Gilded Cage

Home Raker: Episode One

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Home Raker is a “thriller burlesque” novella in progress, spawned from vitriol, and serialized at a diabolically measured pace to allow for proper execution of plot elements and intrigue. And to torture you, obviously.

If you can’t STAND the pacing of this project, you can always return when it’s complete. But I hope some of you will choose to bear witness to its development in real time. It’s going to be messy. But that’s half the fun!

This story is stationed behind my paywall because it’s a true work-in-progress. Translation: it’s as likely to be a raging success as an epic failure. It also contains naughty bits that some readers may find offensive. Think sex, drugs, murder, profanity, melodrama, and sex.

If you’re a FOREVER subscriber and you’d “rather not” partake in this offering, no worries. You can toggle off the Home Raker section in your subscription settings to avoid receiving future chapters in your inbox. 💜

As for the rest of you brave souls, I say come as you are, stay if you please, let loose, go hard, and embrace the beautiful mess that is Home Raker.

Content Warning: Graphic depictions of desperate housewives, disappointing husbands, property damage, a really gross murder and [other madness].

1. Gilded Cage (updated 1/8/24)

“Harold Raker is dead.”

Celeste’s throat closes shamefully over the last word. That won’t do.

“Harold Raker is dead,” she says again, more forcefully into the bathroom mirror. Her stomach twists with guilt and she drags her hand across her eyes.

Bone dry. She laughs ironically.

Repeated eye jobs have rendered her tear ducts useless.

Her voice can still give her away.

“Harold Raker.” She stops to breathe. In and out. “Is dead.” She forces the corners of her mouth to remain neutral, her EuthaDermed lips not to pout as her insides burn with remorse, with longing, and with a desire so strong it forces its way out of her mouth through a gagging sob.

She doubles over and vomits the remains of her last meal into the sink. She praises herself for adhering to her liquid diet of AnnaRx shakes and green juice, despite the increased appetite for solid food Harold has given her. As she heaves, her mind drifts defiantly to a delicious moment.

Harold’s calloused hand feeding her.

Her delicate hand consumed elsewhere.

She rinses her substance-less sick down the drain and brushes her luminescent veneers. Her husband’s idea of a fortieth birthday present.

Rutherford Martinvilleburgson, the third. Ruth to his friends.

In high school he went by Ruthie and somehow escaped being mocked for it. He had them all eating out of his hand. Even then.

Celeste couldn’t resist taking the bait. And now …

Harold Raker is dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Her eyes beg for tears that won’t come.

She strips naked, taking care not to let the blood on her clothes find its way onto the Bianca Dominati tile floor.

She showers. The water mocks her. Kisses her shoulders, her back, her breasts. Warm, pelting, loving, hungry. She claws at her eyes, hoping to break the seal on her catharsis and let it rain under the cover of lavender scented steam. But she’s denied this release. As she’ll be denied every release.

Save the ones she can give herself.

Her phone pings incessantly from the edge of the sink. They’ll only tolerate being ignored for so long before they start banging on her door.

Not the police. They’ve been here already. She called them herself, not knowing what else to do.

Celeste told them the truth.

That she found Harold … that horrible way … on the lawn upon returning home from Suicide Spin class. His taut, tanned flesh skewered like grilled meat. His abdomen ruptured. His chiseled jaw slack. His skilled tongue lifeless, void of warmth.

No, she didn’t see it happen.

No, she didn’t know who could have done it.

No, he wasn’t a bad man.

Did he have any enemies?

…

No, her husband isn’t at home. He’s on a campaign tour. With his campaign manager and whichever of his interns hasn’t quit over his lecherous advances. He’ll be back tonight and more than happy to answer any of their questions.

And perhaps a few of her own.

Wrapped in a pristine white towel, Celeste ritualistically applies her makeup, starting with a thick, ivory base that removes every hint of her humanity. Then she paints each curve and hollow and sign of life back into place, accentuating the areas that make her a prize to be won. The areas that make her a woman to be loved she leaves buried. Deep.

As deep as the Sequoia Timber rake handle that sodomized Harold Raker to death on her back lawn.

Her gut threatens to empty itself again. She breathes deeply and blots her lipstick on her towel. Renata will scold her for the stain. Not that she’ll be back any time soon. Celeste let her go home this morning. It seemed the kindest thing to do given the trauma she’d experienced that day. And she didn’t need the police asking about Renata’s legal status.

Of course, she’s not legal. In any sense of the word. Ruth prefers them that way. They don’t talk outside of school, and if he’s lucky, they don’t resist when he invites them to his office to discuss the terms of their employment over a Scotch-fueled game of coddle the underperforming salami.

Celeste eyes her pale, contoured face in the mirror and resents the satisfaction her reflection brings.

Perfect.

She grits her teeth against a powerful urge to scream.

The doorbell rings, and she takes out her hairdryer.

The next fifteen minutes she drowns out their shouts, their hollow insults, under the droning blast of electric heat.

