.

She wasn’t vain, but her job required her to be as desirable as possible. Once the technology arrived, the women ravaged it and lost decade’s worth of crow’s feet, flabby love handles, saggy breasts and thighs that looked like they had been beaten by the business end of a soccer cleat. It took us guys a lot longer to adopt the practice, even the metros of the time.

Around the time I was ‘graduating’ from college, breakthroughs in stem-cell technology had made it possible to actually reverse the natural decay of the human body. Normal DNA replication within the cells had been halted by the infusion of virginal cells with original strands of nucleotide material via IV’s and syringes. As we grow older, the strands of DNA replicate over and over naturally, but the last two or three pairs end up somehow being negated from the equation. Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s…every age-dependent disease had been eliminated due to the advancement of stem-cell technology but the women ate it up the way they had previously devoured fad diet after fad diet in an effort to achieve the greatness they assumed they had during their younger years. The older women were set apart by the way their eyelids and lips lacked natural movement. The Botox Age ended and left many with semi-paralysis in specific parts of the body. It wasn’t so much the lack of movement as it was the perma-scowl on their faces when looking at the women (whose bodies moved more freely) that set them apart from the younger ones.

Keira was twenty years older than me, but looked ten years younger due to this process. An average of three tricks a night and she had found the money to borrow time past the normal retirement age. The constant procedures had given her body an elasticity and youth that seemed to taunt death at every turn and pleasure with every whim. Hell, she even got carded every time we met up. The added weight was curious.

Termed “Youthing” by those who paid for the process, what actually happened was the cementing of original nucleotides. During the natural cellular replication process, the nucleotidal pairings on the very ends of the DNA strand would stay intact rather than simply fall off like they were intended. This falling off was what had caused the body and mind to degenerate exponentially, depending on the person and their genetic makeup. After awhile, the replicated strands would be smaller in length than they had started out and expedite the aging process by unknowingly, but intentionally, sending the body into slow decay during the normal retirement age. Flabby thighs were normal, but stationary eyebrows and lips were not, even then. In fact, they creeped me the fuck out as much now as they did way back in the golden days of pseudo au naturale.

I would have to remind myself of Keira’s real age on occasion. I always remembered she was older, but the lack of liver spots and vein-skinned fingers played havoc on my senses after the right number of bourbons and a few perfect phrases whispered just past my earlobes. My bed became ours, my wallet emptied and I was never sorry the next morning until I realized she had left. I saw her leave once and I made sure to at least pretend I was asleep after that. I had actually debated a trip to the ATM down the street, just to keep her from leaving. She left anyway and I wanted to drown in my sheets for not acting quicker.

My second bourbon was nearly gone by the time she polished off her fourth pinot and she was starting to slur. Some things, gene therapy couldn’t fix. She was a cheap drunk, but an expensive hooker. Thankfully she was good at the one and not the other, otherwise I’d be taking care of Demetri. I met him once, several months ago. A cute kid with dark skin and hair to match. Some kind of computer was always around him, either in complete disarray or just not working properly, but the kid was smart and liked to tinker.

“Why do you do what you do?” she asked slowly, melding her words together.

“I’m good at it. Why do you do what you do?” I asked.

“Because I like it. I’m good at it too, but I really just enjoy the feel of a man dominating me, if only for an hour or two. I know I don’t have to look far to find someone needing the company. Loneliness has always been the best business. Someone, somewhere is always lonely.”

I gripped my glass tighter and felt my face flush at the jealousy she instilled in me. She was right though. Someone was always lonely somewhere, it just wasn’t her. She was content to simply paw at people to lure them in, a modern day temptress in the business of breaking hearts or just taking them unintentionally. “This is true,” I finally replied. “This is true.”

Her fifth pinot arrived as she turned to look at me through drink-clouded eyes. “Why do you call me so much, Brein? You know we could never have anything beyond my job, yet you call just to talk as if we could someday make each other un-lonely.” She put her drink to her lips and some of it spilled onto her dress. I reached across the bar for the napkins and handed them to her indifferently.

“I guess I keep wanting to recreate our first night together. Calling it magical is a little too fu-fu for me, but it was definitely something.”

She looked at me as if chiding a child. “It’s what I do, Brein. That’s my job. I never let the fact that I need money overpower any possible feelings I might have for someone for exactly this reason. You think I could make this kinda money pulling a nine-to-fiver five days a week?” She grunted in disgust. “Come on. Neither one of us is right for anyone else. We’d only make them miserable and in the process, make ourselves miserable. I don’t get attached because I can’t afford to. You get attached because you feel you have to.” She took another swig of her pinot. “I have to go powder my nose,” she said, sliding off the bar stool and losing her balance. She fell to the floor and I could hear the thud of her head against the hardwood floor. I jumped off my stool and cradled the top half of her body before picking her up as she groaned about the possible bump that would arise.

