DWELLING The Novel - Chapter One

Today I’m thrilled to present the exclusive premiere of Dwelling, the novel I've been working on for 10 years right here on Steemit. With amazing original artwork care of @opheliafu.
Thanks to the Steemit community for all of your amazing support so far!
Without further ado here’s...
CHAPTER ONE
The Tenement
Mioko moved frantically about her apartment, her milky legs covered in Japanese horimono tattoos. The distant towers speckling the darkness outside her windows were the only reminder she wasn't entirely alone.

She ruffled through old vertical files, the photographic evidence of her existence. A frenzied leap boosted her onto a chair. She fished the forgotten space above her closet. It had to be here somewhere.

Dumping a pile of photographs onto her kitchen table, she quickly shuffled images to the floor. And then -- there it was, emulsion, the snap of a shutter, tactile in black and white. The faintest whiff of light and chemicals gleaned off the photo paper. The edges curved slightly. Analogue perfection, despite her subject.

Wildly cranking kitchen drawers, Mioko found a pen and leaned to scrawl a note. She grabbed a roll of tape on her way out the apartment door.

The six-story tenement's ground floor was all bare light bulbs, paint-caked moldings and pressed-tin wainscoting.

In the front foyer, Mioko taped the photograph against the cool inner vestibule glass. She could still feel his hands on her. Despite the fact that the photo was inanimate, incapable of inflicting pain beyond a paper-cut, her stress responses were firing white-hot waves down her spine. In the picture a shirtless hispanic kid had one arm leaning against a metal gate, the other reaching for the lens. She tried to keep her eyes off his face. Negotiating between her adrenalized rush and abject repulsion, she affixed her note below, before opening the foyer door and hurrying back down the hall.

WARNING. This is Rube Carbia and he is stalking me. He was waiting outside the bldg. today and SHOULD NOT be let in under any circumstances. Hopefully he will not come back. Please be aware. -- Mioko.
The door clicked shut as Mioko Kimura disappeared up six flights.

Outside the Lower East Side tenement, Ludlow Street was clearing out. The motley haze of formative singer-songwriter hyphenates, hipster fanboys and junior stock market tycoons had tripped back down the block to their respective chic hovels and phallic glass towers. The last of a ceaseless line of honking taxis had managed to squeeze out of the Ludlow trench onto Delancey, heading home empty as they crossed the bridge for Queens.

An unripe blonde leaned against the doorway as Dorian Teasdale, the picture of maturity at twice her age, slipped his key in the six-story walkup lock.

The drunken artist dragged the blonde into the foyer from the street. Her eyes met Mioko's sign as Dorian struggled to fit his key into the second door lock.

Squinting at the scrawled out cry for help, the blonde struggled to finish reading, but Dorian unceremoniously yanked her inside.

"What's the rush?"

He ignored the question as they rounded the first of many stairwell turns.

On the fifth floor in apartment 19, Morris Hacking, a large ogre of a man sat on his toilet. He stared blankly through the open door at the cavernous mess of his one-bedroom. Morris was incapable of appreciating the depths of his apartment's disheveled state; the encrusted surfaces, the pockmarked ceiling. His mind was too busy wandering into much darker caverns.

This evening's preoccupation: his increasing sense that the bedroom shadows were shifting of their own accord every time his gaze drifted. Had they somehow taken on mortal qualities? But more importantly, would they try to butcher him in his sleep? He crushed the end of a pencil into the wall. If only he could draw the shadows properly, he might stand a chance of measuring their movements.

The sound of footsteps brought Morris back to his oval perch.

He stood up, his hulking frame towering as he leaned over the toilet, pressing his nose into the marked up wall. He peered out through a timeworn relic of a peephole in the sealed wooden door. A pair of communal latrines on each floor had once been shared by apartments bursting with tenants, but were now sloppily coupled to each living quarter in a string of slapdash late seventies renovations. Yet Morris's keyhole remained.

Through the glass ring, he caught the slightest waft of the artist and the blonde stumbling up the stairs. He’d missed his opportunity at a proper glimpse by mere seconds. The sheen of the blonde’s soft skin was painfully elusive in its rapid exit from sight.

Dorian pushed the rusty rooftop door, yanking the blonde out into the cool spring night. Kissing her, he peeled off her top as they crossed the tar-covered roof.

Dorian watched the blonde's sizable breasts push against the sheer of her strapless bra as she looked down at the blinding street below. Leaning with her, the angle made him woozy, but his usual fear of heights was dulled by blood alcohol count.

"It's kinda cold out here, isn’t it?"

Her nasal twang was killing Dorian’s vibe. Time to get on with the show.

