Episode 1: Funny Business

I've had a corpse wake up on me one time. He was a young gangly kid who'd been shot twice in the head and by all accounts, was dead as a doornail. But the damndest thing happened when I started to hammer his coffin together. He started screaming and hollering and pounding on the wood like a wild hyena. I dropped my hammer and fell on my ass as I thought I was witnessing some kind of divine resurrection. The kid ran out of my store at top speed but only got a few steps down the street when he collapsed and crunched face first down into the dirt. This time he was really dead.

The doctor finally arrived after half the town and poked and prodded the poor kid's body for what seemed like hours. I'm sure one of those jackals would have stolen his shoes if they weren't sitting in my office already. After a quick examination, the doctor told us that the kid had indeed passed on but it wasn't from the two .45 shells that lodged themselves in his skull. Incredibly, both of the bullets failed to hit any vital parts of his brain and simply knocked him out cold. The eventual cause of death when he stormed out of my offices was, if you can fathom it, shock. The kid was so scared that he was in heaven or hell or some such thing that his pilot light just went out.

When the doctor finished explaining things, all the townsfolk quickly disappeared off the street and I was left to pick up the kid and put him in his coffin after all. From what I understand, he's buried with his Ma and Pa underneath that big pine tree north of town. It's a funny business I've chosen. Not laugh-out-loud funny, mind you.
Although, I did laugh when a scruffy man in greasy overalls walked through my door this morning.

"You the proprietor, mister?" he said, nervously.

I looked him up and down. At first I thought he was going to rob me.

"I am the undertaker here, yes sir, what can I do for this fine sunny morning?" I said.

"Well, I need you to arrange a coffin for me."

Before I had a chance to talk about size and wood type, he quickly produced a leather satchel he'd been carrying and emptied its contents on my desk. It was a gold nugget the size of a dinner plate.

"I want you to bury this." he told me.

It was around here that I started laughing.