#1 | February 20 - March 5, 1997  

Materi Dearest

Question: What do you do if the child you gave birth to is a stillborn stiff? Answer: If you're one of the two enterprising would-be mothers featured in this edition of Dying Here, then you toss them out like so many other things you see discarded on the sides of roads, in parks, empty lots, and so on.

"Hey, has anyone seen my eye? For the life of me, I can't find the darn thing!"

Just in the last week, a 19-year-old stuffed her stillborn into a pakyeta, along with the rest of the trash, and dumped it... where else?... by the railway tracks. Not to be out-Dying-Here'd, a 31-year-old mother couldn''t stomach littering on her dear city's vast greenery. "My stillborn is my problem, and not Moscow's" she cried. So, she opened up the balcony door and stuck junior's stillborn corpse in a pile along with the vodka bottles and beer bottles that hubbie never turned in for the deposit money. She hadn't thought about what to do with junior come spring, but hey, who's thinking of the future here anyhow?!

Flammable Ironweeds

A homeless invalid was burnt to death in a construction wagon that had accidentally caught fire. Authorities believe that the fire was caused by-get this-a fire. The deceased man was sharing that wagon with another homeless invalid, who survived, and went mad crying about his friend's death. Mayor Luzhkov was said to be so touched by this story, that he personally sent eight heavily-armed envoys to evict the surviving homeless man from Moscow. A real three-box-o'-kleenexes story.

Jackpot!

A Siberian killer was going to murder one person, but it turned out that he scored three! He had been hired to kill a relative of his brother's murderer, so he did the manly thing and iced the murderer's mom (who had just stuck her child out on the balcony). Then, in order to cover up his footsteps, he smoked the taxi driver who took him there. But wait, what about the guy who paid him to make the hit? Bye-bye! Then our murderer did a little math, and realized he'd have to unleash a massive nuclear winter to kill every potential witness, including himself, just to keep from getting caught. He was arrested on his way to Gorky-9.