(TW: ableism, ageism, slut-shaming)
We start out the chapter in Vlasic Dill Beaver Cleaver’s viewpoint (OK, his name is actually Oren Paige), “traveling up the clean, wide street to the stately mansion.” Because only rich people have clean, wide streets, amirite? Methinks we’re in for a little wealth porn here to contrast with the poverty porn of Azrael’s slum-set life.
Of course, the neighborhood where Stately Cleaver Manor is located has almost no crime because money, which the writer uses Oren to associate with the needed privacy to commit multiple hideous murders without detection. Fair enough; in most countries you get exactly the kind of justice you pay for.
The next paragraph tells us Oren opened the gate with a passkey (why not just a key? Who knows). He also indulges himself in some age-appropriate but what is presented as unmanly behavior by skipping up a walkway and giggling. No alpha male would skip or giggle.
By the way, that “alpha male” phrase that the author uses on her website for all her male heroes (as far as I can determine), her ideal romantic hero? The alpha male concept is based on a study of wolf behavior from 1970 by David Mech, building on earlier studies of wolves in captivity. Mech has been trying to get the publisher to stop printing his book because the information is no longer accurate, including the idea of the alpha male wolf. In the wild, most wolf packs consist of a family unit: father, mother, babies, not a pack full of strangers that are dominated by the strongest male. There are strong males, but it’s not a constant dominance battle.
So basically every werewolf fantasy series is based on outdated, discredited information about wolves so they can worship the ideal of the alpha male. Just FYI.
Anyway, Oren’s happy because of the imprisoned sex worker in the basement that everyone in his family is busy torturing. Everything’s big in this house—the “cavernous” foyer and the “massive” dining room—because rich. If they’re this rich, why don’t they have servants? I know it would interfere with the sex worker torturing, but people this rich don’t shift for themselves.
The formal dining room is where his Aunt Dory is. Of course they have one of those long Citizen Kane dining room tables, and she’s sitting at the end, drinking and talking to herself. Talking to yourself is not necessarily a sign of mental illness, but Oren gets worried because he sees blood on her hands. Why would this worry him? He’s already told us his aunt and uncle are all in on the sex worker torture/murder front, so this has to be something he’s seen before.
The writer also takes this opportunity to refer to Oren’s state of mind as “deranged.” Tell me what’s the difference between him and Azrael? They’re both murderers who look down on sex workers and love butchering other people. Yet one is deranged and one is chosen by God.
His uncle’s in the nearby study, naked except for boxers with his “withered member” hanging out. Hang on, Uncle Myer’s got gray hair but he doesn’t sound like he’s that old if his nephew’s in his early teens. Oren takes a second to connect with his inner Wesley and “let his rage boil.” The proximate cause of Wesley’s signature emotion is his aunt and uncle’s “ignorance and slovenly ways.” So he’s even more like Azrael that we previously had reason to believe, taking into account her constant phobia about filth in Awakening, to the extent that she believed a clean shirt was filthy and that filth and its variations were Foster’s third-favorite word.
Oren’s willing to put up with it because they provided him the means to murder sex workers and get away with it, so he pushes everything aside and goes down to the basement. The route he takes confirms the fact that this rich family doesn’t have any servants, although they have an elevator down to the “unused servants’ quarters.” The house is described as stone and magnificent because rich, but no actual details of architectural style are provided which would give us information to form a mental picture of Stately Cleaver Manor. I suspect they won’t be, either.
So he gets to the “deep bowels” of the house, and is described as leaving the elevator, passing through the game room, and entering the extra storage area. Even the basement is posh. When he gets there, he finds his victim dead. He comes to the obvious conclusion that his aunt and uncle killed her while he was out hunting for a replacement. There’s some gratuitous slut-shaming here about the nameless sex worker, who’s suspended from restraints “in an obscene sprawl.” She’s covered with bruises and there’s semen all over her thighs and abdomen, which disgusts Oren. The torture instruments aren’t spit-shined and in their assigned places, so he has a short mental bitch about that.
He picks out a riding crop that the author takes pain to describe as “short” and “vicious” (hello, Christian Gray) and goes upstairs to deal out some whoop-ass to his immediate family. His aunt’s still drinking in the dining room so it’s ladies first, I guess.
He paused in the doorway, letting his rage ripen. As he calmly entered the dining room, prepared to dispense with his own form of justice, she finally looked up.
