28 pages 56 minutes read

Carmen Maria Machado

Her Body and Other Parties

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

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Story 4

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Story 4 Summary: “Especially Heinous”

“Especially Heinous” reimagines 272 episodes of the popular television series Law and Order: SVU. Episode to episode, Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler must solve especially heinous crimes involving violence against women. Detective Benson becomes haunted by “the girls-with-bells-for-eyes”: teenage models who were raped and killed and who, mistaken for another set of murdered teen models, were accidentally buried underneath their doppelgängers’ tombstones. The number of dead girls who haunt Benson multiplies until she can no longer sleep. Meanwhile, Stabler is preoccupied with solving the mystery of his wife’s rape.

By season four of this reimagining, a new pair of detectives, Henson and Abler, are introduced. Henson and Abler look similar to Benson and Stabler. The two are sleeping together. Henson is a notorious bachelorette while Abler has a wife and family. Henson and Abler terrorize Benson and Stabler, though their motives are never made clear. The district attorney, who is secretly attracted to Benson, starts sleeping with Henson.

The dead girls begin to inhabit Benson’s body. They wait in her apartment until she comes home, “draped over every surface like Dalí’s clocks” (72). Benson and Stabler, and Henson and Abler, continue to battle for power. Benson and Stabler finally shoot and kill Henson and Abler.

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