But Gretchen's mother was dead, and could not tell her daughter to ignore such silly superstition, let alone act them out. She had no father, and the other children would not listen to her talk of her mother's death; they believed it was a trick to lure them into her home. It had been several days and her mother's body still laid on the kitchen floor, the counter covered in herbs and fungi.

     Gretchen had watched her mother carefully cut the plants and idly snack upon a mushroom or two. It was after one such snacking that her mother fell over, and it was after many moments of crying and pleading to the dead body that Gretchen realized what happened. Her mother had warned her not to eat any plants without knowing what they were, lest she fall into a never ending sleep. Even though she had not yet fully comprehended the finality of death, Gretchen certainly comprehended sleep, and how much she hated when her mother decided it was her bed time.

     As the day went on Gretchen learned to avoid the kitchen and the smell that came from it. She also learned that she was very hungry, and that if she's not careful with what she ate she could find herself as wakeful as her mother. She tried to tell other people of what happened to her mother, and how hungry she was, but this only scared them away. She realized she would have to find food herself, but was at a loss as to what would be safe. The more she thought on the other children running away the clearer the answer became.

     She was always told she was a witch, and that's what they're supposed to do: eat children. She wasn't sure how she'd get a child to eat though, they'd never come along inside her house. She stared up at the sky, the yellow of the sun reminding her of the last meal she ate; fried eggs her mother had made her. Inspiration then struck her, if she couldn't get them into her house she'd just go into theirs, after all they'll all be in bed once it's night.

     As she waited she realized she'd need something to eat children with, and decided upon a knife. The same knife that was in her kitchen next to a rotting corpse, a fact that Gretchen had not forgotten. Nor was she likely to ever forget, so awful was the stench. She was lucky that the body still looked mostly human, but the smell of rotting flesh and voided bowels still hung in the air. Although she tried to hold her breath while in there she couldn't for long, and soon the stench clung not only to the air but also to her throat, a mocking preview of her meal to come. She grabbed the knife as quick as sh could and left, her eyes tearing from the rank odor.

     The wait itself went by quickly, and soon Gretchen found herself under a full moon outside. In front of her was a wooden door, lightly covered in vines. All she had to do was enter and find a child, but she became nervous. What if the door was locked? What if she was caught? What if it tasted bad? The pain in her stomach quickly pushed away those thoughts and and pushed the door. It was unlocked.

     She walked throughout the house, too small and light to make noise with her steps, until she found the child's bedroom. He was smiling in his sleep. Gretchen wondered how she'd feel if someone tried to eat her, if she never woke up because of that. She still couldn't truly wrap her mind around it, and instead focused on the fact that she was a witch and witches must eat children. She brought down the knife on the child, repeatedly and forcefully though the action held no malice. Soon the bed and Gretchen were a splattered mess, and she stopped the stabbing to instead cut. She took care to cut her food properly, as her mother taught her at the dinner table.

     But that would make for a considerably less interesting story, as he would've continued leading a rather dull life. So dull that there are no details that stand out enough to warrant telling here, save how boring it was. He had never taken control of his life, always followed the path of least resistance. Any exciting activity he did was at the suggestion of someone else, geared towards their tastes rather than his own. Not that it was their fault, he never made his tastes apparent, if he had any. If he did it was surely something bland, like filing paperwork or cleaning.

     The day he died this all changed. It is not unknown for head injuries to change people, and that is precisely what happened here. He decided to be more active in his goals, let nothing stop or control him. Starting with finishing his cleaning. He was so intent on this task that he tried mopping up the growing pool of blood, not realizing it was from his own head.

     A few days later his family and friends gathered for the funeral. His sister attempted to deliver a eulogy, but stopped halfway through telling an anecdote about Charles when she realized she didn't have one, a conclusion many of his loved ones came to when they tried to tell stories about his life. Thankfully they would soon find themselves with quite the tale.

     Having mulled it over for a few days, Charles Gaunt decided that he must clean his bathroom, and he'd be damned if he let something as small as death stop him. So, moments after his sister delivered her eulogy, he pushed open his coffin, climbed out, and asked if anyone could give him a ride home and perhaps pick up some cleaning fluid on the way there. No one replied. No one even moved. In any other situation there would be panic, people screaming and climbing over each other to run away, but this was a funeral and a corpse rising was no excuse to be impolite.

