4)“The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce
Plot:
The story opens with one man reading an old account book in a room with six other silent men. On the table under a sheet is a corpse; this is an inquest. They await the arrival of a single witness, William Harker, a journalist from the city, who was with the deceased, Hugh Morgan, when he died.
At last Harker comes in, having sent a dispatch of the same testimony he will give at the inquest, but as fiction. It’s too fantastic. Yet, he reads his manuscript under oath.
The coroner asks the jury if they have any questions for the witness. The foreman rises and says, “I should like to ask one question, Mr. Coroner. What asylum did this yer last witness escape from?”
Thoughts:
The author sets the mood in the first few paragraphs and carries the gallows humor throughout the work. The first chapter is titled, “One Does Not Always Eat What is on the Table.” Before long, the reader realizes they are reading about an inquest, and a dead person is on the table. Cute.
As the men sit in silence before Harker’s arrival, Bierce tells the reader, “From the blank darkness outside came in, through the aperture that served for a window, all the ever unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness—the long nameless note of distant coyote; the stilly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in tree; strange cries night birds so different from those of the birds of the day; the drone of great blundering beetles, and all that mysterious chorus of small sounds that seem always to have been…”
The atmosphere is heavy and forboding. But there is also a rough humor. The jurors, at first curious when the coroner examines Morgan’s body, regret getting too close.
And not all is as it appears.
The person reading the book has some things in common with the other men around the table, but he is also not like them. He is the coroner. Harker, young and from the city, is an outsider and easy to dismiss.
This is a well-crafted, if not particularly pleasant, story. It is quite short and easily read in a single sitting. The author has set up a nice little mystery. I like the beginning more than the ending.
This story can be read here:
This story can be listened to here: (22:03)
Bio: Ambrose Bierce (1842- disappeared 1914) was an American journalist, writer, and Civil War veteran. Among his best-known works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”—familiar to high school students in the U.S.—and The Devil’s Dictionary, a collection of sardonic definitions of common words. He also wrote a memoir, What I Saw at Shiloh, an unsentimental (at least) account of that battle.
There has been much speculation about his death. He is said to have gone to join the forces of Pancho Villa to observe the Mexican Revolution and disappeared, but a small ocean of ink has been spilled about hows, wheres, and whens.
Title: “The Damned Thing”
Author: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
First published: Town Topics, December 7, 1893
Length: short story
