Sépulture Inachevée
Matthew Catawoll blinked.
It was a thick, languid blink, that dragged his eyelids to hang across his eyes for several moments before clearing.
He blinked again, then twice more. Knitting his eyelids tightly together, until he felt an inward pressure against his own eyes.
"Am I in hell?"
The question hung unanswered for a minute, as he ran his fingers over the coffin's walls.
God wouldn't do that, would he? Send a man straight to hell, without even telling him? That wouldn’t be very neighborly of him.
He’d have sent some sort of hint, at least. Suitably ironic as this punishment might be, it wasn’t something an honest Lord would do, this was something the gods of antiquity would come up with. He went around dressing and acting as the dead, now he joins them underground. Real Shakespearean.
“…Fine. Hell to you too, high-riding son of bitch.”
Shifting slightly to make himself more comfortable in the limited space, Mr. Catawoll didn’t stop to contemplate why he might deserve such a fate. Even wearing the wedding tux that matched an old widow’s dress, such matters were both above and below him.
He had read of a town in Ireland, he remembered, that would wrap their dead shepherds in sheepskin. They believed that God wouldn’t turn them away for skipping church, so long as he knew they were simply tending to their own flock on each Sunday instead. It made sense to him, then, that if God wouldn’t turn away the absent shepherd, that he shouldn’t turn away any absent laborer.
And just what the hell had he been doing, if not labor?
It’s not like the higher powers could have really cared for the old maids if they let their heads go to mush in the first place. What do people do with those heirlooms that he isn’t getting more out of them? They’re all just knickknacks, taking up space on the shelf, gathering dust. Holding people back from moving on. It was almost a service, what he did for them. No one wants to be remembered by the waste they leave behind.
If this was Hell it certainly wasn’t what he deserved, so he resolved to pass through it unphased. Like a true stoic, he’d take it as a chance to lean back and catch up on beauty sleep. It wasn’t his first time sleeping in a coffin, after all.
It was a sick joke. A sick stupid joke. Like a third-rate sitcom’s Halloween skit.
Down here? In the bone-chilling pits of Hell, submerged in his ironic punishment for a life of grifting?
His nose itched.
It was almost funny at first, in a cynical way. Like a bloodhound. A creature so plainly hideous that it circled back around and became cute in its own way. But you can only be drooled on for so long before the novelty wears thin. There wasn’t much room to move and moving too much would trigger his natural reflexes, driving a panic at the claustrophobic space.
Is this really what Hell would be for him? A mild itch in a shoebox?
Being buried hit the mark though, from what he had read. According to Dante, thieves would sit in the seventh of fifteen pits, surrounded by fellow fraudsters on all sides. And that was… worryingly fitting now that he really considered it.
He shook away the dreary musing with a firm scratch, before catching a glimpse of his own ivory digits.
“It’s bone.”
He said calmly.
“Of course. Because I’m dead.”
He added, thoughtfully.
“PLEASE! PLEASE GOD!”
The coffin remained still, as a grave should. Even as he pounded and scratched at the unforgiving wooden lid, and his voice shook with fear.
“PLEASE GOD, JUST ONE MORE WEEK! I’LL MAKE IT ALL BACK TO THE WORLD!”
The roughly hewn pine had no sympathy for him, even as blood smeared thinly across its surface.
“GIVE ME A DAY! SEND ME LAZARUS! I CAN ATONE FOR EVERYTHING! I REBUKE THE DEVIL, I REBUKE LUCIFER, I DENOUNCE THE MAN I WAS! JUST LET ME OUT!”
Once again, his cry went unanswered. He lay there, spittle staining the roof above him, and reached upward. Hand shaking as it moved, he asked again, more quietly now.
“Please. Save me.”
And his hand tore open into mist, seeping through wood and soil like open air.
Emerging on the other side of the alley wall, Catawoll grimaced at the booming music and gaudy discotheque lighting. “Fairy but Cherry”, the third hottest nightclub in Brocktown. Word on the street was that the building used to be a speakeasy for kraut sympathizers back in the war, but things swung hard in the other direction after the Reds took Berlin.
“Undertaker, come in Undertaker. What do you see?”
The radio crackled roughly into his left ear, louder than he’d like, but it’s not like anyone would pick up on it with the music blowing their ears out.
“Bastard’s here. Cheap fur coat, pink feather boa, kaleidoscope monocle… and three lumpy-faced cronies who all look the same. Just like the tip said.”