You cannot seem calm while being filled with rage the way the writer described. Rage emanates from a person like heat—you can always tell when violence is on the way, even if you’re denying it to yourself. And “dispense with his own form of justice” means he isn’t going to apply said form of justice. “Dispense with” means get rid of (as an example, “dispense with the pleasantries” means get down to business). If it was “dispense his own form of justice,” then he’d be about to deal out the whoop-ass.
There’s an implication that there’s something up with his clothes (earlier it was mentioned he’s wearing a disguise) because Aunt Dory looks at them before looking at his face but doesn’t have the nerve to say anything. Let me guess: the writer’s taking a page out of the movie Orphan or that Bugs Bunny cartoon with Baby Face Finster and Oren’s actually a grown man. Place your bets.
That does make sense since the imagery used for the aunt and uncle seems older than it would for a couple whose nephew is in his early teens.
So we’re told Aunt Dory’s fat (which the writer apparently hates, as witness the borderline pro-ana with Azrael) and can’t make it out of a chair quickly and starts whining at Oren and refusing to take personal responsibility, to which he responds by giving her a good hit with the crop on the shoulders, and then a couple more because he’s getting his inner Christian Gray on. She starts screaming and wakes up Uncle Myer, who comes in. Get ready for this next part.
Seeing the depraved man he called “Uncle” by need, only incensed Oren further. He turned his back on Dory. Myer’s flaccid and overused cock hung out from open unwashed boxers.
A perfect target.
Uncle Myer backed up, but not fast enough. The crop lashed across his lap (my note: you don’t have a lap if you’re standing up), cutting into exposed flesh and causing a dehiscent burst of blood and screams.
Ultrasonic Carousel: Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen! Our first guest is appearing on this show in place of the Oxford American Dictionary, who was unable to join us tonight. Please give a nice warm welcome for Merriam-Webster! (Applause)
Merriam-Webster: It’s a pleasure to be here, Carousel.
UC: And a pleasure to have you here. Now, our first question is “dehiscent.”
MW: (Chuckles) Where in the world do you get these?
UC: It’s a long story. Three books long, in fact.
MW: Dehiscent means “to split along a natural line” or “to discharge contents by so splitting.” What was the context?
UC: Uhhh…someone split a man’s penis open with a riding crop.
MW: (Side-eyes the host. Silence stretches out.)
UC: Well, we’re going to a commercial now, and when we come back, we’ll continue our discussion with Merriam-Webster! (Outro music)
The preceding paragraphs indicate that Oren isn’t related to Dory and Myer. Maybe a Chinatown situation here. Too soon to tell.
Anyway, after he gets through with the whoop-ass, he brings up the problem of body disposal, which I would think they’d already have down pat by now, since it doesn’t seem like this was the first victim. But maybe it is, because the aunt and uncle don’t seem to understand the necessity and Oren has to clue them in about decomposition and rigor mortis. There’s also a passing mention that his voice isn’t as deep as he wanted, so maybe it’s a double fake on Orphan and Oren’s really an adult woman? But my bet is still that Oren’s an adult.
Oren’s hair is down and is long, which I’m thinking supports the adult woman theory. Foster did a little research about rigor mortis when she has Oren say, “It only takes a couple of hours for it to start, and by tomorrow morning she’ll be in a complete state of rigor mortis. Then we’ll have to wait for the proteins in her muscles to decompose. It could take several days.”
The source I checked lists two to six hours as how long it can take to set in and can last from 24 to 84 hours. Caution would dictate Oren’s using the earliest onset and latest departure times, but it also depends on how cold or hot the environment is. A stone house with a basement in a cold environment would retard the onset, and a hot humid climate would accelerate it. The earlier times also serve to keep Dory and Myer under control.
Dory’s horrified by the idea of having a decomposing corpse in the house for days and Oren likes that, so he pushes her by threatening to lock her in the never-before-mentioned wine cellar with the corpse. You would think that would be cool enough to stave off rigor mortis for a while, but moving on.
Oren has enough feeling for his wife to agree with Oren to end the conflict. While he’s doing that, he also:
…examined his now swollen and cut member. Seeing the abuse inflicted on the old shriveled appendage, his mouth trembled.
Things This Series Hates:
- Old people, especially with tumors
- Women who have sex if it’s not with a “special someone”
- People cursing
So now that they’ve agreed to his plan, he tells them to wrap the corpse in a blanket and he’ll bring the car around so they can put it in the trunk. Dory asks him he if wants to change and he says no, as it’s better if he’s seen like this. By sheer happenstance, the garage of Stately Cleaver Manor is right next to the storage area where the body is, so no chance of anyone seeing them. How lucky!
