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“There, that should just about do it” he whispered under his breath as he worked placing the last piece of fresh cut sod on Martha Tinney’s grave. She had died a miserable old woman: no children of her own, widowed thirty years, and living off of Social Security tending to twenty-seven cats. Giving the earth a final pat down, he looked up at the headstone

Martha Tinney

1923 – 2007

Old bitch, ain’t ya?

“Evenin’, Joe!”

The unexpected salutation startled him. He quickly turned on his knees to see Tony, the night watchman, waving at him from outside the rusty iron fence that surrounded the old cemetery. The nervous gravedigger smiled at the guard and raised a hand in a friendly hello. For the better part of ten years Joe had worked at Lawndale, and each and every day he greeted Joe in the same manner; and each and every time he did, it surprised him. Joe always replied just the same. Old Tony smiled and went on his way, whistling a tune from his childhood that no one in the modern age would even know.

Joe the Gravedigger turned back to the headstone

Martha Tinney

Martha. Oh, Martha.

He envisioned another, extremely beautiful Martha he knew in his youth. Close friends through grammar school and junior high, she never acknowledged his desires to make their relationship more than it was. Sure, she let him touch her naughty parts now and then, but nothing more. The gravedigger laid down on the freshly covered grave, face down, imagining he was laying on top of his long lost love.

I always loved ya.

Recalling the night in ‘53 when she let him finger her in dad’s new Chevy, he began slowly grinding his pelvis into the cold grass.

Martha.

Picking up the tempo, he looked again at the headstone, only this time to see

Martha Jones

staring back at him.

Martha Jones. His love from another age. The love he never got to really love. Old Martha Tinney would have to suffice.

When he reached orgasm, he locked eyes on the headstone and whispered “Take that you old whore. How did you like that?”

The ground rocked beneath him. His body stiffened, not knowing whether what he just felt was real or a figment of his imagination. Puzzled, he looked to his left, then his right. A heavy thud emitted from within the grave. Man’s primal fight-or-flight instinct kicked in and he found himself on his knees, ready to jump up and get the hell out of there. But before he could make legs jettison him away, the third and mightiest of the tremors shot off like a cannon, causing the ground to swell below him and then cave in slightly. Martha Tinney’s headstone fell backward and the gravedigger’s legs were ripped from below him. He landed face down on the grave, frozen in terror.

A hand burst violently forth from the earth and clenched his neck.