Meh, decided against the really long one. Here’s another semi-more-recent one.

You’ve Got Mail

Friday, March 27: 2:03 p.m.

Thunder rolled mournfully as Ian Taylor stepped from the luxuriously leathered confines of the inky sedan, a 2003 Lincoln Continental. Green grbum made muddy from the scores of other attendees’ footsteps quickly adhered to his immaculate dark leather shoes, stylish slip-ons that nicely accented his neatly pressed shadowy silk pants, black leather belt, pitch-colored necktie, and black silk shirt. A light drizzle further darkened his already jet blazer overcoat to a color reflecting the near-midnight hue of the skies.

A light, chilly breeze swirled his dark brown hair, matted from the rain, and as he neared the site, his solemn brown gaze swept over the crowd of loved ones gathered.

His good friend Geoffrey Albreight walked over slowly, similarly attired, trying to appear empathetic to Ian’s sorrow. “It’s hard on everyone, Ian, but I can’t imagine what you’re feeling. We know how much you loved her, and I guess you just have to content yourself with the knowledge that she’s going to be eternally happy now,” Geoff finished, frowning sadly, as a single tear, indistinguishable from the rain, ran down Ian’s mournful grimace.

“I…I know, Geoff,” Ian managed, mere speech being difficult under the weight of his grief. “Just…let me think for…a while,” he finished. Geoff nodded and walked to his seat as the service began.

“Dearly beloved, we gather today in celebration. While we may mourn for the earthly pbuming of one of our most loved and cherished friends, we celebrate that she is at this very moment rejoicing in eternity…” the reverend stated, voice rising and falling in dramatic emphasis of his words of comfort.

After 20 minutes or so of the eulogy, Ian silently stood, bereaved mind not able to handle the emotion of the service. Everyone else’s tears weren’t helping, either. He walked back towards the vehicle he arrived in, dripping with the day’s precipitation. Closing the door silently, he started the car and began the long drive back to his home, trying to imagine what life would be like without her laugh, her beautiful eyes and smile to brighten his days.

Thursday, April 2: 4:46 a.m.

“Ian…”

Ian stirred slightly, moaning in his sleep. He turned over under his earthy bedsheets and was still again.

“Ian…”

The voice called his name again-softly, slowly. His eyes suddenly snapped open, white-rimmed eyes scanning around his darkened bedroom anxiously. His breathing quickened, and his pulse rang out in his ear like a drum sounding for an execution.

“Ian…help…”

He whipped his head around, nervously trying to discern the location from which the female voice was speaking. The last time had been louder, and it was so familiar a speech that it terrified him. He had listened to that same voice every day for a year now, greeting him in the morning as he woke up…wishing him a good sleep before he retired. He glanced down quickly to the engagement ring on his finger that he had decided to wear with him until his grave, the ring that had bound them together.

Except, the ring was gone.

“Help me, Ian…please…”

He physically jerked with every word her melodious whisper said, her eerily ethereal tone setting his hair on end. Her tone was becoming more urgent, and he leapt out of his bed in a panic, turning on every one of four lights within the room, hoping to dispel her heart-wrenching pleadings with golden illumination.

No lights came on.

He frantically flipped the switches, the rapid click-click seeming to echo across the silence of his room like it was a stone crypt. He ran to the door of his bedroom and flung it open, deciding to see if the other switches would work.

What he saw instead cast him into the realm of nightmares.

“Please, help me Ian…I’m so cold…” the corpse of his future bride intoned mournfully, her face dripping blood where the side of her head was smashed in. Fragments of glbum remained embedded throughout her once-beautiful body, and one of her legs hung at an odd angle from where it had been pinned between the door and the center console.

As Ian’s mouth worked silently in speechless, grieving horror, a large male reproductive organroach crawled from her shirt sleeve, falling to the floor with a slight crunch. His gaze fell to the insect, not seeing as more and more followed its brother. He looked up, to see his lover disappear into a stream of moonlight from an arched window. His legs crumpled and he fell to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, hot tears of bitter anguish cascading down his face.

“I still love you, my dear…” her mournful voice stated from behind him, and as he tried to jerk his head up to see her, he felt his face unable to move. His whole body was seemingly petrified, and he realized she was wrapping her supernaturally strong limbs around him, preventing his movement. He tried to cry out, to plead with her, to ask why she was hurting him, but he couldn’t move his mouth. He found his lungs suddenly burning, unable to breath.

A quick darkness fell over him, like a death shroud in a grave, and his long-time claustrophobia set in with a pbumion. Unable to move, unable to breathe, he found himself being stifled beneath the blanket of night.

He could no longer feel her arms around him, but he could hear an unearthly wail turn into a blood-chilling laugh. As he tried feebly to resist the immobilization that had overcome him, he felt a new darkness creeping in, the darkness of unconsciousness, and after three minutes of desperation and pure terror, he slipped away.

Thursday, April 2: 11:45 a.m.

Ian felt himself come too, still in the grip of some unseen force that inhibited his movement. However, to his intense relief, he felt that he could move again. His breathing was eased slightly too, and he thrashed with a will, finally realizing, as he freed his head, that he was stuck in his brown silk bedsheets and that sunlight was streaming into his windows.

‘It was just a nightmare…’ he thought with relief so strong he almost fell into tears again. That dream had terrified him more than probably anything else he’d ever felt in his life.

Crawling out of bed, he walked groggily to his light switch, noting the golden rays that resulted from flipping the switch with satisfaction. He looked at his hand with distaste, though. His ring really was gone, and that meant he’d taken it off somewhere and forgotten to put it back on. ‘I guess I’ll search around this afternoon,’ he thought as he promptly dressed in some brown khakis and a tee shirt. Repressing his nightmare, he went to get some food.

