Hello DEAR READER,
The following is Chapter 3:2 from my first novel, The Pupa Woman. You can read Chapter 3:1 here.
You can get the PDF over at my gumroad! ^_^
Available from our unfortunate tech-overlords over at Amazon both in paperback and eBook.
“There’s not much to say about my childhood,” she narrates as Susie gathered together the materials for tea. “Me and Judy always fought, and maybe that’s because we didn’t have the same mom. We had a demanding father. She was his favorite, because I was too fat for him.” Susie stared back with a half-opened mouth, not quite sure how this skeletal creature could have ever been fattened– she imagines June to have been hatched, a little chubby grub growing into a gruesome exoskeletal insect but in a small closed-off alleyway connected to one of the darker streets in this here prefecture with black gunk between its many gutters full of filth and the faint neon-lighting and tri-colored stoplights buzzing along to the many cicadas and the scurrying of rodents between the neglected trash cans which inhabit the alleyway’s many winding paths, you know the kind you’d see in establishing shots with the bland concrete and television-colored light pouring out through the cloudy windows ‘n between a restaurant and a copier/stationary store, underneath a nail salon with an incredibly prominent sign of a beautiful set of manicured hands, there was this video place with racks of black VHS outside its doors which were available for a discounted price to compete with the shop down the street which sold recreational 5 ¼” disks ‘n inside the store June, or ‘neko_girl92’ as she was known to her gangly peers at school who enjoyed suspending their necks in front of computer screens, sat on a wooden chair at a counter decorated with a register, a static-prone radio, and a small television and well her uncle owned the store and she was constantly being told off for being lazy and watching videos while on the job though in her own defense running a video store is really not as exciting as it might sound to your average fail-daughter and June wondered if after all the trouble they went through, saving money and abandoning their old native-town and family to settle in this strange new cityscape supposedly booming full with opportunities ‘n the sweetest of low-hanging copper-scented fruit and the coal-colored frames of cassette containers, that this would be the way her life would unfold until her final years, “elapsing into noise, gears coming to a halt, finally spitting out its used vessel,” she wrote in her journal which was a cheap blue notebook already shedding pages and subject to daily conversion by slow input on a PC system, and she started to feel as if she was within a large tomb, a catacomb, the family crypt made of thick plastic and magnetic tape made to keep the decaying remains of her and her uncle and his wife; the only record of their existence lying within.
Friday nights were the most profitable for the store as bored younger adults would gather around the shelves and look for something to entertain them for the night which would usually either be bootleg recordings of television shows, “Auntie-in-Law had gotten quite good at dubbing,” or cheap adult video churned out in what she imagined was some abandoned seedy warehouse in the parts of town her uncle wouldn’t let her see, where ill-dressed men perhaps guarded neon-lit doorways to underground lairs of sin and decadence full of opulent big-spenders with insatiably perverse appetites. June often used the television on the counter to watch cassette tapes of her own liking, sometimes even withholding a last copy from a customer asking if there was any more left, and she’d often spend her nights with a hand folded underneath her head reading subtitles and only occasionally turning to take an order in the most bored voice and irritated expression she could muster; wielding a bitch-face worthy of historical record and she’d begun to adopt some of the mannerisms from the television, testing out expressions on randomly-selected participants, and you can’t fault her for sometimes imagining that she was the actress on the small twelve-inch cathode-ray tube, watching as her own face adopted its usual neutrality, as blank as untouched paper, with muscles not pulling in any particular direction and eyes not revealing anything beyond earned patience. The face starts to move and muscles contract into a complex expression of heroic stoicism betraying deeply-felt sorrow and upon her face, both June’s and the actress’, a shining tear laid dormant between the eyelids threatening to drip down the cheek in the most subtle-yet-devastating of all gestures yet never carrying out its promise.
She turned away from the tombstone etched with two names of which one was lined with red ‘n her eyes bored deeply into that hollow shell of a man ‘n her arms fell to her sides with trembling hands next to the edges of her snow-frosted dark-brown coat. The first sounds from her mouth, teasing the audience, were only truncated beginnings of a syllable and her eyes turned away slightly before returning to a penetrating gaze and she pulled her lips towards her nose softly with only a hint at the disgust which burned at the tip of her tongue. “I...” she said, softly, words held back only by trepidation, so masterfully imitated by June, “I…”, and her soft yet vital exit left behind a palpable sense of emptiness on the screen which held its position for a few tense seconds and June sighed so loudly yea so deeply was she affected by this that it took a lot of self-control to not decapitate the idiot, a powerful swipe with the side of her palm, a powerful gush of never-ending ketchup-pigmented fluid spewing out of a stump like a shower-head, who tapped the counter, interrupted with an apology, and asked when the next Virtual Armour Division season would be released on VHS.
