The Novel I Wrote 6 or 7 Years Before My Spiritual Awakening

By Mystic Life

Originally titled Native Death Scenes: An American Murder Novel Mystery, this story explores the psychological, emotional, cultural and geographic distance between individuals. The characters attempt, and sometimes don't attempt, to break through isolation in an attempt to become real to themselves and others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 25, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595839322

Mystic Life

Mystic Life is a polyamorous writer, psychic and tarot reader. For more information please visit www.spiritualpolyamory.com

Book preview

Copyright © 2006 by Mystic Life

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

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Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-39533-0 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-83932-2 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-39533-3 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-83932-0 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

The Sacred, Constipated Journey of this Novel

soup

old film

laugh track

leukemia

garage

moisturizing lotion

caribou laughs

all that crap

control

prescription drugs

receiver

counterclockwise

a good bargain

brutal rape scene

something different

blame

nurse

thin line

morning route

words

filled with a rage

line of defense

serious eyes

sin

feet

attachment

the dedication

animal grace

nothing beyond

walking

forecast

back and forth

the dark look of murder

lightly dyed

holidays

the ground

lukewarm

about survival

an open mind

plotting

decisions

systems constantly shift

conception fades to winter

secret lover

circular

what they saw

pink and blue hearts

a plot twist

mission

no muscles or bones

the stubble stage

fill the church

thirsty

several theories

the faceless image

working with other people

huge

masses are silenced

the response of water

shoelaces

process these words

define

avoiding the squash

if it should continue bleeding

take care

close

order from the sun

jam on top

an ultimate state

tray

our country isn’t what it used to be

touched

penance

beneath the big toes

anything

the journey

some nachos

ammo

an analysis

born outside

immediate shelter

deadlines

into the end zone

rah

after a scolding

another murder

set it on fire

thinking about money

pudding

broken collarbone

redrawing the lines

it has happened to us

white

stages of gestation

husbands in the audience

the nameless lake

some pens too

wood rubbing

no longer scream

headed

a woman who paints

stress

souls

the most difficult decision

wisdom

like an ending

not trees

dark all day

moving

explanations

illustrated story

buried in the woods

a sore throat

cherish the letters

ENDNOTES

Dedicated to the persistent truth within you,

always willing to surrender,

yet never giving up.

The Sacred, Constipated Journey of this Novel

Shortly after I first moved to Arizona, I wrote this novel and titled it Native Death Scenes: An American Murder Novel Mystery. Prior to hopping into my Diesel Rabbit in Michigan and heading out to the desert to find myself, I had never traveled west of Missouri. My television upbringing led me to half expecting to see camels and sand dunes upon my arrival in Phoenix. What actually awaited would be an entirely unpredictable spectrum of powerful growth, intense lessons, cleansing heat, and cotton mouth.

I was all freshly graduated from Michigan State University with my snappy new virtually employability-benign English Degree…and I was ready to prove that my B.A. was a good investment. Career-wise, it most clearly was not. Fortunately, it was my parents who picked up the bill.

Soon after I finished, the one and only copy of this novel was sentenced to a white typing paper box and half-forgotten. It then disappeared for awhile after I couldn’t remember who I lent it to. It then, after a little hunt, reappeared.

In recent months, the process of getting this work prepared for publication was full of chaos and frustration which seemed to reflect my own resistance. I wondered what the universe was trying to tell me with the seemingly endless challenges. Is this even meant to be? Is this any good? Is it absolutely horrible?

And then it all came together…this evening. I realized, like a character in a mediocre story¹, that I want to share this with others and trust that others may find something they feel within it.

So I present to you the newly titled, The Novel I Wrote 6 or 7 Years Before My Spiritual Awakening.

soup

You are sitting in your favorite chair, reading a novel. Your radio alarm clock is set to activate in another hour; you want to make sure you’ll have plenty of time to shower before Debra arrives.

She certainly wouldn’t mind finding you absorbed in a good mystery. Nor would she mind the mild sweat upon your body. But you feel compelled to clean up before making love, to wash the remains of today’s work from your skin.

Debra invariably arrives perfumed with musk and jasmine. She knows you like it, so she does it as a favor to you, as well as to make herself feel more confident during sex.

Until she arrives you will sit back in your soft recliner, absorbed by the cushions, by your novel. You will ignore the dirty dishes because they bother neither you nor Debra.

An hour ago, you heated up some vegetable soup and French bread for dinner. Sitting on your couch, you dipped your bread into the soup while watching local news. The warm, moistened bread comforted you as late August winds crossed Giga Lake, caressing your home before continuing east through the hardwoods of Wisconsin. The evenings are not yet cold, but they are cool enough for soup.

