One-Armed Bandit
Day’s end for Joe
The nights are cold in Lanarkshire, but there’s an extra fierce chill in the graveyard. I shiver and call out to George, our foreman, “Bit of a chill here, tonight.”
George, a thick brute of a man, was leaning, as usual, on his shovel, holding the gas lantern so that we could squint and see what is around us. You don’t want to fall into an open grave, after all.
“If you're cold, dig faster, ya lazy git,” was all that George grunted at me.
So I dig as fast as I can. The job is terrible, but there are worse. At least I’m not using my legs as a leech feeding ground.
Thunk!
I’ve hit something. I quickly clear the dirt off the old pine box and pry open the lid. Good thing a shovel is a multi-use tool.
The stench hits me like a wave, nearly causing me to lose the meat pie I had for dinner. I was wearing a scarf over my face because the smell is revolting, but this one was extra odoriferous.
The corpse was bloated, with a greenish tinge. And worse, it wasn’t even whole. Most of the right arm was missing.
“Oi! This one’s no good,” I yell to George.
George comes over, takes a look at the corpse, pulls his lantern close to the gravestone and squints as he struggles to read the inscription.
“Shite, this is clumsy old Joe. He lost his arm down in the pits, sticking his hand where it shouldn’t be. Remember,” George admonishes. “Even if we can’t sell the body, we can still feed it to the pigs. Nobody, wait, I mean NO bodies go to waste.” George doubles up in laughter. I shake my head and go back to exhuming the poor old fellow.
I based this story on the following writing prompt:
as well as this story by Mark Farrar
and continued to use the characters introduced in another of my stories
Paul Mansfield is a writer, a photographer, a guitar player, a philosopher — some he does well, some not so well, but he still tries them all.
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