05/28/2026
The funeral parlor was suffocatingly quiet; the grief had become so orchestrated it felt entirely mechanical.
Soft soles gliding over polished marble.
Suppressed, measured breathing.
White lilies arranged with a terrifying, absolute perfection around a lavish casket.
Faces hidden behind black veils, desperately trying to mask their impatience and survive the somber masquerade.
And then, the maid screamed.
It wasn't a polite gasp.
It wasn't ordinary hysteria.
It was the primal shriek of someone who had just caught the Grim Reaper making a fatal mistake!
Before a single soul could intervene, she hoisted a heavy fire axe and brought it crashing down onto the coffin's lid.
CRACK!
The explosive sound cleaved the room in half.
Pristine white wood splintered, launching debris into the air.
Mourners shrieked, stumbling backward in absolute terror.
The maid wrenched the axe free, her chest heaving violently. Her glaring orange uniform was a burning beacon against the sea of morbid black and white.
An elderly patriarch, sharp in a tailored mourning suit, stormed toward her, his face contorted in unspeakable fury.
"HAVE YOU LOST YOUR DAMN MIND?! STOP THIS INSTANT!"
But the maid held her ground.
Her violently shaking finger pointed straight at the shattered wood.
"SHE ISN'T DEAD! I HEARD HER DROWNED OUT IN THERE!"
It should have sounded like pure lunacy.
It almost was.
But in the next heartbeat, the atmosphere in the room mutated.
Because buried beneath the horror, beneath the blistering outrage, beneath the profound desecration of the moment—
There was a dead silence.
The kind of crushing silence that forces people to listen against their own survival instincts.
The maid slowly crouched, pressing a trembling palm against the fractured lid. Her voice dropped to a chilling, breathy command.
"Just listen."
Nobody dared to breathe.
The older man froze solid beside her.
A grieving woman slowly lowered her hands from her face.
The jagged fissure in the pristine wood gaped open like a fresh, bleeding wound.
And then—
Something echoed from the dark within.
It wasn't loud.
At first, it wasn't even human enough to process.
Just a desperate, scratching scrape.
A suffocated breath.
A buried mistake clinging to life.
The older man edged closer. The righteous anger on his face abruptly collapsed into something far uglier, far more sinister.
Unadulterated dread.
"No... no, that's literally impossible."
The maid glared up at him, her eyes a chaotic mix of begging and absolute certainty.
"PRY IT OPEN! RIGHT NOW!"
Then it echoed again.
Sharper this time. Unmistakable.
THUMP.
A deliberate knock. From INSIDE the casket.
A guest gasped violently, tripping backward and crushing a floral wreath.
The patriarch stared at the fissure as if the very walls of the room were closing in to execute him.
And then, with a violent, explosive splintering of wood—
A ghostly, pale hand punched straight up through the lid!
The entire room recoiled with a collective scream.
All the blood instantly drained from the patriarch's face. He stared at the hand in paralyzed, absolute horror, a single name escaping his lips:
"Emily...?"
The maid flinched back in shock.
The desperate fingers began to claw through the jagged splinters—
And just a split second before anyone rushed to the casket, the maid spotted what was tightly bound around the trapped wrist:
The heavy gold signet ring belonging to the old man.
👉 What horrifying crime is this patriarch hiding? Who really buried Emily alive? Uncover the sick truth in Part 2 in the comments!