HEYA.

So. Duddies and Peeps, we realize that we have not written anything for Thursday, November 4th, 2010. So we shall be telling you what what we were up to. We were finishing up our horror story, and now we shall share and our grand masterpiece with you lucky bumheads.

With his heart pounding, desperation threatens to engulf him. In his tired, cracked voice, he still feebly cries out for help. Heavy, laborious pants echo throughout the tomb. It is his own personal study, as he usually likes to call it, but right now, with perspiration running down his stiffening body, there was no time to reminisce on old thoughts. Falling to the ground, he clutches at the accursed coffin of Asaph Sawyers- ultimately the cause of his own demise- and thinks back to how this has all happened...

Being a mortuary artist is not a desirable job for many, but for the lax George Birch, it is ideal. There is just something indescribable about the dark musty odor of caskets and the graves they lie under that attract him. Be it the degree of dignity in posing lifeless bodies or the costly "laying-out" clothes beneath the casket's lid, the feeling cannot be put into words. It is almost with a rush- a crude satisfaction that George coldly stares with at his final masterpieces. But nevertheless, he is only human, and the quality of his work differentiates.

One late April afternoon, George sighs and drags his tired legs to the door. He has been neglecting his work lately, giving the same excuse that the winter ice has not yet thawed until even to him it sounds like nothing more than the lame excuse it is. And now that not a speck of ice is left among the fresh dew that layers the withered grass, even he cannot back up his own argument.

Heading out the door, there is a strange foreboding of misfortune hanging in the misty air. Being a strictly non-religious man, George haughtily puts off these feelings as mere nonsense- an after-effect from drinking the night before. However, even his usually dutiful hearse feels unusually vexed today. All this easily irritates the already annoyed George, and he does not handle the frail body of Matthew Fenner as carefully as he usually might have. Viciously drawing up his hearse at the tomb, he relishes the damp, odorous chamber with the coffins carelessly placed around. As he recognizes the coffin of Asaph Sawyers, the light vanishes, and the rusty latch to the tomb door clicks shut.

Suddenly, he is engulfed by the dusk of the tomb. Cursing to himself, he weaves carefully through the coffins only to be confronted by the realization that the latch on the door is broken due to poor conditioning- a result of his neglect. Knowing no one is likely to hear him, George starts to grope around, remembering the tools he saw in the corner earlier. He selects a hammer and chisel for the job and proceeds to the rusted faulty latch. Onwards, he toils at the latch, but when he realizes that the latch was not going to give he decides to try and find a different path of escape. George scans the room twice over, he considers going up through the ceiling but almost immediately deems it impossible. He then selects the only other way out: the slit of the brick ventilation opening. George plots out his escape through the slit via a staircase of stacked coffins. Satisfied with his plan he quickly gets to work. Upon finishing his makeshift coffin structure, George scrambles up the staircase and frantically begins to chip away at the opening, growing ever so anxious of the deathly presences below his feet. So on went George with his hammer. Despite his progress coming in small increments, he perseveres knowing that he can’t stand staying in this damned place a second longer than he has to. It must have been near midnight when George decides the slit is now big enough for his slender frame to pass through. George decides to take one last rest before the laborious task of hauling himself out of the opening. He descends the flight of coffin stairs to take a break at the bottom since the air there is much cooler, but as he makes his way back up, he feels his weight give in on the coffins. Upon reaching the top, he is certain that the stairs wouldn’t last any longer. Without time for a second thought, the coffin underneath him collapses and brings down both George and the rest of the structure with it. George gathered his last reserve of strength and attempts to pull himself through the slit, but even in his ghastly situation he unmistakably recognizes something from below pulling him down…

He feels fear for the first time that night. No matter how much he struggles, he cannot escape the captivity of the unknown grasp. Searing pain flies through his calves like sharp knives. His mind is in a state of fright, and all he can think of is the splinters, loose nails, and the breaking of the wooden box. Maybe he has screamed too, but somewhere in between the frantic kicking and the squirming, his mind is too distraught to remember much.

The man wiggles through the ventilation opening and lands in a heap on the damp ground, incapable of walking with the pain biting at him. He also knows with what is left of his lucidity that he can’t drive his hearse, so he continues to crawl. Moonlight illuminates the way as he drags his bleeding ankles to the to a residence across the cemetery. His fingers claw against the door in a mad haste, and everything feels slow- like how one would feel being trapped in a nightmare with no escape. There are no pursuers; there is nothing, since he is still alone and alive by the time Mr. Armington opens the door.

“Whoa, George? What the hell is goin' on?” At the sight of all the blood, Armington hurries to carry his friend to a spare bed and shouts, “ Edwin!”

“What is it dad? The boy freezes at the door.

“ What are ya doin’? Don’t just stand there! Call Doc' Davis!”

Armington can do nothing but wait for the doctor’s arrival by the injured man’s side. The only sound perturbing the silence is George’s occasional delirious mumblings.

“ …Oh my ankles…”

The local doctor comes and immediately starts to treat the injured man, examining his wounds with an expression that grows more and more serious each second. Both of the Achilles tendons of his patient are torn brutally.

“… Let go…” George continues to mumble.

“ Where did you get this?” the doctor demands, hands shaking and eyes averting as he dresses the mangled limbs. It is wrapped quickly, almost as if he wants to get the wounds out of sight as quickly as possible.

“…Shut in the tomb…” George groans and his head tilts to the side.

Once his patient is more lucid, Doctor Davis makes the man spill everything there is as to what happened- about his grotesque experience down to the last detail. The identity of the top coffin of the pile, how he has chosen it, and how he has been sure it’s Asaph’s coffin in the dark.

To make sense of things, the doctor himself ventures back to the tomb with a flashlight. Wrenching open the door and illuminating the inside, Doctor Davis begins to put the puzzle pieces together. The sight that greeted him compels a wave of nauseousness and a string of profanities out of his mouth. It turns out that George has been lazy and careless with the bodies- not treating them properly. At the edge of the mountain of piled coffins Doctor Davis discovers the body of Asaph Sawyers. It appears that his legs has been sawed off from the ankles onwards- just perfect enough to fit Matthew Fenner's diminutive cast-aside coffin.

“It seems like Sawyers kept his reputation for being a revengeful prick after all.”

 Aren't we geniuses :D

Toodlelioodles