Graveyard Shift

Graveyard Shift

Thomas settled back in his wooden chair, trying to get as comfortable as he could. It had a hard, straight back and hurt him, but he would not complain. Not tonight. He straightened his green tweed coat.  The salesman who had sold it to him at the market a few weeks earlier had called it Hunter Green. It was a favourite choice of colour for those
(hunters deathly hunters killers)
who loved the sport, you know. Thomas smiled to himself.
   Ah, love… the air was rife with it these days. Henry VIII had married Catherine of Aragon just the previous week. Of course, Thomas thought, their “love” was tainted by the untimely death of Catherine’s previous husband, Prince Arthur, young Henry’s older brother. Oh, the scandal of royalty was always rather repulsive, yet the common folk couldn’t help but be thrilled at every turn....
   Why people would need to satiate their thirst for gossip with the royal family’s scandal, Thomas didn’t know. There were enough love-tragedies and such-like in their own back gardens, if only they would open their eyes and see it. Why, it was quite positively the meat of great epics! Though of course, in an epic, Thomas the Just and the True would be the hero and win fair maiden’s heart….
Yet, it was not to be. He was Thomas Gilder, son of Harry Gilder, grave-digger and sometimes farm-labourer. She was Sarah Baker, daughter of Horace Baker, student at Stone Hill Young Ladies’ Finishing Academy and servant to Helen Greene. No, it was never to be. She was to be somebody. He was to be nobody. Somebodies and nobodies never mixed, no…. The consequences
(death)
of such a sin were bad….
Sandy – his pet
(snake eyes of a snake)
– was sleeping between his feet. She didn’t fuss over colours... they were all the same in her eyes. Only smell mattered to her. Thomas had heard from someone that a person’s smell played a vital role in falling in love.
   Ah, love…. Sarah Baker…; so fair, with hair of spun gold, skin of the finest cream silk, and eyes of the deepest, bluest, uncut sapphire. Ah, for her to look upon him, he would climb a thousand mountains, scale a hundred palace walls, swim the largest ocean….
He sighed and looked at the shiny silver bell – innocently glinting in the lamplight, oblivious of its gruesome
(dead dead wake the dead)
duty – hanging from a short pole beside his chair. A long string lay slack, one end tied to the bell, the other vanishing into the newly dug earth, through the lid of the coffin below, to end in a knot around the buried
(dead wake the undead)
man’s wrist. Thomas had never been on graveyard shift before. He had specially requested that he be allowed to finally show his superior that he could be trusted. He had waited a long time for someone to die uncertainly, so that he could prove his worth. He chuckled to himself as he considered the morbidity of his work. For him to have work and to be paid, others had to lose loved ones. The idea was actually perversely amusing.
   He looked at the headstone, made out of granite, a mere placeholder until a more magnificent marble one could be made.
   
   SAMUEL GREENE
   1486 – 1509
   BELOVED SON AND DEVOTED BROTHER
   THOU SHALT BE MISSED
   REST IN PEACE
   
     Samuel Greene. Son of Helen and Daniel Greene; nobility of Stone Hill. Thomas did not mourn Samuel’s death. Why should he? Samuel had not been a friend to him. In fact, he had been a rival
(undead)
of sorts. Thomas knew the man’s face well. Thomas remembered his skin; deeply tanned to the point of obscenity, a consequence of hunting and similar activities outdoors. He had not been learned. Not been a scholar. He had been a killer. His eyes had betrayed his cunning and treacherous ways; iron grey, with feigned kindness lurking within them. His smile had been evil, able to get his actions
(hunt kill)
immediately excused and able to melt young ladies’ guarded hearts; those mystifying vaults that Thomas had never even been able to crack. Samuel had been a secret womanizer, leading all those poor girls
(victims)
into a false chase of lust, for them to be discarded once he had drawn what pleasure
(sick sick SICK)
he could from them.
   Sarah had been one of his intended victims. He had brought her rare flowers, and expensive chocolates. He had often sung
(evil hear no)
to her outside the window of her modest home, dressed in his most dashing clothes. Thomas had hated that especially. He had seen what Samuel had been doing, even if (maiden) Sarah herself had not. Samuel had been parading his wealth before her, putting her down, insulting her. He had been making her seem inferior to him and his rich family. Thomas (hero Tom) would never do that to Sarah.
   Thomas had loathed the man on behalf of those
(victims)
women who wouldn’t dare.
   So, when Samuel’s death had come to pass, Thomas did not mourn him. No. Samuel had been off to go hunting, to go killing. His trusty, beloved horse had spooked at a snake (a common European adder, curiously enough) in its path. It had thrown Samuel. He had not been wearing a helmet, since it had mysteriously gone missing that very morning. His unprotected head had struck the rocky road hard. One of the strangers passing by the road had rushed forth, pushing past a shocked farmer and his wife, claiming he was a doctor’s apprentice and that he could help the fallen Greene boy. The young man had checked Samuel, and then hung his head, his shoulders shaking. Samuel Greene had been pronounced
(undead)
dead and his face had been covered respectfully with the young apprentice’s green – (“Hunter Green, good sir! Best colour for stalking prey, it is!”) – tweed coat.
   Thomas was jolted out of his thoughts by the clear peal
(dead wake undead risen)
of a small silver bell. Thomas looked at the ringing bell beside him, its high tinkling muffled by the heavy fog. Sandy, his pet snake (a common European adder, how curious) lifted her head and flicked her tongue to smell
(love)
the air. Thomas reached out his hand and held the clapper silent. The string continued to jerk insistently, but silently.
   Thomas smiled as he waited patiently through the night for the string to fall still as Samuel Greene – filthy womanizer and self-proclaimed suitor to Sarah Baker – slowly suffocated.