Pretty Little Dead Things & Other Stories

By Bob R Bogle

A relic of the House of Plantagenet, lying forgotten in a garage in Iowa, stirs up outside interest of a questionable nature in "Old Jawbone" and "Colfox Murdered Gloucester in Calais (Remember Radcot Bridge)."

In the aftermath of an inimical relationship, a young mental health patient discovers auspicious new functionality in the latest software upgrade of a therapeutic device in "Feedback."

An aging author, her too long-familiar husband and yokemate, and a perky young pre-med confront the converging tides of yesterday and tomorrow in "The Pool."

In "The Detention Cell" the bugs are triumphant. . .

A severed finger discovered on a stretch of Tennessee highway briefly unites a state trooper with an unusual hobbyist up north on a collecting trip in "Pretty Little Dead Things."

In these and six more stories that playfully embrace myths, legends and archetypes, ranging from mainstream to horror to science fiction and back again, the lingering effects of past choices and chances continue to break through and affect lives in the present. "Never suspecting the whirlpools fanning out through possible futures. Throw a pebble in the lily pond. Ripples disperse, like that."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob R Bogle
• Release date: Nov 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9780985589318

Bob R Bogle

Bob R Bogle has been a cell biologist, a phycologist (Spirogyra, Procloron), an oceanographer (light- and scanning electron-microscopy, photography, Antarctic diatoms, Eucampia), a clinical chemist (robot repairman), a histocompatability technologist (the Frankenstein business, epitope investigator at large), a reluctant hematologist (counting to 100 repeatedly, robot repairman), a microbiologist (normal flora detective, antibiotic resistance, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, virology, genomics, bioweaponry, West Nile Virus), a transfusion medicine technologist, a father (sub-roles too numerous to itemize), an appreciator of psychedelic and impressionist art, a Dylanologist, an aficionado of Frank Herbert, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Thomas Pynchon and James Joyce, and a life-long writer. Most of his professional training was at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He is presently blogging compulsively about his most recent novel, Memphis Blues Again (American South, the blues, jazz, the Civil War, Civil Rights, New Orleans, Savannah, the Mississippi River basin, etc.) at brbogle.blogspot.com.

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PRETTY LITTLE DEAD THINGS AND OTHER STORIES

Bob R Bogle

PRETTY LITTLE DEAD THINGS AND OTHER STORIES

Bob R Bogle

Copyright © 2012 by Bob R Bogle.

Smashwords edition

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ISBN 978-0-9855893-1-8

2nd edition

DEDICATION

This compilation is in memory of James Marlin Bogle (1941-1986), Walton Leroy Bogle (1915-1997) and Annabelle Gardner Bogle (1917-1994).

PRETTY LITTLE DEAD THINGS AND OTHER STORIES

Bob R Bogle

Old Jawbone

The Remediator

Bone-Diggers

Feedback

In the Smoky Mountains

The Pool

A Host of Heaven

The Detention Cell

Moving On

Veterans Day

Colfox Murdered Gloucester in Calais (Remember Radcot Bridge)

Pretty Little Dead Things

About the Author

Old Jawbone

Must be a family heirloom; it was dusty in the garage.

I found the jawbone of Richard II. Sticking their mitts through a crumbly coffin.

I found the jawbone of Richard II.

Children quarrel, like wolves over bones in a church. Throw a pebble in the lily pond. Son of the Black Prince. Boys will be boys, fighting in a church. Children quarrel, like wolves over bones in a church.

Give us a bottle of that lovely purple wine. Throw a pebble in the lily pond.

The first white rose to snuff it.

Throw a pebble in the lily pond. Must be a family heirloom; it was dusty in the garage.

I found the jawbone of Richard II.

How did it come to Alba? All that clear air over the Gàidhealtachd's emerald sward. Holy heirlooms are not so holy until they've accrued centuries of historical immensity. And he was not well loved in his day. Oh no, except by Robert de Vere. Ha ha. Holes in the casket? Reach in quick, I dare you! Let's hope the embalmers were thorough.

Sticking their mitts through a crumbly coffin. The first white rose to snuff it. Give us a bottle of that lovely purple wine.

All that clear air over Alba. Rumbly tumbly patchwork quilt of greens. Boys will be boys, but they bore the relic north first before it crossed the Irish Sea. I dont know why. No one knows. Just a minor family migration, maybe, an old jawbone packed in a wagon among toys and dog food and other sentimental detritus. Some dirty thing he stole in his youth. Maybe never even told his wife what it was. Would you? Londonderry by way of the Hebrides, maybe creeping forward at a multi-generational pace. Along the way, throw a pebble in the lily pond. Something like that.