The voice became quieter for a moment, speaking to the side before returning focus.
“Target confirmed. Remember the plan, Undertaker.”
Motioning for a mug from the bar and lifting it in a faux toast, Matt smiled behind his scarf and slipped into a new role.
“That’s the ticket, man. I’ll take good care of it.”
The bartender smiled back, his walrus mustache twisting in a blissfully unaware cheer.
Catawoll whistled low from his booth at the side, facing the dance floor but with eyes on the prize as he made for the backdoor with a wide gait.
Wide smile, swinging boa. Hulking goons in synchronized steps behind him.
“Our guy is MOVING! Groovy baby! Like walkin’ on water!”
His cheers drew a smidge of notice, but nothing more than a glance. The admittedly choppy lingo diffusing into the drunken chorus of hollering partygoers as Catawoll made for the bathroom.
Easy strides, slouched shoulders. Beer mug still in hand.
His name was Thornton Wilder, and he was pretty sure he was the dopest killer on the streets.
“Oh eyah.”
He spoke to himself in the back alley. It wasn’t more than three blocks from here that he got his superpowers. Bodacious man.
That’s what he called them, the clay dudes he could build. His “Bodacious Men”.
Oh eyah, so fuckin’ cool.
Why’d he blow the popsicle stand? ‘Cause he’s got ‘biznez’ to take care of. Drug dealing, gang shit.
Oh eyah.
He wasn’t actually part of a gang yet, but he got an envelope saying this is how he’d get in. His big test; Guard this alley until the dealer shows up, then do what he says.
When you call The Wilder though? You don’t get one guard. You get four. And there ain’t a bitch in the whole city who can snap through four dudes.
“Hey, bud. Are you out here all alone?”
Turning on his heel and snapping to attention, Thornton saw a short, thin man on the closed end of the alley. Bundled from head to toe, his long coat held tightly to his emaciated frame.
Wilder could have thought he was the dealer if it weren’t for the full mug of flat beer. Poor guy chose a real bad time to pop out for a smoke.
“Hey, bud, I’mma need you to scootch off, catch me? Scram, or my buds will help you.”
The figure rolled his shoulders, taking care not to spill his drink.
“Bring’em on them. All three.”
That earned a moment of pause. The guy was maybe 5’6? Thornton’s dudes had a full head on him, saying nothing of the muscle.
“You fuckin-“
A thought struck him, so vivid it stopped his mouth for a moment.
‘Guard the back alley until the dealer showed up.’
This was a part of the test.
Whoop this druggie’s fuckin’ ass, and prove you’re an ass whooper, Thorny.
That’s what they were telling him. He didn't even motion them forward, his Bodacious Men were on the move as soon as he set his mind to it, pushing in front of him and walking shoulder to shoulder. A brick wall on six legs.
“Alright you fuckin’ narbo! You want to get laid out, that’s on you!”
The freak in front of him raised his glass at the approaching brutes, before cocking the stein back at a slight tilt.
"Cheers bud, I was worried you might spread them out. Could have made things messy."
Golden, fizzless ichor flowed down and out, splattering the entire glass at their feet as he threw his arm wide. Thornton stopped again, squinting in befuddlement before a sinking feeling settled in his gut.
Five long, dark digits settled around the middle guard's leg, dragging him smoothly through wet concrete. A second malformed hand tore into the left 'man's' calf, he landed unevenly on the edge of the beer but it simply didn't matter. His form bent and tore, as he was ripped sideways down the gap.
The last guard had time to react, pulling away from the puddle with a clumsy back step, but not time to save himself, as the abyssal horror dragged itself from the depths. It's wet form lurched in pursuit of prey, a monstrous claw eclipsed his skull as it drove him into the dry pavement behind him.
Thornton quivered, stepping back from the massacre as he realized just how quickly he lost his protection. Whipping around to flee the alley, he felt a cold wind push past him, only to see that thin man on the other side.
"What's the problem, bud?"
Cloth scraped against cloth, as his scarf shifted down to reveal the bare bone of a long, leering grin.
"You look like you've seen something terrible!"
The light glinted off his now empty mug, as he raised it over his head.
"You can tell us all about it-"
And brought it crashing down on Wilder's.
"-After you've sobered up."
Cheerfully smiling as two PRT Agents hauled away their quarry in the background, Undertow lifted an oversized hand towards Undertaker, her palm facing outward and slick with brackish seawater.
“Good work team!”
“I don’t… really do high fives.”
"...Oh. Sorry."