Gold Digger

The recently deceased body of Virgil Baptiste lay naked on a steel table in his funeral home’s prep room. A long steel syringe — trocar — protruded from an incision in his neck, just above his clavicle. The attached hose pumped a pink embalming agent through his veins, flushing blood and preserving flesh. Though lifeless, he was going through a process that would give him the illusion of life. After all, He had one last date with his family, and he needed to look his best.

A man in his mid 20’s examined the body as the pumping process came to an end. The blood draining from Virgil’s open artery became the embalming fluid, and his body looked again like it should. The pump was turned off and the trocar was withdrawn. After the open slit was cleaned and sealed, the man took his protective mask off and scanned the old man once more.

“Looking better already, Virg,” Damien said to himself, running his fingers through his goatee. He focused his attention on Virgil’s face. The 78-year-old man looked better than most of the other bodies that came through. He decided he would only need light makeup for this one. Virgil was taken by a heart attack, which made Damien’s job easy. There were no facial wounds to cover up, no blunt force trauma in the body to reshape, and all of his limbs were accounted for.

“You should have seen the poor bastard that came in a month ago,” Damien said to Virgil’s hollow eyes, “Walked right in front of a bus and got fucked. He was drunk, but even so, how do you miss something that large coming at you? Do you think it was on purpose?”

Damien pushed the deflated and shriveled eyes into the back of Virgil’s sockets. He stuffed them with cotton and placed eye caps over each wad. He uncapped a bottle of superglue and sealed the eyelids shut.

“The family insisted on an open casket for the funeral. The guy’s body was easy, we just popped his shoulder back in place and his suit hid all the damage to the skin. But this guy’s jaw and cheek bone were caved in on one side. THAT took quite a bit of sculpting and makeup to normalize. They should have just showed him the way he came to us. It’d be a great cautionary display for looking both ways when you cross a damn street.”

He inspected his work on Virgil’s eyes, happy to see the proportions and placement of the caps were correct. The caps looked like real eyes under the glued-together lids. He was beginning to look more like a man in a peaceful rest. Now came time to close the mouth. Damien reached for the needler tool. This would allow him to drive metal pins through the gum line above the teeth for wiring the mouth shut. Damien pulled Virgil’s top lip up to reveal the teeth.

“Oh, Virgil, what do we have over here?” Damien said, seeing Virgil’s golden canine and two bicuspids on the right side. He felt a small flutter of excitement in his torso. It looked like a bridge, which would be easier to remove than implants. With a few strikes from a hammer and a flat-head screwdriver, the bridge came free. Damien examined the piece, estimating the profit he might gain selling it. He had a friend who could melt it down into a single nugget, making it less suspicious to jewelers or pawnbrokers. It was a nice take, along with Virgil’s gold pocket watch and wedding ring, which he had no intention of dressing the body with.

“I appreciate your generosity, Virg,” Damien said under his breath. He looked over his shoulder toward the embalming room’s entrance. Liza, the funeral director, didn’t often come downstairs into this room while a procedure was in progress. It would be his luck for her to sneak up on him while he pilfered a body entrusted to the funeral home. The coast was clear, and Damien pocketed the bridge. He continued installing the metal pins into Virgil’s gums. He looped steel wiring through the top and bottom pins on either side of the mouth, securing the jaw shut. He finished by drawing a line of superglue across Virgil’s lips and sealing them together.

Damien called for Liza to help with the last step; dressing Virgil for presentation. Together, they threaded his black slacks up his legs, then fitted them over his hips by rolling the body side to side. The same went for the shirt and suit coat. Once dressed, they transferred him from the steel table to his casket. His gold wedding ring was placed on his finger and the gold pocket watch placed in the inner breast pocket of the coat.

“Thank you, Liza, I’ll go ahead and wheel him to storage and start cleaning up,” Damien said, looking at the clock on the wall. It was almost 3pm, plenty of time left before the 7pm viewing.

“Sounds good, and please bring him to the viewing room when you leave at 5,” Liza said, walking back upstairs to her office.

