Grotesque

Prologue

Eleanor Shaw has never once entered a room unnoticed, and tonight is no different.

The SoHo gallery is her kind of place — expensive, crowded, and curated to look dangerous.

Misshapen sculptures catch the light at wrong angles.

Paintings line the white walls like nightmares ripped out of someone’s skull and hung for sale.

The crowd is a collision of beautiful people and even more beautiful weirdos.

Eleanor moves through it all with the ease of a woman who has been the most interesting person in every room she has entered for forty years, and has stopped finding it remarkable.

She sips wine from a plastic cup. She has always liked that about art openings, the democracy of the plastic cup. It's about the art, not the people hoping to be seen buying it.

Eleanor takes another deep sip and pauses at a table of intimate wood carvings.

The artist is young — late twenties, heavily tattooed, watching her from the corner of his eye the way young men always watch her, both intimidated and attracted at the same time.

Eleanor picks up one of the carvings.

It’s an abstract face made from reclaimed wood, the weathered pieces stacked in hard geometric blocks. Eleanor turns the piece over in her hands, delighted by how much attention went into something so strange.

She sets it down. Picks up another piece. A grotesque tree.

This one she keeps.

She carries it to the register and pays without inquiring about the price. Curious glances follow her as she heads for the exit with her newly acquired prize.

The night air hits her on the way out.

Eleanor Shaw knows this city well. She has outlasted several versions of this neighborhood and expects to outlast several more.

Eleanor begins her long walk uptown. Calling a ride never even enters her mind. The distance doesn’t faze her. She enjoys the city too much at night. Manhattan has been her home for sixty-three years. She has never regretted her decision to leave the small town she’d grown up in for the big city.

A few blocks later, she spots a homeless man in a nearby doorway. She has always noticed the folks on the margins, the outsiders, the weirdos, the losers.

She crosses to the man without hesitation.

The grizzled figure looks up at her, eyes cloudy with alcohol, a crooked grin plastered on worn features. Bleary eyes study Eleanor appreciatively through a haze of inebriation.

Eleanor pulls a hundred dollar bill from her coat. Crouches down to his level, places the bill in his hat and leans in close.

She whispers something into his ear, and the homeless man's eyes go wide.

Eleanor straightens, the faintest smile touching her mouth.

And that is when she feels something move behind her.

She turns?—

The fist catches her across the side of the face, and Eleanor Shaw goes headfirst into the asphalt.

The sharp impact of her jaw connecting with sidewalk stuns her. She tastes copper as the world goes blurry.

Her attacker looms above her. White ski mask, coat stained with dirt, eyes she cannot read through the haze. The mugger is already going through her coat, her purse, her pockets.

Eleanor's mouth moves.

She is trying to say something. The words come out damaged, her lips swelling already, her teeth tasting of blood. But she keeps mouthing words, driven by muscle memory more than conscious thought.

The mugger goes still.

Looks at her with fear in his gaze.

The masked man reaches into his coat and removes a hammer.

Stares down at Eleanor for one frozen moment.

“Shut up!”

Eleanor’s bloody lips keep forming words we can’t make out.

“Shut the fuck up!”

The masked man’s eyes narrow as he brings the hammer down on her mascara-smeared face.

Again and again and AGAIN.

A mad, savage frenzy. Blood sprays.

The homeless man watches helplessly from the doorway.

He sees the hammer come down once, recoils and averts his gaze, unable to watch the savage spectacle. He does not look back until the sound of the hammer pounding flesh has stopped.

By then, voices are rising from across the street. Footsteps slap the pavement. The mugger is already gone, swallowed by the dark.

The homeless man stares at Eleanor Shaw lying on the pavement.

Even in death, she holds the same strange gravity she carried into every room.

He cannot look away as her blood spreads into the gutter, catching the streetlight as it moves slowly toward the drain.