Southern Fried Rat and Other Gruesome Tales by Daniel Cohen Read Free Book Online Page B

The trunk was practically airtight, so the body had not so much rotted as it had dried out and mummified. Mary was still recognizable, though most of her flesh was gone and her skin was now stretched tightly over her highly visible bones. No one would have called her beautiful now, but she did finally look as if she was smiling—or grinning as skeletons do.
    No one knows for sure what happened, but the police guessed that poor Mary really had tried to throw herself into the spirit of the game for the first and last time in her life. She had run all the way up to the attic and hidden herself inside the old trunk. It was a good hiding place; no one would ever think of looking there. Too good, for the trunk locked when she closed it, and no one was able to hear her screams for help. Suffocation is a horrible way to die.
    That's why the Sanderson house is abandoned, and why no one wants to buy it—ever.

Cheap Wheels
    "There's no such thing as a free lunch."
    "You get what you pay for."
    These two hoary old sayings had been guiding principles of Alexander MacLaran's life. So when he saw an ad in the paper offering an "almost new" Porsche for fifty dollars, he was suspicious, highly suspicious. Must be a misprint, he thought. Five hundred dollars for such a car would have been ridiculous, even five thousand would be an unbelievable price. Still, he came up with a couple of other hoary old sayings to fit the situation.
    "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
    "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
    Fortified with this ancient wisdom, he went down to the address in the ad to look at the car. He had expected to see potential buyers lined up around the block. But there was no one else. All of the others had figured, as had Alex. that the ad must be a typographical error. Unlike Alex, they had not bothered to check it out.
    The door was answered by a nice looking young lady, and Alex, not one to waste time, got right to the point. "Are you the one who advertised a Porsche for fifty dollars?"
    "Yes," she said
    "Then the ad was no typographical error."
    "No, of course not. The car's in the garage. Do you want to see it?"
    Alex certainly did want to see it. It was beautiful. He could just imagine himself riding around in it. But he was essentially a cautious and realistic fellow, not one to be carried away by wishful thinking and imagination. There has to be something wrong with this deal, he thought.
    "Can I drive it?" he said.
    "Certainly. You can't buy a car without giving it a test drive. I'll go with you."
    Alex drove the car around the block and around the neighborhood. It was a marvelous car. While there was obviously something fishy about the whole deal, Alex no longer cared. He reached into his pocket, pulled out fifty dollars, and handed it to the woman. She in turn gave him all the necessary papers. He looked them over and found everything was in order. The deal was legal, the Porsche was his for a measly fifty bucks.
    "All right," he said when all the papers had been signed. "What's the catch? Why did you just sell this car to me for fifty dollars?"
    The woman smiled, and then she began to laugh. It was not a pleasant laugh. When she finally stopped laughing, she explained to Alex what had happened.
    "A couple of weeks ago my husband ran off with his secretary. Just the other day I got a telegram from him saying that he is never coming back, and that i should sell the car and the house and send him the money.
    "You don't know anybody who wants to buy a house for a hundred dollars, do you?
    —————
    Today all of the auto companies are advertising the "new" fuel-efficient cars. Well, it's nothing but a big ripoff, a fraud. Years ago engineers in Detroit discovered how to make a car that gets nearly one thousand miles per gallon of gas.
    Naturally, if a car like that ever got on the market, it would just about bankrupt all the big oil companies. The oil companies and the car companies are all tied up together, and they