It was always to June’s persistent disappointment that the man on the screen would have such beautifully chiseled features and soft eyebrows and skin, one which would inspire carving in a different time and demands adornment with silk, yet when she’d turn to the idiot, any idiot, tapping on her counter with his stubby fingers, she’d see acne and/or a shitty haircut and/or a smelly school-uniform which inspired only her adrenal glands to secrete contemptuously. Her uncle thought that June’s standards were simply too high, that she was corrupted by the misleading artifice of the male actor (“his looks, his voice, his mouth, the way he walks with unearned confidence”), and that someone smart and young like her shouldn’t wait till she goes old and fat in her seat surrounded by soybean pods waiting for a man to materialize through the screen, but what’s wrong with a bit of fantasy, Auntie-in-Law argued, a girl is allowed to dream, and she so did dream a little bit about that boy who’d occasionally walk in, in the darker hours after dinner-time, to rent the genre of films that June herself enjoyed and she took a light joy in recommending cassettes to him, perhaps testing the waters a little bit ‘n seeing what kind of man he was even though June, it’s a mistake to assume these things by someone’s taste in art, and she was always happy to see him return the film, rewound as it should be, agree with June’s assessment, what good taste she must have, and express gratitude for the good recommendations. She wondered why she couldn’t say more, why all of the speeches and expressions she’d learned from the films she studied carefully seemed to dissipate into thin air; things to say that one remembers far too late, when he comes up with his money already in his hand like a small child and instead, she’d giggle a little too much and ramble on about something she’d watched today.
It was another Friday night when June was sitting on her chair watching a bootleg of a comedy program involving a comedian who was bald and a comedian with hair and their attempts to buy clothing for each-other; there are looks of mock irritation towards the bad-boy arctic-camo shorts as the audience laughs in concert and their voices were twisted into a trebly buzz by the over-stressed receiver, and the boy walked once again into the store and said hello to her which demanded her attention. The boy– his hair short in the back but with a delightfully boyish length around the sides, was a little red in his face this time; blushed & flustered, and June wondered if he was sick or something and maybe felt a little panic or a twitch in her arm, and the boy comes closer and with a youthful twang and a trepidation in his mock-deep voice asks June where he’d find those videos, and she felt a little embarrassed herself and then anger started to irritate the edges of her nervous system and her first rash instinct was to slap him with a furious left hand for such a vulgar question, the second instinct to admonish even if it came out of curiosity, a curiosity she felt too when she watched those videos quietly as a glance, a squeamish peek, into a world that had nothing to do with hers, learning what adults are supposed to do behind closed doors, intrusive & grotesque sounds and visions which sometimes would irritate her for months when she imagined the many men who rented them pleasuring themselves in isolation to such images. June cleared her throat, closed her eyes, and opened them up once she was ready to say that he was not old enough to rent them and that those adult materials were not for children.
The boy was slightly confused, knowing full-well that he was absolutely mature enough for such material, well within his legal rights, and he protested just a little too loudly, drawing some odd glances towards him, intoning with brightness that he was of legal age ‘n June glared at him for a good ten seconds before finally relenting and recommending a series by a bespectacled director which was known for his artistic achievements as much as its stark subject matter, a tip passed off as if it were a secret handed down from one little one to another to be kept away from the big ones; she said it with as much contempt as she’d ever felt, and she pointed towards the far-end of the store, her eyes alit with a message: you can’t miss it kiddo, it’s the ones full of tits.
The plastic case which held the cassette tape featured on its front a woman bound in rope, distressed with blushed red skin burning underneath the coarse fibers, and the words “Starring Gorgeous Girl Sylvie” in ostentatious lettering below a title which said Joyless Struggle. The boy felt himself slightly intimidated by both the intensity of its cover and the aggressive stares of June, her head peaking from above the counter with its amateur’s bowl-cut; so he placed the plastic case back on its shelve, “god that bitch is crazy,” and instead, looking for something which seemed more innocuous in its presentation, grabbing a tape bearing a smiling young girl with pigtails and soft features wearing a wet swimsuit; Playing at the Pool written at the bottom in pink letters. He felt a little light-headed seeing her naked body on the back of the insert and yes he knew he was sweating a little bit too, staining his blue good-kid button-up shirt with salty perspiration as he approached the counter once again, his money in his hand, and he looked away in embarrassment after the coins clattered onto the ply-wood surface of the counter but June said abruptly in a soft voice that adult video rentals were cheaper so the boy looked back at the coins, dragged some of the change back into his hand, and slid away with the video, while June watched him go silently, ignoring the questions of a woman who was holding up two cassette tapes and pointing at one of them. This one’s for the journal June, you can already see yourself booting up with the start diskette and angrily crossing your arms while the drive loads 720k slowly but surely and the heat emanating from your head would fog up the raster display with a thin layer of spiteful condensation as you thought about how the boy walked away from the store with a nervous twitch in his step, hoping that no-one he knew would meet him in this alleyway, or on the streets, on the way to his father’s apartment, appearing out of the hazy night fog the white head-lights of cars looking like large disembodied eyes to the boy which traveled towards him at the speed of post-work hour traffic, burning out as he hid himself into the second-story of their low-rent complex which overlooked the main street.