As you read your mystery your dishes lie twenty yards away in the kitchen sink. There is a bowl, a spoon, a pot, a knife, a pan, and a mug. They rest with remnants of tomato juice, bread crumbs, two partial pasta letters (L and O), a small piece of celery, three carrot chunks, and some evaporated milk residue. They have no recollection of a satisfying meal. They are in no hurry to be washed.

So you continue to read your novel. It is a mystery in which the murderer will be revealed within the final pages. Knowing that he or she will be captured within a matter of time and pages comes as a great comfort.

When you read a book, you frequently lose track of time. Sometimes you find yourself becoming a character, perhaps the detective, and suddenly a lover knocks upon the screen door:

knuckles-on-metal—knuckles-on-metal—knuckles-on-metal, snapping you back to your immediate surroundings.

But Debra’s not here yet, and your radio alarm clock is set. You’ve checked it twice. By the time she arrives, you will be prepared.

old film

Joe Wenbo, a Native American, sits within his chair, his thoughts far adrift in ancient Chippewa dreams. As if he has consumed oshtimisk wajashauki, a hallucinogenic mushroom, he no longer controls what he sees. He no longer feels connected to his home on Giga Lake. Joe Wenbo now has the timber wolves to keep him company along the cool, rocky shores of Lake Superior.

Joe’s last conscious thought had to do with finding something else to watch on television. The show he’s been viewing was uninteresting, so he raised his tired body from his chair and began walking toward the television. He wanted only to turn the channel, but now sits back down in his soft chair, listening to an old timber wolf:

Greetings, Joe Wenbo. We finally meet.

This lake is not Giga, Joe replies. This must be Superior or Michigan. It’s much too large to be my home.

This is the ocean, and its shores are your home, the old timber wolf says. And the woods are your home. And the streams and small lakes are your home.

Joe stands confused, looking out to the dark water. His once heavy heart feels weightless. His dream of Chippewa past has become real as his body rests in its chair.

Upon the floor of his house on Giga Lake, in front of his bare feet, lies a colored hand-woven rug. It is orange, blue, and red. The living room walls are decorated with a charcoal drawing of a fawn, two black and white photographs, and an oval mirror with a copper rim. The pale yellow walls are dirty, with cobwebs clinging near the ceiling. But in the next room, his bedroom, the bed is made; the light blue blanket is smooth like a hidden pond.

Joe Wenbo’s television remains on Channel 3, emitting light in the form of a game show. There is no cable television near Giga Lake, so only two channels come in clearly: 3 and 9. Sometimes, if the sky is conducive, Channel 12 may be received. But for now, it stays on Channel 3, and a woman answers correctly, naming the title of an old film starring Humphrey Bogart.

laugh track

Dinner? asks Cheryl Hannon.

Give me another hour, Honey, replies Mark, looking up at his wife, away from the computer. I’m on a roll.

Okay. See you in an hour, says Cheryl as she closes the den door. She breathes easier in the hallway, relieved that Mark’s mood seems positive. She walks into the kitchen, then stops, realizing it is too early to begin microwaving dinner. So she turns toward the living room where she will attempt to enjoy Friday night television. There is no one else in the house except Mark.

Back in the den, M.W. Hannon types in another chapter of his second novel, Murdersota, a mystery that takes place in Minnesota. His first novel, a horror story inspired by Stephen King, also took place in Minnesota. He called it The Bruised Lake. Three years ago, Mark and Cheryl moved to Giga Lake because it would be a quiet, inspirational place for Mark to write. It worked. He finished his first novel in less than seven months. Still unpublished, it is traveling from one editor to the next.

M.W. Hannon likes to use Minnesota as a setting for his novels because it’s similar to Wisconsin, yet different enough that his writing won’t appear autobiographical, though it often is. Of course he has never been attacked by a carnivorous, contaminated lake. Nor has he known, or even seen, a detective, but the inspiration, the tension, and many of the characters are derived from Mark Hannon’s life.

He actually has been to Minnesota several times. It looks quite similar to Wisconsin. So with a comfortable distance from his fiction, he continues to create Murdersota.

After twenty minutes, Cheryl becomes bored with the situation comedy she has chosen to watch. During the course of the program she has smiled twice. In that same interval she has heard the laugh track about 70 times. She does not wonder if she has a bad sense of humor. She simply turns off the television and goes to the kitchen.

Cheryl removes two microwavable turkey and gravy dinners from the freezer. She decides that rice with broccoli and cheese would taste good with turkey. So while the turkey is in the microwave, she uses the range to heat the rice dish. She does not think of herself as particularly adept at cooking. She simply does what needs to be done to prepare dinner.

leukemia

Roger Grove stands in a hot shower, washing his penis with a bar of soap and his hands. The water sprays from the shower-head to the patch of greying hair on his chest before flowing down to his soapy groin. He washes it with a detached attitude, not thinking of it as a tool for sex or urination, but as a body part that needs scrubbing. He scrubs with no more or less attention than he would give his left armpit.

