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A Being Otherwise
A Being Otherwise
A Being Otherwise
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A Being Otherwise

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Wayne Hrovat is a quintessential cog-in-a-wheel; at forty-one, he has worked as an accountant in the bowels of Ford Motor Company for fifteen years. He is unmarried and lives with his ailing eighty-something mother.
He is also mildly schizophrenic.
When downsizing costs him his position, he takes a consulting job at a manufacturing plant in rural Michigan and discovers that the town has a dark history of unsolved murders and lost persons. He soon finds that he is both an outsider and an integral part of the continuing nightmare.
As the story progresses, it becomes clear that his damaged psyche has been annexed by an opportunistic demon, and the two mental states joust inside until the climactic ending.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 28, 2018
ISBN9780463878736
A Being Otherwise
Author

Chris Kassel

Chris Kassel is a Detroit-based writer, journalist, and the co-creator of the popular Our Story television series and winner of seven Michigan Emmy Awards. He is a former Detroit Free Press columnist and the author of twelve books of fiction and non-fiction.

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    A Being Otherwise - Chris Kassel

    Part One: Damocles Effect

    Chapter 1

    Consistency is the cornerstone of sanity.

    The patient—an odd, gawky man named Wayne Hrovat—sat meekly on the soft Tanner loveseat with his bony hands resting on bony knees.

    Sitting in a leather armchair opposite him was Dr. Gould, a big, bulbous behemoth with hair the color of burl wood. He might have passed for a portly favorite uncle watching the Army /Navy game, but the trio of framed diplomas on the wall and his supple, precise speech betrayed him and gave him an air of dignified aloofness.

    At first, Hrovat viewed him with scarcely controlled terror—Gould’s expression, from the outset, had seemed detached, reflective, but remotely threatening, like a gorilla peering from behind the glazed glass at the zoo.

    Nevertheless, the office represented a healing milieu for meaning-centered psychotherapy. It was awash in quiet symbols that evoked tranquility and safety—ambient lighting, muted taupe walls, a Tibetan singing bowl, and healthy philodendrons drawing nourishment from the south-facing window. The room was inside Gould’s red brick, three-story home, where a vine-shaded stoop led up to the parlor floor containing the warm, comfortable space where he treated terminal patients, caregivers, and folks like Wayne Hrovat—cancer survivors.

    As you know, I’m trained in psychiatry, but I specialize in oncological cases, Gould had begun, his head tilted and his voice animated with more clinical curiosity than compassion. I agree with Dr. Naveed, of course. From what I can see, self-healing on this scale is unprecedented. From one X-ray to the next, your tumors vanish; your biopsy is clean, your scans come back clean. Spontaneous regression of this magnitude is about as rare an anomaly as exists in medicine. Still, it happens—the human body can be a miracle machine.

    Wayne sat perfectly still in the leathery loveseat. It was big enough for two, but he remained sucked tightly into the far left side as though there was someone else sitting beside him. He said nothing, but he knew already that the disappearance of his tumors, though remarkable, was not unprecedented. The files that Dr. Gould fingered may not have contained his entire medical history, but in Wayne Hrovat’s forty-one years of life, this was his second experience with spontaneous regression. When he was nine, he’d developed a rash on his inner thigh, and by the time his mother had him transported to the emergency room of St. Joseph’s of Warren, both of his legs had erupted in waxy lumps and angry, livid, purple sores.

    Tests had confirmed the worst: It was a form of carcinoma, so rare in a boy of his age that only ten cases had ever been reported in the United States. Given the rapid spread, the doctors had determined that radiotherapy would not be effective, nor could they dig the tumors from the skin. Amputation was the best option. But the night before the surgery, in the bathtub, as he watched, the tumors began to shrink and shrivel, and by the time his screaming alerted his mother, they had vanished. There’d been no doubt of the diagnosis, and the doctors were amazed. According to some, protocols suggested that an immune mechanism was responsible; others attributed a sudden surge of hormones.

    He had remained cancer-free until the previous January, when he’d been diagnosed with spindle cell sarcoma—normally a bone cancer, but in this case, already developed into a kidney tumor with tendrils spreading to his lungs, and he’d been told that it was a terminal case—that it was inoperable and would likely not be helped by chemotherapy or other treatments, and that the median survival rate for this stage was under a year.

    And then, virtually overnight, the cancer cleared. The series of reports in the folder that Dr. Gould held proved that without equivocation.

