Once night once again descended on the town, we took my minivan back out to where we'd stalked the funeral earlier on. Before we'd left Eternal Wings, we went over our main goals one more time.

"No desecrating bodies" I sternly reminded them.

"No adding to whatever body count is already on record there" Aaron added.

"And no turning on the incinerator and "accidentally" forgetting to shut it off" Sighed Tom.

"What happens if we get caught?" I asked.

"We can't let that happen. Steve would freak and we'd probably get arrested. It's still trespassing if we have a key right?" Aaron asked.

"We need to dress up" I suggested.

"What like as a cowboy or an Indian or something? Have you been smoking the incense, Frodo?" Tom asked.

"No I mean in all black. Like a cat burglar or something you see on TV. Do you have any balaclavas?" I asked, realising too late how silly that sounded.

"I might be a little on the wacky side but I'm not a terrorist you jackass!" He barked.

"Sam's right though, we need some sort of camouflage" Aaron calmed the situation. "If only we knew of a place where all black clothes are a normal sight . . ." He let the last statement hang in the air, waiting for one of us to take the bait.

"I suppose we'd find that here, wouldn't we" Tom finally caught on.

So it was decided we'd keep our black suits on and top them up with black hats. The hats were often used at funerals to complete our getup but I'd been told on my first day that they were kind of old fashioned so we'd only really wear them if the customer wanted us to. Steve always gave them the choice but I'd yet to wear the headgear. I certainly wouldn't have imagined that my first time doing so would be to break into another funeral parlour. What had my life become?

Outside the funeral home we all took a deep breath.

"You guys ready for this?" Tom asked. I nodded.

"If I was ever going to go to jail, I never would've imagined that it'd be for something like this. But I'm ready" Aaron said defiantly.

We stealthily made our way to where Tom had seen the key being hidden. Luckily for us it was still there so we had no problem getting inside.

Now, in case you haven't figured it out yet, without the cheerful banter and the comedy shows on television, funeral homes can be a pretty freaky place to visit. Well now we were in an unfamiliar one at night, and none of us were hiding the fact that we were terrified.

"This was a bad idea" Aaron observed as he shone his flashlight around the dark corridors. For all we knew this looked like Eternal Wings did, but it was so dark that none of the features could be made out. We'd decided that turning on the lights would make it obvious that someone was inside when they shouldn't be, so our torches would have to do.

"For once I think I agree with you" Whispered Tom.

"Should we turn back?" I asked.

"No way!" Tom hissed. "We've come this far already. We have to put our lives on the line for this mission!"

"Oh trust me, I think we are" Aaron gulped.

By now our eyes had adjusted to the darkness a little better. It was a long narrow building which initially seemed to only house a corridor, but there were three doors on either side. We decided to get the worst part over with early, so slid to the end of the corridor and checked the two furthest doors. They contained a bathroom and a janitor's closet. Suddenly we felt pretty stupid for coming up with that plan but we put it to the back of our minds and continued on our quest.

The next two adjacent doors each contained rooms similar to our own den. The first was full of empty coffins whilst the second was like a mini morgue, with bodies strewn across many tables.

"Holy shit!" I gasped in horror at the sight before me.

"Well his filing system could sure use some work" Tom said far too casually for my liking.

You'd think that working with so many dead people would make things like this a lot easier but trust me, it doesn't.

Deciding that nothing good could come from trudging through those rooms, we closed in on the last two doors. The first was a dull locker room type of area but with the final door we tried, we hit the jackpot. It was Christian Goldstein's office.

"You've got to be kidding me" I sighed. "The first door we could have tried was the one we wanted all along?" You couldn't make it up.

"Just keep telling yourself that this way makes the story more interesting" Tom said, pushing his way into the room. I'll let you decide if it did or not.

"What are we actually looking for in here anyway?" Aaron asked.

"Anything that could be useful or cause a scandal for Goldstein. Sex toys, child porn, devil worship books. Stuff like that" Tom answered as he leafed through a filing cabinet.

"Well that won't be hard then will it" I said with more sarcasm than I ever thought possible. Goldstein may have been a prick but he wasn't stupid. If by some divine miracle he did have any of that stuff, I didn't imagine he'd stash it in his place of work.

I looked all over his desk but didn't find anything I deemed to be useful.

"Anything?" Aaron asked me. His search had apparently been a waste too.

"All I see here are the plans for the rest of his funerals this week. Nothing helpful" I sighed.

