Deborah says that “Under the Skin” came to her at a time when she felt overwhelmed by her own pain and anger. The opening scene draws from fantasies of revenge, coupled with twenty years’ experience in the martial arts, and she used these as a springboard to explore “the seductive nature of hatred.” Agatha Christie said in one of her murder mysteries that if you invite evil into your heart, it will make its home there. Deborah adds, “Understanding that hatred, even in a righteous cause, can devour from within is a crucial step in healing.”
Under the Skin
Deborah Wheeler
It could have been a mugging, or some kid on dope roughing up a wino, but when she paused before the darkened alley on the humid July night, something in her guts went zing! and Jodie Marshall knew another woman was in trouble and needed her help. She stepped beyond the Hollywood streetlights and saw two bodies wrestling between the trash cans. Without thinking of the danger she might be putting herself in, Jodie dropped her sweat-soaked karate gi rolled in its black belt and sprinted toward them.
She could not see much more of the man than his back and a thatch of hair, but she did not need to in order to know what was going on. He hunched over his victim, pinning her legs apart with his knees. The woman beneath him moaned, a hoarse, almost animal sound. Her white thighs shone in the darkness.
Jodie’s first kick, a sweeping roundhouse with all the power her kiai could generate, caught the man across the back of his kidneys. Breath burst from him as his spine arched reflexively. His neck snapped back to meet her knife hand at the base of his skull.
The man’s head thwacked against the cracked pavement, bounced, and then lolled from a limp body. Jodie clung to him like a limpet as he fell, and then slid her fingers around to the front of his neck, digging through the layers of muscle for his carotid arteries. The pulse under her fingers felt strong and vital. She wondered what it would be like to press just a little harder.…
It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? No one would ever know it hadn’t happened accidentally during the fight. Just a little more pressure, and the elastic walls of the blood vessels would bend inward, bend and finally collapse…
Temptation swept through Jodie like a wave of sexual heat. She sweated with wanting it.
The heart itself, now so arrogant in life, would begin to falter, beat by beat growing slower and less regular. Then stillness, blessed peace, one less monster to prowl the darkness, giving women nightmares they would carry for the rest of their lives. His brain might cry out as it squandered the last of its precious oxygen supply, but it would be a silent cry. She would never hear it, not even in her dreams. Now she had the chance she’d longed for these past ten years, the chance to get back for what those bastards did to Sherry.
Just a few more moments…
The woman on the ground moaned again. She pushed herself up on her elbows, her face hidden beneath a tangle of darkness.
“C’ mon, we’ve got to get out of here.” Jodie lifted the other woman by one slender wrist. The skin was marble cool under Jodie’s fingers, the bones light and fragile as a bird’s.
“I’ll take you to the hospital—you might be hurt and not realize it. Adrenaline does that to you—” Jodie hurried her out of the alley, pausing only to scoop up her gi.
“No hospital. No police,” the woman said in a low, heavily accented voice. She sounded Russian or Polish, not Hispanic, but Jodie could not place her origin.
“You can’t let that creep walk away, not after what he tried to do. The next woman he jumps might not be so lucky—she might end up dead.”
Jodie realized that she was talking too fast and her fingertips ached from pressing against the woman’s arm. With an effort, she released her grip. It wasn’t the woman’s fault that she had been brainwashed into taking whatever shit this sexist society dumped on her. Or maybe there was another reason.
“You don’t want the authorities to know about you? Are you an illegal or something?”
The woman’s face glimmered in the artificial light—huge shadowed eyes, pointed chin, wine-dark lips. “I need only a place to rest.”
“I can’t just leave you here.” Jodie pointed to her battered Honda at the curbside. “You can stay with me for a few days.”
The woman slid into the front passenger seat. “I shall not overstay my welcome. A few days, as you say.”
Jodie unlocked both locks to her one-bedroom apartment. “C’mon in, sit anywhere. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Mary Smith.”
