Inside the casket

Tall black cloaks stood all around me, none of them seemed to house living things, all caskets in their own right, all peering down at the true casket in the ever dampening hole in the ground.

Open it. I wanted to shout to everyone that the damned box was empty, that they had wasted their time in coming to a funeral because it was nothing but a hoax.

Open. It. Maybe it was selfish or unjust of me to demand to see whatever poor body, if any, they had stuffed in there to settle my own doubts. It would be uncouth to whoever they once were but it was just as unfair to gather all of us here if the name to be on the stone wasn't the one going in the ground.

Open it! The cloaks moved around me with the first signs of life I had seen all evening dropping everything from coins and flowers to letters and rosaries on top of the casket. Something in my stomach burned hot, these people didn't even know who they were giving these things to. They had no proof that the right body was in that casket just the word of some 'Monastery Man' who claimed to have watched my sister die and had personally taken care of her post life dealings. However, it seemed he was not in attendance today. It was only myself and several people who called themselves her friends. They must have been from the temple she was involved with. matching cloaks for a funeral for their 'sister' but she wasn't their sister, she was mine, and I had a lump deep in my throat telling me she wasn't in that box.

One after another the cloaked procession left the cemetery gates. I stood back away from the grave until the group of them had disappeared. It was growing dark but the burning in my stomach had not subsided as I edged closer to the hole they said she was in. Mud squelched under my feet as I dropped into the hole with little room for anything but the casket. The white polished lid made even harder to grip by the cold slick rain was unwilling to give up whatever secrets it held.

"Hey!" A mans voice ricocheted off the walls of the grave and I scrambled to get out of its wake. Using the casket as step I heaved myself onto the damp outer earth and wheeled around to see who it was.

"What are you doing out here?" The voice was much softer this time, almost caring.

"That's supposed to be my sister. I need to see if it's her." It sounded more pleading than I'd hoped it would.

"You ought to get home, she's gone now. I'm just here to cover her up but I'll take good care of her, it's best if you don't watch though it tends to upset loved ones." Caring, and like he thinks I'm simple.

"No. I need to see if it's her in there I don't think she's dead." I don't sound simple but I do sound daft.

"I don't suggest you do that," The grave digger shook his head and relaxed his shoulders, "it won't sit well to remember her like this. Keep what you have of her."

"I need to know if she's dead. Could you live not knowing if your sister was dead?" I was pleading again but at least I wasn't daft. The grave digger paused for a beat and looked hard at me. He seemed to be having a rather hard conversation with himself about his morals. Finally his wide shoulders relaxed even further and he sighed.

"If I open that for you will it really help you?" The rain was beating down on us as I nodded my head at him.

"Let me get a lantern then." He sounded less than pleased to take on such a mad escapade in this weather but he trudged back toward the mausoleum in nothing but sparse moonlight to fetch his lantern anyway. The yellow glow illuminated his face to show a thick beard and downturned mustache, equally thick eyebrows knitted together at the top of his face.

"I shouldn't be doing this at all, its much better to live with the thoughts of them as they were than as they are here." His face had not relaxed as he approached me and his shoulders had scrunched up tightly with dismay.

"I can't thank you enough. I just need one look, I just need to know." He only grunted in response and lowered himself carefully into the muddy grave, his broad shoulders hardly fit but he seemed steady in the mud.

I realized I hadn't prepared myself for getting an answer. If my sister wasn't in there what the hell was I going to do? And if she was? The same question hung in the air.

The shovel the grave digger brought looked dirty in the lamp light, I imagined this was the first time his shovel had been used for anything other than digging graves and he looked at me one more time as a final plea not to make him crack open the final resting place of whoever was in there. I only nodded at him in encouragement and he sighed again. With great speed and with more power than the tight walls of the grave should have afforded him he wedged the shovels tip between the now muddy white lid and wall of casket. He grunted as he put his full weight onto the shovel, popping the lid up just enough to get his large hands in and hoisting the lid fully up.

He made no sounds as he gazed into the box. But I wished now more than ever that I had thought of what I would do next before I had him open it. The soft yellow glow of the grave diggers lantern bore the horror of whatever they had put in my sisters casket. A woman's body, draped only with a sheet.

"Well, what now?" The grave diggers voice was quiet as he spoke to me, like maybe the corpse would hear us.

Silence stood between us as he kept the lid raised and I looked into the casket, the shoulders and arms were a pale grey color, but built so similar to my sister. The face was different though, my sister had a beautiful nose with cutting cheek bones and a slender neck, and this one had a jagged line across the throat where a woman's head was gone and replaced with a pigs.