“Let’s get you home. You’re definitely not the drinker you thought you were.” I looked at the bartender, Dominic. “Can I settle up tomorrow, Dom? I promise I’ll be back in,” I said, pleading.

“No problem, B. Whenever. You want a hand?” he asked, motioning to Keira.

“I think I’ve got her. I’ll make sure she gets home okay,” I replied, walking out of the bar carrying Keira as if we were a married couple crossing the threshold of our new home.

My place was closer than hers and since she already knew the layout of my apartment, I figured it would be okay. I had forgotten, however, that I would need to carry her up 11 flights of stairs. By the time I reached the bottom of the stairwell, Keira had passed out and I had flung her over my shoulder for easier carrying. Not the most romantic thing you’ll ever see, but it was effective. I reached the top of the stairwell and my legs were on fire. I’m in pretty good shape, but it was a workout I vowed never to try again.

I got her inside and laid her on the bed, leaving her completely dressed and putting her purse on the nightstand. I slipped off her heels and covered her with sheets as her pager vibrated in her purse. Reaching in, I turned it off, got her a glass of water for when she woke up, and went to sleep on the couch in the other room. I stared at the ceiling fan for awhile before finally succumbing to the sandman’s wishes. When I woke in the morning, Keira was gone, but she had left a note.

“Sorry,” written in red lipstick on my bathroom mirror. Yet another mess of hers left for me to clean up. Cute.
Things with Keira soured after our fourth or fifth night together. I had been at Dom’s having my usual after-work drink when I saw her in the corner of the bar. She was cozied up next to a Suit who couldn’t seem less interested in what she had to say. She definitely trying to hustle her way into his wallet, but it was hard to tell if it was working. The Suit wore a flat look on his face and showed no expression while she rubbed her hand on his thigh and whispered in his ear. He didn’t smile, he didn’t grin, and he never looked at her directly, just at me as I stared at them through the mirror behind the bar.

I watched for another half an hour as she pawed her way across the front of suit and played with his tie flirtatiously with the Suit never wavering from his stony countenance. We were locked in a staring contest across thirty feet of crowded room and he was winning without really trying. Keira was practically in his lap by the time I paid my tab. As I left the bar, we stared each other down again and finally, Keira noticed us engaged in our psychological alpha-male entanglement. I stepped outside as I heard her call my name and kept walking.

“Brein, hey!” I could hear her heels clip-clop on the sidewalk behind me as I kept walking in long, quick strides. It wasn’t too chilly out, but I shoved my hands in my coat pocket and pulled it closer around my body as if needing the warmth. “Hey, why are you ignoring me?” I heard her yell. It echoed gently off the sleepy brownstone buildings lining the neighborhood and I turned around.

“You were busy turning a trick. I just realized that’s not something I want to see,” I said, raising my arms in defeat. She had left her coat inside and her arms were wrapped tight around her chest as her body shivered visibly.

“It’s my job, Brein. I’m sorry we happen to share the same watering hole, but the Suits in this part of town are more willing to spend their paychecks on my company than the ones in South County. I have to make a living too, ya know.”

“You should do it at a different bar. At least when you’re not trying to empty my wallet, which you know isn’t difficult,” I replied.

She walked closer and tried to get up in my face, but her head only reached the bottom of my neckline. “Ah. I see, you want some kind of weird custody battle over ‘your’ bar,” she spat back. “Well fuck you, Brein. I don’t judge what you do for a living, so why do I get the short end here?”

“Because I’m not fucking everyone in the city for my paycheck,” I shot back. I felt my face sting before I ever saw her hand move. The girl was faster than I gave her credit for and I was ashamed before I even spoke the words.

“Maybe not, but at least I accept that what I do is somehow normal! I don’t know how you sleep at night, sometimes.”

“I don’t,” I replied, rubbing my burning cheek.

“Well maybe that’s karma for ya,” she said, turning to go back to the bar.

“At least I’m doing something that benefits the people around me, even if they don’t give a shit about me,” I yelled at her back. She turned around, removed both of her heels and tossed them quickly in my direction. They both missed me by inches, but the car window behind me wasn’t so lucky. The first shoe spider-webbed it, setting off the alarm in the early morning hours, but the second one sent glass flying everywhere inside the car. She ran off and disappeared around the corner, forgetting about her possible trick while I stayed behind to talk to the police about the incident.

‘No, I don’t know who she was.

‘No, I don’t know why she did it, but I think she might have been drunk.

‘No, I didn’t see what she looked like, but she was definitely agitated about something.

‘No, I didn’t see where she went.

‘No, I don’t know whose car this is.

‘No, I don’t think she’ll be coming back.’

More Chapters:

The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Thirteen
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Fourteen
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Fifteen
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Sixteen