A New Twist On An Old Lexxian Story!

(What once passed for Valderon's Disclaimer!)

There has been a very bright light in the sky tonight. The sixty-five year old went into all of our bedrooms and pulled the blinds down on all of the windows. We had been redding up the house and outened all of the lights early in the even. Bout ten o'clock we were all settled in for bed.

Mr. Miller had brought us home some good Jersey milk to make fresh butter with for breakfast, and I skimmed it,..shook it,..and salted the resulting fresh butter, made from the rich cream that comes from jersey cow milk. We would have the butter with my scratch biscuits in the morning.

Once we had all settled in for the night,..I heard a shout from outside the house. One of our neighbors was a' hollering for some reason!

For us, my family,..it was late, past ten PM. We are not fancy folk and we don't sit up till all hours like past eleven PM or past midnight. The ten year old's classmates are scandalized if she talks about what she watches on television at night. They are scandalized that she even posseses such an instrument of the devil as a television set. And the sixty five year old is just one generation away from making me wear a head covering and using one horse transportation. We try to fit into the neighborhood by keeping decent hours,..i..e..we are in bed at night and sleep past seven in the morning.

Anyways, we had all settled in for the night when we heard the neighborman's yell of,.."Fire! Fire!! Fire at the lumberyard!"

If that was not enough to shake my poor family out of bed,..there was the bright light that suddenly came flashing through our bedroom windows!! Such was that light that it was brighter than any that even the sixty -five year old had ever seen in his sixty-five years! I swallowed hard and climbed out of bed.

"Stay down!" I whispered to the sixty-five year old, who was now hiding undr the bed.

"I'm in my closet and not coming out!!" yelped the ten year old's muffled voice from her room down the hall.

"I'm going out!" I growled as I stood up and headed for my chest of drawers,.."If I'm not back by morning.....!"

"If you ain't back here by morning," spluttered the sixty-five year old from his position from under the bed,.."Then you ain't a' commin back!!"

I picked up my 22 rifle,.a flashlight,..and some ammo and lit out cross the back of the yard into our neighbor's cow pasture to see what was going on. Zeke Miller's lumber yard,..I assumed,..was the lumberyard,.which was on fire. Zeke's wood yard was the closest lumberyard,..two miles down the road, but was just a quarter mile away through the pasture.

When I had climbed through the barbed wire of the fence, I saw the very bright light flash again..not more than halfway cross the cow pasture from me! I set my 22 down the crook of my arm and made my way cross the cow pasture.

Despite my extreme care in stepping about in the darkness,..I slipped on a cow patty and landed on a human body!! It was a dead human body so I found as I felt it's cold skin whilst I scrambled back to my feet,..slipped on that same dang cow patty again and I landed right on top of "that dead stiff!"

That "dead stiff' was definetely a "dead stiff" a' cause he was damn cold and stiff and I could feel his cold skin as I landed on top of him!! As Mr. Miller was not in the habit of keeping dead bodies in his back cow pasture,..I knew that the "stiff" did not belong here!! Mr. Miller's cows would certainly give sour milk if he was in the habit of keeping dead bodies in his cow pasture!!

I gulped and pointed the light of my flashlight down on the dead face. It was a man. It was a Dead Man,..but he had a very beautiful and delicate face. He,..if this man was a "he,"...(the dead head bore what amounted to the long hair of a woman in these parts of Ohio),..was a good looking corpse. In fact,..he was one damn fine good looking corpse.

"Oh shyst,..Stanelle!" I whispered to myself as I felt his wrist and tried to find a pulse, "He is just TOO good looking to be dead!"

He WAS dead. No pulse.

"Oh shyst!" I muttered to myself again, "Why do all of the good looking men around here have to be either Old order Amish..or DEAD?"

Then,..the Dead man..opened his eyes!!

(to be continued!!)
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