Dorian pushed her against the edge, unbuckling his pants. He spread her legs, licking his fingers and dragging them along her crease. He shoved his pelvis towards her open skirt. She squealed a little. Despite herself, she got into the rhythm for a moment, but then started to frown. He moved in for a kiss, but she hooked a finger in his mouth, and shoved his head away.

"Dorian."

The nasal screech of his name made his entire being cringe.

"This isn't what I call treating me like a lady."

The words had a familiar ring. Which made sense considering they'd had a lengthy discussion on what treating her like a lady meant just hours prior, but seven Stoli and Sodas’ and the first half of a joint seemed to be dulling his brain’s ability to recognize patterns.

"Dorian, let's go inside," she said, her hands pushing his chest away.

Typically a little mild resistance would just have encouraged him, but his trusted brush, wilted by too much turpentine and rough handling, had gone soft.

Dorian pulled out.

Reaching into his pocket, he extricated the second half of the joint and lit up. The slender blonde stared at him, working to muster as much offense as she possibly could.

"You're such an ass."

He smiled back with ample condescension, offering her the roach. She adjusted her skirt, waiting for something else. But something else didn't come.

"Don't bother calling," she said as she finally turned and strutted away.

He took a long haul off his smoke, enjoying the night, as the blonde struggled with the rooftop door.

She guided herself down the stairs, relying on the banister for balance. Reaching the last step, her heel hooked and she tripped forward, slamming headlong into the first floor apartment door.

A loud thud forced open the eyes of Ndusen Muluzi, an African man who lay in bed with his wife, Kondwani.

"Ndusen. Did you hear something?" Kondwani asked in their Malawian tribal language of Chichewa.

Ndusen closed his eyes again, hoping she would follow suit.

"Go back to sleep," he said.

"Go and check."

Ndusen didn't move. His wife dug her knee right above the bone of his pelvis. How did that confounded woman know exactly where his bladder was located? The need for sleep was suddenly in stiff competition with the urge to urinate. He sat up, climbed out of bed and felt his way through the doorway in his boxer shorts.

Ndusen walked past his three children sleeping on rolled out mats in the tiny living room and another Malawian woman who occupied a folding cot.

Opening his apartment door, he peered out into the first floor hallway, now completely empty. The building silent.
Groggy, taking in the hallway, Ndusen looked out past the doors of the timeworn foyer.

Outside, only two sounds were audible in the twilight hours, the clip of the slender blonde's high heels fading into the distance and the metal shutter of Rosarita's Pizza slamming to the pavement.

Rube Carbia stood down the block outside Rosarita's, clicking a padlock on the restaurant’s grate. His eyes were locked in the direction of the slender blonde. Her broken heel amplified her already offset balance, so that she walked at a gravity-defying angle down the center of Ludlow. Her fingers probed a growing forehead welt from her stairwell tumble. Rube’s tongue pushed up against the inside wall of his cheek as he scrutinized her.

Apart from the surgical enhancements up top, she was all jagged edges. Rube was partial to juicy curves. As the clicks of her heels receded, he turned his gaze slowly back towards the old six-story tenement.

Crossing the street, he peeked inside the front door--only to find his own image staring back at him.

Oh shit.

Rube didn’t hate the way his bare chest looked in the pic, but he wasn’t too eager about the sign next to it. He knew he shouldn’t linger, but he moved a few steps back all the same, taking in the giant vertical of the tenement. Gazing up at her window, the faintest of glows was visible inside. A few more steps and he felt the far curb underfoot. Another hour, she’d be up. On her way to work.

But that sign. It had to go.

He looked about for something blunt to smash the glass.

Blunt.

It was about that time.

The call of lulling himself to sleep with a good blunting put his feet in gear.

Bitch could wait a night or two.

And with that it begins. Stay Tuned for chapter 2!

UPDATE: Here's it is: Chapter 2

Thanks so much for reading & Steem on!

Yours In The Chain,
Doug

Dwelling chapter Illustrations by the wonderful @opheliafu.
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife @zenmommas for years of support during the writing process, @ericvancewalton for his trailblazing, inspired collaboration and incredible guidance, @andrarchy for his mind blowing insight and friendship, @bakerchristopher for being an inspiration as a human artist and bro, @complexring for his brilliance and enthusiasm, Masie Cochran, Taylor Rankin and @elenamoore for their skillful help in editing the manuscript, and to @opheliafu for the fantastic illustrations she created exclusively for the novel's launch on Steemit and to Elena Megalos for her wonderful character illustrations. I’d also like to thank Eddie Boyce, Jamie Proctor, Katie Mustard, Alan Cumming, Danai Gurira, Stephan Nowecki, Ron Simons, Dave Scott, Alden Karr, Missy Chimovitz, my dad Andy Karr and late mother Wendy , and everyone else who helped lead me to this moment.

I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347

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10% of all profits from Dwelling will be donated to Amnesty International.