The calls resume. A trail of profanity-laced voicemails and texts left like flaming tote bags of designer dog shit on her porch.

She’s heard it all before.

Jealousy follows her everywhere, like a deranged disciple, bent on becoming and then destroying her completely.

Bring it on.

She scorches, twists, and bends her platinum locks into alluring submission. She frowns at the negligible evidence of her silver-salted, auburn roots peeking from behind the gossamer curtain.

Ruth will insist she go to the salon for a re-touch.

Harold always insisted she get back to her roots.

She weaves her fingers into her hair, close to her virgin scalp, and pulls until it hurts.

While she has no plans to leave her house tonight, she dresses to be seen. A navy pencil skirt with a generous slit along her left calf. A sleeveless, cashmere turtleneck, red, and a draping ivory cardigan. Four-inch heels. 24K gold earrings. Blood diamond tennis bracelet. And underneath it all, something brutally desirable for her husband to turn his back on later.

It will be her fault, as always.

Her hands shake as she collects her blood-stained clothes from the bathroom floor, holding them at arm’s length while wanting desperately to embrace them. To inhale whatever essence of her butchered lover remains in the fibers. She hurries down the stairs and past the front door where the cartoonish shapes of her friends are gesticulating wildly behind the frosted windows. Their weak fists and knockoff Trendi heels pounding the iron-framed door. Their voices muffled but not completely disguised.

Hornets.

Eve. “Celeste honey, let’s be adults about this, or I swear to God, I’ll come in there and drag you out by your hair!”

Lucie. “You couldn’t have him so no one could? You entitled whore!”

Jezzabella. “Oooh … Baby Girl’s too scared to come out? What’s Big Boy gonna say when he finds out you been gettin’ plowed by the guy who mows his Big Boy lawn? Oooh … Baby Girl’s gonna gettit! Ha ha!”

Celeste barges into Ruth’s office, the desire to vomit returning at the first whiff of Scotch mixed with her own perfume. He insists his conquests wear her. Her scent. Her makeup. Her clothes. So, when she accuses him of straying, he can point convincingly to her insanity. 

She holds her breath and heads for the eight-inch square door in the wall behind his desk. She opens it and shoves the bloodied clothes inside, slams the door shut and cranks the knob to the right. The whoosh of the furnace sending jets of flame into the Lux Model Conspirator Personal Incinerator allows her a moment of relief.

Ruth doesn’t trust paper shredders.

“They make puzzles,” he says. “And puzzles can be solved.”

He prefers to reduce his indiscretions to ash.

Documents, memory drives, pregnancy tests.

Souls.

The pounding on the door intensifies. Fed up, Celeste pulls up the GateKeeper Security camera feed on Ruth’s desk monitor. The insects on her front porch look small. Like toddlers throwing a tantrum over a shared toy. One they never had any hope of possessing.

She opens the override controls and hits the manual alarm, slowly increasing the volume of the high-pitched tone until the Hornets pull back from their assault on the door, their hive mind driving them to cover their ears in unison and start their serpentine retreat across the front lawn toward their respective nests. Celeste deftly opens the Wet Envy Elite sprinkler dashboard and sets the full arsenal to max flow. She watches with displaced satisfaction, as her attackers flee and curse each other out of her security footage.

With the intruders out of sight, Celeste can’t help but admire her own backyard. The grass freshly mown. The shrubs pruned into smooth, unearthly domes, misted over with sprinkler dew, glisten under the pink-orange sunset. The feed jolts over to the patch of property where Harold’s lifeless body lay less than four hours ago. The sprinklers managed to reconstitute his blood and send it sprawling in all directions, creating a jagged map of gore across her landscape.

Her chest seizes and she forcefully jabs at the screen to end the show, snapping the tip of her acrylic index fingernail clean off. She grimaces at the sight of her now imperfect manicure and decides to rectify it, if for no other reason than to distract herself from the carousel of horrific images tearing through her consciousness. And the intense dread creeping over her with each passing minute.

Ruth will be home soon. And she’ll have to say it. Out loud.

And she’ll have to ask him if he had anything to do with it.

And she’ll know right away if he’s lying.

Because he’s always lying.

He’s a senator.

All the drawers in Ruth’s desk are locked except for the one she’s after. She pulls the largest drawer open and sifts through a jumble of her kimonos, thongs, teddies, camisoles, blindfolds, ball gags, zip ties, flavored lubricant, unflavored lubricant, homemade lubricant, massagers, perfume and cosmetics. She finds her signature shade of nail polish, a shimmering burgundy red, laced with pure gold dust, appropriately named, “Gilded Cage.” It was discontinued years ago, but Ruth bought out the remaining stock as an obscene romantic gesture.

Celeste polishes her nails daily, sometimes twice daily, hoping to exhaust the supply. She promised herself, when she finally used the last drop, tossed the last bottle into the trash, she would leave her deceitful cock of a husband.

