Boston. Late at night. The sharpening wind started to pound an opened door downstairs. The intrusive sound awoke Elaine, who had thought she would finally be able to have one decent night of sleep since that fateful day.
Home alone, Elaine stood up, still in a haze, trying to figure out what was going on. She then realized it could only be the damaged backdoor lock. Elaine cursed herself for not fixing the blasted thing sooner. She had no choice but to get out of bed and go close it.
Her feet touched the chilly bedroom floor, where several used tissues were scattered all around... marks of the pain and suffering she had been enduring in the last month.
Elaine searched for the breaker, but to no effect, since the storm outside had cut the energy supply. Barefooted in the darkness that had turned her beautiful two-story house into a scary dark maze, illuminated only by an occasional lightning, she groped her way downstairs.
On her way to the kitchen, she entered the dining room. She picked one of candlesticks over the dinner table and lit it. As she finally got to the kitchen, she was stunned to find out that the backdoor didn’t just open with the wind... it was broken down. Someone was inside.
Terrified, Elaine searched for the phone. On her way, she slid, almost losing her balance on a pool of mud. Under the dancing flames of the candle, she could see the trail of pools coming from the backdoor toward the living room. It was then she saw a tall and sinister figure by the kitchen entrance.
Driven by instinct, Elaine started to shout desperately. She tried to flee through the destroyed backdoor into the backyard. The strange figure, however, was faster, grabbing her arms before she could escape. Along with the fear of being trapped, she felt an overwhelming stench of rotten flesh, a stench that provoked on her the urge to throw up. As the invader opened his mouth, trying to talk to her, his foul breath made her dizzy. “Elaine, it’s me... Trevor.”
Elaine froze. The air seemed to be blowing away from her lungs and her blood to stop running through her veins. “Trevor...?” she exclaimed, startled.
The stranger let her go. Elaine backed away a few feet, like a tiny scared squirrel, she raised the candle up to light his face to check if he was indeed her fiancé, the only man she had ever loved her entire life, Trevor Spiers.
Even covered of mud from head to toe, Elaine would recognize those eyes anywhere. “Trevor! Is that you?” she had forgotten the rotten state he was in, or maybe she just didn’t care. She ran to hold him. He embraced her tightly, as if holding the biggest treasure a man could have.
Elaine looked him in the eye, stunned, not understanding what was happening. “But, how can it be? I BURIED you, nearly a month ago!”
Trevor was an insurance salesman who suffered a sheer heart attack at the young age of thirty-five. He and Elaine were supposed to be married by the end of the month and spend their honeymoon in Spain. Now, all she had was a walking piece of rotten meat, standing in front of her.
“I don’t know how it happened... but I came back for your, my darling,” Trevor said as he extended his arms, showing his fleshless fingers. “I had to dig my way out, through the wood and the earth.”
“Oh, my love,” Elaine said, her heart thorn apart. She touched his dead hair, tenderly. “My prayers have been answered. God almighty has brought you back to me.”
Elaine thought that was almost too good to be true. At the time of Trevor’s death, she tried to console herself with the firm belief that they would be reunited some day. Even if she had to wait a million years for her beloved man, she gladly would, for their love would always keep them together. However, after a couple of days, the pain had proven to be much stronger than she ever thought possible. The longing for her beloved husband grew more and more. If not for her strict religious upbringing she would have even considered suicide in order to be with Trevor once again. But now, for the first time in what seemed like ages, tears, not of sadness, but of happiness, erupted from Elaine’s eyes. “Everything’s all right now. Nothing will ever set us apart.”
“Nothing,” Trevor agreed. “But the others, the living, they must never know of my existence.”
“Of course,” she promptly concurred. “We can very well live in this house, just as we planned. There won’t be no family or friends, but what matters is that we’ll be together, forever.”
“Do you really think you can love something like this?” he said about himself.
“Yes, I can,” she stuttered. “It will take some getting used to--”
“No!” he interrupted her. “I can’t be part of your world anymore. ...But you’ll be part of mine.”
Elaine was confused. “What?”
“When I got to the other side,” he said.
“I found out we wouldn’t be together until the time of your natural death, which will be in about fifty years.”
“I don’t understand...”
“I couldn’t wait that long. No, I had to find some other way... and I did.”
“So, the Good Lord answered your prayer and sent you back to me.”
“No, the Lord didn’t... but one other did.”
“One... other?!” Elaine was terrified.
“Trevor, what have you done?” Trevor smiled.
“What I had to do. I was granted the power to come back and bring you with me to a place we can be together for all eternity.”
“A place. but not Heaven.”
“Does it really matter?”
“My God. ”
Elaine’s expression was a mask of terror. “You are not my Trevor. ...You are a MONSTER!”
She tried to run away from him but he managed to grab her.”
“No, get back!” she screamed. “Please, no!”
“Don’t scream, my love.” Trevor said as he held her arms together with one hand while the other slid toward her neck. “Soon we’ll be truly together.”
Elaine managed to emit one final scream before her neck was broken like a toothpick. After a while, Trevor realized something was wrong. He felt as Elaine’s soul left her body, but his was still trapped in his. He thought best to take her body out of there before the break of day, so he took it to the only place he had left. The cemetery.
For days, Trevor awaited, hidden with Elaine in an abandoned mausoleum, until he finally lost his hope. He had been tricked. He allowed the longing for her beloved to blind him, to the point of hurting the one person in the world he cared about more than he did life itself. His only comfort was knowing that Elaine should be fine on the other side. It was a feeble consolation since he was doomed to remain on this one.
So, because he couldn’t wait for some lousy fifty years, Trevor would have to remain trapped in a rotten corpse for the rest of eternity.
A hard lesson in patience to be learned...