Citadel by Jack Remick

Women’s literary fiction

Publisher: Quartet Global Books

Irven DeVore, an evolutionary biologist, writes that "Males are a breeding experiment run by females."  What if, in fact, women ran everything?  What if women rejected the culture of rape and violence to take control of their lives in the safety of the Citadels? What if women could exist without males? CITADEL is a metafictional, apocalyptic story braided into a contemporary post-lesbian novel built on genetics.

Advance Praise

"I loved the book and I'm suggesting it to all the writers, editors and women I know as a must read. You blew me away... the book drew me in completely... great experience! 

 I'm not sure how you managed to come up with this... let alone research it... a story usually follows one or two Characters... I found myself following the writer, the editor, the publisher, not to mention the Characters in the book... and never got lost, never ended up wondering who someone was or why they did that? I read the book in short spurts and longer chunks depending on opportunity... but never had a problem of falling back into the story... you had me from page one to the end. Great job"  -- Wally Lane, filmmaker, screenwriter.

Excerpt

Beach Meat

Trisha

As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a sense of dread. I dream, and when I wake, I am sure it will be the day the world ends. Rose, my therapist, tells me more of her clients have apocalyptic dreams like mine. She doesn’t know what it means.

Yesterday at the beach as I watched the beach meat in their combat ritual, I had one of my visions of annihilation. There were four of them. Their sandy bodies glistened. Muscle and sweaty flesh silhouetted in an exploding sunset ripe with blood. Their overhand smashes and digs were laced with grunts and howls and the wail of loss.

I imagined them still grinding one another to dust in the chaos of extinction. The shaven-headed one, the tall, muscular and vicious one spiked a set-up and the volleyball blasted his opponent in the face and he went down—on his back, on the sand. Bleeding. The fallen enemy crawled off the pitch, his shamed partner beside him. Mr. V., the Victor, taunted the losers ‘you bunch of pansy asses.’

Daiva startled me when she lay back on her towel

groaning. I asked her if she was all right.

“I’m a day early,” she said. “Should know better than to wear white. What did I miss?”

“A little blood. One good spike.”

Daiva wore a white one-piece suit. Hair bound up in a twist with a swan-comb. The setting sun burnished her hair.

            I was going back to my ereader when Mr. V. knelt in the sand at my feet. I smeeled his sweat mixed with sea air and the odor of blood. It was the familiar scent of death and destruction that often crept into my dreams. Rose tells me that I have parosmia, a flaw in my brain that makes me smell odors that are not real. The scent pouring off Mr. V. was the scent that followed men like angry dogs chasing a wounded doe. He grasped the bloody volleyball against his crotch. Eyes closed, Daiva piped up,“Are they all this tall?”

“It’s an optical illusion,” I said. “At sunset they seem

taller.”

“Do you suppose he shaves everywhere?”

“That teeny-weeny crotch cloth won’t hide a single

pube.”

“Tell him to stand up and strip off that speedo,” Daiva

said.

“Hey,” Mr. V. said. “I’m right here.”

“We can smell you,” Daiva replied.

Mr. V. His eyes were deep wolf-gray, his mouth a

pouty delicacy. I had tasted meat like that but never this

one. He was persistent, and he didn’t back off as I scanned

him. He liked the assessment so much he quivered. Silent.

A horse at auction waiting a bid. His eyes tracked me up

and down never veering above my breasts. Beach meat.

Muscle and sand and blood and sweat. I had seen him

before, but he always failed the wine test.

I said, “What do you think of the 2025 Napa pressing of Pinot

Picante?”

He got that what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about scowl

on his face.

“Wine,” I said. “Pinot Picante.”

“Oh, yeah, I had that a few times.”

Pinot Picante did not exist, so I went back to my

ereader. Clara was hounding me to finish the next Pinnacle

Romance. She wanted it edited and online now. Today. Not

tomorrow. Mr. V. said,

“Hey, I kicked butt out there.”

“Yes you did,” Daiva said, “but we’re having our

periods.”

Mr. V shot to his feet, bloodstained volleyball in his

hands. Disgusted, he trotted off into the surf. The sunset

was so intense, so  red, the light seemed to burn through

him. Daiva said, “RER.” “What’s that?”

“Residual evolutionary response,” Daiva replied. “The Alpha male can’t tolerate things he can’t control and menses is our big mystery. Irven DeVore says males are a breeding experiment run by females. This guy has all the traits breeders cue on—muscles, physical presence, drive, power. He responds to the stimulus, in this case your breasts, your hips and thighs, your skin. The entire history of sexual selection is working itself out right here on this beach, Trisha. You’re a prime receptacle. You’re supposed to dive into bed with him, but you said no, so he’ll have to kill you.”