Anyway: years pass.

Leagues pass under a ship's hull. Blue, blue waters under blue, blue skies, sun a golden face smiling down. Winds and tides: imagine! The freezing wind blasting your clothes against your hungry body. And now people are afraid to fly in pressure-controlled jumbo jets. Few hours across the continent, little bottles of rum or whisky. Afraid of that! People dont know what courage means. Rotteny wormy old ships across the Atlantic, day by day, by day, by day.

To Pennsylvania. Then Tennessee. Iowa. That's how we got here. That's how the jawbone got here. The jawbone of Richard II, son of the Black Prince.

I found the jawbone of Richard II; well, they told me where to look.

Heaps upon heaps, a thousand men fall. Old Richard II started the dominoes tumbling. Wars of heredity. Whose mother. Whose father. And so on. Generational blood-letting. Old Samson drank water out of his weapon. But nothing but trouble's ever gonna issue from out of this family heirloom.

Throw a pebble in the lily pond. Give us a bottle of that lovely purple wine.

Like to rehash old quarrels, like arena spectators from behind the stars.

I sold the jawbone to the re-animators. They like to open old wounds, I think, or maybe they just like roses.

I sold the jawbone to the re-animators. How'd they know it was in the garage?

Surprised as Lazarus, no doubt. They're not from this Earth, I think. Sneaks sniffing down the corridors of time. How'd they know it was in the garage? Like to rehash old quarrels, like arena spectators from behind the stars.

How'd they know it was in the garage?

Why start all that dirty business up again? Surprised as Lazarus, no doubt.

Got thirty-five bucks.

The Remediator

Handfuls of white stars still burned steady in the scallopy crimson predawn sky when the stranger came walking down the road. Late moonlight frosted the hushed land. The hoary old satellite itself, three-quarters full, looked rusty, stained in old blood.

Around him the wide fields ran unchecked to dim, distant horizons. Flat. The air was fresh, earthy and moist with the transpiration of the crops he'd cut his way through. He wore a wide brimmed black hat and a dark, dewy coat against the chill air, and he carried a large paisley upholstered valise. Under untamed twirls of gray and silver hair his pasty face was old, but his eyes were crystal-hard and blue as open ocean. Resolution was stamped on his mouth. He was a wild-looking man dutifully conducting important business.

Roseville was like any tiny plains farming community: a café, a schoolhouse, a filling station, a grocery store, several small houses silvered in languishing moon glow, and a few other buildings of uncertain service. Aching with silence. Tall cottonwoods and elms thickly cloaked the town's few streets. He passed a slab of broken concrete that had once been a basketball court, its nets long vanished from bent orange hoops. Almost there. Through chain link he noticed the weeds growing high from the long, curving cracks.

He stopped. He paused, glimpsing in the café window. Its lights were out. Frowning, he crossed the sleepy street to the grocery store. A pink neon sign in the window buzzed OPEN. He pulled back the screen and pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Canned goods stacked high, dirty checked floors worn through to a previous generation's tiles, white fluorescent tube lighting overhead, humming refrigerators against a wall, some unsavory fruit in plywood bins and shiny stainless steel racks jammed with junk food. He scanned for the coffee pot. He spotted it. A fat clerk, snoozing precariously on a stainless steel stool, jerked awake in surprise.

Didn't hear you drive up, the clerk said, rubbing his eyes. He was in his late forties with an almost entirely bald head. His face was red. His eyes cleared somewhat as he focused on his customer.

The stranger lowered his valise to the floor and sniffed the coffee pot. Perhaps. He poured a large cup. Hot, but not too good. Old.

I didn't drive up, he said. I walked.

Walked?

Yes. What time's the café open?

Eight o'clock. Walked from where?

Hays. Umm . . . eight o'clock's late. He glanced about for a microwave oven. I dont guess you have any frozen burritos? Anything hot?

Hays? That's almost fifty miles!

I had a couple of changelings there.

I guess I'll have to wait, he thought, resigned. A cold breakfast wont suit me today. Eggs and bacon's what I need. And fresher coffee.

Changelings? The clerk hauled his bulk up off the stool.

This job's getting predictable, he thought. I need a vacation.

He sighed.

New policy. They're cracking down on pointless malice. You know – meanness for its own sake. People who enjoy cruelty. People like you, Mr Ellis.

The fat clerk started to say something, then he shut his mouth and blinked. What do–

Come, come. No sense pretending. I know you beat your wife, Mr Ellis. You swear at your kids. You cheat your friends. Surely you know that prayers get through. He put the cup down. Coffee's old. He picked up the valise and approached the counter.

The clerk's mouth dropped open and his face went very