Sean X. Luo
Post-postmodern Nonsense
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| The Fading Lake Lore by SEAN LUO October 22, 2003 The Historical Reports Around 1915, various residents of northern Indiana reported sightings of a beautiful naked woman swimming in Lake Michigan. As it turns out, this woman is a rich heiress (educated at The University of Chicago) turned hermit turned author/activist named Alice Gray. Tired of the urban rustle and bustle, she sought refuge in the recluse yet beatific Dunes. She periodically came back to Chicago and incited quite a bit of media fanfare with her ahead of her time environmental protective stances and was on her way to fame. That is, until she met an unemployed boat builder with a questionable past named Paul Wilson. After he became a suspect in a murder case, they moved to Michigan City. Alice died a few years later of childbirth, but the sensational news accounts followed pointed to Wilson as the perpetrator, citing reports of domestic violence and abuse. Over the years, some claim to have seen the ghost of a nude woman running along Lake Michigan into the water. The title the Chicago newspapers crowned her, "Diana of the Dunes", survived, as a legend. The Sighting How rare is it, for a girl to have aced (reportedly) in mathematics, astronomy, Greek and Latin, making Phi Beta Kappa junior year and still be hot? With that question in mind, I began my quest to witness the ghost of Diana of the Dunes. I can barely find someone who's alive with such excellence and appearance simultaneously. Thankfully, I found a nifty program on the web called GhostFinder 1.0 for PalmOS, which aided my effort greatly. It seems that one's name always has a strong bearing to ones existence. Most of the time it's a response of "huh, who?" But if it were somewhat unique, it'd be "oh, her." Regardless, it is always a powerful association of concept and space, a symbol and an existence, a representation of an individual. And this program, rather than detecting such intangibles, detects "coronal discharges" of a dead human being. Walking east along south side of Chicago, I used my PDA like a SWAT team member looking for a bomb. The indicator grew stronger and stronger as I approached the lake. The lake is blue today as usual, with the Martian looking downtown buildings far away. It went off the scale when I was about two meters from the water. This is not good, because Alice was not here, and even though her spiritual presence was strong, it was not yet on a visually detectable level. I'd have to get closer. But my program was thus rendered useless. I resorted to use my Intuition. I strongly consider myself a spiritual person. Whenever I call up Theo the Tarot Card Reader through a 1-900 number, she always understands exactly what I was talking about. There is a special connection, a certain je ne sais quoi that I feel to the supernatural. Hence, I simply closed my eyes and let my legs do the work for me. I walked blindly for a few hours, bumping into various objects. And then I murmured to myself, "one, two, three", and opened my eyes. Then I saw someone, walking, or rather, skidding on water rather Hollywood special effect style. From far away, one could still detect the fullness of the female body, the richness of the curves, the pure, ivory whiteness of the skin, the free flowing strands of hair. I was mesmerized for a moment before I saw a gigantic male looking figure following closely behind. The Dialog "Holy shit!" "I decided to pay you a visit as I know you are thinking constantly of me recently, even in your dreams. And plus, you go to the same school as I did." Her voice was tenuously comparable to Renee Russo's, but not nearly as coarse. "Yes, right, wow...were you in a sorority?" "Hmm...Is that what you came here for?" "Well, not exactly. I was hoping that you could tell me if your husband, Mr. Wilson, is actually responsible for your untimely death." She looked back at Wilson for a second. Wilson is a clean-shaven thirty something looking man, and is wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans, in contrast to her stark, yet flamboyant nudity. Wilson, to me at least, didn't look like a criminal. The Truth Basically, the first murder that Wilson has reputedly committed was an accident. A cult member attempted to sully the lake by dumping arsenic into it, and Wilson caught him and confronted him. In darkness of the night Wilson inadvertently pushed him into the lake. The poor guy poisoned on his own arsenic. The situation with Alice was more complex. Paul Wilson was actually a half Jewish communist party member named Louis Salzburg. He abandoned the party offshoot of three members in Texas for the hope of marrying a rich and famous and--most importantly--hot woman. But he became obsessed with the Dune itself, often burying his head in the sand for hours, breathing through a specially designed tube that comes out of the ground. Alice was traumatized by the increasing mental instability of her husband, but she was helpless and pregnant. As it turns out, Paul Wilson had a twin brother Luke Wilson, a.k.a. Andre Salzburg who fell in love with Alice when he visited her brother. He was actually on an assassination mission from the party to kill Paul. In desperation he stuffed Paul's breathing tube with a large ball of rubber cement sprinkled with cyanide, and tried to burn his body. Alice saw him and tried to scream. Luke stopped her and calmed her down. They decided to cover up the crime and live together ever after. On the day when the baby was due Luke's guilt caught up to him. He decided to commit suicide by drinking a glass of unfiltered Lake Michigan water. Alice got thirsty when her uterus dilated and she drank the water instead, and she choked on it and that subsequently caused a rapid pulmonary failure and uremia. Luke decided to burn his brother's body and report his brother's wife's death as of childbirth. He lived on assuming Paul's identity and disgrace for the rest of his life. The Conclusion Paul chimed in, "The Diana of the Dunes, protector of the lake, lived for and died from the water." |