Mr. V., rising out of the sea, glistened. Golden. His thighs rippled. He was a glorious animal so locked into himself that a bloody tampon shut him down…you said no so he’ll have to kill you. I shuddered. What if I had taken him home? What if he did kill me?

I watched Mr. V. dash to the parking lot where he jumped into a black BMW.

“He drives a Beamer,” Daiva said. “Beamer means resources and resources fill out the evolutionary menu. Size, speed, resources. Why didn’t you take him up on it?”

“I have a few rules,” I said. “If they can walk, I look. If they can talk, I listen. If they make me laugh, I think about it. If they know good wine, I sometimes say yes.”

“That’s kind of picky. Why do you hunt here then?” “You can see the merchandise unwrapped.”

“You sure make those guys howl.” "Howl? Let’s head back.”

I rolled my beach towel and tucked it into my bag.

Daiva followed. The hot sand felt good on my feet as we

passed the volleyball court with its saga of blood and

sweat. At the parking lot, I tossed my bag into the Z-Ray.

The afternoon sun gilded Daiva’s hair now. She was a real

blonde. You can tell. Her skin was peachy and shone from

the sunblock. She had indigo blue eyes.

Daiva had moved into the condo two weeks ago. She was always alone. No visitors. Her Southern California unenhanced trim and creamy skin made me jealous. The one thing that bothered me was the solitude. In two weeks, no one. I knew her name, Daiva Izokaitis, and I knew from her mail box that she was a doctor. 

The drive through Latimer Canyon is idyllic in the early evening. Late gulls squawk, eucalyptus shadows stretch across the winding road, the Z Ray hisses on the pavement like a very beautiful red python. I love the car. I parked in my slot at the condo on Mesa Drive.

“Got time for a glass of Chardonnay?”

“I was going to ask you—I need to wash off the yuck

first only my plumbing is out until Monday.”

“Sure, you can shower at my place.”

About the Author

Jack Remick is the author of twenty books—novels, poetry, short stories, screenplays. He co-authored The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery with Robert J. Ray. His novel Gabriela and The Widow was a finalist for the Montaigne Medal as well as a finalist in Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Award. He reviews for the New York Journal of Books. He is a frequent guest and co-host on Michigan Avenue Media with Marsha Casper Cook. His novel Citadel, was featured in the July issue of the Australian magazine eYs.

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In the Key of Be by Lena Hubin

Non-Fiction / Memoir

Date Published: April 2, 2018

Publisher:  Chatnoir Press

Lena Hubin is a straight-A college senior when she lands in a psych ward. After her release, psychotherapy, illicit drugs, and sex distract her from her chronic anxiety--but none yields lasting relief. Despite teaching abroad, marrying, earning a masters and adopting two children, she remains haunted by anxiety. In her fifties, Lena returns with her family to the U.S., anticipating peace of mind. But when her son struggles with alcoholism, she feels her sanity swirling down the drain like the liquor she would dump--if she could find it. In a quest to help him, the author starts a journey that will change her life for good.

Excerpt

The Loony Bin

“…I saw the words just crawl up off the page like they were alive!”

I sat in Dr. Rubin’s small office on the fourth floor of Luther Hospital, reliving for him the incident in my apartment two nights earlier, when I hadn’t been able to wrestle meaning from a sociology text paragraph. The little black words had rebelled, marching into the air like a trail of ants. I shuddered. “I’ve just started the school year, and I think I’m going insane!”

“What else happened?” the doctor asked.

“What do you mean, ‘what else’? Isn’t that enough? I saw the words parade off the page in front of me. I’m seeing things. There’s something wrong with my mind!”

This hospital psychiatrist was my last hope. Back in school, I’d begun sinking like a leaky rowboat. No one could bale me out of my sudden madness: not my old boyfriend Andy; not John, the campus minister with UCM; not Dr. White, the college shrink. I’d panicked.

But Dr. Rubin wasn’t helping. He sat like a bent scarecrow, studying the papers scattered over his desk. “Your admittance info mentions another incident.” His small eyes squinted at me through wire-rimmed glasses.

“Well, if it’s there, why do I have to tell it again? I’ve already explained all this to two people here.”

“I’d like you to describe it for me personally, if you don’t mind.” The doc opened a desk drawer and took out a pipe. 

His equanimity set me on edge. “Please, can’t you just read it in the report?”

