The funeral was a wretched affair; plagued by rain which was simultaneously complimented by hail, which bore down onto the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. The clunks and cracks sounding from the coffin as the hail stones struck them seemed to fill the air with their cacophonous cries. Inside the coffin, the poor man could get no rest in his death, mother nature unrelenting to him even in the afterlife.

As far as this man's story, it really was an odd one. The old saying that if you fell off a bull you should get back on was one he probably stuck to quite dearly, for in this man's case he'd fallen off of it a number of times and finally it did him in. Constantly, he thought he had the ability to usurp the town's prized fighter... and constantly, he failed. It was actually his own ring leader who had done the dirty deed, but even he wasn't enough to keep the proud fighter down.

Yet still, the man continued to try. Eventually, he was stricken unconscious during a fight with his greater foe and brought to the ground. Left there, the downpour began, and he eventually wound up drowning in a puddle of rain water.

Quite ironic that nature was what did him in, and not the man who he'd so desperately sought to be better than... the poor fool just couldn't catch a break.

Me? Well, I'm a grave digger in this here town. I observe what goes on day-to-day because, strange as this town is, the graveyard is in its center. I digress, however, and go back to what I was saying before: I'm a grave digger. My job here is to make sure the dead find their home in the earth.

I'm a regular architect, one might say-- if one were to be speaking sarcastically and rolling his eyes about.

Around here in the graveyard, I have to carry my shovel about with a small pistol; not because of zombies, but because of those who love the dead more then anyone should. As I've said, this is a strange town... but never did I expect it to be riddled with necrophiles. So, not only did this make me the grave yard's grave digger, but also their guard.

It's unfortunate for the men that there aren't many young women left in town, and to those that are they're either romantically involved with another or with each other... but to resort to digging up dead bodies is a bit beyond desperation.

And to think, after so many of them began screwing corpses... you'd figure they'd know why the amount of women left in this town was in decline, but I digress.

I suppose, as the reader, you might be wondering a bit about myself and, as common courtesy, I'll say this much: I'm a 20 year old male here in this little town called Strangeville. I do NOT sleep around with the corpses, mind you, and I'd also like to call myself a bit of a ladies man due to that fact alone.

"Alright, let's cover'm up!" shouted the priest towards me with a nod, his faux-sympathy for the family of the deceased beginning to wear thin. I shrugged my shoulders at him as I lifted my shovel and made my way over.

A hail stone struck my foot and I cursed under my breath at the pain, reminding myself not to anger the nice priest man by shouting blasphemies at the top of my lungs. Tenderly I lifted the shovel and struck it into the pile of dirt beside the grave, scooping the dirt over and into the hole. If the corpse within thought the hail and rain was annoying, he'd be getting a lot more over the span of the next few minutes.

I digress far too much.

"You'd think he'd given up after that second time..." mumbled the priest as the family mourned off to the side. I looked at him and smirked slightly, shaking my head in remembrance of the persistency of the proud and determined fighter I was smothering in rain-soaked dirt.

"You can say that again," I chuckled, turning my attention back to the hole below and stifling a wail of laughter over the thought of the words next to leave my mouth; "Big strong fighter falls to a damn puddle! What are the odds?!"

The priest had to lift one of his hands up to stifle a laugh of his own as he patted my shoulder with his free hand, tears welling in his eyes. There was a sense of black humor to all of this, a way to take one's mind off of all the mourning around.

"I'd better go help console the woman... she really seems broken up about it." he said, the mood going back to a sombre one. I made a motion with my hand as though permitting him to do so and, with a mutual chuckle, he made his way off to them.

To be honest... I'd be broken up about it too-- and not because of the death itself, but because of the hell I'd be catching from everyone about how he died. You'd think a guy like him would go down in a blaze of glory... but he drowns in the rain, instead.

Oh, how dearly do I love irony.

Deciding to take a break after roughly half of the grave had been filled, I looked over to check on the priest's progress with the family and found him steadily lowering his 'consoling hand' on the widow's back towards her rear, disregarding the fallen husband laying 6 feet beside me.

"Even the priest is desperate for some action..." I grunted to myself, spiking the shovel into the ground and rolling my eyes to no one in particular. It seemed as though nowadays nearly every male was desperate for some form of intercourse... and Old Man McPhee with his donkey was a testament to that.

Of course, that's another story for no other time, as I'm completely unwilling to tell it ever again.

My feet trudged along the surface of the graveyard as I made my way back to the shed where all of my supplies were held. Ironically, this toolshed for the graveyard was also my so-called 'guard post' over the place, proving once again just how strange this town really is.

