In an unsurprising twist, Christian had upgraded his security. We were now targeting his funeral parlour across the road from us so that the police wouldn't think it suspicious of us to be hanging around outside. Tom had compromised that he'd have no problem with Christian keeping his main home open because there would still be plenty of customers for them all to share now. Steve could easily be kept in business for the foreseeable future now, but it still wasn't clear if he was going to sell up or not.

Despite the cloud of controversy that had been floating around his business lately, Christian was still taking clients in somehow. This worked to our advantage though as it provided a decent distraction for us to sneak into his funeral parlour. Once again our brilliant disguise worked too, as anyone seeing us would have just assumed that we worked there instead. That's the other thing about this kind of work. The uniforms are pretty standard and boring. Maybe I'll speak to Steve about getting us something a little more fun.

Anyway, we snuck into Goldstein's place to look for anything else that we could use to ruin him. The trouble was that it couldn't be anything too obvious like the chicken suit or the mix up at the gravesite because with us being so close to the building, there was no way anyone would think we were innocent. We'd made it into this parlours version of our den. Because this was initially set up as just a temporary one, it hadn't been fully stocked with coffins or bodies like the previous one that we'd snuck into but there were still a few. Coffins anyway. They were all empty, and thankfully there weren't any bodies strewn across the floor.

"So what can we do this time?" I asked, looking around the room.

"We should probably have figured that out before we came here!" Aaron cried.

"Relax!" Tom told us. "We can't get in at night's anymore since he's beefed up his security. Besides, we're smart people, we'll figure it out"

I wasn't so sure. We were still sticking to our golden rule that no bodies were to be harmed, and there weren't any here anyway. We could always do something to the coffins but then if Christian noticed, he could easily swap the damaged one for another. It was only in rare cases when caskets had to be made a different size.

"We could spray-paint all the coffins?" Aaron suggested.

"That would be great if we had any" I pointed out.

Just then, we heard muffled voices coming from the corridor outside the den. I couldn't tell what he was saying but it was definitely Christian. I could recognise that rat whine anywhere. There was also a second voice, presumably the client he was currently giving the big sell to.

"Shit! Someone's coming!" Aaron cried as he looked for a place to hide.

We all looked frantically around the den but it was considerably smaller than our own one. Tom was currently standing by an open window, giving him the perfect escape route. He climbed up to the window and got his head and shoulders through before coming to a standstill.

"Why did you stop?" Aaron asked as he and I approached, hoping to follow Tom out of the window.

"I'm fucking stuck man!" Tom cried. This was just what we needed.

It was the hottest day in ages and the sun was shining bright but the room had darkened now that we were experiencing an eclipse thanks to Tom's current position.

"What do you mean you're stuck?" Aaron asked.

"I mean I'm stuck! I can't get any further through! What else could I mean?"

"Guys, he's going to be here any minute now!" I tried hurrying them along.

The only way for us to save our skins was to push Tom. He was jammed so tight into the window that he couldn't even get himself back out. So we each took a side of his ass and started to push.

"Jesus guys this hurts!" Tom cried in pain.

"Well we don't have a choice!" I told him.

"Maybe this'll inspire you to lose a few hundred pounds" Aaron sniggered.

"This isn't the time for jokes, pretty boy!" Tom hissed. "Hey guys I just thought of something pretty stupid"

"What's that?" I grunted as Aaron and I continued to shove Tom.

"We're two floors off the –" The rest of his sentence was inaudible because we'd successfully got him through the window. Unfortunately, he'd crashed straight to the ground. We both rushed to the window to look out but we couldn't see him.

"Is he dead?" I panicked. Aaron simply shrugged.

"I'm ok!" Tom's voice bellowed from two storeys below. "I think I only broke like six bones!"

I was about to shout back down to him but we heard the door handle being gripped from the other side. Neither me nor Aaron were likely to get stuck in the window like our partner had, but there was no way that both of us would have enough time to escape. We had to find somewhere to hide in this room which was no bigger than a standard classroom.

Christian entered the room and explained to his guest that these were the sample coffins and that he could choose from any of the models on display. I prayed that he didn't pick the one I was hiding in.

That's right. Both me and Aaron had chosen a coffin to hide in. It was a close call between letting Christian catch me or lying in a coffin and closing the lid on myself. It wasn't quite being buried alive but it was hopefully the closest that I would ever come to experiencing it. They are pretty comfy though. The velvet linings really keep the heat in and if you were really sleepy you could probably have a decent nap in there. Of course I wasn't tired at all, just terrified, meaning I was extremely uncomfortable. I couldn't adjust my body position at all or roll onto my preferred side. Coffins aren't exactly designed with the movement of the occupant as a consideration.

"I like the look of this one" The customer said. "May I take a look inside?" He asked, which of course Christian was more than willing to allow him to do. I didn't know if it was my coffin, Aaron's coffin or one of the spares but I still almost shit all over myself. I wasn't waiting for death, but I might as well have been. "That looks great on the inside" The guy said again, putting me out of my misery. He hadn't chosen my one and by the lack of screaming, I assumed that he hadn't picked Aarons either. "Can I check this one too?" The man asked again. What was with this guy? You've seen one coffin; you've seen them all right?

The nerve-wracking wait started again but thankfully it held similar results to the first and the man chose the first one that he'd inspected. Apparently we'd chosen the worst looking caskets that Christian had to offer.

I heard the door closing again and immediately flung open the lid. I felt the same way that I had after my first funeral, like I was coming up for air after being thrown into the ocean. A look to my right showed me that Aaron was feeling the same way.

"Let's get the fuck out of here" He panted. I nodded franticly in agreement. I'd never been so desperate to leave anywhere in my whole life.

