Megan McDuffee

A walk I had done countless times before.

my body left dumped in an alley, not 500 yards from home.

By all accounts, I have come to understand that no witnesses have come forward to name any potential killer, no clues found upon or near my body, which have been stripped naked and drained of its blood through various carefully made incisions.

I have no real memory of the exact moment of my death,

I'd been stumbling along quite happily, a belly full of ale and the thoughts of a warm loaf of bread when I arrived home, before plans of retiring to an even warmer bed beside my sleeping wife.

Then I was hit from behind with a violent force, and I recall falling face-first toward the floor.

Then there was nothing, except a total darkness I've now become accustomed to.

At some point I regained a consciousness of sorts.

Facing the sky, I was surrounded by the constant flow of people coming and going about my body, prodding me, examining me, defiling me.

But despite the strange and unpleasant awareness of my surroundings, I could not move, and I could not speak.

For some unknown reason, though, I could see, I could hear, I could think again.

And I was scared.

A black bag was placed around me and I sensed movement as I was lifted, followed by the sensation of traveling on what felt like the back of a cart.

Eventually, after I know not how long, the bag surrounding my corpse was removed and I could but stare upwards at candlelight flickering around me.

I suffered my autopsy in silence and felt no physical pain.

But the pain would come soon enough, when the distraught faces of my wife and daughter leaned over mine, kissing my forehead, their tears dripping down onto my cheek.

They whispered that they would never forget me, that they would always love me.

My wife told me she would cherish our time spent together.

I then suffered what felt like an eternity shut in the pitch blackness of what I could only assume was a mortuary.

Eventually I was moved to the coffin I've been laying in ever since.