The air is thick, muggy. It drowns you with its humidity and dampens your skin, even as a chill thrills the hair of your arm. You find yourself in a place so familiar and yet so strange--tombstones litter the roadside as you trudge on through the swampgrass.

The full moon which lit your way to this place, once yellowed, fades off behind blackened cumuli and, faintly, a lobo's howl tickles your eardrum. And now an aroma punctures your proboscis- carrion, death, offal.

In the pitch you stumble, twisting your knee and falling wunk! into cold marble. A familiar tombstone, with a red rose emblazoned on it. The name on it--you remember it well, but it has faded on the stone just as your memory dims.

The soil there is upturned, the coffin laying oneside.

You creep, one toe ahead sinking down into the spongy soil, then the other; you pause.

Is it true? Can it be? The thought excites you- terrifies you- makes you lust.

Gong! a churchbell slices into your ear from far off.

A cold wind cuts the steam and stench off of you and you want to run, but you can no longer see the trail that lead you here. Turn back to the coffin.

Gong. Closer.

Reach out your hand.

Gong. Closer.

Touch the lid.

Gong. Closer.

The coffin opens.

Gong. Closer.

Peer into the darkness.

Look for any sign of the friend, enemy, stranger you met once in passing...

Reach in your hand.

Run it down the satin of the box, feel it burn against your hand.

The bottom. There's nothing there.

Gong.

And you turn around.

And he's looming there above you.

CBear47. Back from the dead.

Shut your eyes, little ones. It's not going to be pretty.

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Ye who toiled in the Devil's work. For now it tolls for thee."

GONG.