"Oh, dear God almighty what the hell is that?!" came my gasp when I opened the door, the scent of something acrid and foul slapping me so hard across my face that I was forced to reel back and spin towards the others as though I'd been decked in the jaw, projectile vomit splashing across the ground as the mourning family and the priest looked at me with dumbstruck eyes.

"Everything quite alright?" called the priest, his hand nonchalantly resting over the widow's right ass cheek. I coughed and sputtered before finally answering the best I could, wiping at the side of my mouth with my sleeve in disgust.

"I'll be fine, go back to your fraternizations with the woman!" I called back, getting a wide-eyed expression out of the priest as the woman looked up at him in confusion, seemingly unaware of his groping limb on her 'salt shaker', as it were.

I couldn't help but crack a smile despite the awful odor which so strongly offended my senses.

Turning to the smell of death I let out a long sigh and plunged my way in, searching quickly for whatever it was that was causing the smell. On the back window of the shed lay the half-eaten carcass of a squirrel, flies buzzing about despite the rain and hail narrowly missing the back end of the shed.

Resisting the urge to vomit again, I lifted my leg high enough to poke the dead body off the windowsill with the tip of my boot. Hearing the thud on the outside from the squirrel's fallen form was not exactly the most pleasant thing in the world.

Of course I shut the window once that deed was done, and then proceeded to look for some sort of air freshener... but every man must breathe, and I'd been holding my breath for far too long.

"My God it smells like the space between Rosie O'Donnel's legs..." I gagged, and then gagged furthermore at the thought of said space between the woman's legs. It seemed as though I only asked for this punishment to be brought on me, because that was truly not an intelligent thing to say.

Moving my hand to the table beside me I lifted my silver lunch box from it and let the handle swing it about as I brought it in front of me, wondering what wonders my girlfriend had left me to eat this morning.

Opening it up... I found a sandwich.

It's peanut butter jelly time.

I sifted through the rest of the regulars in the box: a bag of chips, a can of apple juice, a bendy straw that has some weird cartoon pattern on it...

And, for some reason, a book on the mysteries of the universe. Somewhere in that book, I'd imagine there's a reference to this town as well.

I unwrapped my glorious peanut butter jelly sandwich and took a hefty bite out of it as I used my free hand to open up the book and thumb through to a random page. Of course, my girlfriend knew of my interest in astronomy... but it was certainly random to find the book in here with my lunch.

"Mmff, around five-- damn, is this concord jelly? This shit is good-- around five billion years ago a dark, vast cloud of gas and dust stretched hundreds of light-years out in space." I mumbled to myself as I read, of course going into a tangent about the wonders of my girlfriend's peanut-butter-jellying prowess.

"Inside of this cloud, temperatures hovered just a few degrees above absolute zero... aw, damn it, winter's coming."

Again, I digress too much.

The sounds of the priest approaching on the outside of the shed brought me to close my book and take another bite of my sandwich, wondering why he'd be coming during my lunch hour. The door to the shed opened, and the priest stepped in in all of his would-be glory.

"Just wanted to-- dear God man, what is that smell? It smells like the space between Rosie O'Donnel's legs!" he cried, plugging his nose as I enjoyed the sweet sweet taste of deja'vu coursing through my veins, "As... I was saying, I just wanted to let you know that I'll need that hole finished in the next hour... hate to cut your break short, but it needs to be done."

His nasally sounding voice amused the hell out of me for some reason, as I smirked at his retreating figure. Funny how quickly I got used to the acrid odor while he couldn't stand it at all. The priest never did like getting his hands dirty... but he sure did like cleansing them on the cheeks of women's asses, it seemed.

Looking back at the astronomy book set on the table I decided to pick it up and flip to another random page, only to lose grip and send the paper-back book spiraling to the ground. I groaned in resentment to my predicament... it seemed as though the smell had settled closer to the ground and the last thing I wanted to do was draw closer to it then I already was.

However, there was something intriguing about the book... a note, it seemed, had fallen out from in-between one of the pages and lay jutting out to the side of the book. Plugging my nose I then bent down and retrieved the note, opening it up curiously.

The priest's voice called, "Hurry it up! The family's growing restless!"

My eyes then widened at the sight of the words on the paper and I quickly stuffed it into my pocket. It was quick to dawn on me exactly what the note entailed, for I'd written it the night before and placed it in the book for safekeeping. By some stroke of luck, it seemed my girlfriend's grown tired of me leaving books out like that... she put it in my lunch box instead and inadvertently reminded me of the plans made for absolution.

Plans meant for the betterment of a very strange, crumbling town.

My mind drifted back to the fighter left lying 6 feet under... Frank Merritt was so skilled in his prime, yet he was brought down by a much superior force of nature then just the rain, and I'd only now remembered why it had to be.

To bless the town with absolution... he must first eliminate them all.

Frank Merritt had only been the first piece to the jigsaw puzzle.