The Grotto

Matt was beginning to feel rather nauseous, while everything outside sped past in a blur. He turned his head and looked back down the road. With the car on the verge of taking flight, and Caroline happily behind the wheel, it was a good time to start praying, he thought. Due to her current love affair with K-Pop, she had the volume cranked up on the stereo, blasting boyband music through the speakers. It almost made him wish he had stayed home. But he was captive as her passenger, and nothing was going to change the fact. He only hoped it would make the trip faster. Suddenly, she tapped the brakes to slow down, and ended up jerking the wheel a bit, before abruptly righting it again. "Oh, no, I think I missed the turn," she said and looked around, checking out through the windows. "This isn't the road we’re supposed to be on. I think we were supposed to turn back there." Matt looked out across the field on his side, and, by the rows of large hay bales at the back...

The Mortuary Assistant Phil double checked the orders for the body and it was due to be incinerated. He pulled the sheet back and looked at the man, and, by his moderately youthful appearance, suspected it had been a widowmaker. "Well, Jim," he said, as if to an old friend, "though it’s a shame we had to meet like this, it looks like this is where we say 'goodbye.'" Wheeling the gurney down the hall and through the doors, he then parked it before the furnace. When he whisked off the sheet in one quick motion. "Hope you don't mind, but this is by request. Don't worry, it's as good an end as any." With a grunt, he slid the heavy iron door open and pulled out the tray for the body. But when he went to grab the corpse, its hand reached over and took hold of him. He jumped, but the man on the table was alive, glaring up at him with a frightened look! "Jesus!" he blurted out. "You're still alive!?" The man could only s...

The Garden ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’ - John Keats, from the opening line of ‘Endymion.’ Heather adored her garden. Now that spring was here, it was her only wish to watch it grow and see it thrive, the flowers bloom. With time, it would become a place of beauty, where she just might pass the time, serenely. Since her husband had passed, it was the only thing she had left that seemed the same. Just like other years the sole upkeep fell to her, and although Phil was gone, it was still there for her to tend and it gave her a sense of normalcy, despite these new hardships. Today, she would be planting the rosebushes. Kneeling down upon the soft dirt, she grabbed her hand shovel to dig a hole for a sapling. She struck into the dirt with the shovel tip, when she hit something in the ground that jarred her wrist and sent a jolt coursing up her arm. Pausing to rub the kink out of her wrist, she shook her head as she peered in the hole. She could see the top portion of an object and...