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    Bag of Bones
    Bag of Bones
    Bag of Bones
    Ebook55 pages49 minutes

    Bag of Bones

    By M.R. Hyde

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Calpurnia lived alone in a quiet and dull world only disrupted by her pesky co-worker Walter Sprang. Then one day Calpurnia woke up outside of her skin. This piece of long fiction explores through magic realism, and in homage to the Latin American fantástico tradition, the experience of one single, lonely women who enters the world of Mexico and is transformed by her encounters with border police, immigrants, the violent and the beloved.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherM.R. Hyde
    Release dateFeb 19, 2017
    ISBN9781370237890
    Bag of Bones
    Author

    M.R. Hyde

    M.R. Hyde celebrates and explores the known and spiritual world by writing for Christian religious purposes and by penning fiction for the sheer joy of words. She is also an active artist.View the online gallery now at https://www.redbubble.com/people/mrHydeArt/shop.

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      Book preview

      Bag of Bones - M.R. Hyde

      Bag of Bones

      Written by M.R. Hyde

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2017 M.R. Hyde

      Cover Art by M.R. Hyde

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Contents

      Chapter 1: That Bag of Bones

      Chapter 2: Setting Out

      Chapter 3: Crossing Over

      Chapter 4: Moctezuma

      Chapter 5: The Festival

      Chapter 6: The Veranda

      Chapter 7: The Intruder

      Chapter 8: Home Again

      About the Author

      That Bag of Bones

      Calpurnia could sleep through the thunder, and she had for the most part. Now it was daybreak and the thunder had not yet run off to the Gulf. It was hanging around with a thick curtain of rain determined to snuff out the sun for as much of the day as possible.

      This made it difficult for Calpurnia to get up. It had been difficult to get up for twenty-one days. That’s how long the mantle of cloud had shrouded the region. It was an unusual shroud, heavy and damp—so unlike the quick storm bursts that darted in and out at other times of the year. So, Calpurnia just lay there. She was rather uninterestingly reviewing her dreams of the night. They held little meaning for her. This was unlike her mother who put great stock in dreams. Dreams are the portents of the future, Calpurnia, her mother had said frequently. Calpurnia had dismissed this conviction outright, even as a child. She dutifully nodded and smiled even in that moment, her head brushing the pillowcase in an unusually rasping way.

      This slight physical activity restarted the engine of her duty. She would rise as usual, make and eat breakfast and then go to work. Work, the metronome of Calpurnia’s existence, was necessary for survival. She was not a bad drone, just a nominal one. She neither sought glory nor prestige. She was satisfied in doing her work because it gave her a sense of accomplishment each day. That was all Calpurnia wanted because that was all she felt she could have.

      Calpurnia lay for a few more minutes thinking about how to avoid Walter Sprang at work again. Walter was Calpurnia’s tormentor and he found it his life’s work to publicly humiliate her in as many creative ways as possible. He never seemed to run short of ideas. Although their co-workers privately resisted his efforts, once Walter got going, invariably they would join in. Walter’s greatest delight was broadcasting to everyone that Calpurnia was a bag-of-bones.

      Indeed Calpurnia was thin—very thin. She was tall, gaunt and gangly. It seemed as if she had been this way from birth. She did not mind her physical aspect, but apparently others did. She learned to disregard them and to dismiss Walter and his efforts to shame her in public. But she had learned quickly to avoid Walter Sprang when at all possible. Providing fodder for him was not her purpose in life. That purpose really was to do her daily work well, go home to read and sleep, and then to get up to do it again. Calpurnia rarely interacted with co-workers or her neighbors in the apartment complex. She did not go to office parties, eat lunch with anyone or attend the apartment manager’s attempts at community. This bag-of-bones was resigned to her life and to constantly planning how to avoid Walter Sprang.

      When Calpurnia finally sat up in bed, her eyes were still closed. She felt quite a bit lighter but did not give it much notice. She rather liked pretending to be blind, to see if she could navigate her tiny apartment without stubbing her toes or knocking things over. This morning she

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