I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: December 20, 2023] “The Skull”

This year my wife ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my sixth time reading the Calendar–it’s a holiday tradition!  Here’s what H&O says about the calendar this year.

The 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individual short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.  Now in its ninth year, the SSAC is back to once again bring readers a deluxe, peppermint-fresh collection of 25 short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.

The author of this story was Leopoldine Core.  Each day has an online component with the author with a brief interview.

It’s December 20. Leopoldine Core, author of When Watched, steers clear of Facebook Marketplace.

This was a short story about, yes, a skull. 

A woman inherits a skull from her artist uncle.  She’s not sure where he originally got it, but he used it as a model for a lot of his still life paintings.  He didn’t leave it in his will to her.  Rather, he left a bunch of his stuff at her apartment when he went abroad and when he died the skull was in one of the boxes.

She doesn’t want it.  She really doesn’t want it in her house.  But she doesn’t know what to do with it.  She can’t just put it in the garbage, right?  If she buries it she’ll surely be seen.  So what then?

She remembers a curio shop in the neighborhood that surely sells all kinds of bones and other weird things.

I love the idea that the people in the shop think she’s weird for wanting to get rid of such a cool item.