Dead(ish)

I crunched across the frosty gravel of Tillinghast Mausoleum & Gardens in my flannel pajama pants and orthopedic boots, press badge fresh from Kinko's. The March blizzard provided perfect cover – nobody questioned winter attire featuring cartoon sloths with coffee mugs.

The security guard, whose neck had consumed his chin sometime in the nineties, glanced at my badge.

"Elodie Sharp? Not on the list."

I sneezed violently, my body's standard response to funeral lilies.

"BuzzFeed," I mumbled, dabbing my nose with a cactus-embroidered handkerchief. "I write their 'Death and Taxes' column."

Okay, technically that wasn’t a full-blown lie. More of a Schrödinger's truth. I had submitted seventeen pitches to BuzzFeed, mostly involving corpses and conspiracy theories, but they ghosted me harder than my last date when I mentioned I still own a DVD player.

This funeral was my Hail Mary, the one that either lands me a byline or gets me permanently banned from rich-people cemeteries quicker than Bender getting kicked out of the Hal Institute.

The guard squinted again at my poorly laminated badge. "Fine. No photos of the coffin. Family request.”

I shuffled into the grand hall, an architectural monstrosity screaming 'new money paranoia.' A closed mahogany coffin dominated center stage, surrounded by lily arrangements that made my sinuses throb.

Scanning the room, I mentally cataloged faces. No tears – not even professional ones. The mourners wore expressions from mild annoyance to barely suppressed excitement, like people waiting for a mediocre restaurant to call their name.

The officiator, sweat dampening his collar, kept glancing at the sealed coffin. "We gather to honor Rufus B. Tillinghast, whose... unexpected passing... has brought us together."

"Per Mr. Tillinghast's explicit instructions," he continued, tugging his tie, "the casket remains sealed for reasons of spiritual hygiene."

I sidled toward a woman wearing sunglasses indoors. "Unusual request," I whispered.

"Third weirdest thing he's done this year," she snorted. "Rufus 'dies' every time someone forgets his birthday. I'll believe it when I see the body."

My journalistic spidey-sense tingled. Closed coffin. Zero grief. A freak blizzard trapping everyone.

***

The reception transpired in Tillinghast's idea of normal space: part hunting lodge, part laboratory, with chrome fixtures and stuffed peacocks in fighting stances. Snack tables offered cheese cubes speared with tiny flags bearing Tillinghast Industries' penguin-monocle logo.

A woman in purple robes floated up beside me, silver hair spun into a gravity-defying swirl. She looked like the patron saint of chaotic séance energy.

"The veil grows thin," she intoned to no one in particular. "Rufus speaks through me now. He says... the cheese is disappointing."

"You must be Celeste," I said, recalling my research. "The ex-wife."

"Current spirit vessel," she corrected, suddenly rigid. Her voice dropped three octaves. "CELESTE UNDERPAID THE CATERER. I SPECIFIED IMPORTED MANCHEGO."

I backed away, colliding with a man whose lab coat appeared to have been slept in for days. His name tag read 'Dr. Bixby Krall, Personal Physician.'

"What exactly killed Rufus Tillinghast?" I asked.

Dr. Krall's eye twitched violently. "Natural causes. Very natural. The most natural causes imaginable."

"Could you be more specific?"

"Heart. Or brain. Perhaps lungs. One of the major organs people need for... continuing to be alive."

A man wearing four different plaids slid into the void left by Dr. Krall, clutching amber liquid that wasn't punch.

"Uncle Lenny," he winked. "Not a real uncle."

He took a long sip. "Not even particularly avuncular."

"You don't think he's really dead?"

Uncle Lenny tapped his nose. "Let's say I know about certain... tunnels. Certain escape hatches. Certain plans involving body doubles and experimental cryogenics."

Across the room, two identical men in identical suits argued furiously. I drifted closer.

"—legally stipulated that the elder twin receives the molecular resequencer," hissed the left one.

"I emerged from the vat six minutes before you," countered the right.

"Vat?" I interrupted.

"Metaphorical vat," said the left twin. "I'm Tinsley Tillinghast."

"Baptismal vat," said the right twin simultaneously. "I'm Grover Tillinghast."

"Sons?" I asked.

"Not exactly, twins," said Tinsley, glancing sharply at Grover.

"Genetically adjacent," offered Grover. "Father was very... innovative."

