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Story Copyright 2004 by Jacob Thomson. All rights reserved. A limited license is hereby granted to post this story on Usenet, on appropriate fiction websites, or to include this story in PERSONAL emails, provided that this notice remains intact, and that a link is provided to http://jacobthomson.com. With the exception of brief quotes in reviews, no other use of this material is permitted without permission in writing from the author.

I am a very patient man. When I have set my mind on a goal, I do not feel it must be accomplished instantly. There is always plenty of time to act. Haste makes waste, the saying goes, and I quite agree.

So it was in the matter of Felder. I was patient, Felder was not. This, I knew, was why I would triumph in the end. Oh, there was many a time I thought of just what I should do with Felder. He was a most annoying young man, conceited, very full of himself.

As why shouldn't he be? He was quite wealthy, and my employer's son. They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but in Felder's case I must say that it dropped and rolled a good, long distance before coming to rest. His father was a true gentleman, kind, generous, slow to anger and quick to forgive. Precisely the opposite of his son, who merely assumed a genial façade, but beneath the surface was utterly selfish and uncaring for his fellow man.

Now, I always held his father in high regard. This is one reason I felt that patience was called for. Harming Felder would no doubt have grieved his father, and I did not wish for that to happen. But, still, Felder himself deserved nothing good. More than once I found myself thinking of inviting him down into the deepest cellar for a nice glass of amontillado, then walling him up to scream his life out in darkness.

I never did that, of course. Felder would never fall for the trick, and I didn't have a capacious wine cellar in which to wall him up. A few dozen bottles of cheap wine in the closet, and even those cheap wines, the best the local discount grocer had to offer, were in any case too good for Felder.

Nor could I take a cue from the Brewster sisters, give him a nice glass of home-made elderberry wine laced with cyanide and "just a pinch of strychnine," though burying his body in the cellar—that cellar again—did have its appeal.

I had so many thoughts over the years as I plotted my revenge. Felder dropped from a factory catwalk into a vat of acid, or a ladle of molten steel. Felder tied to the railroad tracks, with the 6:10 right on time. Felder tied to a log and run very slowly through a saw mill, feet first, in order to increase and prolong the pain. Felder introduced to a beautiful demure young lady, whose casual wear, once they were alone, would prove to be mostly leather and steel spikes, and who would take great pleasure in slowly dismembering such an obnoxious specimen.

But I did none of this. How could I? Even if I wasn't caught, and in our fantasies we never are, any harm done to Felder would cause grief to his father, and his father was my employer, my mentor, and my friend.

Now, as I said before, I am a patient man. Patience is usually rewarded. The day came when Felder's father passed away. Felder himself was not particularly upset, for with his father's passing he gained a controlling interest in the business. His two sisters, however, were distraught not only at their father's passing, but at what their odious brother intended to do. You see, Felder had plans. Once his father was safely in his grave, he intended to sell out to a big chain.

"Family operated funeral homes," he declared, "are obsolete." Adding, to me, "If you're lucky, maybe the new owners will let you keep your job. If not, it hardly matters, does it? You're just an old man and you should be thinking about retiring."

I had no interest in retiring. My job wasn't particularly hard, after all, and my customers never complain. As for my customer's families, well, most are quite happy to see how good their departed relative looks in his casket. I am a bit of an artist. Most of my customers go into the ground looking better than they did during their final years.

So did my employer. I took particular care with him, and I was properly sad at the funeral. Why not? I liked the old man, and he had always been good to me. It was his son, his odious son, who had made my life hell.

Felder didn't even show up for his father's funeral. Neither of his sisters seemed particularly surprised, and both presumed he was either off negotiating the sale of their father's funeral home or patronizing some streetwalker.

When several weeks had passed, and Felder did not reappear, things began to settle down. The police had been notified the day after the funeral, but they had made no progress. It was as if the detestable Felder had simply walked right off the face of the earth. The sisters, who were less venial and much more like their father, continued to refuse all offers from the big chains.

After three years, and still no sign of their brother, the sisters decided to change the name of the business from "Felder & Son" to "Felder & Nichols," taking me in as a full partner. I knew the business and did most of the work, after all. No one knew what would happen if Felder suddenly decided to reappear, but we continued to run the place, by now hoping he would not.

But now, patient as I am, I believe the time has come. My doctor has been in for the final time today, and has admitted that I can hardly expect to live through the night. That is why I have decided to tell this story. For the truth is, I know where Felder is. I know precisely where he has been for all these years and where, I presume, he will remain.

Felder's father was a very large man, six and half feet tall, and weighing nearly 350 pounds. Felder himself was a runt, only 5' 3", and he weighed, I should think, no more than 130 pounds.

A man like Felder's father has to be buried in a special casket, much larger than the standard models. A solid bronze oversize casket like the one we used is quite heavy, even without the deceased resting inside. So no one noticed that this one was, perhaps, a little heavier than usual, nor did they hear the faint sounds of drugged breathing from beneath the thin mattress on the adjustable platform supporting the body.

I still wonder what Felder thought when the drugs finally wore off and he awakened in the low, narrow space at the bottom of the casket. Did he scream? Did he plead for his life? Did he try to claw his way out? I can only speculate, for by that time the casket was tucked away inside its concrete vault and covered over with four feet of earth. If he screamed, no one could hear him.

If I am patient, Felder was not. But I do have to wonder if he finally learned patience. It wasn't as if there was anything else for him to do.