Damien waited 10 minutes, then reached inside of Virgil’s coat. He pocketed the watch as well as the wedding ring right off of the body’s finger. He closed the bottom lid of the casket, which covered Virgil’s body from the waist down. No one would know the items were missing unless they specifically looked for them. He closed the top lid and wheeled Virgil into the storage room, awaiting his last date.

Damien was never a religious person and he didn’t subscribe himself to the thought of the afterlife. When you died, that’s it, you were just dead. Therefore, you didn’t need anything that was left behind. Which is why he had no moral conflict about taking from the deceased. To him, leaving valuable items to be buried or sealed in a crypt was the same as throwing said items away. Why not let someone else benefit from them?

He spent the next hour and a half cleaning the prep room, tools and all. When he finished, he brought Virgil up the service elevator and wheeled him into the viewing room. Family would start showing up probably as early as 6:30. He said goodbye to Liza and wished her a smooth viewing.

He lit up a cigarette as he walked towards his aging Honda in the parking lot. As he sat inside, he placed his hand over the pocket with Virgil’s belongings. He traced his finger over each item, feeling their shapes through the denim of his pants. This wasn’t his first take, but he imagined it would be one of the more profitable ones. He started the car and pulled out of the lot.

Curiosity got the best of Damien on his way home. He made a detour and found himself sitting in the parking lot of a pawnshop on the edge of town. He turned the engine off and pulled the ring and watch out of his pocket. He examined both items closely, now that he didn’t have to worry about Liza seeing him. The ring was a gold wedding band that featured a unique twisting pattern akin to the spiral of a towel when wringing water from it. He looked at the silver Celtic ring he currently wore on his right hand. Sliding it off his ring-finger, he tried on Virgil’s band. The ring was a perfect fit, but along with it came a sudden chill that ran down Damien’s spine.

He sat upright for a moment, then relaxed and chuckled at the reaction.

“Oooh, is this ring haunted now?” He asked himself in a mocking tone. He gripped the steering wheel and admired how it looked on his hand. He knew he wouldn’t want to keep it, as he wasn’t one to wear gold jewelry. He took the band off and slipped his Celtic ring back on.

Next, he examined the pocket watch. It was a basic design with a button on top of the winding dial. When he pushed it, the front cover opened just a crack. The spring must have worn out. Damien flicked the lid the rest of the way, revealing a plain white face with black numbers and hands. The inside of the cover displayed Virgil’s initials, engraved with an elegant hand-written font. It looked nice enough, but the engraving and broken spring might take away any real value. He pocketed the items and walked into the shop.

After half an hour of dealing and shopping, Damien was happily driving to his favorite steakhouse. The ring alone fetched him $300, and he decided to keep the watch to add to his collection of ill-gotten mementos. One of the little perks of his profession, as long as no one ever caught him. To be caught would mean loss of job, and possibly being blacklisted from other funeral establishments. The risk was part of the appeal. It brought Damien a sense of added excitement to his macabre line of work. Today was a good day, and tonight he would celebrate. He could already taste the ribeye and beer as he drove to dinner.

After the night got away from him, Damien stood at the front door of his small house. His head was spinning, as was the world around him. He understood that he somehow drove home, but only remembered fragments of the trip. When he thought back further, he realized the past few hours were also bits and pieces of memory at best. He burped and was hit with a foul-tasting mixture of meat, alcohol, and bile. He reached into his pocket for his keys, forgetting he was already holding them. Feeling only the pocket watch, he looked at his other hand and chuckled. Gently swaying side to side, he attempted to fit his key into the door’s lock. The first two tries missed, sliding the tip across the metal face of the deadbolt. The third time was the charm.

Before going to bed, Damien forced himself to drink three glasses of Gatorade with a couple of multivitamins and Tylenol. He pulled his pants off, leaving them on the floor by his bed and climbed under his blankets with the rest of his clothes still on. That was good enough for him to sleep comfortably. He looked at his cell phone and saw 12:50. I could still get five hours of shut-eye if I fell asleep in the next 10 minutes, he thought. It was unlikely, and of course there would be the hangover waiting for him in the morning. He closed his eyes and focused mentally on stopping the sensation of spinning.

