The Source

By Harvey Stanbrough

Jonathan Kirski is tasked with the job of mining bones from the Siberian death fields. It shouldn't be a problem. After all, it's just ore, from which will be derived a calcium extract. But Jonathan's past says otherwise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: StoneThread Publishing
• Release date: Jan 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370991877

Harvey Stanbrough

Harvey Stanbrough is an award-winning writer and poet. He’s fond of saying he was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas, and baked in Arizona. After 21 years in the US Marine Corps, he managed to sneak up on a BA degree at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales in 1996. Because he is unable to do otherwise, he splits his writing personality among four personas: Gervasio Arrancado writes magic realism; Nicolas Z “Nick” Porter writes spare, descriptive, Hemingway-style fiction; and Eric Stringer writes the fiction of an unapologetic neurotic. Harvey writes whatever they leave to him. You can see their full bios at HEStanbrough.com.

Book preview

The Source

Harvey Stanbrough

the Smashwords Edition of

a FrostProof808 publication

an imprint of StoneThread Publishing

To give the reader more of a sample, the front matter appears at the end.

The Source

Jonathan Kirski worked hard all day in sub-zero weather to mine the bodies—the source of the calcium extract—from his claim in the Siberian burial field.

The reality of the claim was very different from what was depicted in the training films.

In the films, there were no mouths frozen open, no severely discolored and ice-burned skin. There were no extra body parts stuck to the outside of the wrong body when the one next to it had been torn away. In the films it was all very neat.

But here—here was a naked woman, lying face up. And two children—they looked to be a boy and a girl, around three to five years old—lying atop her. The boy’s head was nestled beneath her jaw in the curve of her throat. The girl’s head and shoulders lay to the near side of the boy’s right leg.

The boy’s left leg was missing, torn away from the hip socket.

Probably it had been transported to a cooler, still frozen to whatever source had lain this side of it.

The girl was intact, save the left side of her skirt. No doubt it had accompanied her brother’s left leg to the acid as part of the other body.

But apparently there had been an inadvertent trade.

Just as the body that had lain to the near side of the children took part of them, so the body that had lain to the near side of the woman left a part behind.

Someone’s blackened bottom