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I do quite a bit of reading, a lot of which is news. Every now and then, there are some curious happenings that I appreciate more than others, because it gets my imagination working.

Like a story I stumbled upon today.

This has to do with the body of a Cambodian man found in his apartment near Paris.

Except the apartment was no longer his. It had been sold at auction from the bank which repossessed it to someone else who bought it sight unseen. When the buyer went to go look at the apartment last week, locksmith in tow, the body was discovered hanging from the ceiling in a mummified state.

In other words, the body had not decomposed, and apparently, did not stink enough to arouse the concern of neighbors.

The man was last seen in 2005, after filing a complaint against his employer over being fired from his security guard job. Some residents of the apartment complex were quoted as saying they simply thought the man had returned to Cambodia or abandoned the apartment. No one had bothered to investigate.

I’ve read stories similar to this, where people have been dead a year or more before someone came by and found them. This is the longest I’ve heard of.

What’s most intriguing, obviously, is how his body remained so well preserved. The area, a suburb called Bussy-Saint-Georges, must not be known for its mummification qualities, since officials are supposedly baffled by what took place.

So, what caused it? Are Cambodian physiques somehow different than other physiques? Did the air in the apartment, which would probably become stale, dry and somewhat warm, help mummify him?

Or is there some other explanation?

If this were a fictional story, and I was writing it, there would be several ways to go, I think. The primary premise, though, would be foul play. Instead of a suicide, which the real man is thought to have committed, it would be a murder made to look like a suicide. And the man would have been injected with some kind of solution that could slow down the degeneration process, presumably, so the body wouldn’t be found right away.

The solution would be untraceable after a few days. Of course, the cause of death would be attributable to hanging, but the murderer wouldn’t want any questions being asked about the solution, anyway.

Okay, so then that would lead to why the man was being murdered. A possible reason is in the article. He was fired from his security job. Maybe he worked for a giant pharmaceutical company, and he guarded one of their research facilities. And maybe he’d overhead something or stumbled on to something. Something horrible. Something illegal, unethical, or immoral and he was threatening to go to the authorities. Or maybe, the evildoers thought he had already, and couldn’t take a chance.

It could be the injection itself the murderer was trying to keep a secret. And in a rather wry twist, maybe the murderer was using the security guard as a test subject, a human trial, as it it were, to see if the substance actually worked. It could be some kind of new preservative that worked too well, or an anti-aging agent of some kind. The fountain of youth.

Of course, this would be just the beginning, since there would need to be an investigation, and some kind of sinister motive behind it all. Someone trying to make a fortune perhaps? Money always seems to be a factor.

Okay, so I’ve just shared the techno thriller possibility. There’s always the paranormal angle. A vampire that desiccates rather than merely sucking blood. An ancient power the security guard helped to unleash giving him his just reward.

There’s a number of possibilities this story could take. Just got to let the imagination ruminate for a spell.

If you’re interested in reading the article, you can find it here.