The Last Autopsy - Softcover

Zaenglein, Norbert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0970217609 ISBN 13: 9780970217608

Publisher: Night Howl Productions, 2000

Synopsis

Now Updated! Contains five extraordinary tales.

The Last Autopsy - A devout hamlet is devastated by the murder of a local girl. A religious rogue is the likely suspect, yet his arrest raises troubling questions that attract the national media. Under the white-hot spotlights of the press, the town must confront its own ungodly secrets. In a dramatic conclusion, the distinction between good and evil blur and ultimately vanish in an amorphous mist.

In The Shadows of Madness - A haunting tale that plunges the reader into a murky underworld where the differences between utter madness and profound genius are indistinguishable.

Whispers of Butterflies - An evocative story that captures one woman’s desperate struggle to cope with the intolerable brutalities of life she faced as a result of her curious appearance.

Last Night In The Desert - The curious odyssey of a young couple cursed with eternal life.

Requiem For Miracle - A dark and disturbing Kafkaesque type story about who lives and who dies in a world obsessed with superficiality and beauty.

Zaenglein’s disquieting visions are startling, idiosyncratic, and seasoned with controversy. The author makes no concessions to market forces or to the conventional etiquette of fiction. The results are striking creations that defy traditional expectations. Zaenglein has created a compelling style for readers who are unafraid to venture into the twilight and explore life’s dark and distant peripheries.

Read The Last Autopsy and receive four additional tales from the twilight of the imagination.

About this title

About the Author

Norbert Zaenglein is the author of three nonfiction books. The Last Autopsy is his first foray into fiction. Zaenglein was born in Europe and has, for most of his adult life, in California and Nebraska.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The crack of a rifle shot shattered the still of the evening as snow sprinkled to the earth like powdered sugar falling from a shaker. Winter had stilled the night and a mutant moon appeared on the horizon; its large orange mass twisted and misshapen. The bullet ripped across the long blue shadows that had formed across the disinterested landscape of the plains. The boy who fired the shot had moved his crosshairs due left. Snapping back the bolt sent the hot cartridge sizzling into the snow. After lowering his rifle, the boy watched as the coyote scurried beneath the skeleton of a distant combine. For years, the animal had roamed freely in that forsaken barn on Old Man Westlers farm. One day, the early morning hours gave way to an unfamiliar trespass. Entire families arrived, having crammed life s necessities into aged pickup trucks that struggled and belched during the brief journey here. Others had crowded into cars that pulled horse trailers crammed with chairs, tables, clothes, and heaters. As soon as they had they stopped, the kids yanked portable televisions from the heap and set them on rocks and tree stumps. Groups gathered around quickly to monitor the anomalous events that lured them from their homes. Most of the evacuees believed their stay would be brief, and that they would be home in time to celebrate the 1989 New Year.

As the moon reached higher into the sky, a group of people amassed near the large barn doors. Like the night air, they too had remained silent, unmoving, and only the disharmonious singing of children mingled with the night: "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily..." As if guided by some mysterious force, the group suddenly parted and six men emerged. Their outlines stood as black silhouettes against the glow of camp lights and kerosene heaters that burned inside the barn. A quiet excitement had permeated the air suggesting that something momentous was about to take place.

Marching like a military unit on patrol, the men marched to the waiting trucks with a thick, braided rope slung across his shoulder. Those who remained behind huddled by the massive doors and watched the convoy snake down the snowy knoll and blend into the midnight mist.

It took only a few minutes for the convoy to reach Beaver Crossing Road, a destitute intersection reclaimed by weeds and inhabited by a sturdy breed of jackrabbits. Dimming their lights, the trucks inched through the ever-present haze. Silent minutes had passed when the caravan moved onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. The men remained motionless; their tough, weathered faces illuminated only by the amber glow of cigarettes that glowed fitfully like fireflies.

A door creaked open and two men jumped from the lead truck. Like thieves in the night, their eyes darted about quickly, nervously. Having determined that no one was near, the men flicked their cigarette butts into the snow and hurried up the road. The night air had remained strangely still and only the falling snow whispered ever so softly. Now, the crunch of the men s boots scored the silence as they marched ahead.

In the distance, the men spotted their mark. It was a most inexplicable quarry: two rows of portable toilets. Their sheer numbers appeared to form long black lines that converged in the distance. Beyond, the feeble lights from Glen Hollow strained through the moving white veil. The chomp of boots stopped when the men reached the first stall. There, the taller of the two men pulled a flashlight from his pocket and fired a beam toward the waiting convoy.

The plan they had rehearsed earlier was now in action. Moments after signaling, the shape of a pickup emerged like an apparition from a mist. Reaching the stall where the men stood, the truck veered across the road and backed up. The men who waited there toppled the toilet onto the pickup, wrestled it down with rope, and slammed their fists against fender. That signal sent the truck and its plundered cargo back to the barn. Moments later, a second truck crawled up. It took just a few minutes to filch several portable toilets from the outskirts of Glen Hollow and whisk them back to the barn. There, the boisterous cheers from the men, women, and children greeted the returning men like heroes.

Just weeks before the now notorious outhouse heist, Glen Hollow was just another obscure town nestled in the midst of America s heartland. Here, the traditional values of family, religion, and God had rooted deep in the soil. Life in Glen Hollow had been slow, predictable, flowing like a gentle waltz. The population sign staked at the edge of town hadn t changed in nearly thirty years: "Now Entering Glen Hollow--Population 680."

Looking back now, those were indeed the good old days. Who, then, could have imagined that the heart of this small town was about to be ripped out by events so unimaginable, so wicked, so deviously twisted; events that dueled with the imagination of the devil herself.

Today, the streets of Glen Hollow are choked with hundreds of news vans, hordes of reporters, cameramen, and thousands of outsiders. Rooftops are jammed with satellite transmitters that stare into the heavens as their invisible beams scatter the most dreadful news to a stunned audience.

The bizarre odyssey that thrust Glen Hollow onto the world s stage unfolded one early November morning.

Edition details

• Publisher: Night Howl Productions
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0970217609
• ISBN 13: 9780970217608
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 143