For the next little while, you will intermittently be hearing about my fascination with author Stant Litore’s  Zombie Bible Series.  And for a minute here, you’re going to hear about it again, although, not exactly the way I had intended to do this.

That book laying there already has the hallmark visual prescience that says “something horrible most likely happens in there.”  True enough. I think.

I say I think, because I cannot open it.

After having read the first installment, Death Has Come Up Into Our Windows on my iPad Kindle program, I was hooked.  But the first book is not very long, and my well-documented cerebral struggles with going the litertary long-haul on the backlit screen was barely invoked with such wonderfully-brief sendoff into the series. [DISCLAIMER: before anyone in my life thinks I’ve taken a sudden fascination with lacing green smoothies with a Sardonia root, let me just explain: the story involves the prophet Jeremiah. The enemies of Israel are the undead. Transpose the main structural themes with that, and you have at least an idea where it’s going.  But understand this: Jeremiah’s positions are neither truncated nor perverted for the sake of the story–even though some artistic license is still there.]

So about that book up there.  I had already purchased it on my Kindle app once, and when I tried to venture that road, wound up vapor-locking a chapter in.  All I know this far is this: Caius is engaged in a rather tumultuous autopsy, and that”s as far as I got.

I’ve realized–I need tactile books–or at any rate, E-ink, if I’m going to be able to read.

So, going to Amazon to buy it again at a whopping .74 cents did not make me feel guilty.  It was a used copy, listed as “VERY GOOD” in the “conditions” rendering.

This was not the case.  What I received was a decomposed, rotting, malodorous ex-book.  Horrid smells emanating from the pages, dubious dark-statins remniscent of blood, blatant dirt-clod remnants on the cover (visible if you click on that picture), with an unwieldy feel–almost like some acetone-based rigor mortis.  There is also a putrid bouquet of cigarette smoke which comes off on my fingers.

So in effect, I was mailed a Zombie, by the non-circumspect quality control department of the Amazon affiliate (literary corpse division).

I wrote them back and told them of this mild discrepancy.  They wrote back, completely apologetic and refunded my money this morning.

But why . . . why do I have this odd feeling . . . that when they wrote me and said “no need to send it back to us”  . . . that . . . well . . .

Never mind.  I’ll read it when I know it’s dead. For real.