Murder for Morals...



Jesus, it’s pouring! I’ll duck into this creepy bar.

“ What are you doing out this late? There’s crime in this neighborhood. You a cop?”

“Shit! You scared me. No, I’m a detective.”

“You hear about all those people who went missing?”

“Yea, I heard about Shipman, Williams and Rogers.”

“Yes, those three went missing too.”

“Who else?”

“There was this one guy who used to come in here all the time. Haven’t seen him in a month.”

“Maybe he quit drinking.”

“The last time I saw him he told me a story that I chalked up to the ramblings of a drunk.”

“What was his story?”

“His name was Abe and he ran a car repair shop a few blocks from here. He told me that he once brought a man back from the dead...

Abe was an inventor. His latest invention was a new car battery.
He claimed that his battery was so powerful it could bring
someone back to life.
Abe went to the cemetery and dug up the body of a dead man.
He threw the body into his truck and drove it back to his shop on the outskirts of town.
Abe lived with his sister, Betty, in their parents' old farm house. Betty heard the truck from a mile off and started to prepare for the experiment.
The rumbling truck rolled into the open barn. Abe and Betty grabbed the dead man and lifted him onto the makeshift table.
“Did you do as I told you? Are we ready to begin?” Abe asked his sister.
“I got everything on the list. I set it up just as you described it.”
“Wrap this band around both of its feet and these around its arms.”
Abe checked the body up and down. “I don’t see any reason this man should’t be living. There are no puncture marks. Are you ready, Betty? Okay, stand back.
 I can’t be to sure what its reaction will be!”
There was a soft ‘click’ and a loud ‘CLACK’ and the room went
 from pure darkness to a blinding white! One minute the Abe was staring at a dead body and the next he caught a glimpse of movement. His vision wavered in and out of darkness. The intense bright light had damaged his retinas and made
strange images in his mind.  
Abe blinked his eyes hard trying to focus and each time he saw a slightly
 different picture. The first was of a woman leaning over a man. Then it looked as
though a man and a woman were embracing. The third time he looked he thought he made out the image of someone standing over a body on the ground.
Abe didn’t understand what he was seeing and he called out to his sister “Betty! Did it work? I’m very disoriented! Can you tell if he’s alive?”
His shouting did not have an effect on the two figures in the room. In fact,
 not even Abe could hear his own shouting. The ‘CLACK’ was the
last thing he heard, and now there was only silence.
Abe shook his head hard and when he looked again, both figures had gone.
“It must have worked!” Abe shouted to the empty room.
He searched the barn in an almost intoxicated stupor but could not locate his sister or the formerly dead man.
The episode had left Abe with no hearing and colorless, flickering vision.
 He was in no state to notice what was taking place in the dirt outside the barn.
The formerly dead man had risen from the platform and claimed Betty to
replace him in the ground.
He grabbed her by her hair, dragged her screaming into the yard,
 shoveled dirt form the ground and threw her in. He had to hit her in the head twice with the spade of the shovel before she would lie still enough for him to pile the dirt back on.
Abe kept yelling curses at his sister, even as he staggered past her freshly dug grave.
Buried alive.
 They say there is no form of death so terrifying.
They say that you alternate between hope and hopelessness from your first enclosed breath until your last.
Never able to rest, never able to completely give up or let yourself believe you’ll be saved.
By the time Abe regained his hearing and vision the formerly dead man had vanished.”

“Why in God’s name would you believe a story like that? I mean, how could this Abe guy even be the one telling it? He never knew what happened to his sister, but you just said she was buried alive?”

“Nope, Abe never did find out what happened to her.”

“So none of this makes any sense!”

“Well, let’s think back. You said you’re here about that Mary Rogers girl, right? What if we can solve two mysteries at once? How did I know how Betty died, if Abe never told me? That’s the first mystery. And the next was who killed Mary?”

“Oh Christ! It was YOU!? Who are you?! Where did you come from? Why kill Mary?!!?”

“One, two, three, hahaha. One, my name’s Matthew Wall. Two I’m from Braughing, England - and three, I have never killed anyone. I simply see people who think life is a joke and I put them where someone put me! I too was buried alive but I’m here today! Mr. Abe thought he would run experiments on a dead man. No respect for the dead begets no respect for the living. Him and his sister deserve their graves. As for Mary, it was no town secret that she had just had a second abortion. Life is not given or taken freely. There are consequences and she chose hers. It was rather impressive that she escaped her grave, but I just couldn’t let her run to the police. I’m having so much fun here alive again, which is quite unfortunate for you...


Image:Wiertz burial.jpg

The End
now...
GO HOME!!!


Author's Note: Deciding how I was going to end my storybook was very hard for me! I have enjoyed rereading Poe's work and coming up with what I think my characters would do in the same situations. I chose Poe's story The Premature Burial because I truly believe that being buried alive would be the absolute freakiest way to die. Poe's tale is quite a bit different than my own version. In the original Poe tells the reader about a few different cases of accidental premature burials as a set up for a main story. One of the pre-tales in this set up is about a man who brought a dead body back by using a battery. Because the original story is rather long and complicated I chose to focus only on this shorter pre-tale. The main part of Poe's Premature Burial is about a man who has a condition that makes him appear to be dead, when he is in fact, alive. The story is chilling and exciting, but too long for my own selfish uses. But I urge you to please go read the original! Have you ever considered what it would be life to be buried alive? My favorite buried alive movie scene is in Kill Bill Volume II. Maybe I should have had Uma Therman play the part of the detective! That would have been action packed!
    This last story wraps up my frame-tale. We find out that the murderer is actually the result of a supernatural event (SHOCKING!) and that once again Mary was not our only murder victim. It looks like our Detective Le Rennet may be in a bit of trouble himself. Who knows, maybe he escaped and is telling this story to someone else right now. If he, in fact, did end up in that coffin we can only hope his heart beats as loud, and as telling as others...



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Bibliography:
Story Title: The Premature Burial
Book Title: The Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Year Published: 1843
Web Source:  Edgar Allan Poe Society

The Premature Burial. Web Source: Wikipedia
Uma Thurman. Web Source: Blog Spot
Buried Bride. Web Source: Synoptique



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