Anyway, they leave to begin the corpse disposal and Oren’s really feeling the need for someone to “dominate, to prove his mastery.” That sounds like Wesley. I think I’m right about the Orphan/really a girl angle, because in the last book there seemed to be particular venom for women who don’t behave in a proper, demure, feminine manner.
Oh, I hope Foster didn’t pull a J.K. Rowling and make Oren trans. It will make me mad if Oren is trans. Well, we’ll deal with that if and when it happens.
Then we get into some of his backstory, which seems to parallel Azrael’s, although the writing is as muddy as ever. It appears that he was brought up in foster homes, based on the line “He’d once been a child on his own, passed from one house to another.” It’s really annoying that I can’t trust anything implied by the writing because it’s so unclear that any changes can be made at any time. Why, yes, I am still bitter about Azrael’s inconsistent backstory. How did you guess?
We get a little more detail on the aunt and uncle, mostly from the descriptors sick, twisted, perverted, and weak, so this definitely implies sexual abuse happened at some point before Oren managed to get the upper hand.
A lot of first-time killers decide to dismember the body, wrap the parts in garbage bags, and scatter the bags randomly throughout whatever city they live in. This does have the benefit of possibly delaying discovery and/or identification. But that’s a little too much for them, so Oren decides that they need to dump the body in the nearby nameless river, which has never been mentioned as part of this nameless city. The only clue about where we might be is that there are carp and catfish in this nameless river that he hopes will eat the body and thinks that he can get access to the river through some of the bad neighborhoods.
Just in case anyone thinks this eliminates Phoenix, Arizona, as the location for the series, Phoenix has two main rivers, the Salt River and the Verde River. While carp and catfish are not found in the Verde River, they are found in the Salt River.
Oren takes charge and pretty soon they’re in a black Mercedes because rich and on the way to the river. Do they even have anything with them to weigh down the body? It’s a cloudy night with a little bit of moon and he’s brooding on how he needs someone to dominate and thinks he needs a new “tramp.” Perhaps the word whore could have been used here for clarity, as tramp is a synonym for hobo or bum as well as for a woman who isn’t chaste, and whore is a word that’s not shied away from in this book.
Anyway, Oren decides to find a new victim tomorrow and thinks:
Nothing could get in his way. Not even the skinny bitch with the spooky, perspicacious eyes.
UC: And we’re back with Merriam-Webster! Next question is perspicacious.
MW: That means “of acute mental vision or discernment.”
UC: So her eyes have acute vision?
MW: Apparently.
UC: Marriam-Webster, everyone!
There’s a section break and we’re back in Azrael’s POV. And there was much rejoicing.
She’s written a few chapters of her new graphic novel and has been locked in her room all day. So I suppose she isn’t driven like she was in the last book, when she could create a complete 350-page manuscript from blank paper to publishable product in 12 hours, artwork, storyline, lettering, inking, coloring, everything in less than a day. Of course she hasn’t eaten any meals, either, in case you thought the writer might have backed off from the anorexia overtones.
Apparently the name of the comic book’s heroine is Servant—how ass-kickingly feminist—and the series is “mega-popular” with the “underground crowd” and now it’s somehow popular with “everyone,” despite the fact that only a few weeks have passed. Morty’s already said that business is slow because he doesn’t have a new issue out—does that mean he only has one run printed and once it’s sold out that’s all, regardless of how much demand is still there? That would make sense as he said in the first book that they’re collector’s items, but he’s doing himself–and her–out of a lot of money if he restricts himself to one print run. Was underground popularity not good enough for our Jerk Sue? She also refers to Servant as an “idol” for the readers. Arrogance—the heroine’s favorite sin.
Is it wrong that I’m picturing Servant (in the absence of any authorial description) as Aeon Flux? You know, the cartoonish assassination expertise and the ridiculously unrealistic body proportions? I would really enjoy it if Azrael caught a fly with her eyelashes.
Then we get some backstory about how Azrael’s the Super Sekrit writer of this series and nobody knows at all because she’s so much smarter than everybody else, I guess. She does call herself “a homely, lonely, antagonistic bitch,” in a moment of clarity.
