Self-Defense by Jonathan Kellerman

to:
    Clarity
    Chastity
    Priapisty
    Buggery
    Butchery
    Prepared perfectly for truncation:
    Hone the bone. Toss the I Ching,
    then toss the rules out the window.
    The title poem was an empty black page.
Several other pieces seemed no more than random collections of words, and a
six-page poem entitled Shaht-up consisted of four four-line verses in a language that
a footnote explained was “Finnish, stupid.”
    The final piece was printed in letters so
tiny I had to strain to read them:
    Slung and arrowed, she begs for it.
    Shitsmear idiocy—who does she think she
is?
    Snap.
    To give up!
    Snap.
    Just like that—
    LIKE THAT
    Easy to see why the book hadn’t worked—and
why it had enchanted Trafficant.
    I pictured him poring over it in his cell,
then rushing to Lowell’s defense.
    His motive would have been more than
shared literary taste. With a few supportive words, he’d bought himself early
parole.
    I reread the final poem.
    A woman begging for it, then scorned for
giving up.
    Classic male rape fantasy?
    Lucy’s incubus...
    The abduction imagery in the dream.
    Had she come across this dreadful little
book, perhaps as part of her brother’s “roots” research?
    Reading it and identifying with the
victim?
    Or what if the dream represented something
more personal—being molested herself?
    At the voir dire, she’d denied ever having
been a crime victim. But if it had happened long ago and she’d repressed it,
she wouldn’t have remembered.
    The dream had started right after she’d
listened to Milo testify about Carrie.
    Identifying with a child victim.
    Abused in childhood, not by her father—he
hadn’t been around to do it—but by a father surrogate? A teacher or some other
trusted adult?
    Other men in the dream—melding with her
father because he had hurt her in another way?
    I thought of her waking up on the kitchen
floor.
    The helplessness of the position.
    Victimization.
    Or maybe none of the above.
    I wrestled with it a while longer, got no
further, and went back inside. Remembering the radio broadcast I’d heard in the
car, I flipped TV channels till I found a news show. Something about Eastern
Europe; then Shwandt’s face appeared, leering, over the anchor’s left shoulder.
    “Police in Santa Ana are investigating the
mutilation slaying of a young woman, still unidentified, whose body was found,
stuffed in a trash bag, by the side of the Santa Ana Freeway early this morning
near the Main Street exit. Sources close to the investigation say the slaying
bears striking similarities to the serial murders for which the Bogeyman, Jobe
Shwandt, was recently sentenced to death, and the possibility of a copycat
killer operating out of Orange County is being considered. More on this
breaking story as details emerge.”
    Too much bad stuff, time to sweat it out
of my system. Pretending my knees were eighteen years old, I took a hard jog on
the beach. When I got back, the phone was ringing. My service with Lucy, again.
    “Dr. Delaware? I’m... calling from work. I
had a... bit of a problem.” Her voice dropped so low I could barely hear it.
Noise in the background didn’t help.
    “What happened, Lucy?”
    “The dream. I... had it again.”
    “Since this morning’s session?”
    “Yes.” Her voice shook. “Here. At work, at
my desk.... God, this is so—I have to talk softly; I’m at a pay phone in the
lobby and people are staring. Can you hear me?”
    “I hear you fine.”
    She caught her breath. “I feel so stupid ! Falling asleep at my desk !”
    “When did this happen?”
    “Lunch hour. I was brown-bagging, trying
to catch up. I guess I nodded off, I don’t know, I really don’t remember.”
    “Had you taken any sort of medication?”
    “Just Tylenol for a headache.”
    “No antihistamines or anything else that
would make you drowsy?”
    “Nothing. I just... fell asleep.” She
whispered: “It must have woken me up—I found myself on the floor, my legs...
the dream was still in my head,