Splattered-Out, Ch. 2, pt. 2

Now the moon had started to rise, a little flour-tortilla moon half-sheathed by a blanket of warm cirrus. With fleeting focus Mr. Gavins scanned the horizon: a procession of haunting, pearl-lined clouds feathered the dark ocean, drifting slowly from east to west on the jet stream. His eyes followed them easily, until stopping suddenly upon a silhouette down at the beach. The silhouette was conspicuously William-shaped.

"Pardon me William," Mr. Gavins stuttered, floundering arrythmically toward the water, "but I seem to have two vodka tonics in my hands. What's one guy doing with two vodka tonics, eh?"

"Hey dude," William said in a precipitant access of sobriety, "why don't you take a look at this."

Though he was in quite a stupor, Mr. Gavins knew exactly what William meant. There, flanked by drooping, heliotropic palms was a long slender box made of a strong, vitreous black material. It was irregularly shaped and large enough to hold a man, and sat comfortably flat in some jungle growth fringing the beach. Ghost-litten by the moonlight, its weathered, seaweed-strewn surface showed it must have been lost at sea for a long, long time.

"Classy," said Mr. Gavins. "Looks like I'll be able to save a few bucks at my funeral."

"You mean you didn't know this was here?" said William.

"Me? No," Mr. Gavins replied. "Probably washed up just recently. A lot of weird stuff gets washed up here. Where do you think I got my snowflake ashtray?"

"Oh, that Apache thing? I thought it was a punch bowl."

"Hmm," said Mr. Gavins. "Now that you mention it — damn, I've got one hell of a nicotine habit."

"Hey, check this out, there's some writing along the side here."

Mr. Gavins had to step back to see it all. Indeed, two words ran the entire length of the strange box in faded but contemporary lettering — still very much legible, though portions of it were obscured by what looked like firework residue. The words were "Kingdom Kom."

"Must they put such huge branding on coffins these days?" Mr. Gavins chagrined.

"I guess," replied William. Lowering his voice, he said, "So, you think someone's in there?"

"Well, even if there was, would you really want to find out?"

"No, no, of course not. That would be, you know, disrespectful."

"Right, disrespectful," Mr. Gavins replied. "Not to mention totally horrifying."

"Yes," William said uprightly. "Disrespectful and horrifying. Very disrespectful."

They stood quietly then, watching each other with keen eyes, like rival chess players. A little crab emerged from below the mysterious casket, scurried around to the top, and spent a little while listening to its own feet tap brittlely on the surface. Nearby, pelicans slept soundly upon the swell.

"Well dude," William said, "these caskets don't open themselves you know."

"Right, right, I'll take this end."

So they each grabbed the hood of the casket on either side and braced their legs firmly. A brief exchange of uncertain eyes, the particular sort people only give one another when they're about ready to open up a stranger's coffin and, with a coordinated and massive lifting effort — achieved absolutely nothing.

"Damn," said William.

"Hmm," said Gavin, "casket must be dead-bolted. Heh heh."

"Wise ass," William chuckled nervously. "I'd die to get into this coffin!"

"Nice," Mr. Gavins smiled. "Oh, hey, wait a second — I think I found the problem."

What Mr. Gavins had spotted was a little handle set deep in the side of the casket's hood, trim and sleek like what one might find on a prototype sports car. Akin to the rest of the casket, it was completely covered in silt.

"Kindly step aside," Mr. Gavins said with pretended calmness, trying hard not to notice William's cadaverous pallor, or the ominous stillness of the air, or the sudden pounding of his own heart. Carefully, he reached down and pulled the handle.

The casket made a thump — a frightful echoing thump of something inside coming unlatched — and the little crab darted away. From the fissure beneath the lid belched a plume of moldering white sediment, then the hinges began to creak and groan. Next came a protracted hissing sound, like a tire being deflated, and slowly, under its own power, the lid began to raise.

Presently a glow appeared from within the casket: it was a bewitching chartreuse glow, such that one might have thought the corpse inside was festooned in emeralds. It mingled with the silt swirling in the air to bathe William and Gavin in a ghastly green fog, in which they could not for the moment see any more detail than the casket's vast polygonal form. William and Gavin both tittered at this, although neither of them were actually smiling.

And then, as abruptly as it had started, the hissing ceased; the lid had reached its fully open position. For nearly a minute, William and Gavin remained completely silent, waiting either for the rest of the silt to fall, or a trembling skeleton arm to reach out and yank them into the spirit realm — whichever came first.

"Okay, look alive," said William. It was the best thing he could think of saying to summon his nerve. He approached the open casket and peered inside.

"Well, what do you see?" said Mr. Gavins avidly.

William looked dismayed and a little puzzled. "Hmm," he replied, "I see some fuzzy dice, a bottle of upholstery cleaner, an opened box of nine-grain crackers, and... a seatbelt?"

"Really?" Mr. Gavins said, starting toward the casket to see for himself. "I love nine-grain crackers."

When he looked inside, Mr. Gavins was decidedly relieved: there was no corpse. Though it sure seemed like it could use one. Sumptuous, cushioned purple velvet lined much of the interior, contoured apparently to nestle a dead body in supreme comfort. And the underside of the hood was dressed in a rich mahogany finish.

But three things stood out that seemed particularly unsuited for a coffin: the first was an elegant, intensely green-lighted control panel on the inside hood; the second a small window below the control panel which saw to the outside; and the last — perhaps most unusual — a soundly designed shoulder harness and lap belt right in the middle of the enclosure.

"How is it everything could be so dry and utterly free of wear?" Mr. Gavins asked.

"Yeah, that's what I asked my last girlfriend," William replied.

"And what in the name of God is a control panel and a seatbelt doing in a coffin?"

Almost as soon as he had asked, Mr. Gavins discovered the answer, a simple message emblazoned into the wood near the control panel:

IN THE EVENT OF MALFUNCTION, take comfort that this ultimate matter transference vehicle is also the ultimate final resting place! — Your friends at Kingdom Kom

He took a closer examination of the control panel: it displayed, among other data, a prominent and elaborate matrix of numbers. Mr. Gavins immediately recognized them as some sort of coordinates. "Dude, this isn't a coffin," Mr. Gavins whispered, as if not to betray his acute discovery to some unseen audience. "This is a teleport pod."