His first exposures to this kinda stuff had been from his father’s collection of magazines, of women from a different era exposing themselves in static perpetuity, motionless with inquisitive glances, beehive hair and thick make-up, images that were rather creepy to the boy as they bore no resemblance to any of the girls he knew in person, none of the girls, particularly not June, would stand so still and dress in such antiquated clothing and yearn with such acquired expertise like statues captured from some forgotten era. The cheap pulpy paper crinkled under his hands, distorting the women’s shapes, and he asked questions in his head addressed to no-one in particular. “Who is she doing this for?” For whom did these women reveal themselves so willingly, smoothen out their limbs and suck in their stomachs, fingers probing so confidently into orifices? He felt a little pathetic, sure, and he certainly did piss June the fuck off, but he’d promised himself that this would be the year he’d grow up, and he’d put aside his childish games and learn the words and images of the world his friends spoke of, the enticing way they described the movement of women’s bodies and the air of maturity, of sophisticated boredom with flesh. He knocked on the door of the apartment before stepping in, hiding the cassette tape in his jacket, and announced that he was home. His father was sitting at the kitchen table with a notebook in his hand, full of frustrated scribbles and aimless doodles, and grunted in acknowledgement but before the boy walked into his room, he added with irritation that dinner was in the fridge and that he’d be stepping out soon for drinking with his co-workers. The boy closed the door behind him, pulled on the string to his desk-lamp which softly illuminated two of the corners of his room with an aging PC system in all its dark-grey cubic horror casting shadows over his made-up bed, and took the cassette tape out of his jacket and placed it in front of his television, examining its pitch-black container and the worn paper label written in professional font above a series of numbers: 8.8.8.8., for a couple of seconds before hiding it behind the VCR and stepping into the bathroom.
He thought about June and her facial expression, the sound of her voice when she was angry and the subtle twitch underneath her nose, as he waited for the water to fill the bath and even though he was quite convinced of his righteous undertaking, to join the symbolic order: the brotherhood of man, he honestly felt really bad about himself and he didn’t know why and he was beginning to worry that June had perhaps already forgotten about him, chatting up mustached boys from his class who drove cars and didn’t need to rent adult videos, who’d heard of the bored foreign girl working at the video store and confidently strode in with a smirk ‘n he jumped a little when his father tapped on the door and said that he was leaving ‘n after his bath he found himself in front of his television once again, unfolding the plastic case of Playing at the Pool and carefully feeding it into the VCR which pulled the rectangular vessel into its cast-die frame with a whining gulp. A quick breath before pressing play on the device itself, a last wind of cool oxygen, and the video started with a burst of sound followed by a quick copyright warning and a computer-animated title sequence, there were tin-drums accompanying synthesized brass which wavered in-n-out of pitch, before the video faded in with shots of the girl swimming by a pool surrounded by palm-trees and brightly lit by an imposing sun ‘n snake-y figures danced on the surface of the water. “Hiii… my name is Sylvie.” She wore a pink swimsuit which hugged her contours salaciously, unlike the image on the plastic case where she was wearing blue, and her pigtails bounced up and down in concert with the rest of her body and she smiled and giggled for the camera which eagerly drew in closer to her body from the back as she used the step ladder to ascend out of the blue depths, her body glistening while the rest of her smooth legs are being revealed with careful exposition ‘n droplets of water dripped onto the mosaic-lined ground. The boy’s mouth was slightly open, a delicate movement in his lips, and he’d placed his hands behind him while his eyes unblinkingly watched the screen, and he felt his body ache a little bit ‘n his chest feeling heavy while she dried herself with a towel, the camera capturing with fond detail the movement of skin and fat as she rubbed the fibers up against herself, she giggled and smiled and she didn’t remind him of June at all, especially when she walked into a seedy pool house and bent forward to stretch her limber body while the camera fixated on her rear, no June wouldn’t do such a thing at all the boy thought to himself, and her face was still smiling and she was still giggling as she undid the strings of her top and the boy felt himself move closer towards the screen as she undressed herself with the same smile, the same giggling, and of course the boy began to touch… oh fuck the pressure he thought, there was a painful blush, rubbing as the girl with the pigtails quietly cooed and moaned while her fingers pressed in spaces which gave in & curved to her touch, that same smile and giggle done with perfection, for someone, and he wondered if June looked like this too when she reclined on a bench on her back opening her legs but he also thought and he couldn’t help this, how many men before him thought about June while watching this, imagining perhaps her face onto this body sans her flaws ‘n that spiteful voice, and he felt really stupid holding the television closer to himself, clawing at it, the glass fogging up with translucent white while jerking and twisting in such a violent rapid motion and feeling even more stupid when after it was all over, and yes it was over no more than ten minutes in as the cold air invaded his throat, he’d quickly ejected the cassette tape while she was in the midst of a squeaky finish– her ghostly image remaining on the screen for a good second or two before he wiped away the webby globules which had shot onto the screen with tissues while trying to hold back tears, a hotness irritated his eyes while the pressure died down, and he wondered if it was too late to take the tape back to the store where June worked at, apologize, and pretend the whole thing had never happened.