The Cremation of Mr. Arder

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In the year 1889, I remember traveling to Yorktown, New York on the HMS Boxcar. When I arrived I was met by a friendly old man who helped me find a small and quaint little townhouse. His name was Mr. Ander and we became friends almost immediately. He was quite affluent, harboring over $1,000,000. Unfortunately he had a heart condition that caused him to die alone in his bed the following year. I was invited to the will reading and cremation at the Wilmington Funeral Home. When the will was announced his sister, who never really liked me too much in the time that I knew her, recieved $50,000. I recieved $100,000. She was outraged at this so she came up with a plan. The cremation wasn't going to start until two hours later, and as I was saying my sorrows to his family, his sister took my check out of my coat pocket and exited to another room. A little while later, I reached into my pocket to find the check missing. I searched everywhere for it, I asked people I even went to my carriage to check. When I went back in I noticed that his sister was gone. I looked in every room until I found her with my check in the preparation room. She was putting my check on the chest of Mr. Arder for it to burn when he was cremated. I was enraged at the sight that I ran forward and slung his sister aside, causing her to crash her head on the floor, knocking her out cold. I retrieved my check then resolved to hide the deed. I grabbed Mr. Arder out of his coffin and placed him in a spare one on the shelves. I picked up his sister and put her in Mr. Arder's coffin, and I nailed it shut. I took the coffin Mr. Arder was in and dragged it out the back door to my carriage where I gently placed him in the trunk. I went back inside to see the coffin being rolled into the lit pyre. It was silent until pounding and screaming emerged from the coffin. Some people looked around and others freaked out. They were all in a daze of hysteria at the sound from the casket. The screaming only ceased when the coffin hid behind the flames and came out ash. I left after that moment and drove me and Mr. Arder's coffin to a countryside meadow where I buried him properly. I then got back in my buggy and drove off. I passed the funeral home with everyone still panicking about the screaming. No one knew I did it. No one knew it was actually his sister in the coffin and not him. I reached into my pocket to feel the crisp $100,000 check, still there.

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