    Puzzling, but thrilling, Gould went on. We won’t second guess miracles. In theory, our immune systems should hunt out and destroy mutated cells before they ever develop into cancer. Anyway, Dr. Naveed referred you because cancer survivors can occasionally become emotionally paralyzed. Fear of relapse is understandable, and residual physical, behavioral, or social sequelae associated with the inevitable fear of recurrence. Clinically, it’s referred to as the Damocles Effect. Like Damocles, you perceive a sword perpetually hanging over your head, ready to drop without warning. For some people, the psychological challenges of survivorship can be worse than the physical treatment for the disease. As survival increases, issues of coping become paramount. I understand that you’ve already accepted work—a consulting job. That’s phenomenal, Wayne. Survivors often have a hard time deciding to get married, change jobs or make other major decisions. The Damocles Effect…

    But Wayne was no longer listening. He had noticed that the sunlight was glinting at a peculiar angle as it passed through the window above the philodendrons; it lit upon the beveled pane of the bookcase that stood behind Dr. Gould’s desk. The case contained existential books on psychosynthesis, Kimochi dolls for pediatric patients, ‘Inner Peace’ cards of reflective meditation and all the standard textbooks, but none of these caught Wayne’s attention—rather, he squinted at his own reflection in the shimmery glass.

    Gould continued, …sense that your own body has betrayed you on a cellular level; naturally, there may be trust issues. You write in a diary, correct? Keep a journal? I urge you to continue that—it’s a life hack; writing is thinking. There’s even a term for it: ‘Journaling’… A permanent record for posterity and a cathartic release for you.

    Wheels within the wheels. Wayne felt his own face, stroked it and fondled the smooth, blue-grey contours of his chin. He was clean-shaven, as always.

    Yet, as the sunlight sidled through the south-facing window, it made the bookcase glass into a mirror, and although he crooked his neck, turned his head and rubbed his face, Wayne could see that his reflection was of a man with a bushy beard.

    Chapter 2

    Mr. Wayne Hrovat

    LaGrange Manor Apt. # 439A

    31999 Mound Rd, Warren, MI

    June 23

    Dear Wayne,

    Following our phone conversation of Tuesday, June 14, I discussed the matter in detail with my sons, Trey and Warren, and I have decided to accept your proposal for consultancy. As agreed, your services will begin at some date in mid-October based on your medical schedule and will last four weeks. We will expect an analysis of our ‘best practices’ at the end of the first week, your proposed optimization plan at the end of the second week, and your assistance in the implementation of them during the following two.

    I agree to cover, in full, all travel charges you incur, your hotel accommodations, your standard $65 dollar per diem for meals, and other day-to-day activities as well as the specific consultancy fee outlined in your proposal.

    I remain sensitive to your health situation, and as you know, one of the reasons your proposal impressed me was that I believe you have both the educational and personal background to understand the framework of our corporate philosophy at Bayard Polymers:

    Operational excellence, industry-leading customer satisfaction and superior financial performance while recognizing the diversity in our most valuable asset: Our people.

    Sincerely,

    William Bayard II, CEO

    Bayard Polymers

    1829 S. 1st Street

    Creston, MI

    Chapter 3

    The Negwagon County News, August

    William Bayard II Dies in Plane Crash

    Bayard Polymers confirmed Friday that its owner and founder died in a plane crash Wednesday while returning from a business meeting in Dearborn.

    Sixty-six-year-old William Bayard of Creston died when his Piper Malibu crashed in Macomb Township after a meeting with Ford Motor Company. He was the only one on board.

    His family, friends, and employees now mourn the loss of Bayard, who started his business as a college graduate by purchasing a nearly defunct injection molding company and growing it into a multimillion-dollar industry serving the automotive and pharmaceutical industries.

    He believed in people, and so he gave guys chances in the business with a job that a lot of people didn’t, said Bunk Roche, Creston’s police chief. Helping others was a big part of his life.

    Air Traffic Control at Romeo Airport attempted to reach Bayard but lost radar contact.

    I got a call from the Air Force that told me that there was a beacon distress signal from the plane, said Scott Obstarczyk of Perry Field, the public use airport where Bayard’s aircraft was based, two nautical miles from downtown Creston.

    After a multi-agency search, the crash site was found around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in rural Macomb County.

    Bayard’s colleagues and close friends were part of the search party that found the crash site.

    We are numb, the numbness of being there and finding out and seeing him was pretty hard, said Reid VanDis, a warehouse supervisor at Bayard Polymers and a former Army Reservist. I just didn’t believe it at first. He spent plenty of time in the warehouse, and you just expect to hear his big laugh.

    Bayard is survived by his sons, Warren and William III. We’re moving forward, William said. We’re going to keep this dream alive for my dad and for the people that benefit from it. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash. Hamilton’s Funeral Home said a memorial service will be held

    Tuesday at Lutheran Church of Hope in Creston.