At the snack table, a woman in mud-caked overalls rearranged vegetables. Her name tag read "Marge, Groundskeeper." One eye was glass, though I couldn't determine which.

"The hedges been chattering nonsense," she muttered, leaning close. "Saying he's coming back."

She thrust a business card into my hand: "Margaret T. Wilkins, Botanical Communications & Underground Infrastructure."

"When things go sideways—check the northwest maintenance tunnel. Built 1974. Pre-dates the robot rabbits."

The lights flickered, then surrendered to darkness. Thunder crashed outside.

Someone screamed. Glass shattered. A body thumped against the dessert table.

"Nobody panic," Celeste commanded, followed immediately by, "EVERYONE SHOULD PANIC. THIS IS RUFUS SPEAKING."

I fumbled for my phone flashlight, illuminating chaos. Dr. Krall had fainted face-first into a cheese display. The twins clutched each other. Uncle Lenny sipped his drink, while Marge brandished pruning shears.

A mechanized hum filled the room. The lights returned, revealing the source: the coffin lid sliding open approximately three inches.

Uncle Lenny reached into the gap, extracting not a hand, but a cream-colored notecard. He read aloud: "Try again. I'm not done yet."

Silence blanketed the room, broken only by the blizzard's howl and Marge muttering, "Told you so. Hedges never lie."

Celeste collapsed dramatically. "He's alive! My spiritual conduit proves accurate!"

"That," Uncle Lenny remarked, pocketing the note, "or someone has a particularly morbid sense of humor."

Dr. Krall's eye twitch accelerated. "Impossible. I personally verified his... his... deadness."

"Did you, though?" I asked. "Did you really?”

There was a beat of silence. Then the lights flickered, the lilies trembled, and Dr. Krall did a nervous pivot that suggested he'd just remembered a very important appointment with a hallway.

I cornered Dr. Krall in the east wing, beneath gargoyles with Tillinghast's prominent nose.

"Walk me through your examination of the body," I demanded.

The doctor's face cycled through expressions before settling on 'aggrieved professional.' "Standard procedures were followed. Death was confirmed via—" He paused, eyes darting. "Via death-confirmation methods."

"Did you physically see the body?"

"I saw... a form. Under a sheet."

He vanished before I could sneeze again, leaving only the scent of panic and whatever cologne he was using to mask moral decay. I decided to look for someone less medically licensed and more spiritually deranged.

Celeste occupied the chapel, surrounded by fire-code-violating candles, eyes rolled back.

"THE WILL IS INVALID," she boomed. "RUFUS DEMANDS ALL ASSETS TRANSFER TO HIS BELOVED EX-WIFE."

"When did Rufus change his will?" I asked.

Her eyes snapped forward. "Three days ago. Highly suspicious. Adding some 'surprise heir' at the last minute."

"Any idea who?"

"BEWARE THE ONE WHO CARRIES MY FACE BUT NOT MY SOUL.”

After being yelled at by both a ghost and a woman wearing five layers of velvet in a building with no ventilation, I made a tactical retreat. I followed the faint sound of muttering, wood creaking, and the unmistakable clink of bourbon in motion.

Uncle Lenny rifled through Tillinghast's desk drawers with prison-gift-shop expertise.

"You mentioned escape tunnels," I prompted.

"Man had more enemies than a porcupine has reasons not to be hugged." He sipped bourbon. "Built this place with seventeen secret exits. For 'hypothetical resurrection insurance.'"

"You might want to check the northwestern section," he murmured after my allergic eruption scattered my notes.

Once Lenny pointed me toward the alleged tunnel zone like a drunk prophet, I figured it was time to circle back to the identical science experiments formerly known as Rufus’s children. Because if anyone knew where the bodies were buried—metaphorically or otherwise—it was probably the guys grown in a beaker.

The twins prowled opposite ends of the hall. Tinsley examined the coffin with scientific detachment.

"Was your father afraid of being buried alive?" I asked.

"Father feared nothing except mediocrity and incorrect grammar," he replied. "Did you know human DNA contains approximately three billion base pairs? Father's research suggested consciousness could be mapped across those pairs."

"Mapped? For what purpose?"

"Transfer. Continuation. Multiplication."

Across the room, Grover pressed his ear against a wall, whispering in binary code, his voice clicking like a dial-up modem.

"Your brother seems... unusual."

