Night. A cemetery. I lay there upon the well-trimmed grass, still of body, yet quaking of soul.

Around me, autumnal fallen leaves scampered, danced and made merry. Wind blew forceful, freezing. Monlight and trees' shadows wrestled hard for supremacy and the right to make the ground beneath umbrous or illuminated.

It was, some would say, a night upon which the dead might seek to rise and do the bidding of their choice.

What would that bidding be?

I do not know, yet am afeared, that, on such a night, the risen dead may seek vengeance for my three crimes against them,whereupon I sought to join their rotting throng before my time.

Would they burn my ears with a hail of malice? Would they shriek with mocking laughter at my fears and form? Would they punch my ribs and strike my face?

On such a night, whilst cowering in abject terror, I would pray, to no god, but to my own bleeding soul, that the dead would not seek such vengeance, for if they were to, then dead and living would come together in hideous communion.