The Disembodied Parts

From author Pablo D’Stair (LUCY JINX, REGARD) comes an inimitable portrait of brotherhood and an excavation of the communal folklore which forges artistic perception.

FOURTH GRADER, ICHABOD BURLAP AND his brother Alvin lived in a neighborhood where the disembodied parts of a corpse, each armed with some implement of death, roamed without restriction. These maledictions could disguise themselves as animals, each one. Rust-colored squirrel, a hand. Overweight pigeon, a head. Some kids said this shape-shifting is needless as the parts could turn invisible, teleport through solid walls and ceilings. Some kids said all kinds of things. Misinformation. Uninformed lunkheads, disbelieving louts, and daredevils sewing confusion. 

Were the body parts all of a single corpse? Whose corpse? Was the dead man contemporary, ancient? Were the body parts as much a disguise as the animals? Was this menace - entity, lifeforce - not of our physical or psychic realm? 

Some kids said they knew. Some kids said all kinds of things. 

Some kids were, one day, never heard from again …

THE DISEMBODIED PARTS is an autobiographical novel evoking a childhood exactly as it was – which is precisely as it wasn’t.