Sometime later, Damien’s eyes opened again. The blanket had been kicked to the floor, and he was shivering in a cold sweat. Laying on his back, he glanced around and noticed a slight haze in the periphery of his vision. He then caught the scent of formaldehyde, which he assumed came from his clothing. Though, he didn’t remember ever smelling it in his home before. There was something else that didn’t seem quite right. His sense of awareness felt heightened, as if he were in the presence of some unseen danger. He tried to roll over in his bed to retrieve the blanket, but quickly realized he couldn’t.

Damien tried to lift an arm, rotate his hips, or at least turn his head. His body was unresponsive, everything but his eyes. He felt a heaviness in his chest, as if he were being held down. He couldn’t speak, the only sound being his labored breathing. The smell of formaldehyde grew stronger. A sensation fight or flight anxiety nagged at him that he could not act on. He lay there, shivering internally, not out of cold, but fear.

He rapidly glanced about his room in any direction his eyes could. He saw his dresser off to the side, his closet door past the foot of his bed, and his bedroom door in the corner. Upon seeing the foot of his bed again, a shadow with a basic human form suddenly appeared to face him. Under normal circumstances, Damien would recoil or at least yelp in surprise. All he could do now was gasp through his nasal cavity.

The figure stood, unmoving, as if it were there the whole time, though it wasn’t a moment ago. Damien stared directly at it as long has he could. His eyes began to dry and burn. When he finally blinked, the figure was gone. The smell of formaldehyde grew stronger, making him nauseous. He heard the shifting of fabric to the side of his bed. He looked over to his side as far as his eyes could travel. He knew he should be able to see something, but there was emptiness on the floor. Then there was silence, save for Damien’s own pulse he could feel and hear in his ears.

After a long, tense moment, Damien heard a faint click inches from his face. Again, the figure appeared, so quickly, yet it seemed like it had been there all along. Where the figure seemed like basic shadow before, it stood now like a detailed person in the dark. The features were clear, and recognizable, to Damien’s horror. In some unexplainable way, the smell of formaldehyde now made sense. He spent the afternoon filling Virgil’s body full of it.

The old man, looking just as Damien had last seen him, was now standing beside his bed. He bent down to face Damien. His eyes still sealed shut, the eye caps under the lids now off-centered. He held the pocket-watch by the thin open cover and forced it into his sealed lips. All Damien could do was hyperventilate while he watched the body of Virgil slice its own mouth back open.

After cutting a slit in the middle, Virgil reached his index fingers through the lip hole and pulled in opposite directions. With the sickening sound of ripping soft tissue, the lips parted. Damien could see the wiring that still held his jaw shut, and he saw the gap where three gold teeth should have been. Virgil leaned in further, now inches from Damien’s face.

“Give… Back…” the body wheezed through collapsed lungs, “Or… I… Take…”.

As soon as the last word was spoken, Damien regained his body and felt a jolt as if falling down. He sat up immediately, still in his cold sweat, his heart thumping in his chest. He looked about is room frantically, but nothing seemed out of place. The haze in his vision was gone, as well as the awful smell. He waited with a vigilant eye for something, anything to jump out at him. After a while, he began taking deep breathes and tried rationalizing his experience. His headache reminded him of how drunk he allowed himself to get earlier. The falling sensation sometimes happens when people are in an “in between” state of sleep. He also knew that scary dreams often came to him when his body was cold while sleeping. He took comfort in that, reaching to the floor for his blanket. He covered back up and tried to find some amount of sleep.

The rest of the night was a cycle of light sleep, followed by waking up and looking around the bedroom. Each time Damien checked his cell phone, he would see only 30 minutes to an hour having passed. He reassured himself that it was just a dream, but he remained on alert. As soon as he felt himself drifting to sleep, his body urged him to open an eye and scan the room. Eventually, exhaustion broke the cycle and granted him respite.

