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  The Big Beyond

  Books by Michael Lister

  (Love Stories)

  Carrie’s Gift

  (John Jordan Novels)

  Power in the Blood

  Blood of the Lamb

  Flesh and Blood

  The Body and the Blood

  Blood Sacrifice

  Rivers to Blood

  (Short Story Collections)

  North Florida Noir

  Florida Heat Wave

  Delta Blues

  Another Quiet Night in Desperation

  (Remington James Novels)

  Double Exposure

  (Merrick McKnight Novels)

  Thunder Beach

  (Jimmy “Soldier” Riley Novels)

  The Big Goodbye

  The Big Beyond

  The Big Bang Bang

  (Sam Michaels and Daniel Davis Series)

  Burnt Offerings

  Separation Anxiety

  (The Meaning Series)

  The Meaning of Jesus

  Meaning Every Moment

  The Meaning of Life in Movies

  The Big Beyond

  Michael Lister

  a novel

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael Lister

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to people or places, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Inquiries should be addressed to:

  Pulpwood Press

  P.O. Box 35038

  Panama City, FL 32412

  Lister, Michael.

  The Big Beyond / Michael

  Lister.

  –—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-888146-33-2 (hardback)

  ISBN: 978-1-888146-34-9 (trade paperback)

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  Book Design by Adam Ake

  Printed in the United States

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  First Edition

  eBooks created by www.ebookconversion.com

  For Dawn

  with love and gratitude and all of me

  “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set her free.” -Michelangelo

  You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” -Atticus Finch

  “O gentle vision in the dawn:

  My spirit over faint cool water glides,

  Child of the day,

  To thee;

  And thou art drawn

  By kindred impulse over silver tides

  The dreamy way

  To me.” -Harold Monro

  “When I am with you, we stay up all night.

  When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep.

  Praise God for those two insomnias!

  And the difference between them.” -Rumi

  Author’s Note

  This book is a sequel to “The Big Goodbye.”

  Please read “The Big Goodbye” before reading “The Big Beyond.”

  You’ll be glad you did.

  Very Special Thanks to:

  Dawn Peterson, Marlene Womack,

  Jason Hedden, Jill Mueller, Adam Ake, and Jennifer Jones.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  About Author

  Chapter 1

  When they came to kill me, I was in no condition to defend myself.

  This would’ve presented more of a dilemma had I not wanted to die.

  For days doctors and nurses had done everything they could to keep me alive—everything but the one thing that would’ve made me want to live.

  They hadn’t kept her from dying.

  No, that was no good. That’s the story I kept trying to sell myself, but I wasn’t buying.

  The unimaginably ugly truth—the one I had no defenses for—was this: They didn’t let her die. I did.

  No, that’s no good either.

  I didn’t just let her die. I killed her.

  Days in a drug-addled delirium had done little to diminish that devastating fact.

  In my morphine-induced disintegration, I was drowning in a dark ocean, breaking the surface of the swells only occasionally to recall a random rivulet of conversation or glimpse the distorted reflection of her in an oblique object.

  I remembered I had told her I could save her.

  “All right, soldier,” she had said. “See what you can do. I don’t mind.”

  I had believed I could, thought I might somehow undo the damage I had already done.

  Memories little more than mist. Fragile evanescent fragments.

  Passion and obsession bordering on madness. When we were together, nothing else in the world seemed to matter—there didn’t seem to be anything else in the world.

  Whiling away the time like lovers do, like it could never be exhausted.

  Lying in between sand dunes looking up at the stars, listening to the unseen waves of the Gulf caress the shore. Beneath us, the sand soft and cool, above us, the sky dark and clear and dotted with stars, and around us, the beach empty for miles.

  “Listen, soldier. This is the big love for me. I’ll never love another man. Not ever. This won’t end for me—even if you end it. I’ll still love you the way I’ve never loved anyone in my whole entire life.”

  DOA.

  I didn’t know that I hadn’t saved her until days after I had failed to do so.

  I had no memory of crashing my car into the main entrance of Johnston’s Sanatorium or the doctor’s pronouncement that she was dead on arrival.

  While she was sleeping the big sleep, I was trapped in a deep well between daylight and darkness, between death and the half life I would have without her if I was able to claw my way out of it and not wake up only to eat my revolver.

  But coming out of the coma hadn’t ended the purgatorial plane of my empty existence. I was just awake for it now.

  Adrift.

  Untethered.

  Weightless.