"Grover believes he's the original," Tinsley's smile contained no humor.

Grover pressed both palms to the wall and started humming what might’ve been the Windows 95 startup tone.

“He’s been... glitchy,” Tinsley admitted, watching him with the wary reverence of someone spotting a microwave on fire. “Started mimicking things Father used to say. Favorite insults. Childhood fears.”

“Like what?”

Grover turned toward us, blinking too slowly.

“Do you still fear thunder after seven?” he asked.

Tinsley stiffened. “That wasn’t in any files.”

I made a mental note: When a science twin starts channeling long-dead childhood trauma like it's a Spotify playlist, things are not fine.

After five minutes of unsettling DNA-themed monologues and Grover whispering sweet nothings to drywall, I needed air—and fewer people casually referencing consciousness transfer like it was a group project. I headed outside, where at least the soil wasn’t actively trying to upload itself to the cloud.

Marge organized fertilizer alphabetically in the garden shed. "The maintenance tunnel," I began. "Northwest section. Where does it lead?"

"Behind the third statue. Angels facing east. Devil facing west. Squirrel undecided." She pantomimed death. "Master Tillinghast watches everything on tablets. Even dead people get smartphone notifications."

Wait, Tablets? Bluetooth.

I had detected a Bluetooth signal near the coffin earlier. A device, still active, inside.

"Check the painting of the penguin in the north corridor," Marge advised. "Eyes follow you 'cause they're cameras. Access panel behind."

The moment she mentioned the squirrel statue and the phrase “smartphone notifications for the dead,” I knew two things: one, I was definitely following her lead; and two, I probably needed to upgrade my data plan before this was over.

The north corridor displayed Tillinghast family portraits with unfortunate noses. At the end hung the penguin painting wearing Rufus's monocle.

The penguin's eyes followed my movement. I found a seam along the frame and pressed. The painting swung open, revealing a control panel.

One button marked "EMERGENCY PROTOCOL OMEGA" showed recent fingerprints.

Here goes everything.

I pressed it. A mechanical whirr emanated from the main hall. I dashed back as the coffin lid retracted fully.

Inside, rather than a decomposing billionaire, lay a CPR training dummy in an expensive suit. A gray wig sat askew on its plastic head, monocle taped to its face with dinosaur-patterned Band-Aids.

The dummy's chest cavity clicked open, revealing a tablet. The screen illuminated, displaying Rufus Tillinghast's face, very much alive.

"Greetings from beyond!" recorded-Rufus announced. "If you're watching this, I've faked my death again... unless I didn't. In which case, this is awkward."

"The will reading scheduled for tomorrow will proceed as planned, with a special announcement some of you may find... evolutionary."

The tablet switched to a countdown clock: 18 hours, 24 minutes, 13 seconds.

"Until then, enjoy the refreshments. Except you, Celeste. The deviled eggs will destroy your colon."

While the room argued about resurrection etiquette and deviled eggs, I slipped out. The northwest maintenance tunnel wasn’t going to find itself.

Behind the third angel statue—wings out, judgy expression—I spotted the taxidermied squirrel Marge had warned me about. It stared into the void like it knew things. Secret things.

I rotated it northward.

A panel hissed open, revealing a tunnel that smelled like expensive cologne and hubris.

The tunnel opened into a modern bunker-meets-bachelor-pad situation: leather furniture, panic buttons, and a suspicious amount of cologne in the air. Surveillance screens showed mourners bickering around the empty coffin like reality-show contestants after the host fakes his own death for ratings.

"Found you," I whispered.

Then I saw the shoe poking from behind a leather chair. An expensive oxford, attached to a leg, attached to...

Rufus B. Tillinghast lay sprawled on the floor, monocle perfectly positioned despite his awkward posture. A teacup rested nearby, dark liquid spilled across marble tiles.

Unlike his dummy doppelgänger, this Rufus wouldn't make any announcements. His skin had the waxy quality exclusive to the genuinely deceased.

A leather-bound journal had fallen from his hand, titled Clone Me Once. The final pages of his journal were scribbled like a man racing his own thoughts:

Transferring consciousness via genetic lattice mapping — successful. Both versions access core memories, but which holds the ‘spark’? The original soul? The self? If memory is the map, where is the driver? Are we both Rufus?