We both took the window exit, much more gracefully than Tom had. It still hurt landing on my feet though so I have no idea how Tom felt. I couldn't even ask him because he was nowhere to be seen!

"Did he just take off?" I asked.

"God I hope so" Aaron laughed.

We made our way back to Eternal Wings and found Tom sitting by the front door with a wet towel held against the side of his face.

"You ok?" I asked him.

"Do I look ok?" He shrugged.

"I guess that's the end of that plan" Aaron sighed as he sat next to Tom.

"Not exactly" Tom said, lowering his towel so that I could see his giant grin. And all the blood at the side of his head.

"What do you mean?" Asked Aaron.

"Let's just say I had an epiphany as I fell to my death. I managed to do a little damage while you were escaping Christian's evil clutches. How did you do that anyway?"

"I don't want to talk about it" I whispered. Scarred for life.

"What the hell did you do?" Aaron demanded.

"You'll see at Christian's next funeral. And because it's just across the road, we can have a front row seat to the destruction.

We didn't have to wait long as there was a funeral the very next day. Once again the sun was shining and we decided to take the phrase "front row seats" to a new, literal level. Tom had bought us some garden chairs and we set them up on the front lawn of Eternal Wings, which looked silly enough already. But Tom also took out a cooler with milkshakes for all of us.

"I get to watch Christian's empire fall, and top up my tan at the same time. What a perfect day" Tom smiled as he took off his suit jacket. Me and Aaron followed suit (Pun baby!) but with less enthusiasm. It was kind of hard to be excited when we didn't actually know what was about to unfold before us.

We sat in our lounge chairs, rolled up our shirtsleeves, put on our sunglasses and sucked our shakes through a straw. When I was seven years old this was pretty much my life ambition. The moment was soured somewhat when the funeral procession began. The guests arrived in their droves and entered the funeral parlour. It was a miracle that they didn't see us enjoying the summer paradise whilst they all cried their hearts out. The home was presumably full, and Christian closed the door, only to reopen it half an hour later. Tom explained to us that whilst we were in his den he'd briefly seen the details of this funeral but not enough to formulate a plan straight away. The little bits that he did see, told him that the service would be held at this funeral home, and then they'd drive the body to a separate burial site, just like many of the funerals that we did for Steve.

"You guys ready for the fireworks?" He asked as they reloaded the coffin into the hearse.

"As I'll ever be" Aaron muttered as he watched intently. His answer summed up my feelings too. This was like a car crash. You really didn't want to look at the chaos and destruction but your morbid curiosity meant that you simply couldn't take your eyes off it. I was nervous, but eager to see what the big finale to Tom's plan to destroy Christian was.

In a standard funeral of this variety, the custom is for the hearse to lead the way to the gravesite with a separate car carrying the next of kin right behind it. Then all the guests or attendees or whatever you want to call them can make their own way there. It looked as though this was the procedure that was about to occur here. Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet.

"You going to tell us what you did yet?" I asked impatiently. I'm never good with surprises, especially when you know it isn't going to end well.

"Fine" Tom sighed, clearly upset that we were ruining the surprise. "I fucked around with the screws in the back of the car. You happy?"

Aaron stared at him in horror. "You son of a bitch"

"That doesn't mean what I think it does. Does it?" I asked nervously. No one answered, instead, turning back to the mess that was about to happen.

The hearse drove down the slight slope that sat in front of the temporary funeral home and turned, quickly to the left. And then it happened. The coffin slid towards the rear window and shattered the glass straight away, sending the casket careening onto the road. I watched in astonishment as it bounced onto the tarmac and flew into the air once again. It was hard to imagine things getting any worse but they did. The trailing car turned onto the road just as quickly as the hearse had and crashed straight into the airborne coffin. The casket shattered the front windshield and slid so far into it that it was almost sticking out the trunk at the other end.

"I'm going to be sick" I whispered before running back inside. Aaron and Tom quickly followed me, hoping that no one would see the unwelcome spectators. Thankfully for us, they were all too busy covering their gaping mouths and wide eyes to see us.

After I'd puked all of my strawberry milkshake up, I left the washroom and came back into the den to find Aaron beating Tom with a folded newspaper.

"We are so fucked! What the hell were you thinking?" He barked.

"Hey I was just letting that woman experience her husband going down on her one last time! Is that really such a crime?" Tom tried defending himself.

"You're a sick bastard! Do you know that?" Aaron shouted again.

"I've been aware of that for quite some time" Giggled T-Dog.

"This isn't funny!" Aaron slapped him again with his paper weapon. "If he calls the cops again they could do a proper investigation! Have you seen CSI? They'll find out it was you who tampered with the car and we'll all go down for this! Guantanamo Bay here we come!"

"That's a bit of a stretch isn't it?" I asked more hopefully than curiously.

"You really think so?" Aaron asked me. "We're like funeral terrorists now! I think that's the best we can expect!"

Time for another confession. I was about to drop to my knees and cry like a little girl. The only thing that stopped me was Steve's entrance.

"What the hell is going on through here?" He screamed.

"Nothing Steve" Tom lied. It was pretty obvious too. Tom was still laying across the desk with Aaron standing over him menacingly, weapon in hand.

"It doesn't sound like nothing!" Steve screeched. "Or look it" He finally noticed the strange positioning of his employees, and Tom's injured cheek, "And what happened to your face?"

"Nothing Steve" Aaron spoke this time.

"What are you fighting about? You're making so much noise that it could wake up some of the bodies we have here!"

I didn't mean to say it out loud but I couldn't help letting the others know exactly what I was thinking.

"That actually wouldn't be the worst thing that I've seen today"