Dead Serious

Chapter 18 - The Worst Bad Thing

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.