One Night

After surviving a fire in a homeless shelter, two Iraqi Freedom vets, Alicia G. and Horace Lloyd, are sent to a motel outside the city where they will be safe for the night. Both are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder—Alicia as a consequence of a gang rape by three fellow soldiers while in Iraq and Horace from battlefield pressure linked to his Army MOS as a sniper. The two of them have been together for more than nine months, Horace acting as a kind of helpmate to Alicia, who was so traumatized by the rape that she can't even consider having a normal relationship with a man. Their arrival at the motel introduces them to the owner Doug Mensing, called Meny, and the beginning of our understanding of the trials sexually abused women face in the American military. Alicia refused to stay silent like so many other women and fought while she was in the Army to have the rapists punished. But only two of the men were charged and merely given pay reductions, while the third man was never named or prosecuted. Once discharged, she received little help from the VA. She found herself rejected by a religious mother who blamed everything that happened to Alicia on a "God-less army peopled by marching masturbators." Exhausted from the loss of all their possessions, and having reached a motel they thought would provide them with shelter, Alicia and Horace find themselves instead in a highway bordello. Here, throughout one night, old wounds are opened, flashbacks recount their histories and the truth of events they both hoped were over emerge from the past to color the rest of their future.