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Unlucky Stiffs: New Tales of the Weirdly Departed
Nothing makes you want to embrace the quiet loveliness of life's ordinary moments more than the prospect of a spectacularly dumb death. Consider the fates of these unwitting In the tradition of Thinning the Tales of the Weirdly Departed , Ceilán's latest collection of true stories offers another shamelessly irreverent romp through the unenviable final adventures of some of the world's unluckiest stiffs.
256 pages, Paperback
Published August 3, 2010
About the author
Cynthia Ceilan
6 books13 followersCynthia Ceilán is a native New Yorker who was dragged by the hair kicking and screaming by her otherwise well-intentioned parents to live on a lovely island in the Caribbean when she was in high school and, therefore, too young and obstinate to appreciate that she was in Paradise. The distraught, uprooted teenager argued that, according to all the Catholic literature, flesh-blistering heat and the blinding white-hot glare of the sun were essential characteristics of Hell. The argument fell on deaf ears.
For the next eight years (which will forever be known to her as The Decade of Darkness), she waited for the circus to come to town so she could run away with it.
The Flying Wallendas did, in fact, show up once, but before Cynthia could learn to balance a beach ball on the tip of her nose, Karl Wallenda plummeted to his death with a horrible splat while trying to walk a tightrope between two fancy hotels in the heart of San Juan's tourist district, despite dire warnings from the locals that the trade winds could be quite treacherous. The surviving Wallendas didn't have the heart to replace poor old Karl right away, not even with a pseudo-acrobat willing to work for the price of a plane ticket off the island. So much for seeking asylum with circus folk.
Cynthia added the news clips of the Wallenda tragedy to her collection of weird death stories and got a job right after college, like a regular person. She figured it would take five or six years to save up enough money to finance her move back to the mainland, or a couple of months if she gave up piña coladas and sangria by the pitcher on Friday and Saturday nights. As luck would have it, her employer's home office was in Atlanta, not on another island. She finagled herself an interview, secured a new job, and off to the Bible Belt she went to write mind-numbing technical manuals for imminently obsolete computer products.
Atlanta was very pretty (in a beige, cookie-cutter sort of way), and on occasion presented its share of challenges to the recalcitrant transplant. Sadly, she never acquired a taste for grits or chicken-fried steak, and was utterly unable to twist her mouth in all the right ways to correctly pronounce words like "y'all" and "corndawg." People told her she talked funny, after which they usually asked what church she belonged to. Her un-Christianlike responses sent many of them scurrying to hide the children. On at least two occasions, complete strangers stood on her doorstep and asked if they could pray for her. She replied, "Sure. What the hell," and politely closed the door on them so they could do so in private.
Cynthia spent the next few years in Atlanta searching for liberals, scaring the Baptists, and quietly pushing unsolicited okra to the edges of her plate. Just as she decided that she had reached the end of her Southern Experience, she met a strange and eloquent young man with an easy smile and very little shame. He told her they would leave Atlanta together, "in a another year or two." Three years later they were married, and still living in Atlanta. Four and a half years after that, she left without him, for reasons that had almost nothing to do with okra.
Cynthia finally made her way back to her home town. She bought an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side and nailed everything down to the floor. She is never leaving again.
Meanwhile, her collection of weird death news stories turned into a couple of books. Thinning the Herd was published in 2007, and Unlucky Stiffs in 2010. In between the publication of the death books, she was inspired to write about psychotic love. Weirdly Beloved was released in 2008.
In something of a departure from her penchant for dark humor, Cynthia returned to her first true love, literary fiction, and penned the novel Myths of a Merciful God. She is currently at work on a second novel.
For the next eight years (which will forever be known to her as The Decade of Darkness), she waited for the circus to come to town so she could run away with it.
The Flying Wallendas did, in fact, show up once, but before Cynthia could learn to balance a beach ball on the tip of her nose, Karl Wallenda plummeted to his death with a horrible splat while trying to walk a tightrope between two fancy hotels in the heart of San Juan's tourist district, despite dire warnings from the locals that the trade winds could be quite treacherous. The surviving Wallendas didn't have the heart to replace poor old Karl right away, not even with a pseudo-acrobat willing to work for the price of a plane ticket off the island. So much for seeking asylum with circus folk.
Cynthia added the news clips of the Wallenda tragedy to her collection of weird death stories and got a job right after college, like a regular person. She figured it would take five or six years to save up enough money to finance her move back to the mainland, or a couple of months if she gave up piña coladas and sangria by the pitcher on Friday and Saturday nights. As luck would have it, her employer's home office was in Atlanta, not on another island. She finagled herself an interview, secured a new job, and off to the Bible Belt she went to write mind-numbing technical manuals for imminently obsolete computer products.
Atlanta was very pretty (in a beige, cookie-cutter sort of way), and on occasion presented its share of challenges to the recalcitrant transplant. Sadly, she never acquired a taste for grits or chicken-fried steak, and was utterly unable to twist her mouth in all the right ways to correctly pronounce words like "y'all" and "corndawg." People told her she talked funny, after which they usually asked what church she belonged to. Her un-Christianlike responses sent many of them scurrying to hide the children. On at least two occasions, complete strangers stood on her doorstep and asked if they could pray for her. She replied, "Sure. What the hell," and politely closed the door on them so they could do so in private.
Cynthia spent the next few years in Atlanta searching for liberals, scaring the Baptists, and quietly pushing unsolicited okra to the edges of her plate. Just as she decided that she had reached the end of her Southern Experience, she met a strange and eloquent young man with an easy smile and very little shame. He told her they would leave Atlanta together, "in a another year or two." Three years later they were married, and still living in Atlanta. Four and a half years after that, she left without him, for reasons that had almost nothing to do with okra.
Cynthia finally made her way back to her home town. She bought an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side and nailed everything down to the floor. She is never leaving again.
Meanwhile, her collection of weird death news stories turned into a couple of books. Thinning the Herd was published in 2007, and Unlucky Stiffs in 2010. In between the publication of the death books, she was inspired to write about psychotic love. Weirdly Beloved was released in 2008.
In something of a departure from her penchant for dark humor, Cynthia returned to her first true love, literary fiction, and penned the novel Myths of a Merciful God. She is currently at work on a second novel.
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