            His bony old hand shook as he struck a match and lit the pipe. “Tell me what else happened, Eileen.” He leaned back with a lop-sided smile and puffed. “Take your time.”

            “Too much time’s already been taken! You must have the results of all those tests I took. What else do you need?” I’d waded through the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Thematic Apperception Test, some muddy Rorschachs where I saw Jesus throwing stones. Shouldn’t this top-of-the-line shrink know what to do with me by now? I was frantic.

            But I was trapped, nowhere to turn. As smoke from his pipe swirled, I droned out the rest: “Yesterday at the end of conducting lab, Dr. Byrne put on a record of this Mozart music and made us stand and direct it. The jumpy beat scared me. I wanted to cover my ears and run away.” My voice quavered. “And the others were taking it so damn seriously, everybody holding up the stupid little sticks in their hands like puppets, and I felt so out of it, I could hardly hold the stick up. It scared me.”

            “And then?” The doddering doctor’s head leaned back, his lips pursed around the pipe stem.

            “Dr Byrne came up behind me and took hold of my elbow and said, ‘It’s simple 4/4 time,’ like I was some idiot, and he started pushing my arm back and forth….”  Anxiety rose in my stomach. “Him touching my arm like that, it made me feel nauseous, like I was gonna pass out. I sat back and hung my head down so I wouldn’t faint.”

            More puffs on the pipe. “And you didn’t faint.”

            “No…, the bell rang, and I went out to the hallway and found Andy—that’s my old boyfriend. He felt my forehead and said, ‘You’re prob’ly coming down with something.’ Then he just picked up his French horn and went into his practice room.”

            “But you continued to feel anxious.” His eyes followed the smoke drifting upward. I was sick of his pipe, of the smell. I was also dying for a cigarette, but having been told smoking was only allowed in the day room, I’d left my pack in my room.

            “I couldn’t stand it any more. I knew something was wrong. I rushed over to see John, that’s the UCM minister, and told him what was happening to my mind. And about Roger, this strange guy I spent the summer with—then he asked me if Roger could’ve slipped me a drug, but I know he didn’t; we just drank beer. Then John got me an appointment with Dr. White, this campus shrink, and—”

            “I know Dr. White. He’s a good psychologist.” Puff, puff on the pipe.

            “Well, he didn’t help me. He just gave me tissues and told me to cry it out.”

            “So you were frustrated.”

            “And then he said maybe I was overtired. He told me to go home and sleep as long as I could, and I slept sixteen hours straight—but it didn’t help. Nothing helps!”

            “But you went back to Dr. White….” Dr. Rubin peered at a paper in front of him, his pipe poised in a quaking hand.

            “Yeah, yesterday afternoon. There was nothing else to do! He said if I felt that bad, I could come here. So I went home and packed my suitcase and took a taxi, and here I am.” I drew in a sharp breath. “I committed myself!” I sagged into the back of my chair.

 

            “And here you are.” His voice was dead-calm. “How do you feel right now?”

            “I’m just sick of all this. I want it to go away!” I wrestled back tears.

            “What are you sick of, exactly? What do you want to go away?” He still sucked at the pipe.

            I sat up straight and leveled it at him: “All those other people out there, normal people, I feel like they’re in a different world, and I’m set apart—I can’t connect. It’s like I’m trapped in some kind of bubble, looking at everything from the inside out, stuck in here like one of those paperweight bugs in acrylic. Nothing outside makes sense!” I leaned back, and my voice pitch rose with a finale: “I had a 3.94 grade point last semester, for Godsake, and now I can’t even read! I can’t play piano. I can’t do anything! I’m just floating inside this damned, eerie bubble and I can’t get out!”

            Tears stung my eyes. I began to sniffle; then I was gasping out faltering breaths. I let my head fall into my arms on Dr. Rubin’s desk and dissolved into racking sobs.

            When I felt the doctor’s light touch on the back of my shoulder, I stopped crying. “You will get through this, Eileen. It will take some time and effort, but we’ll help you, and you’ll get well.”

I could have been a little kid with her parent telling her the monsters weren’t real. The doctor’s pipe bowl rapped against the glass ashtray. I opened my bleary eyes to see him shaking where he stood, bent like a question mark, beside his desk. He smiled gently at me and beckoned with his pipe stem toward the open door.

*****

            Dr. Rubin lied. I’d been in the fourth-floor loony bin for over a week and was not getting better. In fact, I felt worse: anxious, bored, and useless, incapable of any normal thought or action. My mother came to visit. “We’re worried. We don’t really understand why you’re here.” I didn’t either; I couldn’t explain. I didn’t want to talk to her. Her teachers’ insurance was footing the bill, but I just wanted her to go away.

