“I can’t do this.
I won’t.”
Flashback.
The Slums. Gravedigger sits slumped against a brick wall, his eyes wavering into unconsciousness. His arm has a plastic strap tied around it, a plastic bag, and there’s a needle sticking out of it.
This is the end.
He can feel it. His entire being drifts towards finality.
As the drugs course through his system, destroying what’s left of any sobriety and desperation, he puts his head back against the wall, taking what he hopes will be his last breath.
“He saved me. I wanted it to end. The despair, the desperation, the miserable banality of an existence that barely survived, and never thrived. I wanted to die. When I put that needle in my arm, I knew it was too much. I knew it would kill me. I knew that I would finally end my life, right there on the street, in that dirty alley.
I knew nothing.”
Flashback.
Gravedigger awakens in a morgue, his eyes blinded by light. He gasps, chokes and vomits immediately to his left. His eyes falter, rolling back in his head, only to finally come to and see a large figure looming over him.
His trademark hat adorning his tired and worn face.
“Am I dead?”
He shook his head.
“It would’ve been easier to let me perish and ferry me to the other side. That was his job, his duty. Had he not carried me back to the Mortuary, I would’ve died. I wanted to. Hell, even laying on that table, feeling like death itself, I wanted nothing more than the sweet embrace of death.
Tombstone could’ve given me that. I was nothing to him. I was a mere mortal, a worthless piece of shit that wanted the end.
What I wanted didn’t matter. What he wanted… did.”
Flashback.
Gravedigger stands in the cemetery, being handed a shovel by the same gloomy figure as before. The man taps him on the shoulder and walks away. Gravedigger turns around and starts digging his first grave, tossing soil from one place to another.
For the first time, he feels complete. He feels whole.
“For most people, standing across from their mentor in opposition is a dream. It’s an opportunity to prove themselves to the person that matters most. I don’t need to prove myself. I don’t want to.
I know what hand feeds me…
… What I want now matters.
And because of what he did for me, I now dig any grave but my own. I’ll be digging CJ Thorpe’s at Bad Blood and any grave Tombstone wants of me between now and the day I die.
What I won’t do… is dig his.”