“Look, I don’t care who you really are or why you want to stay hidden—” Jodie flicked on the lights. “And if you’re dealing, I don’t want to know about it, but we’ve got to call the cops on this.”
Mary Smith sat on the battered sofa covered with an old chenille bedspread. “What good would that do?”
“For one thing, the creep could still be lying there and they’ll pick him up. Even if you don’t press charges, he’ll spend the night locked up instead of assaulting the next woman he comes across. Also for the record, so the cops start believing us about the frequency of rape around here. Every unreported attack puts us that much further from decent protection.”
“As you wish, but it will do no good.”
She was right. The duty officer sniggered, “You did what to him and left him how?” and refused to take the report without Jodie’s name.
Christ, another bozo who doesn’t believe women can fight back, Jodie thought as she hung up.
The next morning Mary Smith was gone. After Jodie dressed for work at the women’s bookstore, she headed for her favorite coffee shop. She was low on funds, as usual, but after last night she deserved a meal she didn’t have to cook herself.
“Hi, Stell.” Jodie slid onto a stool at the counter and picked up the copy of the Los Angeles Times that the last customer had abandoned. “How’s life in the old roach coach?”
“And to you too, Jo. The usual?”
“Yeah, and the coffee up front, please. I had the strangest night—Holy shit.”
The waitress craned her neck around to read the page Jodie laid flat on the counter.
“Some creep got bumped off in an alley. Since when is that news in Hollywood? They figure he was a rapist because his dong was out. Serves the bastard right.”
But he was alive when I left him. I swear he was! Maybe some doper rolled him for his wallet and it had nothing to do with me. But if I hadn’t left him there…
Christ, Jodie, he had it coming. One less macho shit pig in the universe.
He deserved prison, he didn’t deserve to die.…
Jodie bent over her coffee, feeling the warmth seep through fingers grown suddenly cold. She had wanted him dead in the height of her fury. But she had stopped herself from acting on it.
Or had she?
Jodie set down one of the two bags of groceries she carried, unlocked the door to her apartment, and pushed the bag inside with one foot. The reading light over the one comfortable chair was on and Mary Smith sat beneath it, her legs tucked underneath her. Instead of the torn clothing of the night before, she wore a creamy blouse, obviously silk, and black velvet pants. Two expensive-looking suitcases lay in the corner beside the orange-crate bookshelves.
Mary looked up from the book she was reading. “My friend! How glad I am to see you!” she exclaimed.
“Can you give me a hand with these groceries?” Jodie mumbled. “I’m sorry, I’ve only shopped for one.”
Mary got up from the chair in a movement that would stir envy in a dancer. As she took the bag, Jodie smelled her perfume, a dry spicy scent, unfamiliar and disturbing. Mary laughed. “I did not expect you to feed me too! I will put these things away for you—no, let me do just this little thing. You have done so much for me already.”
In the bathroom Jodie pulled off her clothes and stepped into the shower. The hot water beating on her shoulders helped relax the iron tension of the day. She lost track of time, for when she had dried and dressed, s
he found the living room empty. She wolfed down a frozen dinner, flipped the TV on and off a few times, and finally tumbled into bed.
The dream began as an ordinary residue of the day’s events, but soon Jodie found herself walking down a deserted hallway, peering into one doorway after another. As the light faded into shadow, colors took on a strange new richness and all her senses grew sharper. The cold air brought her waves of intoxicating scents; her own heartbeat and the gentle whisper of air in her lungs seemed more compelling than an ocean storm. Finally she reached the last doorway and stopped. She looked down at her hands, to find them spattered with fresh blood. But instead of being horrified, the sight and smell filled her with an almost orgasmic ecstasy, a pleasure so deep that it sent her reeling into terror and she woke up in a cold sweat.
* * *
The next day Jodie awakened feeling as if she’d been on a three-day drunk, her body sodden and unresponsive as she lurched out of bed. She ran cold water down the back of her neck and scrubbed her teeth while she stared into the mirror. You did kill him, she thought despondently. That’s what your subconscious was trying to tell you last night. What are you going to do now? How are you going to live with this?