  One moment I was floating through the zero gravity black void of an empty, silent hell, the next I was bobbing like a buoy in the bay between consciousness and unconsciousness, between the bad dreams of sleep and the waking nightmare that was now my existence entire.

  I had just surfaced when they showed up.

  I had no idea who sent them, b
ut whoever hired the menacing muscle here to break the spring of my mortal coil had spared no expense. Even if I wasn’t weak and wounded from being gut shot, even if I cared anything at all about living a life without Lauren in it, even if I wasn’t a right-handed man with only his left, I wasn’t sure I could’ve prevented them from putting the big pinch on me––but as it was there was nothing I could do but lie there and watch my fate unfold.

  Both guys were big and broad and hard, but the bigger of the two stood watch at the door while the other, dressed in an ill-fitting white coat, came inside.

  “Hey, Doc,” I said, “your coat don’t fit so good.”

  “Yeah? Well, there’s a war on, or haven’t you heard?”

  “Yeah I heard.”

  The too small lab coat covered a darby drape and foreign kicks that looked to have cost plenty of lettuce.

  “So what’s my prognosis?” I asked. “Worse now I bet.”

  He smiled. “A wise guy, huh?”

  “Not wise enough. Not by a mile.”

  “What are you going on about, mister?”

  “Just saying I know you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I know your kind. Know why you’re here.”

  “Then you know how this is gotta go, soldier.”

  “I do. And I don’t mind so much.”

  “On account of the dame?”

  “Just tell me who’s punchin’ my ticket.”

  “Can’t do that.”

  “Nothing to lose, mister. Why not spill? No one’ll ever know.”

  “Sorry, soldier. It’s just not in the cards.”

  “Don’t seem so much to ask. Be a pal and grant a dying man his last wish.”

  He pulled a syringe out of his coat pocket.

  “You’re not fading so fast partner,” he said, plunging the needle into the side of my neck. “We were told to hurt you some first.”

  Chapter 2

  I woke up in a dim dungeon-like room, strapped spread-eagle to a metal barrack-style bunk, a bright bare bulb hanging above me.

  I was naked, hungry, and in excruciating pain.

  The carnage that was my upper torso looked even more dramatic beneath the direct light—the short stump of right arm, the old scatter of shotgun wounds that had cost me the limb the year before, the fresh bloody mess of gut shot wound in my abdomen and the seeping bandages partially covering it, the various bruises, cuts, and scrapes dotting the pale, overexposed battleground that was my body––but nothing made me feel more helpless, more exposed, more embarrassed than my flaccid phallus lying limply on the dark patch of pubic hair.

  I couldn’t see much beyond the circle of light I was in the center of, but I was pretty sure the medical-looking machines were torture devices.

  A pungent chemical smell permeated the air, but I couldn’t place it. From an unseen sink somewhere close by, a leaking tap dripped an irritating, incessant wet thumph.

  Thumph.

  Thumph.

  Thumph.

  A tall, thin blonde woman in a lab coat came into the room, her heels, at least one of them in need of repair, clicking on the bare cement floor beneath her. Her fine hair was short, her bangs jagged, her ice blue eyes bits of frozen pond water beneath razor-thin, severely arching eyebrows.

  “And how are ve today?” she asked as she reached the side of my bed.

  “Well, I can’t speak for you ’cause we just met, but I’mdandy as hell.”

  “Zis means … you are vhat?”

  Her accent was vaguely European, but I couldn’t say much beyond that––and I got the impression that she was maybe even faking it or at least exaggerating it a bit for my benefit. “Pardon?”

  “Vhat means dandy?”

  “Good. Jake. A-okay. Dillinger. Fine. Spiffy. Darby. Great. Wonderful. Never been better.”

  “Really? Is zis attempt at humor?”

  “Sister, when I attempt humor you’ll know it.”

  “I zank you are not being completely honest with Christa. I zank you are veak and can use some zing.”

  “Somezing like what?” I asked.

  “No. Not somezing. Some zing. Some boost. Energy. Jolt. A pick-up you.”

  “A pick-up me?”

  “Yes.”

  As she said this she turned away for a moment and grabbed something I couldn’t see. When she turned back around, she was holding clamps attached to electrical cords––as if a smaller version of automotive starter cables.

  “Why don’t you hook yourself up to those things and see if you can jump-start your heart?” I asked.

  “Zese are for you.”

  “I feel bad,” I said. “I didn’t get you anything.”

  “Let’s see … vere should ve attach zese?”

  She trailed the cold metal clamp across my chest, grazing my nipples, then down the length of my body to my flaccid penis.