    Chapter 4

    Daylight on the vinyl siding of LaGrange Manor sent darts into his skull. Photophobia was fallout from the Cytarabine and his steroid drops were only minimally effective.

    This side effect was wearing off, so on this quick trip to Kroger for his mother’s lemons, he hadn’t brought along his polarized clip-ons. Nor his Prednisolone eye drops. Now, as he walked up the concrete walkway with his insulated reusable grocery bag, the sterility of the glossy white façade was stark and glaring, and the starkness bored into his brain and lodged there.

    There was mold in the grout of the tiles around the bathtub. He remembered that as he entered the building’s vestibule and saw the bank of bronze-colored mailboxes, because one mailbox belonged to Ben Grady, the unit’s super, and he had complained to Ben Grady about the mold the previous week. Grady was no bigger than he was, but he was a feral type of creature with dull, pinched eyes and so many tattoos that even without a shirt, he looked like he was wearing a turtleneck sweater. Wayne Hrovat hated to interact with him, and he felt the onset of a migraine headache now that follow-up interaction was required. But it had been a week since the complaint, and if nothing else, along with the upgraded oak cabinets in the kitchen, the sleek satin pulls and the chocolate wood plank flooring, his $960 a month living space included 24-hour emergency maintenance.

    Upstairs, in # 439A, his eighty-two-year-old mother was not bothered about the mold, but about dander.

    Where’s my Claritin? she asked when he’d unloaded the mesh bag of lemons onto the counter.

    You didn’t send me for Claritin, Mother; you asked for lemons. For your water.

    No, I asked for Claritin. That woman next door—what’s her name? Braverman? The Jew? She has cats, which she isn’t supposed to have. It’s a litter box issue; I can feel the dander in my throat—can’t you?

    No, Ma, the Bravermans moved out five or six years ago. There are no cats next door.

    Magdalina Hrovat’s memory loss was the result of vascular dementia. Braverman gone? she snorted. Who lives there now then?

    An Indian couple, I think. With no cats.

    Those Indians? They eat cats. I can smell it when they cook them.

    The old woman padded around a green chair in her walker and moved to the window. She peeled back the laurel curtains. When I grew up, you knew who your neighbors were. You were saying things to them. Someone is going into a door today, it’s like, ‘What? Who is this person?’

    Mrs. Hrovat adjusted Bakelite-frame cat eyeglasses, the same frames she’d had since the sixties—couldn’t get used to another one, so they kept swapping out lenses. She wore a moss green cardigan over checkered housedress.

    When she looked out the window at the courtyard, she started in again: Look at the Jews, just like the cats. You throw them out from the door, they’re coming to the windows. Hitler didn’t kill them enough.

    Okay, Ma, that’s fine, Wayne said quickly. That’s all I want to hear about the Jews today; that’s plenty. Have your lemon water and when my headache goes down, I’ll go out and get you more Claritin.

    Oh, you aren’t getting it for me. You don’t fool me. You’re allergic yourself. There’s some stuff coming out of your nose.

    In his room, behind the closed door, a watercolor on the wall depicted a halcyon scene of family life, with blond children, a jumping dog, and a lawn the color of the tile in the shower. He couldn’t look at it long without tears coming to his eyes.

    As for the rest of his room, unlike the carved curio cabinet in the living room, the chesterfield couch with a slipcover, and the stuffed, gold velour swivel rocker where his mother sat, the furniture was featureless, hotel-like and IKEA utilitarian—a basic bed, a small grey couch, and a desk for his laptop because the couch had armrests too lean to accommodate it.

    He had fetched a cool washcloth from the green-tiled bathroom with the mold in the grout, and inside his room, he draped it over his expansive forehead like a wet, loose-fitting bandage.

    He’d no sooner found a comfortable position than his phone rang. He checked the caller ID and knew he had to take it. He sat on the edge of the bed as the water from the cloth ran in rivulets down the back of his shirt.

    A resonant tenor sounded on the other end: Bill Bayard, returning your call.

    Hrovat tried to sound alert—more than he felt—and affably earnest. Yes, sir, Mr. Bayard. I’m… sorry to hear… about Mr. Bayard. I…

    Thanks; an unexpected thing, but we’re putting the pieces back together. What can I do for you?

    Well, I… Before he passed away… in June, in fact… I had met with Mr. Bayard about doing some consulting work for Bayard Polymers. Specifically, to advise on process reengineering and profitability improvement with your Ford business. As your father knows… knew… I was recommended for the position by Terence Roche at Ford Global Strategy.