     Were he the old Charles, he would've similarly be concerned by proper etiquette, and apologized profusely while lying back down in his coffin. While he did feel the urge to do so, he was no longer that man, and interpreting the silence to his question as a crowd-wide No, he walked off in the direction he assumed, incorrectly, the exit to the cemetery was. After fifteen minutes of wandering he found himself back at his funeral, his loved ones still sitting in silence, and asked for directions. The rest of the crowd still stunned, one friend obliged, rationalizing to himself that this was all a hallucination caused by the drugs he took earlier in the morning, and the reality of it was some mourner or another asking for the way out.

     Against all odds, the trip back to his house was without incident. Upon leaving the cemetery he kept walking and looking at street signs until he found names he recognized. A few pedestrians avoided him here and there, but few if any realized he was dead. To most he was unsettling in ways they couldn't put a finger on, a result of him not blinking or breathing. To others they avoided him because he looked like he would push through anyone who got in his way without even realizing they were there, a detail confirmed by any who were too absorbed in their phones or similar and didn't see him coming.

     Upon reaching his home did a problem finally appear; his door was locked. This being a man who saw death as a minor inconvenience, a locked door was stretching the definition of what constituted a problem. He instead chose to use the nearby window, throwing his shoe through to break it. After climbing through he realized that despite constant cuts from the shattered glass, he wasn't bleeding. He found this useful for when he got back to cleaning, considering how messy the blood from last time was.

     A second realization hit when he looked around, his possessions were all gone. Other men would worry that they were robbed upon seeing that, but Charles was worried that everything was gone, chiefly his cleaning supplies. A worry that was correct, as his sister wanted the house sold as soon as possible, and made sure to empty it of every possible thing. She had even considered removing the toilet so she could hang it by a noose, blaming it for Charles's death, but it occurred to her that the toilet couldn't be killed in revenge, having never been alive in the first place. So she contented herself by clogging it with tissues she used up crying over her brother's death.

     Undaunted by the lack of proper cleaning supplies, Charles started cleaning the glass mess he just made by hand, picking up each piece and tossing it back out through the window. He worked meticulously, on his hands and knees so as to make sure he didn't miss the tiniest shard. After finishing to his satisfaction, he surveyed the rest of his house, making sure all rooms were in order and clean before he checked the bathroom. Much to his surprise, they were. His sister had the courtesy to clean up what little mess she made while moving everything out.

     Before he checked the bathroom, he remembered that he had nothing to clean with. Briefly he wondered if he was embalmed, and what kind of chemicals are used in that. If they could kill bacteria sufficiently enough to use as cleaning fluid, and, forgetting earlier with the window, wondered if he could cut himself and get any such fluids from his body to use. He then considered that they may have left his mop and bucket in the bathroom, and opened the door to check.

     What he saw was not a mop and bucket. Nor was it a half cleaned bathroom with blood on the floor. It was as he had intended it to be the day he died: spotless. There was nothing for him to do, despite coming back from the dead solely to clean this room. True, there was a clogged toilet, but he couldn't tell that at a glance. He sat down, unsure of what to do now that he was without purpose. The room appeared to spin, his thoughts and perceptions with it. He needed something to focus on, an anchor to reality, to sanity. If he didn't, he would sink into a depression, realizing how he wasted his life, and even upon coming back he had nothing, not even a simple goal. A horrible depression that could, ironically, lead to suicide. That is, if he didn't find a purpose, which he did.

     An urge, nagging at him for the past few hours. A voice that he recognized as his own. He knew what he had to do.

     It had been a few hours, but the crowd was still sitting in the cemetery in shock. Several had to use the restroom, but were unsure if it would still be impolite to get up and leave. As the sun was setting, they all saw a figure approach. Had they not already been in that state for the past few hours, they would've sat in stunned silence at the return of Charles Gaunt. He apologized to everyone for the long wait, and how impolite it was in the first place to get up and interrupt his funeral, how his mother raised him better than that, and then climbed back into his coffin, shutting it. Immediately, everyone continued the funeral service, acting as if nothing happened.