Imagine a graveyard. The long dead and recently dead are buried here and there, mostly victims of disease and religious oppression. The gravedigging business was booming in those days. Space in the graveyard was dwindling, and so every bit of ground was being used for the large number of newly deceased. On the day our story begins, the only space left for one particular corpse was just inside the front gate, the last of no less than twelve bodies that had been laid to 'assumed' rest. This fittingly 'fresh' plot belonged to Bob.

Fittingly, because when he was alive Bob was perhaps the most notorious womanizer ever to prowl the earth. His dubious philosophy was, "molest first, ask permission later." It was rumored that, on one depraved Sunday, he had seduced fourteen females on their way to and from church. Great sighs of relief and sorrow were heaved by many a woman on three continents on the day he was hung (for goosing the queen).

Enter smuj.

Little is known about smuj. The initials S.M.J. were sewn into the collar of his moth eaten shirt. I suppose it doesn't really matter that they were the initials of the tailor who made it. He was abandoned as a child presumably due to his profoundly grotesque countenance (Bob claims that the sight of him would turn one to stone). He is also astoundingly stupid. He once stared into a pond for three days thinking he saw a smuj-fish. The only encounters anyone ever had with him were when he approached with his hand out. Often he would succeed in acquiring a few coins from horrified targets if only to make him go away. Using his meager earnings, he would buy used ale from sympathetic merchants and drink himself into a stupor. Shortly after the last spadeful of damp earth was unceremoniously dumped upon Bob's grave, smuj wandered into the burial grounds looking for a place to sleep off an especially successful binge. As fate would have it, he stumbled face down onto a soft mound of newly shoveled dirt and immediately began to snore.

Now, in this reporter's opinion, no living person knows what happens to a person's spirit or 'essence' after life is extinguished, but as Bob tells it, a dead soul has one of three choices after death. It can join other spirits in some ethereal spirit world; it can linger, disembodied, on the earth; or, in some unusual cases, it can inhabit another body. In this last scenario, the new body's resident spirit must be weak enough to allow a stronger one to control it. Need we say more? The convenience of smuj's feeble-minded, warm torso was apparently irresistable for Bob and so he moved in. Overjoyed at his good luck, he set out to pick up where he left off - he hastily set out to get some unsuspecting wench in trouble. It wasn't long before his lecherous bubble was brutally burst when the first lass he approached unloosed such a throat blistering scream that Bob/smuj himself ran in fear, thinking that some specter of death was looming behind him. It was only when a chance reflection from a window revealed his new visage that he realized his misfortune. So, what to do? After considerable thought, he decided that his old body would look better dead than this new one did alive and he proceeded to dig himself up. Etched into the casket were the letters: 'DED BOB' (apparently to keep the semi-literate mortician from mixing up the copious numbers of dead people). One might wonder why he would care which body was which. One might also wonder why it was necessary to distinguish the body as dead as if it might be confused with a Bob who was merely sound asleep. In any case, Bob liked the sound of it and took it as his new moniker.

So, that my friends, is what we see before us today. Believe it or not, it is what Bob would have us think is the truth of the matter, and who are we to dispute it? After all, if one is fortunate (or unfortunate) to encounter the potent pair, what difference does it really make? More power to him/them I say. One can only be thankful that the non-bone stinky bits have long since been nibbled away by the wee critters that do those things. For myself, I wish the unlikely duo well. How often does one meet someone who has beaten death? I wish I could get away with it.