Wesley of course could see through it (although not the homely part, as he’s never once called her or thought of her as beautiful or even pretty) and she starts some mental wanking over him that’s pretty boring so I’m mostly skipping it. She thinks he’s a “real-life hero,” though on what basis I have no idea other than thirteen-year-old hormones kicking in for the first time eight years late.
Anyway, she’s got a bunch of early adolescent feelings roiling around about seeing Wesley again, the way he demanded, and is questioning his motives for wanting another meeting. I’d think it was obvious, Azrael; he hasn’t fucked you yet so you can’t be allowed to escape before he overcomes the challenge you represent.
Then we get a little scene setting where the writer calls the location a “motel” in one paragraph and a “whorehouse” four paragraphs later (but three of the paragraphs are one sentence). This is of a piece with Morty’s residence being both an “apartment building” and a “two-family structure.” Remember Red Betty with the missing teeth? In the text, these are referred to as “side teeth.” Unless your head is a dodecahedron, you have front teeth and back teeth. It’s just unsettling and bothersome for me to read an author who can’t use the correct word for ordinary things. I’m not sure if this is a reflection on Foster’s competence as a writer or just her obvious and complete lack of desire to write this series.
We get a throwaway comment about “lewd displays in the stairway and foyer” and rooms where the door isn’t closed. That tells us this is a movie brothel rather than a real one. Any cop driving by could roust the place based on all the lewdness the writer says is going on, because there’s a difference between public displays of affection and public sex. That is the reason you have rooms and close the doors. If you’re going to go the public sex route, you might as well not bring them back and just do your business in the alley the way Wesley likes.
She puts in earphones (that answers a question from the first book) of the digital audio player (which is written as one word, so apparently the person editing for typos in the first book isn’t involved with this one), listening to and loving the music. Please be advised that on page 116 of Awakening, Azrael said she didn’t like music. But because Wesley gave it to her, she now does. Women are clay, you see, and don’t have preferences independent of what men want them to have. Just as a quick aside, when she said she didn’t like music in the last book, she was saying it to Wesley, so he deliberately gifted her with something he knew she didn’t like so he could begin the process of remaking her to his specifications. Who says romance is dead?
Then she tries to do the headwork about Ghostface. I thought it was pretty simple—she fucked with Carver, everybody knew it, and he decided he had to kill her to save face. She’s mostly mad that he dared to try taking her out and vows to make him pay.
Azrael’s cogitation is interrupted by Bliss showing up with a besuited trick, and we get some insight into what she thinks of men who patronize sex workers.
…men who, thanks to sickness, debauchery, loneliness, or misguided emotion, sought them out.
So it’s sick to pay for sex? Thanks for letting us know. Shame you don’t think it’s sick to jam a knife between an old woman’s legs and rape her to death with it, you judgy hellbitch. Rest secure in the knowledge of the undeserved happy ending you will be gifted by the author once you straighten up and become a proper female.
Now Bliss is getting provisional angel imagery. Azrael mean-mugs Brooks Brothers Trick and Bliss has to calm him down before going into the room. We get some musing about why Azrael is fond of Bliss, although, as I’ve said before, her hostility looks just like her friendship.
Her musing is interrupted by the movie-Buffy monster cramps and she knows she needs to go a-killing for God. The next thing she thinks is that she’s going to have to reschedule her meeting with Wesley and that he will be angry. She doesn’t put any importance on it, though, because when is he not?
Some nameless sex workers are concerned about her and Azrael gets worried that she’s popping vamp face. Total transparency: it isn’t technically vamp face, but there’s a lack of specificity in the description of it, and it amuses me to call it vamp face, so vamp face it is.
We find out that Red Betty has a thick accent. An accent from where? Fuck you, that’s where. Azrael is, as goes without saying, hostile as hell and completely disrespectful and nasty in the face of concern. Bliss shows up even though fewer than five minutes ago she was taking a trick into a room. Azrael wasn’t screaming or anything, so what got her out of the room? Brooks Brothers Trick (I guess) uses the word “ain’t” so he’s not quite as upscale as he’d like you to believe.
Azrael takes off and the whorehouse phase-shifts into a motel again. And we finally get a proper introduction to her Ford Falcon! When we then find out she keeps the keys to her car in the hubcap. Even though it’s rusty and crappy-looking, that car would have been gone five minutes after she parked it there, but she’s Jerk Sue, so her Falcon goes unmolested.
Plus, somehow she knows this kill mission is too far away to walk, even though in the first book she had no idea how far away any of her targets were. She just followed the psychic GPS. There’s no reason she should know the distance now.