Jodie decided to make the morning karate workout even if it meant losing a few hours of work. Her boss wouldn’t object, and she badly needed the mind-clearing exercise. She dug out a fresh gi and her belt. The stitched black fabric had gone gray with wear along the sides.
We are taught to revere life, never to use our art for aggression, but only the preservation of that life. But how could I have turned away from everything I believe in for one moment of insanity?
The class was small, and Jodie was the only woman present. Normally this didn’t bother her, although she had gotten some harsh comments from friends who felt that a woman of her rank owed it to her sisters to work out only with other women. Some of the men had an ego problem about a woman who was their rank superior, and she’d had to “accidentally” bloody a few noses during sparring. As sensei led them through the solo exercises, Jodie worked out next to a barrel-chested man named Steve Azusa. Although he smiled hello as usual, white teeth shining in his dark-complected face, she did not return his greeting with her usual glare, What do you think I am, some second-class plaything? She remembered he was a cop, a detective sergeant with the LAPD.
There’s no scarlet letter on your forehead, no token of what you’ve done, Jodie told herself, clinging desperately to her concentration. It’s only your own conscience that says he can see right through you. And why should you care what he thinks? He’s probably an arrogant s.o.b. like the rest of them.
Jodie finished the workout with a long round of sparring with Steve Azusa. She forgot her doubts, forgot the misery of not knowing if she was really a killer. All she saw was his face, as closed and set as her own, but with a hint of good nature in the lift of his eyebrows. With a mind like ice she blocked his moves, spinning to counterattack. Her hands and feet were not bone and flesh, but hammers, knives, claws, as bereft of emotion as the tools they resembled. Finally sensei drew the class together for closing meditation. Jodie sat on her knees, seiza, and felt her heartbeat calm, her thoughts grow still. Sensei clapped three times to end the class.
Got to air this place out, Jodie thought as she unlocked the door. She’d worked late that night to make up for the morning’s karate practice. The air in the apartment tasted flat, as if all the life had gone out of it.
Mary Smith sat on the sofa in a pool of light from the reading lamp. “Ah, my friend, you are so late tonight. You work too hard. I shall treat you to a concert—Holly Near, at the Pavilion—that would please you?”
Jodie shook her head with genuine regret. “I’d love to, but I’m so grubby, and it’s too late for dinner—”
“Not a problem. You dress, and I’ll make you something you can eat on the way. Please let me do this for you, it’s the least I can offer in return for the refuge you’ve given me.”
They sat in the best orchestra seats, waiting for the concert hall lights to dim. Jodie said uncomfortably, “You’re spending rather a lot of money—”
“I would rather not speak of it. Do you intend to tell me—”
“No, I’m just used to paying my own way, usually the cheapest.” I wonder if she uses her money for dope too. That would explain why she bounced-back so quickly after that first night—maybe the new designer crack… “I don’t understand why you don’t have a place to stay,” she continued, somewhat snappishly. “Surely you can afford a hotel.”
“Do you understand that I would rather not be identifiable by the authorities?”
“You’re an illegal alien, then?” And not a dealer?
“Something like that.”
“You should be getting legal help through the Sanctuary movement or the ACLU—”
Mary sighed and laid one hand on Jodie’s. She lowered her voice to a disturbing intimacy. “I have found through the years that there is a certain loyalty which only one woman can give to another.”
“Are you making a pass at me?” asked Jodie, suddenly skittish. She wasn’t turned on by other women, but there was something about Mary…
Mary smiled and withdrew her hand. “I speak of sisterhood, not sexual bonding. Why else would you risk yourself to save a strange woman? Why else do you run a women’s bookstore for a pittance when your skills could bring you much more from a corporation?”