  “Yes. Here vill do just fine. Zis could use some pick-up, no?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah sure.”

  “No offense, lady, but there’s nothing you have that can get a rise out of me.”

  She attached one clamp to the tip of my penis and the other to the base of the shaft.

  “Ve shall see. Zis should do it, no?”

  “Haven’t seen anyzing else in ze room zat could.”

  “You mock me, no?”

  “I mock you, yes.”

  “I like zat. I am getting very vet.”

  Unlike her words, her face showed no reaction to either the insult or the mockery. It was as if it was a mask, a facade incapable of expression. Without saying anything else, she turned and flipped a switch somewhere behind her, which was followed by a whir and high-pitched whine of a motor coming to life and warming up.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, her voice softer, lighter.

  I didn’t respond.

  “You look hungry.”

  I wasn’t hungry. I was famished. Starving. Desperate for some kind of sustenance. Crazed with the wanting of it.

  I was cold too, shivering in my nakedness.

  “Did you know zat ze Japanese eat zeir prisoners of var?” she asked. “Zey say it is because of Allied attacks on zeir supply lines, zat zey are dying from starvation, but zat is not it.”

  I had heard reports of Japanese beheading Allied pilots and cutting off flesh from their arms, legs, hips, and buttocks to fry up and eat. You never knew how much of that kind of thing was propaganda––or from which side it came––but I knew there was something to it. A buddy of mine who’d escaped a POW camp told me he’d witnessed it for himself.

  “Zey do it, like everyone else, for power and terror.”

  She waited, but I didn’t respond.

  “Eating one’s enemy is ze ultimate in taking his power, no? And him knowing you are going to do it puts within him ze ultimate terror.”

  She paused expectantly again, but I remained implacable.

  “You doubt ze truth of my claim,” she said. “Okay. Let’s put it to ze test. Know zis, Mr. Riley. Vhen ve finish torturing you, my comrades and I are going to eat you.”

  There was a seismic shift in my shivering that had absolutely nothing to do with the cold.

  “We are going to remove choice cuts of ze flesh from your body while you are still alive and cook zem and eat zem. And you will be so starving, I will watch as you eat your own flesh. You will know ze true terror from zis moment and I will have all your power, no?”

  Chapter 3

  She went at me hard—never changing her expression, no matter how painful for me or distasteful for her the tortuous task was.

  The electrical current she continually administered to my genitalia and other parts of my body was not only extremely painful, but gave me the most unnatural sensation, which was nearly as bad as the burns and jolts.

  As if the pain and distress weren’t enough, the procedure caused me to lose control of both bladder and bowels, leaving me to writhe in my own waste.

  I
was glad she wasn’t trying to break me, that I didn’t have some important secret she was attempting to extract, for I would have long since told her anything she wanted to know.

  When she had done her best, which was plenty, she left and the big man from the sanatorium came in.

  “Whatta you think of her, soldier?”

  “That’s a waste of a woman,” I said.

  “Brother, you don’t know the half of it.”

  “I know plenty. I promise you that.”

  “So I guess it’s my turn,” he said. “You ready?”

  “Not really. No.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “When?”

  “What could you have possibly done to deserve all this,” he said.

  “Nobody deserves all this.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “To who?”

  “Really? You don’t know? How many enemies capable of this you got?”

  “Before tonight would’ve said none. Always thought I was beloved by all.”

  When I woke up, the big man was saying something.

  “What?” I asked, my hoarse wisp of a voice not recognizable to me.

  “How’d you lose the limb?”

  “Found myself in a fight without a weapon,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “So I chewed it off and clubbed the guy to death with it.”

  He laughed heartily at that.

  “Thinking I’ll do the same to you with the other one.”

  “You’re all right, pal,” he said. “You’re all right.”

  “Yeah, I’m swell,” I said. “Beloved by all.”

  “Tell you what, I’m gonna give you something. Knock you out so you won’t be awake for the next round.”

  Before I could respond, he was administering an injection and I was slipping away.

  The quality and quantity of light in the room changed and suddenly Lauren was standing beside my bed. She was luminous, a soft warm light tinged with the color of tupelo honey emanating from her. Her big brown eyes were clear and concerned and brimming with empathy, her thick brown hair shiny as satin.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Sssssh,” she whispered, touching her lips with her finger.

  “Please forgive me.”

  “For what?”

  “Not saving you.”

  “You saved me in every way a person can be saved. You know that, soldier.”

  “I miss you so much.”