Here we find out she has no driver’s license and no other ID whatsoever. That settles it—Morty sends cash through the mail for her comic book royalties, because you can’t cash a check or money order without some kind of ID. One of my friends has a relative who used to work in the post office and advised that it’s very easy to tell by feel if an envelope has cash in it and alluded to the fact that some of those cash-laden envelopes don’t always make it to their destination, which is why you don’t send cash in the mail.
Having no ID presents any number of additional problems that I doubt if the author will be willing to deal with. How did she buy that car if she had no ID? It has to have plates and stickers and the title had to be transferred, even if it was a cash purchase. Even if she inherited it from Father Acute-Interest-in-Teenagers, the title has to be transferred. These are the issues relating ONLY to the ownership of this car. I’m not even going into renting an apartment or getting any kind of job.
Plus, Wesley could have run Azrael in for vagrancy the first time they met, if he’d asked for ID and she had none and no cash. But I kid—why would that have been different than the other four times he failed to arrest her?
She does about three-quarters of a page of philosophizing over her calling and talent when the movie-Buffy monster cramps go away. She panics because she thinks Wesley’s around (he’s her psychic Midol) or that she’s missed her chance to kill. What? If you miss the chance, the pain just goes away? You spent the entire last book and part of this one talking about how if you got locked away you’d be in hideous, unending pain for the rest of your life because you wouldn’t be able to kill. Why in the holy hell are you killing when the pain will go away if you just wait long enough? Dumbass! And there is no reason for her childhood to have been a hell of constant pain if all she had to do was sit on her ass and wait, but retconning is a thing around Sunnydale.
Azrael finds herself outside town. From the writing anyway, which lists “wide open spaces,” “scrub brush,” and “dead trees.” She spends half a page thinking about Wesley and his effect on her before she can pull herself together enough to get out of the car. When we learn that she is indeed near the nameless river, which I am calling the Salt River. She thinks it has a “foul odor,” which makes sense because she thinks everything is filthy. She also mentions it’s humid, but according to the timeline between the first and second books, it should be late August at the earliest and early to mid-October at the latest.
Somehow Azrael has never missed a killing chance before, which goes against some implications in her thinking in the first book, but whatever. She’s puzzled, trying to figure out what God wants from her.
Had God given her a unique directive? Perhaps, this time, He wanted something aberrant, something other than a total destruction of evil about to corrupt.
Anyway, Azrael starts walking toward the river and, as comes as no surprise to any reader, finds the body of the murdered sex worker from Stately Cleaver Manor on the riverbank. She observes the body’s bloated and has been there for at least a day and wonders what this has to do with her. Then she comes to the conclusion that it might be someone she knows and her first thoughts are for Wesley and Morty, despite the fact that the body is naked and not a man’s.
The body’s all cut up (a mutilated breast specifically) and bruised, although Oren didn’t mention cuts at Stately Cleaver Manor, just bruises and we learn in a throwaway manner that the dead woman was white. Azrael finally recognizes the body as a sex worker she knows but isn’t friendly with and suspects Carver. The sex worker’s name was Lucy, and she had bleached hair that the other sex workers razzed her about and brown eyes. Lucy. Loosey. Loosey-goosey. A loose woman. How sweet of the writer.
Azrael does some brief, insincere mourning and then gets all mad and decides to avenge her. Protecting her would have been better, but I guess she can take whatever you can fit into your schedule, huh?
She looks around some more, wants Wesley for company, and somehow cleans her boots without having any way of doing that. Then she finally leaves to get her car washed and clean evidence out of the inside. How essential to the plot.
When she gets back to the hotel, she’s channeling her inner Wesley and furious at everything because a sex worker she barely knew and considered herself superior to has been murdered. I think it’s because the murderer managed to do this right under her nose, so her pride is injured. Bliss tries to find out if she’s okay and she’s hostile as usual, until she notices Jimbo Kern’s watching. Bliss hears a stray cat and wants to know if it looked hungry, so I officially love Bliss now because you know if she can find that cat it has a home. Then Azrael asks her when she last saw Lucy, which is supposed to be a cliffhanger but doesn’t really cut it.
And—scene! This chapter had one saving grace, and that was its lack of Wesley. Also Bliss loves cats and her grammar has gotten much better since the previous book, for no reason we’re given.
Next time, chapter 5, where Wesley’s furious and Oren auditions replacements for Lucy.
Ultrasonic Carousel 