            “Do you ever think of killing yourself?” Dr. Goldberg asked one day. He was the psychologist of my “team,” the team of him and Dr. Rubin.

            “Why should I? I’m dead already.”

            “You are clinically depressed,” he said. “Your test results are clear. And these are not unusual feelings for depression. Try to be patient. With some weeks of therapy and medication you’ll feel much better.”

            “Some weeks! I can’t stand this for weeks. Send me to Mendota if you want. I might as well sit there in the state asylum in a rocking chair for the rest of my life.”

            Dr. Goldberg jotted something on his clipboard. Then he smiled at me. “Let’s meet again in a couple of days, shall we? It must be almost time for dinner.”

*****

            Days on the fourth floor comprised a tedious litany. At 7 a.m. a breakfast cart rattled in, jarring me awake. I pulled myself up in bed and downed the orange juice, sloppy oatmeal, and limp toast. I pulled on clothes and sidled into the dayroom for a smoke, avoiding the eyes of a couple of loonies in there already playing cards. I trudged down the hall to a padded bench by the wall in a cavernous waiting area with a nurses’ station as the hub. I sat there fidgeting, hoping for a shrink to summon me for a session; meetings with the docs were haphazard, as far as I could tell. When I finally did get called I felt as if I’d won the lottery. I popped off the bench, salivating for the boredom displacement that was in store, an hour of attention focused on the hapless blob that was me.

            Mostly I sat idle, staring at the dull green walls, at patients and nurses and doctors and orderlies who drifted through and chatted with folks for a spell and then moved on.

            Back in my room at noon for lunch, alone by my request, I’d maw down whatever amorphous vegetables, starch, meat, and pudding or jello they served up, then dread the arrival of the prim, gray-haired lady at the door with her perky voice: “Coming to OT today?” Under doctors’ orders to take part in Occupational Therapy, I’d drag myself off my bed and trail her to a room with other patients at a long table, where I strung hundreds of beads, length after length, into necklaces no one would ever wear.

            Group therapy met after OT, but I begged off. “I don’t want to talk with other crazy people,” I told Dr. Goldberg. “What’s the point? The problem’s in my head.” He didn’t make me go. Except to smoke, I avoided the dayroom, too, where the TV blared soap operas and people sat around playing gin rummy. Instead, I lay on my bed and stared at nothing for as long as I could stand it. Then I returned to the nurses’ station, and like a dog anticipating its master’s return, awaited a doctor’s call which rarely came.

            In my room again at 5:00, I ate the entire crappy supper; feeding my face was something to do. Then I shuffled back to the waiting room. 

            The tedium-drenched days were as leaden as the skies outside my window, which threatened to drop their heavy load of winter any day. But after supper, as dusk fell into darkness, I perked up. In this best part of my day, I could revel in the anticipation of escape into hours of sweet, dead unconsciousness: sleep, my bosom buddy, the only prolonged relief from the anxious, aching dullness of my waking days.

            One afternoon the orderlies herded squirmy patients across a road to a gaping public gymnasium, where they lined us up in teams on the slick wood floor. I stood where they planted me. A large rubber ball was suddenly in motion, people racing around me in pursuit. An orderly had barked out an explanation of the game—but I couldn’t concentrate enough to get it, and this filled me with terror. I kicked at the ball when it came near me—but I just wanted to vanish. A blur of patients scuffled past and shoved at me; sides changed up and an orderly snapped, “Eileen! Other side!” I winced, loped past where he was pointing, slunk down by a wall, and sat there in a shriveled heap until the game was over and I could shamble back to safety in the psych ward.

            The next day when the nurse came in with my meds in the little white paper cup, I whined, “The afternoons are killing me. I just lie around waiting for dinner. It’s pointless. Can’t you give me something after lunch to let me sleep?”

            Besides the Thorazine and whatever other pills they dished out to me three times a day, Dr. Rubin prescribed an afternoon sleeping pill. I sank into blissful nothingness, dead again, for a few more hours each day.

 About the Author

Lena Hubin has been writing since she was a young kid growing up on a small Wisconsin dairy farm. She has had essays and articles published in ISS Newslinks, The International Educator, Midwest Living, and The Sun. For four years she wrote quarterly book reviews for In Recovery Magazine. She has a masters degree in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno. Lena writes, plays piano, teaches, and works for social justice in Prescott, Arizona, where she lives with her husband, dog, and cat.

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