    Yeah, I know who you are. We are still evaluating our moves in that department.

    I mean, my point is, I think… I did have a letter of intent from Mr.… from your father, Mr. Bayard, agreeing to the terms of my proposal.

    Really. The tenor of the voice went markedly flat. Well, as you can imagine, there are a lot of logs in the fire right now. Staff management is definitely one of them.

    See, my statement of work indicates that I’m scheduled to begin… second week of October. Second week. I assure you, the contract is perfectly legal. I have made some arrangements already. The fact that my consulting required me on-site meant that I had to hire someone to care for my mother. She’s infirm and…

    I see, said Bayard, his voice indicating that his ability to see was outweighed by his ability not to care.

    I do have it in writing, Hrovat said finally, as firmly as he could without sounding insolent. From your father. Signed. I can email you a copy.

    Fine, why don’t you email me a copy? answered Bayard curtly. As I said, my brother and I are still working with our attorneys.

    The call ended, and Wayne Hrovat felt fear corkscrew through his system. It was like cancer metastasizing, only these fibers were entirely self-generated—he knew that; he knew the nausea, the spinning room, and the pile driver inside his chest were entirely constructs of his own cognition; it was a personal conspiracy, but as the panic raced and boiled through him, it seemed to be a life-form.

    He stumbled back to the green-tiled bathroom, ignored the mold, ignored the mirror image—a slate-colored face with silvery skin and red-spattered eyes—and swallowed ProSom to calm his nerves and Cordarone for the tachycardia.

    Back in his room, phone switched off, the worst of the attack subsided, he lay back on the bed with his washcloth mantle and focused on the image that generally allowed him to nap for a while:

    He was a child again, a young boy in a lonely house, slipped off to lie luxuriantly upon a canvas hammock the neighbors had left suspended in their yard, while they spent the summer at a vacation home. He rocked against his own weight with a dome of blue overhead and the mid-summer haze filtering through him; his nostrils were filled with the smell of cut grass. His brain quieted, but as it did, he had a peculiar and disturbing thought: At ten, such increments of time, however peaceful and delicious, were passing tracts on the path to greater things—or so you thought. What if, in the end, they were the only tracts of life that actually mattered? He was forty-one years old and could not recall having encountered a single moment in adulthood to rival the sweet safety of the neighbor’s hammock, and so, when the panic attacks kicked in—which they did with clockwork regularity—this is where he returned. Everything in the wake of that soothing swing and the summery smells had been a slow slide to the bottom.

    The ProSom took over, and he slept—longer than he had intended to. When he woke up, the light in the room had changed. But his headache was gone, and he felt refreshed, and instantly rose to fire off the email to Bill Bayard Jr. with the agreed upon statement of work signed by the late Bill Bayard Sr.

    He went into the mold-tiled bathroom to relieve himself, intending, upon his return, to call Ben Grady and make some adamant demands.

    Once inside, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror and he remained fixed and panicked in front of the medicine cabinet, spewing cold sweat until his mother began pounding on the door with her little tight angry fists crying, Let me in! What you doing in there so long? Those magazines again?

    In the mirror, Wayne saw that his skin had turned brilliant emerald green.

    Chapter 5

    Via Email:

    Mr. Wayne Hrovat

    LaGrange Manor Apt. # 439A

    31999 Mound Rd, Warren, MI

    Re: Consulting Services

    Dear Mr. Hrovat,

    We represent the estate of William Bayard Sr. and his sons, William Jr. and Warren Bayard. Pursuant your email of Sept 16, we are willing to honor Mr. Bayard’s commitment to engage your business consultancy, to begin October 15, with a few contractual adjustments.

    Your quoted fee of $16,500 for four weeks of financial consultancy based on forty hours per week is no longer tenable due to restructuring activities Bayard Polymers will initiate later this year. Therefore, we will make a revised offer of $9,250.

    Your per diem fee for incidentals will also be set at $15.

    Living accommodations will no longer be covered as a separate line item expense during your term of consultancy, but the Bayards own a historical building at 72 Campbell Street in downtown Creston. It was formerly a boarding house and as such is equipped with bedrooms and a kitchen. Although it hasn’t been occupied in several years, if the above conditions are acceptable, we will engage a cleaning crew to have a bedroom made ready for your use.

    Sincerely,

    Gregory Dovitz,

    Dovitz & Associates;

    P.L.L.C 95 South Liberty

    Street Creston, MI

    Chapter 6

    The object lesson in the analysis of this diary is that the handwriting is of a very disturbed person. The first thing that grabs you is the disagreeable pastosity and the abundant signs of confusion. There are multiple Personal Pronoun I’s (PPI’s are both printed and scripted) which suggest a division of the personality. In addition to the mixed forms of PPI’s, the baseline of the writing is sinuous which attest to inner turmoil at the time of composition.