Grover insists he’s me. That I’m the decoy. His instability grows. He is becoming dangerous! Claims he's the original—absurd! I built the method, the body, the backdoors. I even programmed the biometric lockout. He can't be me... because I left out one gene. The sneeze...

Footsteps froze me mid-read. I dove behind a server bank, clutching the journal.

Grover entered, movements mechanical yet fluid. He approached Rufus's body without surprise, checking for a pulse with clinical detachment.

"Original pattern restored to singular expression," he murmured, collecting tea drops in a vial. "Unfortunate but necessary convergence."

He arranged Rufus's body in a more dignified position, closing the staring eyes.

"Protocol complete. Identity resolved. The inferior iteration removed." Grover straightened his jacket—identical to Rufus's. "Tomorrow, Rufus Tillinghast rises again. The correct version.”

He lingered by the body, frowning—not like a man looking at a crime scene, but like a kid who broke his favorite toy and couldn’t decide whether to cry or pretend it never happened.

He stood over the body for a long moment, eyes flicking like he was syncing data across a bad connection. A thunderclap boomed outside, and Grover didn’t flinch. But something in his posture did—a micro-shiver, like a ghost remembering its origin.

“He said I was an experiment,” Grover murmured. “A hypothesis. A proof of concept. But I remember his childhood. I remember his mother’s laugh. I remember being afraid of thunder until I was seven. If I remember it... doesn’t that make it mine?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, just pocketed the vial and smoothed Rufus’s lapels like a man laying himself to rest.

He wiped surfaces with practiced efficiency, then departed through another tunnel.

My heart hammered against my ribs with enough force to register on nearby seismographs.

I waited a full sixty seconds after Grover left before exhaling — then another sixty to make sure the Wi-Fi was strong enough to upload everything I'd just recorded to the cloud. You know. In case of post-clone retaliation.

Time to go public.

***

TRUE CRIME PAJAMA PARTY BLOG

🕵️‍♀️ The Man Who Died Twice (But Only Once on Purpose)

By Elodie Sharp, Investigative Pajamalist™

Three cease-and-desist letters and fifty thousand new followers later, I can finally tell you what really happened at the Tillinghast Mausoleum during The Corpse Hoax Blizzard Fiasco.

For those following: yes, eccentric billionaire Rufus Tillinghast faked his death, complete with dummy corpse and pre-recorded video. And yes, he subsequently turned up actually dead in his secret bunker. The twist police dismissed as "paranoid blogger fiction fueled by antihistamine hallucinations"? His own clone killed him.

Grover Tillinghast, created through experimental DNA sequencing and consciousness transfer technology (patents pending), believed himself the "real" Rufus. When the original planned to reveal the truth, Grover took matters—and poisoned Earl Grey—into his genetically identical hands.

Prosecutors remain baffled about charging someone with killing their template. The case has spawned seventeen legal textbooks and one opera.

The opera, titled Clone Sweet Clone, received three standing ovations and one lawsuit from a cryogenics startup claiming intellectual defamation.

👻 Ghosts, Lawsuits, and Cheese Crimes: The Aftermath

Dr. Krall lost his medical license but gained a reality show: "Celebrity Death Certificates: Signed, Sealed, Dubious."

Celeste now leads "Dead and Loving It" ghost tours, channeling spirits with remarkable specificity about restaurant health violations.

Tinsley inherited the molecular resequencer but donated it, stating, "Some family traditions deserve to end."

"Uncle" Lenny vanished with valuable paintings and bourbon. His real name is Leonard Wickshire, wanted in nine countries for "creative inheritance redistribution."

Marge still talks to hedges but expanded to topiaries shaped like courtroom scenes.

As for Grover? His attempt to assume Rufus's identity collapsed at Tillinghast Industries' biometric security. The original Rufus installed a genetic marker in the scanners—one excluded from his clone's DNA.

The marker? A rare gene sequence causing lily allergies. Grover's failure to sneeze gave him away. Irony, it turns out, is airborne and genetically encoded. Sometimes the universe has a sense of humor. Especially with billionaires who build their own clones.

🧊 Next Investigation: CryoCore™ Shenanigans: Apparently they're freezing employees who ask too many questions. I’ve got a fake resume, a borrowed lab coat, and a soft pretzel stuffed with caffeine gum. Wish me luck.

Until then, keep your pajamas pressed and your detective skills sharp.

P.S. Pajamalist™ tees now available: “Investigate First, Nap Later.”