When his alarm rang, Damien both praised and cursed the morning. This would be a rough day, he felt it in his head and stomach. The spins stopped, replaced by a throbbing at the front of his skull. He still tasted bile and stale alcohol in his throat. Despite that, he was relieved that the night was over. He looked forward to seeing Liza, or anyone still alive for that matter. He had just enough time to rush a shower and hit a drive thru on the way to work.

He was noticeably distracted throughout the day. Thinking he had calmed down after the dream incident, two things shook him during his shift. The first was he and Liza loading Virgil’s casket into the hearse. The smell of formaldehyde came to Damien, as strong as it had been the previous night. Liza said she didn’t notice it, despite being an arm’s length apart from Damien. The second, and more chilling thing, was the absence of his Celtic ring. A ring that never left his finger. He was so used to it always being there that he didn’t feel its absence until after Liza left with the rest of the procession to the cemetery. His ring finger had two scratch marks as well, possibly made by fingernails at closer inspection. The skin was red and irritated, as if the ring were forcefully ripped from his hand.

He spent the rest of his shift fighting through his hangover while slowly attending to his duties. He drove the company van to a local hospital and a retirement home for a pickup. After bringing the two new bodies back, he prepped one of them and would save the other for the next day. All the while, he tried to remember everything he could about the previous night. The dinner, the bar hopping, the dream… If it was a dream. He had heard of people having episodes of sleep paralysis. Waking up, yet unable to move. Often times, people experienced hallucinations due to the mind remaining in a mild sleep state. He believed that to be his case. He frequently thought about his naked ring finger. He hoped it was the case.

There was no solace to be had when Damien arrived home after work. He checked the pockets of his pants from the previous night. The absence of the pocket watch and the dental bridge was alarming. He dropped down to his hands and knees, looking under his bed. He checked around the floor, on his dresser, nightstands, anything that had a surface. Nothing.

Damien searched every room in his house. As the time passed, there grew a sense of urgency to find his missing items. Finding them would reassure him that the previous night was just a dream. What was the alternative? What would it mean if they were lost?

“When you’re dead, you’re dead. Remember?” He said out loud, trying to rationalize his mounting anxiety. He wasn’t the kind of person to jump at things that go bump in the night. He was a mortician, after all. He had performed autopsies, seeing the inner workings of men, women, and children. He prepped dead bodies for funerals. The thing they all had in common was they all left him alone. Was he subconsciously forming some sort of superstition after a bad night of drinking?

He turned on the lights in his living room and sat on the couch. His feelings were a mixture of confusion, fear, and denial. He silently criticized himself for how shaken he was. It felt as if something, not of Damien, was forcing itself into his mind. As he sat there, he began to notice a faint and familiar scent.

“Damien, get ahold of yourself. It was a fucking dream.”

He thought his mind was playing tricks on him. His pulse quickened as he caught another whiff of formaldehyde, this time stronger. He felt a sense of heightened awareness, just like the previous night. Goosebumps formed on his skin. He began to feel as though he was no longer alone. The sun set into dusk, and Damien felt quite uncomfortable in his surroundings. Dinner out, and maybe one drink, would help him relax. Then, assuming no more dreams tonight, he would feel better in the morning.

He lit up a cigarette and thought about who of his friends might be free to grab a burger. The thought of leaving and seeing someone familiar gave him a little more confidence.

The formaldehyde grew stronger, as if its source was moving closer to him. He took a large drag off his cigarette. He exhaled defiantly, thinking to mask the smell with a stronger one of his own. Damien froze in disbelief as the smoke he exhaled curled around something unseen. It was a figure that lurched towards him, visible only by the displaced smoke. He somehow knew it was Virgil.

“Jesus Christ,” Damien yelled, scrambling over the back of the couch. He peeked back over the top just in time to see the dissipating smoke pull to the left side of the couch. He jumped back over and nearly crashed into the coffee table. Stumbling through his living room, he felt an icy chill at his back. Looking over his shoulder, the last remnants of his cigarette smoke drifted towards him. He briefly saw what looked to be an outstretched arm reaching him. Then the smoke cleared, and Damien wasted no time dashing out of his house.

