Having shared the sky with the sun for some time yesterday, I knew the moon's recent disappearance behind the Appalachians left several hours before the sun would rise behind me. I now had the blessing of near complete darkness with which to complete my task. Just dumb luck, really, though I couldn't have planned it better. But as my egregiously pessimistic grandmother used to say, "A blessing is often as not a curse in disguise." The mind hates a vacuum and the lack of visual stimuli left memory in charge of my sight. Images of the last week flooded my senses until the need to vomit became overpowering and I relieved the impulse into the hole at my feet. The irony that this act could be considered the ultimate insult added to the ultimate injury did not escape me, and I could not help but chuckle in spite of myself.
My grandmother. Gone for nearly twenty years it struck me odd that I would think of her now, as I stand over this unmarked grave wiping vomit from my chin. Though made a pessimist by nearly a century of hardship and misfortune, my grandmother at heart was an unmistakably kind woman, and I found myself for the first time glad that she had passed away. Glad that she was spared the grief of seeing what I had become. Glad that she had not seen my monstrous transformation as I succumbed to the most vile of human emotions; envy. I pondered this and after a brief moment taken to catch my breath, I used the sturdy shaft of the shovel in my hand to straighten out my aching back and returned to shoveling dirt over the rotting remains of Mr. Renfield's corpse.
I had been toiling for what seemed an eternity before I judged the grave deep enough. I then placed Mr. Renfield accursed remains into the ground, piece by piece. This area, less than a mile north of the village of Carfax where I had first encountered Mr. Renfield, was frequented by bands of roaming dogs whose keen sense of smell would alert them to the shopkeep's presence were he not covered with enough soil. That, of course, had been Mr. Renfield's mistake. Had he burried my beloved Katherine's body correctly, her remains would never have been found.