She informed the silent audience of the dead. She was a fan of the stage.

“You hear me? If this is a prank—”

The intruder took a deep breath. There was one thing she hadn’t checked yet. And that was how far the designers of this…game were willing to take things. She stepped around the coffin.

“Huh. Heavy lid.”

As if the designers were afraid the dead would up and walk off. Not—not a pleasant thought, actually.

You could almost believe it down here. It was so heavy that even when she threw her weight across the lid, she barely shifted it.

“Sorry. But I have to know. There’s no way this is real.”

She informed the grave. After a moment the young woman caught her breath and pushed.

Six minutes passed. By millimeters, by desperate strength and panic, the lid moved. So slightly. But enough. She felt a small opening. The intruder looked down, reached for her iPhone with shaking hands.

“Phew. I bet they can’t fake—oh god.”

The light illuminated a sliver into the stone casket. But a sliver was enough. The young Irish woman recoiled. She saw an emaciated—the dead flesh just lay there as the young woman—

“Oh god. Oh god.”

For a second, she stood there. Staring at what she was sure couldn’t be faked. It was too—real. It smelled. The corpse had been embalmed before it lay there. And someone had placed something on the chest. That was what sold it for her.

The little doll, and the flower, crudely made. Partly-disintegrated by time. Flakes of paint and a wilted mass of petals and organic decay. She stared at the corpse. She screamed. And then she fled.

And she believed.

Long after she’d fled, something found the opened coffin. It studied the disturbed grave, then replaced the stone lid. It turned, following the only sound to break the silence of this place in ages. Besides the damn mice, of course.

——

Nine hours.

Nine hours later, the screaming was done. The panic ended. Exhaustion had set in.

And lack of water. She trudged through the darkness, afraid to turn on her iPhone. She was tired.

Hungry. Thirsty.

Lost.

But she believed.

“What is happening? Where am I? I was just walking—there’s no way.”

A hallucination. She had stepped onto the street. Either it was some kind of amnesia that prevented her from remembering what had come after—or—or—

“Magic.”

But that was impossible. She knew it. She was a realist. The magic existed on the stage. Magic didn’t exist on Earth. Miracles didn’t happen. Hard work was the only thing that worked, and people loved to call it ‘magic’. But ‘magic’ just meant things that they were too lazy to accomplish themselves. Magic was…