He frantically climbed into his car on the street and shut the door. He locked it for good measure, but knew it would do nothing against this unseen assailant. He shivered in his seat and panted a chaotic rhythm of short breaths. He glanced back at the door to his house, sitting partially open. He watched for a few moments, waiting for some kind of movement. Through the opening, he eventually saw a shift in the shadows of the entryway. His heart skipped a beat as he started the car and made a hasty retreat.

Damien drove recklessly with no destination in mind. He was too distracted to think about that. All he wanted was to put distance between himself and that house. He drove past stop signs and through red lights without noticing. It wasn’t until he almost rear-ended a parked car that he snapped back to reality. He pulled into a gas station and allowed himself mental breakdown.

He yelled incoherently at his steering wheel. Tears welled in his eyes as he began hitting the ceiling of his car. He wrapped his own seatbelt around his neck and pulled until his face turned crimson. Then he let go and sat there, taking deep breathes, clenching his fists as tightly as he could. In a moment of clarity, he thought back to the previous night.

“Give back, or I take,” he muttered.

He thought about his missing ring and the pocket watch. He had them before he went to bed, and they were lost by morning. Did Virgil take those items? It made sense, except it was ludicrous at the same time. Damien refused to believe in such things, but he couldn’t deny that something was happening to him.

“What if he is taking his things back?” he asked out loud, “He got his watch, and he took my ring because I sold his.”

Damien thought about the dental bridge. He remembered that it didn’t make it home with him the previous night. Did he leave it at a bar or the restaurant? He tried to remember more in those fragmented memories. All he could do was silently scold himself for getting that drunk, especially on a work night.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this shit,” he said as he pulled out of the gas station.

Damien was forming a plan that he hoped would solve his dilemma. Going against his belief system, he drove towards the pawn shop to get the ring back. He came out with it after paying the store’s set price of $450. Feeling both sour and relieved, he then thought about the teeth. What was he going to do about that? He decided to start at the restaurant, then he would visit the three bars he knew of. One of them would be the spot he drank the previous night. He remembered how drunk he was, maybe he visited all three.

As the night drew on, Damien felt his grip on reality loosen. He had no luck with the first bar, nor the second. Each bartender cocked an eyebrow when asked if anyone had placed gold teeth in the lost and found. On his way to the third bar, the mild hallucinations began. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or the stress of the situation, but he started seeing flashes of Virgil’s face. Like memories that weren’t his own, he imagined the old man stalking him, watching him, warning him. He visited the third bar, asking the same stupid question about lost teeth. Seeing another puzzled expression from the bartender, he knew this night was a lost cause.

He walked in between the cars in the parking lot, searching the pavement for the dental bridge. Every time he thought about how ridiculous this whole scavenger hunt was, another thought of Virgil reminded him that time was running out. He began to hear that wheezing voice as well. Not as a memory, but clearly in his head as if being spoken to.

“Give… Back… Or… I… Take…”

Damien began grinding his teeth as he heard the voice. Out of his fear grew frustration and anger. He looked at his phone and saw 10:13pm. The night was getting away from him again, and in a much different way. Exhaustion and hunger nagged and irritated. He examined the floors in his car and even popped the trunk, but there was no sign of Virgil’s golden teeth. They were gone.

A more rational Damien wouldn’t have allowed such hysteria. What was he doing, running all over town to retrieve the items of a dead person? Sacrificing his health and well-being over some childish fear of a boogey man. There was no denying, though, that the fear was there. The past 24 hours had been very irrational, and nothing sensible could explain his experiences. He knew he needed to sleep, but he wasn’t about to go home. Something was waiting for him there. Perhaps, he would stay the night at a cheap motel and figure things out when he was stable.

He heard the wheezing voice again.

“I don’t have your fucking teeth, what do you want from me?” Damien screamed from inside his car. He hunched down in the driver’s seat, half expecting a reply. He looked around the dark parking lot of the bar. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. A young couple who heard the outburst walked past, staring at Damien through the windshield. Minutes passed in silence. Virgil had nothing else to say.

He started the car back up and exited. As he drove, he felt an unusual drop in temperature. It was sudden and caused Damien to shiver once again. He tried to discern if it was his nerves, but then he saw his own breath as he exhaled. It was still the tail end of Summer. How could this be?