    – John Gruchy, FBI Questioned Documents Unit

    Sept. 16

    "I have engaged a woman named Myrial Sliwak from Right At Home Temporary Care to provide Mother with companionship and homemaking during the month I’m gone to Creston. It was a struggle to find the right candidate, naturally. I interviewed at least a dozen women before settling on Myrial. Myrial is fifty-five-years old and a third generation Croat with family still in Zagreb, and a devout churchwoman, although I will be able to return home on Sundays to take Mom to mass. Other than a severe and disconcerting strabismus, a condition that causes her left eye to wander and makes it difficult to tell when she is looking directly at you, Myrial meets the parameters of expectations.

    She has been a registered nurse since 1991 and has been an accredited home care professional for more than ten years. She seems trustworthy, caring, kind, and patient in every way, which is quite a relief as Mother and her structured way of life can be a handful. She likes to be a nuisance about her views.

    Mother did not mention Mrs. Sliwak’s left eye, so I certainly did not want to bring it up.

    Of course I am not in the least bit pleased with the revised contract the Bayards offered me. It is clearly a breach of our agreement, but I have decided to accept it rather than go the other legal route and sue, as I expect the Bayards have more resources in this department than me, and I also think it is necessary to get back into the work force as quickly as possible.

    I tried to speak to Terry Roche at FGS about it, and he brushed me off. After fifteen years of wearing Ford blinders inside one of his cubicles, I earned the right to expect better, especially after my medical issues. When I asked him to get Purchasing involved (since the aftermarket bezel business is a big part of Bayard’s bottom line), he refused.

    He recommended that I take the job even at the reduced fee, and I did.

    In the meantime, I will take a drive up to Creston tomorrow morning as Myrial will spend the day with Mother so they can get acquainted. It is important for them to establish a personal connection based on their devotion to church and common heritage. It is just as important to me to establish my connection with the town where I will spend four weeks next month to ensure it meets my own parameters of expectations. I know little about it other than what the internet can tell me. Established in 1845, population at last census was 877 and the biggest employer AgriCystal Sugar, followed by Bayard Polymers. In fact, those are the only two industries the town supports. The median household income is less than $30,000 so I am not expecting much in the way of amenities.

    To my relief, Dr. Naveed explained that a potential side effect of Cordarone is one’s ability to perceive colors in the normal range, and that my recent bout of light sensitivity followed by a disturbing hallucination in the mirror was likely a result of the drug.

    She has adjusted my dosage accordingly, to 200 mg. once a day, and since then there has been no recurrence."

    Chapter 7

    Certainly, Wayne’s mother liked to be a nuisance about her views. As to Wayne’s father, there were vague, unsatisfying stories about his identity, but Wayne had concluded, with considerable shame, that his father was his great uncle Stojan. Stojan was twenty-two years his mother’s senior, and in the 1970s was the manager of the grocery store where his mother worked.

    She had mentioned the name only rarely while he was growing up, and then, only with extreme revulsion. It wasn’t until she took Wayne to visit him in a nursing home in Mt. Clemens that the truth became a raw wire with all the insulation stripped away.

    By then, Stojan was eighty something; a frail, foul relic with brown teeth and breath that smelled like decomposition. He leered at Wayne with something that seemed akin to lust, but not quite. Wayne concluded that it was the fact that Wayne himself was a consequence of that lust, especially since—for no discernable reason that anyone ever offered or questioned—after Stojan died, his will bequeathed Wayne enough money to put him through Walsh Business College—a provision he’d added the week that Wayne was born.

    In the interim, Wayne had been an only, lonely child in a small house on Sunburst Street in Centerline. Throughout his entire father-free, sibling-free childhood his mother had been a counter clerk at Kurowski Polish Grocery, and he’d spent that childhood smothered in Mother’s duty, if not, empirically, in her love. Everywhere he went, in everything he did, he was scrubbed and combed, scarved and hooded, buttoned and buckled; every sneeze was blown out of proportion and every cough earned a pot of boiling water with a melted nub of Vicks VapoRub.

    A youth spent in a reality where days were so relentlessly tautological that it was like shuffling a deck and having the same card come up every time had produced few memories that were stand-outs. One occurred when he was nine years old and his mother took him on a rare family outing—a reunion with a bunch of distant relatives at Darius Hill County Park in Sterling Heights. There were a dozen cousins also present, many his age or near, but he knew none of them. As they darted around playing,

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