Some people like to take their showers at night. Roger Grove is one of them. He started as a young boy and has never found a good reason to stop. Although a large man, he sweats only mildly at night, and feels clean when he wakes. His wife Sandy found his showering habit odd when they first spent nights together. She was offended that he felt the need to wash their fresh sex from his body. She took it personally, though he’d told her it was just a habit.

As he showers, Roger takes some pride in the fact that he owns and manages a hunting and fishing supply store. It is in Marland, a small town half a mile from Giga Lake, north of Antigo.

Sandy Grove stands at the kitchen sink, washing her hands beneath a trickle of water. She has just finished changing Tom’s litter box in the basement. Tom is an eight-year-old female, who is near ending a life of gender misnomer due to feline leukemia. Their son, Carl, had named Tom after his favorite cartoon, unaware of the kitten’s reproductive organs. Roger and Sandy got into an argument over whether or not they should allow such a name. Sandy called it unnatural while Roger, for the sake of argument, called it funny. When Carl began to cry they let him name the cat Tom, and he stopped crying.

Sandy could turn the trickle to a stream by a simple twist of her wrist. But Roger is taking his nightly shower, which he likes to be strong and hot. She doesn’t even think about increasing her flow. It takes a little longer to get all the soap from between her fingers, but she’s used to it. She feels good about Tom’s litter box being clean.

I love you.

The phrase lingers in Carl’s mind as he sits in his reading chair upstairs in his room. He thinks that this phrase would normally sound trite in a novel, as if it were a quote from some housewife’s paperback romance. But given its ironic context it is a phrase quite at home in this novel.

Carl takes a sip of Diet Pepsi and two tiny, nearly invisible, ice cubes slip down his throat. He looks out his bedroom window through the pine to see his sister, Cara, at the lake’s shore. She is standing straight and tall, fishing for blue-gill which she will unhook and toss back into the lake. She seems distant and confident, with the silent strength of a big sister.

The sun is now below the trees, the Wisconsin horizon. Cara will fish into the darkness. She will have to wait six months before getting her driver’s license, so she continues to fish on Giga Lake. A show she enjoys comes on at ten, but she has checked her watch and still has over an hour to fish. It is cool and her mother would prefer that she wore a light jacket, but Cara doesn’t mind the cold. Like her father, who is now toweling off, her skin is thick, and she can hunt or fish in any weather.

Carl goes back to reading, unaware that his mother has just begun watching Cara fish in the late summer night.

garage

The video store will close in another five minutes.

Doug Nickerson stands behind the counter, waiting patiently for a teenage couple to make their choice. He has listened to them argue over two movies he has already seen. One of the benefits of working at Marland Movies is getting to choose from the leftover videos at the end of the night. Doug wants to tell them which movie is better, but chooses to remain silent. He waits, looking from the clock to the couple, fearing that he will have to speak to them. He may have to choose between staying late or informing the couple that the store is closing. But it seems they have made their decision. They have chosen the better of the two.

When the couple leaves, Doug performs the ritual he has learned: count the money, place it in the safe, cash register off, video drop box in place, OPEN sign turned over to CLOSED, video boxes straightened out on the shelf, lights off, and door locked. He walks to the side of the small store and gets into his car. For what it is worth, he thinks, it is the weekend.

Doug notices the moon reflecting calmly off Giga Lake as he turns into his driveway. He doesn’t think much of it as he pushes the garage door opener on his visor. The automatic garage light doesn’t work, making the garage look like a tunnel. Doug imagines it is the Batcave, and he is Batman, and his dusty old Toyota is, consequently, the Batmobile.

Doug turns off the headlights and sends the garage door down before hopping out of his car. He dashes to the door, racing against complete darkness. He is late as usual and must clumsily probe for the keyhole with the tip of his key. But when he gets inside, everything seems momentarily okay; he is home.

Doug checks his answering machine but the red light is steady, unwinking. So he goes to the refrigerator for a snack. He decides to eat a chunk of cheddar cheese then heads to the bathroom for the night’s second ritual, the one that he has chosen for reasons other than money. When he gets bored he sometimes thinks of his bathroom ritual. Since he is often bored at Marland Movies it is something that he thinks about frequently. And he’s thinking about it now as he undresses in the hallway.

moisturizing lotion

The radio alarm clock begins playing a love song, gentle and slow. You remove your book mark from the back pages and use it to mark your place. You then walk over to the radio and turn it off. Debra will arrive in another fifty minutes. It is time to take a shower.

You live alone, and your lovers are not shy; your