Damien came to a stoplight and made a right turn. He drove three blocks and turned again onto a service road. It wasn’t until he merged onto the highway that he realized, while he was the one driving, he wasn’t in control of where he was going. It was like he was operating on instinct, one that was not his own. He didn’t know where he was headed, but something like muscle memory guided the car. After two miles, he exited the highway. He instinctually turned left at the traffic light. After travelling far enough down the main street, he began to recognize his surroundings. He came to the horrifying realization that his body was driving him to the cemetery.

He drove past the main entrance and took a narrow service road around to a less populated side of the hollowed grounds. As Damien turned the car off and got out, he mentally protested with his own mind. There was no reason why he would come here, yet here he was.

“What is this? What am I doing?” He said to himself in a harsh whisper “This is stupid, I’m leaving.”

He argued with himself as he walked towards the stone wall. He looked up and figured he could climb over without too much difficulty. He backed up a few paces and then took a running leap. His hand barely reached the lip of the wall. Kicking his feet, he pulled himself up and over to the other side.

“God damn it,” he barked as he began walking. His heart pounded as began thinking of Virgil. He was beginning to believe that perhaps there was something after death. Clearly, some connection was made between the old man and himself. It didn’t have to make sense. None of what was happening made sense, but it continued. Damien knew, in his rational mind, that he could turn around and leave at any time. He felt that he still had control of his body. Yet, there was an impulse driving him forward. It felt like, whatever he was doing, was his idea. That’s what scared him the most. In these moments, he was functioning one action at a time; drive to remote spot, climb over wall, walk to the grave.

After a short walk, Damien came to Virgil’s plot. He stood next to the headstone, cold and shivering. He wondered if he was feeling death itself on his skin, in his chest, and in his head. He thought to place the ring on Virgil’s final resting spot and be done with this whole incident. This would surely appease the specter that so stalked him.

Damien had another bodily impulse, and he dropped to his knees. He forced a hand into the fresh soil that covered Virgil’s casket. He pulled up a handful and dropped it behind him. Damien protested again in his mind as he cupped both hands and dug them back into the ground. He threw the scoop of earth over his shoulder. He pleaded in his mind as he dug his hands in again. He threw another scoop behind him. A panic swirled in his mind as he continued digging towards Virgil, who waited six feet below.

He lost all track of time as his arms worked to excavate the soil. He stopped every now and then to surveil his immediate area. Instinctually, he didn’t want a security guard or groundskeeper to catch him. In his rational mind, he desperately hoped someone would find him. He could not yell for help, nor cease the digging. The physical impulse was too strong by now. If someone could only walk up on him, he could at least give an expression of the fear that gripped him. Some sort of facial signal that he was in danger. Until then, he was trapped in his own autonomous body.

Hours passed as Damien dug further down the plot. A double hand scoop at a time, thrown up and out of the wide hole that formed. Tears streamed down Damien’s cheeks as his painful hands dug. The tips of his fingers bled. The skin was worn raw and numb by the earth. Every one of his swollen knuckles throbbed. Once he was deeper in, he raised his tired and heavy arms to throw the dirt up and out. Sometimes, he was clumsy, and it fell right back down on him. Against all if his mental resistance, his body would see this through to the end.

Relief finally came when Damien jammed his fingers against a solid surface. Four feet deep within the earth, he was down to the final inches. He swept the dirt covering the top lid, piling it up at the lower end. Exhausted, he leaned against the dirt wall and grasped the edge of the lid. His heart thumped wildly in his chest. Though he sealed the casket himself the previous day, it opened with ease.

Damien was hit with the stench of decay and formaldehyde. One day was enough time for a gag inducing buildup of post-mortem stench. He turned his head away and let it rise to the surface of the ground. The cloudless night sky allowed the light of the moon to spill into Virgil’s grave. When Damien turned back around, he stared at the corpse, waiting to see if there was any movement. Virgil lay still, the way he was supposed to. He waited, staring at his face for a good ten minutes. Nothing.

