SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 11, 2021] “Mr. Dombey, the Zombie”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
Mr Dombey was, indeed a zombie. He travelled the morning train every day and read the daily newspaper for his hounsi. His hounsi was interested in the latest rapes and murders, but not enough to read the paper herself.
Being a zombie, Mr Dombey couldn’t talk and therefore couldn’t earn very much money and his hounsi was annoyed by this (even though she knew what she was getting with a zombie).
Mr. Dombey only had one fear–his hounsi, the woman who charmed his spirit and gained control of his body. His spirit was imprisoned in a decorative gourd. Until the gourd was broken–Mr Dombey was stuck.
After thirty years of this, his hounsi grew ill. She had been trying to cure her flatulence with a potion. But she had accidentally been using arsenic. The papers blamed Mr Dombey, and he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.
When he could not be killed, the papers declared him a hero and proclaimed him innocent.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment. But since he could not die, he lingered there for decades. If only someone would destroy the gourd.
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