Part V

Dead, as always, Neena lies on her back. She is in a drawer, or a kind of drawer, something made of stainless steel, on smooth, silent casters, which has been pulled out by a man in a lab coat, a photo ID on the left breast pocket, the little square photo looking nothing like him, but like someone fifteen years older, forced to smile. Neena sees none of this, of course, her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, so fixated on nothing that whoever it is could prick the cornea with the pin on the back of the photo ID, and so he does, dead center of the dark pupil, the jelly sticking slightly when he pulls the pin back out, clinging for a moment to the point, and then snapping back to the ruined eye.

There is laughter, or perhaps giggling, some obscenities, and an overdone feigning of disgust, the latter issuing from two young women, who, drunk and playfully bumping into each other, have seen, and hope tonight to see, much worse.

The insensitivity and immodesty of the naked woman in the drawer, whose toe tag, entirely superfluous, has been deliberately, and distastefully, mismarked, is easily recognized as the now familiar Neena, and she is apparently a great source of amusement, ribaldry, and general, if somewhat leisurely, fascination to whoever they are (attendants, nurses, first-year residents, custodial staff) on the late-shift tonight when, at 3 or 4am, under fluoroscent lights, after 48 ounces of coffee and liberal doses of appetite suppressants, all of this, and what follows, doesn’t seem something that anyone would disagree probably "happens all the time when no one is looking."

Whatever the cause of death, Neena is lying on her back tonight, which, in this case, perhaps because she was dispatched from behind, hides the majority of the damage,

although there is evidence of whatever killed her, an exit wound, maybe, on her chest or belly, someplace vital, as they never tire of saying, but always excluding the head, face, and even the throat, let’s say. Even so, someone, most likely one of the techs, if he’s even a tech, and, if not, it’s entirely irrelevant, has laid an open napkin, which came with his midnight donut, over whatever wound there is, which is meant, one might suppose, to suggest less a reaction to any form of squeamishness than a general aesthetic consideration, perhaps, Neena’s own, although these are matters of personal temperament, so much so, in fact, as to be impenetrable.

You can determine this, however, if nothing else, and quite plainly: two of the men in lab coats, indeed they have lab coats, have masturbated themselves to full erections, which they’ve produced from the unbuttoned fronts of their "navy-style" chinos. They are spattering, or soon to spatter, the dead girl’s expressionless face, making sure to also adorn her cold breasts with droplets, her belly, if their seminal capacity allows, shaking dry over her shaved slit, which, quite predictably, seems to aggravate them beyond all reason. A third man, considerably older , a kind of director of something, or, who could be, he has that air, as well as a fine head of the usually requisite white, wooly hair, is being masturbated by one of the women, also wearing a lab coat, all of them wearing lab coats, but this woman is not the woman re-drawing her lips in a compact, and asking, incessantly, if anyone feels like driving to the ocean to look for sand dollars, which is, naturally, a way of speaking in code, but what it’s a code for, that’s anyone’s guess.

It’s a place of bare rock, and she stands there, separated from everyone, in the usual penitent’s garment of rough homespun, barefoot, cold, terrified, hugging herself pointlessly. Someone, a man in minister black, most likely, is reading a list of what are supposedly her sins, better yet, her transgressions, although his voice is all but in audible over the buffeting wind, and no one is listening anyway, engaged in private conversations dominated by local gossip, and speculations about the weather, which looks, nearly everyone seems to agree, almost indisputably, like snow. The sky is grey enough, to be sure, and flat, and cloudless and all the rest, and there is that moist chill in the air that seems to presage the appearance of a sudden merry fall of white flakes, and yet it’s not overly cold, the kind of cold that generally tends never to accompany snow, etc. etc., that seems to sum up the observations of those leaning towards a forecast of snow, while others, who disagree, argue weakly, in various meaningless ways.

Neena is aware that her nipples are hard and that she hasn’t bathed in nearly two weeks, kept as she was, naked, in a sort of small cell, or stall, with a dirt floor and some straw. She was raped, repeatedly, perhaps, or not, depending on local religious custom. It’s obligatory, of course, either way, raped or not, that she be the most sexually eligible female of age in the entire village, and her selection for what follows marks her as an object, variously, of envy, lust, admiration, to name just three. Neena is, in this respect, without regret, in particular, that she has been appointed, acquired, chosen, or merely lucked into, this role, and, furthermore, unrepentant for whatever mistakes she might have made that have resulted in her becoming a so-called "marked woman."

The perverse truth is that, within certain narrow autoerotic parameters, she is, in fact, quite proud.

One can’t help but notice that her beauty, her bearing, the softness of her palms and heels, for instance, her complexion, the total lack of anything "sinewy" about her, the milkiness of her limbs, etc. the overall impression she radiates of "indoor femininity"-it’s intangible, in the final analysis, but obvious that even stripped of all cultural markers such as clothes, jewelry, even hairstyle, stripped almost naked, in fact, that she is clearly recognizable to anyone looking on as being "not someone from around here."

