Postmortem: Two Thousand Years Later

[unscratchedfoot]

Gloom and despair, the beast will bring upon those who are foolish enough to venture into the mine. This story proves the point that in not knowing, the mind conjures up scary thoughts of its own. The challenge here is can vovansim make the real 'beast' more scary than what we are imagining?

[vovan]

Postmortem: Two Thousand Years Later

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate every little bit of it: be it praise or criticism. Keep it coming.

With a grin on my face, I was striding towards the night watch’s booth. But for some reason with every step I made, my heart beat faster and faster. I could hear the blood pounding in my temples. I tried to suppress the nervousness, but some foreshadowing was crawling upon my consciousness, blocking the light of hope that everything would end in a laughter about the silly confusion.

As I was coming closer to the watchman’s hut, I saw that the door was closed, and quietly chuckled: surely, the man must be sleeping inside, his hands on his stomach, snoring, having left some political article in a last month’s newspaper unfinished. I decided to pull a joke on him to raise my spirits frther. I would open the door quietly and make a sudden noise to wake him up. After all, is he not sleeping on duty? I opened the door slowly, so that it wouldn’t creak, and was careful to make as little noise as possible, to catch him off-guard.

But as the view of the room inside opened to me, I could not help but startle. There was nobody there. The light was off. As I entered the room, I heard a splash. I must have stepped in a puddle of water from the snow that had melted off of the watchman's boots. It was pitch dark. I flipped the switch on the wall, but nothing happened. Either the electricity was out again, or maybe the contact in the lamp was weak, I thought.

I reached to the ceiling with my hand to screw the light bulb in tighter, but sudden pain made me draw my hand back quickly. The light bulb was apparently shattered. I leaned on the table, and felt that there was a small box there. I picked it up. It was a box of matches. At least I could get some source of light. Better that than nothing.

I lighted up a match and looked up. The light bulb was, indeed, broken, drops of blood dripping off of the jagged edges of glass. I must have grabbed it pretty tight. Suddenly, the door into the booth slammed shut with a loud bang. I startled and dropped the match. The hissing sound of fire dying in the puddle on the floor reached my ears. “Who’s there?” I called out, my voice starting to tremble a little. Soft whistling of the wind in the chimney -- the night’s breath -- was the sole response. Must have been a gust of wind, I thought and stroke up another match.

The room was a mess. There was a kerosene lamp lying on the floor, as well as a couple of candles in the corner: in our small town, the supply of electricity was not constant, so the night watch had other means of lighting the place in addition to the electrical lamp. A little shelf on the wall was hanging on one nail, a photo of a pretty little girl lying below it, her face smiling happily behind the pieces of shattered glass, which glittered in the light of the match. A crushed pack of cigarettes was right beside, the broken frame.

The table wasn’t any better. Ash from the ashtray was scattered all over, a cup upset, with the tea spilled over the newspaper. A dark-brown trail led from the cup, over the newspaper, and off the corner of the table onto the floor. I followed it with my eyes, and as I looked down to my feet, I had to clasp my mouth with the hand in order to not give up a shriek. The puddle I was standing in was not water! It was blood...

[TheGuitarist]

Creepy...

This is getting better and better.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Im sorry vovan I havent got time to read this right now but I will catch up on it tomorrow and comment then.

EDIT Oh bother it I couldnt help myself, I went and read it. Very good as ever but will I get up for work on time, oh no not another mystery.

[unscratchedfoot]

The mystery continues. Good job. For extra realism, I thought the part where his feet become wet in the puddle should be changed to something like, "I could hear the slosh of my boots stepping in a puddle of water, no doubt the snow having melted from the watchman's boots." Because he's likely wearing a good pair of boots and wouldn't become wet so easily.

Here's my wacko prediction of the day (hope you don't mind this nonsense): the scared woman, Svetlana, who came to visit Pleshkov the hero of the story, killed everyone and is trying to cover it up. Or, this is a true story, and vovansim is either Pleshkov or the actual murderer.

[vovan]

Originally posted by unscratchedfoot
<snip> I thought the part where his feet become wet in the puddle should be changed <snip>

You are absolutely correct, unscratchedfoot. The man has been walking out in the snowstorm and his feet were dry, and then stepped in a puddle of blood and they became wet? What was I thinking? Edited that part as you suggested. Thank you.

Thanks go to the theGuitarist, and Chrisius for support, also. The story will continue tomorrow

[vovan]

EDIT: Double post...

[unscratchedfoot]

Um... uh... .... actually, blood wouldn't splash either unless it was utterly fresh and in great quantity. Blood quickly becomes sticky as it congeals, especially fast in freezing weather, but it's hard to manage the sentence without giving away that its blood so its up to you. I overlooked this too in my previous post. Maybe something like this, "I heard my boots make contact with a puddle on the floor...". I can erase these posts after if you want so they don't mess up your thread.

[vovan]

Originally posted by unscratchedfoot
... actually, blood wouldn't splash ...

