English
- Mina returned to the parlor. The room, now empty but for Lucy's remains, was bathed in a shaft of early afternoon sunlight filtering through the windows that had somehow escaped the dark clouds. Mina found herself annoyed by the light, and hung back in a darker area of the room. Black curtains of mourning graced the windows, and a dark wreath of hawthorn branches tied with inky satin ribbons hung on the door.
- Lucy's coffin rested easily among the flowers. Her white- clad body lay on white satin, a laced pillow beneath her head, a pillow which had been crocheted by her great aunt and which had been in Lucy's hope chest.
- Mina approached the casket slowly, in wonder. How could her friend look so lovely in death? It was as if the spirit still remained within her, filling out her corporeal form. Truly, she appeared to be resting only. And she looked far healthier than she had in the last few weeks. It made death very inviting.
- Gone were the traces of illness. The blue circles beneath her eyes had vanished. Her cheeks bloomed with rosy color, no longer concave as they had been for weeks which had made her look like nothing more than a skeleton. Those sensuous lips, so red, red as blood...how extraordinary! Pigment tinged her flesh, and her hair sparkled, dazzling as sunbeams danced on the strands. And Lucy's hands! Pressed together just so in prayer fashion on her chest, clasping a white Bible; they looked as though they were about to move, the way Lucy moved them almost continuously when she talked, to reach out and touch Mina's arm, and then Lucy's eyes would snap open, and her lips would part, as she would laugh and say, "I've got you! Silly goose! Did you really think I was dead?"
- But the hands did not move, nor the lips part, nor the eyes open and sparkle with the joy of besting a friend in a superb but morbid practical joke...