This last observation, more than any of the others, perhaps, explains what’s left of the unexplained, or what has previously seemed inexplicable, in the attitude of the hostile crowd now surrounding Neena, for it’s obvious that it is perceived by each and every one of them, that she naturally considers herself better than they are, and they consider her to be so, too. There was a great deal of contention, for example, even among those you’d think might be eliminated from interest due to size, and sex, in the division of her fine city clothing, all of it in the latest style so coveted and beyond the ordinary reach of these plain and simple farming folk, that their acquisition led to several incidents of violence, until a series of negotiations, lotteries, and charity auctions were devised, not, of course, without the usual attendant briberies and inside dealings, but, in the main, fair enough that all were satisfied, or nearly all, and Neena saw her red Bongo size 5 pumps being worn by a large rawboned farm girl, at least six feet tall, the kind usually called "strapping," to whom they’d gone for the absurd sum of fifteen hundred dollars, although a two days walk to the nearest mall would have enabled one to purchase the same shoes on sale for under thirty.

It is probably unnecessary to speculate on the series of circumstances that led to Neena’s eventual abandonment here at all, but the usual can be assumed: an automotive breakdown, being the most cliché’d, but also such things as business meetings, boyfriend troubles, world-weariness, bad vacation choices, kidnapping, and the sometimes popular trek to interview a reclusive celebrity, a disfigured film star, possibly, or a disgraced author of bizarre tales, maybe, something of that nature.

In the final analysis, as initially noted, it is unnecessary, probably, to speculate what finally brings Neena to this particular spot of bare rock, suffice to say, she is here, and waits, shivering with fear and cold, as her largely imaginary transgressions are read, and this scene can be used as a starting-off point for much of what subsequently follows, a generic stage, as it were, barren and neutral, for so many basically undeserved, and therefore all the more inspired, punishments, any of which can begin, and should, right this very moment.

Neena pauses, breathless, by a tree.It would, ideally, be a white birch, a dead one, with only a few ragged yellow leaves, but, all considered, it’s probably an oak, an old one, with a wide trunk covered with a thick, callous bark. It’s a cool morning, fresh is the word, and the woods are quiet, some chattering birds high up in the canopy, but they fall silent as she passes. She stands, head slightly bowed, panting hopelessly, her breath visible in the air, somehow cognizant of the fact that she has maybe one more sprint in her, at best, and then only if she forces herself to move, now.

Over the hill, maybe another hill away, she hears the baying of the hounds, large, grey, long muscles moving in lovely synchronicity, as they lope effortlessly over the distances between them and her.

She is running, finally, her pale feet moving over the damp mat of dead leaves, her legs splashed with cold mud, flecks of mud on her breasts, her anklet of bells jangling. The observer cuts, back and forth, between alternate views: the hounds’ graceful bounding and Neena stumbling forward, back and forth, point, counterpoint, until the naked girl veers off to the left in a kind of prolonged, staggering fall, as if only momentum were keeping her up. She is weeping, gasping, lashed by brambles, and, suddenly, stunned, finds herself without warning in a clearing on a kind of hillock, with a view of the open sky, high white clouds passing swiftly overhead, presumably to a hidden sea, and she, quite unwittingly, presents herself to anyone who happens to be sizing up a shot, as a perfect target.

The shot, when it does come, seems to come from out of nowhere. She is spun, halfway around by a slug of indeterminate caliber, which shatters her left shoulderblade like a fine japanese sushi dish, and drives her to her knees, or, she simply stares, in total disbelief, at the steel tip of an arrow extending ten or eleven inches or so from the lower left side of her abdomen, the whole shaft slick with gore, and, after some brief seconds, the shock and pain catching up to her, she then sinks, inevitably, to her knees. Either way, it’s a "blooding shot," and although not technically fatal, it is clearly the beginning of the final 100 yards of the chase.

Somehow, Neena rises, tragically, unsteady, the steps she takes now careless and haphazard, looking almost drunken, and it’s obvious that she has lost any real control of her body. There is a genearl pitifulness to her efforts, if the efforts she makes now can even be called hers, and the expression in her eyes is one of horror, not in the expectation of a second shot, already being lined up, but in the realization that she is trapped, with no way out, inside a body whose arms and legs won’t obey her anymore.

There is a second shot, and maybe a third, but it seems unlikely, even excessive that there would be a fourth or fifth, after all, she is, in theory at least, a trophy animal. The dogs are on her first, of course, ripping away her Achilles’, along with other essential flight tendons in the backs of her legs, leaving her "hamstrung," as the saying goes. There are dogs at each wrist, and two or three pulling on her arms, and powerful jaws clamped down on her neck, but whether the alpha male has torn out her throat and broken her neck, or merely holds her for his master to deliver the coup de grace, is a matter beyond Neena’s comprehension, and frankly, her interest. She hears, though, the horses carrying the hunting party quickly on the way, already not far off, and feels a surge of adrenaline as she thinks there is still time for one last attempt at escape, even though there isn’t, and soon she lies slung, tied inside a burlap tarp, face down over a horse’s rump, as the hunting party ambles through meadows, taking the long way home, the hunters, sitting easy in their saddles, smoking expensive cigars and discussing sports scores and stock performances and what’s to be done, hypothetically, about certain highly sensitive and compromising, but equally purely hypothetical, tape-recorded conversations...