THE SQUATTER

A man realizes one day that there is a foreign conscience inside his head: it speaks to him, with a German accent. Thus begins the saga of finding out how this came to be, and the attempt to return this outsider to his own body.

Imagine one day hearing a voice speak to you, but there’s no one there. You know you’re alone, but you still look around. You see there’s no one there.

The voice keeps coming up every few days, then more frequently, speaking to you, then with you, as you engage him in conversation. (It happens to be a man’s voice.) For some odd reason, you don’t freak out, you don’t faint, you don’t run to the nearest therapist, or even to the nearest exorcist, yet you still don’t confide in anyone that you are hearing voices.

But it’s only that one voice, and the guy is perfectly friendly. He doesn’t tell you to do things, like, bad things. Instead it asks, very politely. You find out his name, Ralph. Ralph wants you to fly to Regensburg, Germany, because that’s the last thing he remembers. He was a college professor living in Regensburg.

This is how the story begins for Rick Moon, who is a college professor living in Miami, Florida. In some mysterious way, Ralph’s consciousness was transported and transferred in with Rick’s, so now there are two people living inside his skull. Together they delve into this mystery to find out how it came to be that Ralph left his body and found his way into Rick’s, like an uninvited squatter making himself at home, except that this home was not quite empty. It becomes more complicated for the two when the lover of one and the wife of the other find out what’s going on.

What is going on? Is it like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Is it like a parasite leeching off its host? Is it like a demonic possession? No, no! It’s more like a ghost story, only the ghost is inside you, thinking alongside you, and the two of you are like conjoined kindred spirits. Between the two of you, you speak five languages. The additional knowledge and experience make you a better teacher. It would make most people freak out. But not you. You take it in stride, befriend the squatter, and decide to welcome him into your life.

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Lord of Reason, by Roy Luna. A new novel from Solution Hole Press

About the author

Roy Luna: Roy Luna is a retired French professor who dabbles in the arts, tinkers with music, reads heavily in fiction and history, but does not neglect biographies or science. His main efforts these days are devoted to writing a trilogy of novels based on events occurring during the years between the death of Voltaire (1778) and the French Revolution (1789-94), years rich in both enlightened human progress and dark, evil terror. Three times a week he volunteers at Dunbar Old Books, making sure orphaned books find their way to other readers. His library at home may have surpassed the 10,000 mark, and he valiantly tries to read them all… The one important thing to retain about Roy is his horror at the sins, the injustice, the atrocities, the crimes against humanity that are perpetrated and justified in the name of religion. Any belief system that condones such savagery has discarded its humanity, abandoned its compassion, and forsaken its principles of empathy, tolerance and love of one’s neighbor.