I know that blood becomes viscous rather quickly, but then again, according to a dictionary definition of the word splash: to move in or into a liquid or semiliquid substance. So, I guess that should be good enough

Originally posted by unscratchedfoot
... I can erase these posts after ...

No, that's fine. You can leave them the way they are. No need to rewrite history

EDIT: I can’t type today -- fixed three typos in the post above.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Yes I no everybody keeps making selling mistakes, probably due to all the excitement caused by Lucarse's thread.

EDIT oops! Ive made another selling mistake.

Its occured to me I may have hit on something here, Selling Mistakes! I could make a fortune selling mistakes to all the writers here. It would definitely be a useful service and could potentially save the writers untold hours of their own time making up their own mistakes.

now I wonder how much I could charge for half a pound of **** ups, allright you lot steady on now dont go getting any funny ideas.

I wonder if Lucarse would be in the market for a fresh batch, well with a name like LOOK atmy ARSE one never knows.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Sorry about all the nonsense vovan, my mind just goes phff sometimes. Think it might have something to do with all those strange smelling cigarettes I used to smoke.

[vovan]

Originally posted by ChrisiusMaximus
Sorry about all the nonsense vovan, my mind just goes phff sometimes.

Maybe it's because you are posting this at three o'clock in the morning? Are you going to be able to get up in time for work tomorrow morning? The mystery continues...

[unscratchedfoot]

Originally posted by ChrisiusMaximus

Lucarse must be proud of his butt, well with a name like LOOK atmy ARSE it sure seems like it.

You're a funny guy Chrisius, that's why Lucarse is going to kill you last. We at least gotta give the dude credit for admitting to his folly and entertaining us. It's too bad that thread got closed

Frogface says, "Let's start another thread! That would be cool!"

[vovan]

Postmortem: Two Thousand Years Later

OK, folks, since we are getting a little off track here, it's time for the next installment. And keep up the good work on that feedback. Suggestions for revision, as well as thumbs up always welcome. Here goes:

I hate to write cliché phrases like that, but there and then I finally understood that something was wrong. It finally sank in in my mind that it wasn’t a drunken man lying at the mine entrance, whom Svetlana saw; the track in the snow wasn’t from him crawling away, but from somebody dragging the body away; somebody, it seems, has visited this room before me, and the blood dripping off of the light bulb is not mine. Indeed, the wound on my hand was nothing more serious than a scratch. The fine shivering returned, but wasn’t any more confined solely to the bottom of the stomach, but reached out to my legs, and up to the chest and arms. “Oh good, adrenaline” I thought, trying to think of anything but the monster who could have possibly committed several murders in one night. But I failed, and couldn’t help but imagine a silhouette crouching somewhere behind a corner of a building, or under his next target’s window, with a knife in his hand, his eyes, with large pupils, glowing in the dark like that of an animal -- with the same lack of soul and intellect in them -- watching, coldly, the mundane actions performed by the poor victim, who doesn’t have a slightest clue that her own life is hanging by a fine thread, and the scissors are already starting to close across it.

I got hold of myself as well as I could and went back to the mine entrance to examine the track. I came to the very beginning of it, where the body was apparently laying. I tried to figure out as much about the murder as I could (I was now absolutely sure I was dealing with a murder). For one thing, I would probably have to describe everything in most minute detail to the police the next morning. Secondly, I tried to figure out how much danger I would expose myself to, were I to follow the track.

A strange detail suddenly struck me. There was no blood anywhere around the track. Only a bloody trail to the watchman’s hut, from my boots. Therefore, the person wasn’t shot. Or stabbed. It was pretty obvious that it wasn’t the night watch either, for that poor man died a very bloody death it seemed. I also thought I might want to try to find him also… His body definitely wasn’t in the room, which was filled with blood, so how was the body taken out without leaving any trails on the snow? No, if I can only deal with one body, why would I take on a second one? With that, I abandoned further thought of the night watch.

So, since there was no blood, how could the person die? Well, he could expire for natural reasons, of course. A heart attack maybe. Or of cold. Then, the ambulance might have taken him away. But they wouldn’t drag their patient on the ground to their car, no matter what people may say about the quality of our medical service…

So, he must have been strangled. Or knocked out with a hit on the head. In the former case, he would probably have tried to resist. Then there should be traces of struggle in the snow. Sure didn’t look like it. There was the silhouette, there was the groove leading out of the mine’s gate, there were feet tracks in the snow around -- apparently left by me, Svetlana, and the workers earlier. At that moment I noticed something else also. Another faint track leading from the silhouette. It was a groove like the one leading outside, only much fainter, and in the opposite direction -- inside the mine. It seemed the body was dragged out of the mine.

But of course, it must have been a miner, who was killed in an accident, and dragged out by his co-workers. Well, in that case, I absolutely had to find out who the person was, to calm Svetlana down. I decided to follow the track outside the mine

To be continued...

[ChrisiusMaximus]

That could indeed turn out to be a very foolish decision. You dont need any advice from me vovan, your doing a great job by yourself.