Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back

Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back is a post-apocalyptic science fiction short story by Joe R. Lansdale. You can read it online here. It begins,

From the Journal of Paul Marder 

(Boom!) 

That’s a little scientist joke, and the proper way to begin this. As for the purpose of my notebook, I’m uncertain. Perhaps to organize my thoughts and not to go insane. 

No. Probably so I can read it and feel as if I’m being spoken to. Maybe neither of those reasons. It doesn’t matter. I just want to do it, and that is enough. 

What’s new? 

Well, Mr. Journal, after all these years I’ve taken up martial arts again—or at least the forms and calisthenics of Tae Kwon Do. There is no one to spar with here in the lighthouse, so the forms have to do. 

There is Mary, of course, but she keeps all her sparring verbal. And as of late, there is not even that. 

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