
Quadrant 4 of the Heroic Journey 2.0
Story Grid Writing Podcast
The Heroic Way of Being
Roxanne Jones: "Rockis gets a lot of physical loss, right? He gets beaten to a pulp. Ye, so he loses eyesight, righti"? And so he could acquit, right? Hey, i can't see. I've lost my eyesight. But no, what does he do? S like i'm doubling down. Man. I've accepted that i might never see again. But cut my own eye open. Because i need to keep fighting. That becomes a symbolic representation of the heroic way of being"
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Speaker 1
The VIN number revealed that the car actually belonged to a man named Paul Costner, a name they were all very familiar with because Paul Costner had been missing for seven months and his disappearance had been a major news story in the Bay Area. Not long after being taken to the police station, the man in custody admitted to using a phony ID. Detectives had used the oldest trick in the book on him, taking Scott Stapley's ID and asked him to tell him his birthday. When he couldn't provide the correct answer, he realized the gig was up. His real name he told them was Leonard Lake, but before telling them anything more, he asked for a pen, paper and a glass of water and then began making a confession. He told them he'd been a fugitive from the law for the past three years, wanted for a litany of weapons charges and that the man who'd stolen the vise from the hardware store was Charles Heng. As he went on, Leonard spoke calmly, frankly and freely, as if prepared to tell police everything he knew, but as he continued speaking, something strange started to happen. Leonard was now sweating, his breathing labored and soon he was lying on the floor, convulsing wildly and violently, but the interrogators hadn't seen, was Leonard earlier slipping a cyanide capsule into his mouth and swigging it down with the water that'd given him. He'd kept the capsule hidden under the collar of his shirt for just such a moment. Leonard was then rushed to the hospital where he fell into a deep coma. He died four days later, having never woken up from his coma. No one at the police station quite knew what to make of what had just happened. First, there was the gun silencer, then the cyanide capsule, they'd never seen anything quite like it before. Just what exactly was Leonard hiding? How bad could it really be that he'd been willing to kill himself before his secrets were discovered? The answer was more horrifying than anything they could've imagined. Inside Paul Costner's Honda, investigators found a utility bill for a cabin in Willciville, a remote community about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada's. The cabin belonged to a woman named Clarolin Balash, Leonard Lake's ex-wife, and now current girlfriend. With little else to go on at the time, investigators decided to head out to the cabin, hoping they might be able to track down the mysterious Charles Aang, the man Leonard Lake had mentioned just before poisoning himself. When investigators arrived at the cabin, there was no Charles Aang, but what they did find was one of the most horrific and disturbing crime scenes ever discovered. One the two-acre property next to the cabin was a large concrete bunker, a building made entirely out of cinder block designed to be a nuclear fallout shelter. But when detectives began searching it, they discovered the building had another more sinister purpose as well. Walking inside the bunker, it initially looked like a normal tool shed, but after closer inspection, they soon realized there was a secret door located in the wall disguised as a bookshelf. Behind the door was a room with a bed and a closet full of clothing belonging to Leonard and Charles. And inside this room was another door that opened up to a much smaller room, a cell, less than half the size of any solitary confinement prison cell. Inside the cell was a sleeping pad, a five-gallon bucket, a roll of toilet paper, and a two-way mirror built into the wall, allowing someone to spy on whoever was trapped inside. Even more hair-raising, this cell had been completely soundproofed with a set of rules taped to the wall.
Speaker 4
Rule number one, I must always be ready to service my master. I must be clean, brushed, and made up with my cell meat. Rule number two, I must never speak unless spoken to, unless in bed, I must never look my master in the eye, but keep my eyes downcast. Rule number three, I must never show my disrespect, either verbally or silent. I must never cross my arms or legs in front of my body or clench my fists, and unless eating, must always keep my lips parted. Rule number four, I must be obedient completely and in all things. I must obey immediately and without question or
Speaker 2
comment.
We left all of you hanging back in December with the Heroic Journey 2.0 series, so we decided to correct our error. This week Shawn finishes up our series on the Heroic Journey 2.0 by diving into the Quadrant 4.