“I didn’t run down that alley because of some politically correct concept of sisterhood,” Jodie answered hotly. “I knew in my guts what was happening, and then I had to help you. I’ve never had the chance to jump a rapist before, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I did. Not enough to take stupid chances, hoping something would happen, but ever since I was sixteen and my very best friend was gang-raped—”
“My dear, you don’t have to tell me this.”
Jodie said through her sudden tears, “I want you to know, to understand why saving you was so important to me. She fought back—and they took after her with chains—and she died. Those incredible bastards—I saw what they did to her
“Thinking about it—I don’t believe I’ll ever be free of it. I had nightmares for years, that it was me being raped and murdered, me instead of Sherry. That’s how I ’got into karate, to stay sane. I would have given anything to save her, but there wasn’t a damned thing I could do. But this time—this time—”
“Hush. More than you can know, I understand the passion of your anger. It is a mirror to my own. Once I was as you, struggling with the brutality of what men had done to the women I loved. My hatred was all that kept me alive.
“See, the lights grow dim. Day’s judgments fade into shadow and the truth emerges, pure as the virgin moon.”
Jodie turned to stare at her companion before the concert made further conversation impossible. Whatever else she might be, this woman she had saved from rape had an extraordinary and disturbing presence.
Put the whole thing behind you now, she told herself Mary is safe, there’s one for Sherry, and that’s the end to it.
For the next month she believed it. Then came another dream of hunting down a darkened corridor, a dream in which the blood on her hands touched a chord of hunger within her. Restlessly she paced the hallway, always stopping before the final door. There was the same smell in the air, the perfume of fear. She drank it in, and it mixed with the smell of the blood and flooded through her, searing her with pleasure.
I’m going crazy, Jodie thought, staring at the newspaper story. How could I kill a second time, and without any conscious memory of it? The first one I could put down to the fury of the moment, getting carried away—It was an accident. But this time—Mary and I were at the ballet—ABT at the Shrine—we came home—I went to bed, I got up this morning—I don’t remember anything in between! Could I have walked—and killed—in my sleep?
Even the tough evening karate class brought Jodie only a parody of calm. One moment she rem
ained convinced of her own guilt, the next she knew with equal certainty that she had not, could not have done such a thing. After the workout, she wiped the sweat from her face with the towel that she kept by the drinking fountain and leaned against the wall, delaying the trip home.
“How about a cup of coffee, on me?”
Jodie scowled reflexively and started to snap back that she didn’t date men, but Steve Azusa continued quickly, “This isn’t a pass, you just look like you could use a friend.”
I can’t keep on like this, she thought. Hiding and lying, I have to find out the truth, and it might as well be from someone I already know.
Over coffee, amplified by doughnuts, Jodie blurted out her story. Steve listened intently, without interrupting her. When she finished by saying, “…and I honestly don’t know if I killed them or not,” he shook his head.
“It’s not my case, but I can tell you this: Those men didn’t die of a blow to the back of the head. I don’t disbelieve you hit the first one hard enough to knock him out, but what actually killed him was some blood disease. The coroner’s had to call in Public Health, and they’re going nuts trying to figure it out.”
Steve swallowed the last of his coffee. “But what if those guys had died from trauma? You’d have made a confession without your Miranda rights.”
“And you’d have to take me in. I guess that’s what I was hoping for, if I’d really done it.”
“Feeling a little guilty?”
“Steve, I wanted to kill that first creep. I was so bone-deep angry there was nothing I would stop at. I know I’m not rational on the subject of rape, but I didn’t know just how far I’d go. I still don’t and that—that frightens me. I can’t go back to thinking I’m a civilized person, not after the way I felt.”
“I won’t jolly you along with speeches about how many normal people feel that way too. A pat on the head won’t make you feel any better. But it’s no crime to want it, only to actually do it. The bottom line is that you didn’t do it, Jo. So get off your own case. If it’s any consolation, I feel the same way about rapists.”
Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine, Volume 2 Page 3
