Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses Spring 5-20-2015 Untitled Alexander Scott Dannemiller Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Fiction Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Dannemiller, Alexander Scott, "Untitled" (2015). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 2392. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.2389 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. Untitled by Alexander Scott Dannemiller A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Thesis Committee: Leni Zumas, Chair Dan DeWeese John Beer Portland State University 2015 i Abstract Deeply concerned with body politics, sexual slavery, identity, and technology, this work takes a serious and brutally honest route through the close perspectives of those living it moment by moment. With influences from science fiction, horror, weird, and literary fiction, the untitled novel blends genres for a disturbing account. This novel also plays with constraints in the spirit of many constraint-based writing movements, without the inclusion of names, few identifying markers, and in publication the removal of title, chapter numbers, page numbers, and author name. ii Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Chapter One ........................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter Two...................................................................................................................... 19 Chapter Three.................................................................................................................... 38 Chapter Four ..................................................................................................................... 58 Chapter Five ...................................................................................................................... 77 Chapter Six........................................................................................................................ 95 Chapter Seven ................................................................................................................. 107 Chapter Eight .................................................................................................................. 119 Chapter Nine ................................................................................................................... 137 Chapter Ten ..................................................................................................................... 152 Chapter Eleven ................................................................................................................ 180 Chapter Twelve ............................................................................................................... 206 Chapter Thirteen ............................................................................................................. 232 Chapter Fourteen ............................................................................................................. 251 Chapter Fifteen................................................................................................................ 272 Chapter Sixteen ............................................................................................................... 287 Chapter Seventeen .......................................................................................................... 313 Chapter Eighteen ............................................................................................................. 331 Chapter Nineteen ............................................................................................................ 343 Chapter Twenty ............................................................................................................... 357 Chapter Twenty-One ....................................................................................................... 371 Chapter Twenty-Two ...................................................................................................... 387 Chapter Twenty-Three .................................................................................................... 403 Chapter Twenty-Four ...................................................................................................... 420 Chapter Twenty-Five ...................................................................................................... 433 Chapter Twenty-Six ........................................................................................................ 445 Chapter Twenty-Seven.................................................................................................... 452 1 Chapter One Up on the ceiling the faint orange light of the city cuts in parallel lines that clamber together when a warm breeze rattles my plastic blinds. Even at night, even with my little desk fan blowing across my body on its max setting, the end of the summer heat makes my skin sticky. My pajama shorts and the sweat-stained and tattered straps of my first bra cling tight to my body. Next to me, shoved aside in frustration, the twisted knot of sheets radiate a heat of their own. I try to ignore all this and stare up at the ceiling repeating my name aloud. Rolling the sound of it across my tongue like the billows of a long summer wind, I extend the vowels, and then shift to imitating a car alarm, a bird, or smoke detector. I say my name quick, several times in a row, making it all one long sound, exhaling and deflating my chest until I’m breathless. The fan eats my voice, blowing my name back into the room, keeping it from escaping through the black screen and out the window. If someone heard me speak my name, it would be a crime and they would come for me, and maybe my mother too, and expel us from the city. And then what? I’m not sure. I don’t know what’s outside the wall. But I continue repeating my name as I toss onto my side where the fan blows on my face. The air it presses against my skin is still warm and will stay warm until the early morning, just a few hours before the sun rises to steal the night’s chill away. I flip one way, then another, swirling in my bed like a straw. I am “stir crazy.” I laugh between the short syllables of my name. My bed springs pop with a dull bungt . One spring refuses to budge and presses against my ribs like a finger. Behind my closed eyes I repeat my name inside my head, letting my throat rest, repeating it as others count sheep. 2 Our kitchen door slams shut. The two sounds of it, from inside the house and through the window, clash together in a thud and clack . I sit up from drifting into sleep and stare at the city light outside through the fan. The slits of light vibrate in the same way dying florescent lights pulse. Their flickering almost calms me back to bed. My mother has left again, or returned, it’s hard to say which from the door alone. I stand and walk into the hall. From somewhere down the stairs a single light tinges the darkness with an amber glow. A ghost pattern, the remnants of the light through my blinds, lingers somewhere behind my eyes, leaving prints of itself everywhere I look. On my way down the hall I glance into my mother’s room and see that it’s empty. Her blinds left open, leaving the city glow to square across her bed with its sheets peeled back, one corner dog-eared. It doesn’t surprise me. All summer she’s left like this, through the back door in the middle of the night. I’ve watched her dark shape disappear around the house, listened as she opened the backyard gate and closed it behind her. She leaves for several hours and sometimes I fall asleep before she comes back. In the kitchen all the lights are on. Her mask hangs from the hook next to my cloak and mask. On the counter her pack of cigarettes sit opened. At the kitchen door I cup my hands around my eyes, the double image of my reflection in the glass does the same, and wait for them to adjust to the darkness. In the black, a dull red light blinks on and off from on top the wall that reaches far above our fence and surrounds the city, the wall itself now hidden by night. She’s out there in the back yard, walking around the edge of the grass, following the perfect lines of our two-story fence and flowerbeds at her feet. Back and forth in the shadow that is her hand swings the glowing end of a cigarette. I step back from the door when she starts to turn. My white bra and shorts glow in the glass 3 reflection. The rest of my body nearly disappears as I step farther and farther away. Under my feet the linoleum tile of the kitchen is warm. When I reach the carpet I turn. The door opens behind me. Even if I ran now she’d know I was up and then she’d come to my room and ask what I was doing. So I stop. She takes off her cloak and hangs it, lifting the mask, and then putting it back down on top of the cloak. Her shoes are already off. I didn’t notice them there, next to mine, but they sit in a perfect line. She’s wearing tan mid-thigh shorts