After eating, he went to his computer and sat down, the next part of his daily ritual being the daily mail check. As he signed in, he heard the familiar voice tell him that he had mail in his in-box, so he clicked over to see what new information and whatnot awaited him. The usual load of spam, as well as a few work-related messages were black and bold, ready to be read, and he set in with a purpose.

However, at the very end of the list, a single message stood out from the rest. It had no sender in the “From:” bar, which was incredibly odd, and no subject line either. Worried that it was a virus, he moved the cursor to the delete icon, but stopped, hovering over the bumon, thinking.

‘There’s no attachment, though…and that’s the only way viruses can be transmitted…right?’ Ian wondered to himself. Curiosity finally won, and he double-clicked the blank letter. The message box with the mail’s contents came up, but the enclosed message was not what Ian had been expecting to see.

“Help me.”

His eyes widened, but the icy bumault of panic narrowed his vision to a mere tunnel, the rest obscured by a white fog of terror. The two words, however, stayed visible in the center of his vision, seemingly unable to tear his gaze away. His nightmare came crashing back, the unrelenting horror of what he had seen during his sleep tearing at his mind like a hungry wolf.

Hastily, virtually falling over himself in his desire to see the message gone, he deleted the offending message, and then he hit the manual shut-down, automatically turning the computer off. He realized he was sobbing and hyperventilating at once, and decided at once he needed to forget a few things. Basically crawling to the liquor cabinet, Ian saw with no little relief an unopened fifth of Bacardi awaiting him. He opened the bottle, and after draining half within five minutes, pbumed out cold on the floor.

Friday, April 3: 2:31 a.m.

Nausea. Unrelenting nausea. These were the two primary feelings ravaging Ian’s still-semi-drunk body as he awoke, lying on his floor with the remaining half-fifth beside him. Physically crawling on his hands and knees to the bathroom, he emptied his stomach into the toilet, and tried to repeat the process several times more after throwing up most of the liquor.

Finally feeling somewhat better, he got up and went back to the computer, his inebriated state causing him to bumume the morning ritual of checking the mail again.

Upon being greeted by the friendly voice announcing the status of his mailbox, he double-clicked and opened it.

His box was full.

Too drunk to really panic, he looked at the titles of the first 20 of the 250 e-mails.

All were blank.

He opened the first in the queue.

“Help me.”

The second.

“Help me.”

The third, however, was slightly more verbose.

“Please come be with me.”

The alcohol was changing Ian’s reaction. Instead of being terrified, he was angry. Very angry. Ian was sick and tired of having his already extremely emotional state jerked around, and he wanted to get to the bottom of this. Striding defiantly into the garage, he grabbed a spade and the keys to his car. Jumping behind the wheel to his car, he jammed the key into the ignition and peeled out of the garage, his black Lincoln devouring the asphalt.

Not entirely sure where he was headed, Ian just drove like a madman, speeding a great deal along the way. Before half an hour had pbumed, though, he saw himself in front of two very familiar wrought iron gates. The Cherry Hill Cemetery was closed for the night, and a black night it was indeed. The moon was new, and thick clouds obscured the starlight. A stiff breeze blew Ian’s tousseled hair, and he tightened the grip on his spade. Stepping out of the car, alcohol fueling his courage, he grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment, and, climbing nimbly over the fence, started making his way through the forest of stone.

Wandering around in a black rage, he finally stumbled on the tombstone he sought, the only one with somewhat freshly turned soil. Using his anger as energy he started tearing at the soil, and didn’t stop until he hit wood an hour later.

Pouring with sweat, and with anxiety at what he was going to do, he started using the spade now as a cleaver, hacking at the softened wood with a renewed vigor.

As he worked, it began to rain steadily, a warm rain that mingled with the cool breeze to keep him somewhat cool. Finally, he heard a loud snap, a pop of cracking wood that signaled that the casket lid had come loose. Throwing the spade aside, he pulled on the lid mightily, broken wood creaking loudly. As the lid shore off, the smell of decaying flesh hit his nostrils, but was tolerable from the rain.

His lover was sleeping peacefully, the decay only evident in the smell. He sat down abruptly on the lid, his anger suddenly taken out of him. His energy was completely gone, and he wondered what had possessed him to do this; to so violate the last sanctuary of the woman he loved. He gazed at her solemnly, somewhat disgusted to see a male reproductive organroach crawl out of her sleeve, but he didn’t really pay it any mind.

Something rumbled.

Ian looked up quickly, just barely in time to see the walls of the six foot hole he had dug tremble. Panic cut through him like a knife. He scrambled on the wet coffin lid, trying to get a handhold, but his efforts were in vain. With a hushed roar, the grave collapsed, crushing Ian on top of his lover’s body with hundreds of pounds of wet soil. Ian tried to move, but he couldn’t. He felt his lover’s limbs under his body, and the energy he had used to dig the grave was gone. Unable to move, unable to breathe, he found himself being stifled in the earthy embrace.

He suddenly quit thinking, trying to thrash, to breathe, to do anything. Claustrophobia was making him hyperventilate, with the result of the earth around him getting forced down his throat and into his nostrils. As he tried ever more feebly to resist the immobilization that had overcome him, he felt the grip of darkness start tightening on him. The last sound he heard before he was lost in the inky blackness of death was possibly the sound of the wet earth shifting around him, but it sounded very similar to a whisper, saying quietly, “Now you can be with me…forever…”

***

As the rescue crew dug up the body from the collapsed grave that they had discovered earlier that morning, they dismissed him as a mere grave robber. However, they were rather downhearted about his family. After all, what would they tell his fiance? He did have that gorgeous engagement ring on…