For whom, or for what, she didn’t know.

At least she didn’t know until she met Harold Raker.

A strange sound escapes her. A whimper, but rougher and more guttural. She hears it and wants to hear it again. And again. And again. She’s sobbing.

Finally.

She presses the heels of her palms over her eyes. The tears are so close to breaking through she’s almost turned on by the sensation. She sobs harder, pleading for them to come.

Come.

Come dammit.

COME.

She throws her head back and screams at the ceiling until her ears pop. She grabs the nail polish and spins around. She opens the incinerator door, releasing a blast of heat and ash that almost chokes her. She throws the polish into the smoking remains of her clothes and goes back for the rest. The lingerie, the lube, the bondage ties that never made her feel any more tied up or down than her real life did every second of every day.

She found more to burn. Photographs. Of her. But not her at all. Other women, made to look like her. Or were they? Was she crazy or was that really her in those photographs? She can’t remember who they are. Who she is.

WHO IS SHE?

The incinerator is bursting with fuel now. She closes the door and conjures the flames again. She presses her hands against the door as if somehow, she can take credit for the work the fire is doing on the other side. She wants to own it. The burning. The cleansing. The release.

She moans against the back of her hand, biting into her knuckles, wanting to break the skin, the muscle, the bone. All of it. But her teeth barely leave a mark.

She catches her breath and leaves the incinerator to finish its job. She returns to the desk and peers into the nearly empty drawer. The only item remaining is Ruth’s high school yearbook.

It would be his and not hers, because Celeste never graduated from high school. She eloped with Ruth on her eighteenth birthday. On their honeymoon he told her he didn’t want her to go back to school. He wanted her to start her life with him. And she was grateful, because he was her savior.

He saved her from an education that would fail to qualify her for anything but low-wage civil servitude. Saved her from a cutthroat workforce that would only value her contribution in weights and measurements. Saved her from a deadbeat drunk of a father who only ever wanted her kind to suffer.

Ruth saved her from suffering because he saved her from purpose.

Purpose was overrated, he had promised her. And so was love.

“Love is for people who can’t afford to buy happiness.”

And he would know. He could buy anything—and anyone—he wanted.

Celeste frowns. The yearbook will never fit in the incinerator. She’ll have to tear out each and every page if she wants to destroy it. She opens the flap, and a business card twitches to life in the crease. Dingy. White, with black and red accents. At the center is an image of a swollen heart over a clipart headstone. The whole thing looks amateurish. Made on a home computer and printed out in small batches.

As needed.

Her eyes graze over the text at the base of the card.

Nona Sensina

Mortician and Medium

Bringing people together again

In the end

Celeste wants to laugh but her memory snags painfully on something.

The last name.

Sensina.

The security system buzzes awake. Ruth’s compact Hummer is at the gate.

Her heart pounds in her chest as she shuffles through the pages of the yearbook until she comes to the junior class. She can’t help but see herself, beaming from the center of the page, her flowing red hair setting her apart from the grid of her classmates like a fiery beacon.

She forces her eyes away from the daring flame of her former self and down to the S’s.

Samsonite, Rod … Scamman, Christian … Seed, Amanda … Sensina, Winona.

Winona.

A rushing wave of guilt peppered with nostalgia steals her breath. She returns the yearbook to the drawer before she has time to linger over the face of her estranged friend, but keeps the business card, tucking it inside the neck of her turtleneck and securing it under her lace bra strap. The corner of the card cuts at the skin on her throat and she winces.

She hurries to the living room and perches herself like a hood ornament on the sprawling leather sectional facing the front door. She rolls the words she needs to say over her tongue again, but she doesn’t say them out loud. She’s still not sure she’ll be able to when the time comes.

As she waits for her husband’s disappointing entrance, her fragile mind, exhausted by the day’s events, peddles furiously backward.

The sun sets and rises, forty—no fifty—times in reverse, behind her closed eyes.

Her jewelry and clothes fall away, replaced by a silk robe that barely covers her backside.

Her skin is scrubbed clear of concealment.

Her hair, wet and untamed, falls over her shoulders, soaking the fabric of her robe.

The doorbell rings and she hollers again for Renata’s predecessor, Tali, to answer.

But the door to Ruth’s office is closed.

Neither of them will be coming out.

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Dear friends of experimental fiction:

Today you were guests to the unveiling of my newest work-in-progress. A “thriller burlesque” novella that promises plenty of visceral heat, acerbic social commentary, and gut twisting intrigue.

I’m looking for feedback. So, let me have it.

I’m also looking for comparable titles to study as I build a murder mystery plot from the blood-soaked grass up. Though I have some heavy pins stuck in my mental murder board already, nothing is set in stone. If you’re reading along and think “OH, this reminds me of [TITLE]!” Please share that in the comments.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m feeling equal parts giddy and terrified about this story’s potential.

Yours in pseudo-cognito,