As he knelt on the lower lid of the casket, staring at the torso of a dead man, he questioned all that had happened on this night. It was one thing to have a vivid nightmare, but what the hell was he doing here? He looked up out of the hole and into the night sky. He focused on the stars and the sheer exhaustion he felt. He worried about his own sanity and the implications of his actions in the cemetery.

“I got your ring back, Virg.” He said, reaching into his pocket “But I lost your teeth.”

He hoped the ring would offer this sense of closure, at least to himself if not Virgil. After going through all the trouble of digging the hole, he might as well see it through. His eyes glanced down the torso to the corpse’s folded hands. They weren’t supposed to be folded, he thought, we prep the bodies with hands at the sides. To his horror, he saw one of the hands wearing his silver Celtic ring.

Damien gasped and jumped back. His feet slipped on the loose soil, but another side of the dirt wall caught him. He slapped a hand across his mouth as he hyperventilated. It wasn’t possible! How was his ring on the dead man’s finger? Why was the casket lid unsealed? He did not want to accept the possibility that his dream was real. He denied any explanation that came to him, and just accepted that it was there. He would give Virgil his wedding band and get the hell out of the cemetery. He would need to take his own ring back, for he had no intention of sticking around to rebury Virgil. The last thing he needed was for someone to see the open grave and a piece of evidence linking him to it. He would grab his ring, get out, and speak of this to no one. All would be well.

Damien pried the stiff dead hands apart and took his ring back. He slid Virgil’s wedding band on the cold finger. He then glanced at Virgil’s chest. He placed his hand over the spot where the inner breast pocket would be. Damien felt the pocket watch through the fabric, confirming what he feared. Virgil indeed visited him the previous night, to take back his watch and Damien’s ring as collateral. He pressed his thumb to Virgil’s upper lip and felt the absence of the dental bridge. He pulled his thumb upward, separating Virgil’s top lip from the bottom. Not only were they no longer sealed, but the skin showed damage as if cut and forced open.

As the reality of the situation fully settled on Damien, he heard the familiar wheezing of Virgil’s collapsed lungs.

“Give… Back… Or… I… Take…”

Damien felt the cold envelop him again. He felt a final horrific impulse in his body, which sprang into motion. One last autonomous action to carry out and this would all be over.

“I can find them, just give me time!” Damien pleaded out loud. His hand unconsciously reached into Virgil’s breast pocket and pulled forth the watch.

“Please, I’ll get them… I-I’ll make them for you. New ones.”

He pressed the button and flipped open the thin golden cover. It’s edge dirty with pieces of Virgil’s lips still stuck on. He held the watch by the cover and brought it up to his mouth. Damien tried resisting, tried flexing, tried moving in any direction but this.

“I’m sorry!”

Damien held his top lip up with his free hand, exposing his own gum tissue. He pressed the watch cover into his mouth. His body would see this to the end.

Eventually, the overnight groundskeeper discovered the commotion at Virgil Baptiste’s Grave. This late in the night, he was usually nodding off in his utility shack. A screaming in the distance put him on full alert. He raced over with a flashlight and a crowbar, expecting to find a group of teens playing some sort of prank. He walked with a hurried caution in the direction of the sound. By the time the screaming stopped, he saw the mound of dirt and the open hole.

“What in God’s name, how did I miss this?” he said to himself, understanding the amount of time one would need to dig a hole that size. He thought he did a thorough walk-around before settling into the shack. He heard a subdued moan coming out of the hole, which startling greatly.

“H-Hello?” He asked the hole “Come on out. I won’t call the police if you leave now”.

He waited and listened, shining his flashlight at the edge. He gripped the crowbar tightly. The hole responded with a soft whimpering. Feeling like he wasn’t in danger, the groundskeeper crept closer to the edge and peered over. His flashlight focused on a figure at the bottom, Damien, who paid no attention to him. The groundskeeper froze in terror, seeing the blood running from Damien’s mouth, down his arm, and up to his hand which held three teeth. He watched as Damien reached out and placed the canine and two bicuspids into the mouth of the corpse laying in the open casket.

A debt repaid.