"Are you serious!?" Tom yelled, shattering the silence we'd now become accustomed to.

"Jesus! What's the deal?" I asked, trying to restart my heart.

Tom didn't answer but read all of the files I'd found. A grin slowly appeared across his evil face as he finished up.

"Frodo, you have just found our path to Mordor!" He smiled like the evil genius that he is.

"What are you thinking?" Aaron asked nervously. Tom glanced up and stared at us with a sparkle in his eye before explaining his plan. I could give you a detailed explanation but its better if you read for yourselves. But all you need to know at the moment is that we changed one minor detail on one of the sheets.

The plan couldn't be executed quite yet because the funeral in question was set for two days from our recon mission. So we passed the next day by watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory. The geniuses on that show had nothing on Tom at this point.

The day of the plan arrived and we once again snuck out of work to attend another of Christian's funerals. This time though we all wanted to see the results of our efforts so we spread out amongst the gatherers and put on our best sad faces. We silently sat in the church while Christian performed the service. I'll admit that his tone sounded sincere but his script was so clichéd, he probably googled it and uses it for every service he conducts. Rat I tell you rat!

Once that was over, his minions took the coffin to the gravesite whilst we followed in the minivan.

Quick side-note: Ever notice that in movies, any shady business is always carried out in a minivan? Makes me wonder what my family have truly been up to all this time.

Where was I? Oh yeah! We made it to the graveyard early but waited for more people to arrive before we headed up to the grave-hole. We didn't want to risk Christian recognising us; our disguises would only really work in a big crowd.

Once the rest of the guests arrived, we once again split up so we could easily avoid detection, still making sure we'd be able to have a clear path to run back to the sanctuary of the minivan when all hell inevitably broke loose.

And it didn't take long for that to happen.

Emotions are always running high at a funeral, but this was a different beast entirely. I just arrived behind a frail looking old woman when I heard the first shout.

"What the fuck is this? Is this some sort of sick joke?" Cried an angry looking bald man.

Christian looked at him in bewilderment, unsure what the sudden outburst was about, but before he could ask any questions, more people began to notice what had aggravated the man so much.

"Please! Please! Calm down! What seems to be the problem?" Christian asked. He was literally a rat trapped in a corner.

"You've dug up the wrong grave you son of a bitch!" The bald man yelled again. I swear if his face turned any redder, he would explode and he'd need a funeral too.

Christian's eyes bolted to the open grave and then to the gravestone propped up next to it.

"Sweet mother of god" He whispered as he realised that the angry mob were right.

You see the sheet that we edited was that of this guy's funeral. He wanted to be buried in the same grave as his wife, but we changed it so that it was actually the neighbouring grave that was dug up. Working in the profession, we'd learned that graves are typically dug up a day before the funeral. Obviously you can't leave it too late or it might not be ready, but if you do it too early then the weather can affect it, animals could affect it and not to mention that we've all seen films where someone is running through a graveyard at night and fallen into an open grave. Poor Buffy had this happen to her a lot.

Christian didn't know what to do, so he basically just begged everyone for forgiveness whilst the lynch mob closed in on him like a giant tidal wave hitting the shore. We all made eye contact and nodded our agreement that now was the time to leave. We walked at a brisk pace back to the van so as we wouldn't look too conspicuous. Once we were all strapped in and driving away we all remained silent until we were a few blocks away.

"That actually happened didn't it?" Aaron asked.

"It sure did" I said, just as absentmindedly as he had sounded.

"That. Was. Fucking. Awesome!" Tom finally yelled in excitement. I felt bad for being so excited but his enthusiasm seemed to lift all the pressure off of my shoulders and I was actually able to smile then. I looked at Aaron and guessed that he was the same as me.

"We still can't tell Steve that that was us" Aaron warned.

"Agreed. He's going to be stoked when he hears about it though!" Tom cried.

"I don't think we should ever speak of this again" I mumbled.

"Safe bet Frodo!" Tom yelled, patting me on the back. I say patted but it was more of a shove. I accidently swerved the car a little but I managed to get back on course before anything bad happened.

"What should we talk about instead then?" Asked Aaron.

No one had any suggestions until Tom, as usual, finally spoke up.

"I had my date with the sad funeral chick last night!"

Normally I wouldn't want to hear about this but today was different. Very different indeed.

While Tom prattled on about how well it went (a miracle, by the way) I spent the drive in silent prayer. Praying that today's events meant that Christian's takeover plan was now set to sit deep underground.

Six feet under, to be exact.