Gazing contemplatively at the dark sky of the Florida night, Duncan Robinson ambled along a winding path that took him underneath palm trees and past sweet-smelling flower beds. He wasn’t paying attention to where his feet were taking him; all his thoughts were focused on the game that they had just won. He knew his teammates were off partying somewhere, and he knew that he would join them eventually, but for now, he preferred the solitude.
“Duncan! Pssst! Duncan!” whispered a voice which, bizarrely, seemed to come from below him. He stopped and looked around, thinking he would see a teammate who had discreetly followed him, but saw nobody. Thinking that he was hearing phantom voices in the breeze, he started walking again, but then he heard the voice again, clearer this time: “Duncan! Down here!”
Duncan took a few steps off the path towards where he reckoned the mysterious voice was coming from. As he peered over a shrub, he noticed a rather large, oblong hole in the ground, barely visible in the faraway light of a decorative lamppost. There was somebody lying in the hole, and as his eyes adjusted to the low light level, Duncan realized with terror that he was staring at a dead body, half-decayed and crawling with maggots.
But how could a corpse be speaking to him? That was the thought that kept him rooted in place even as the body struggled to move itself into a seated position.
A gruesome smile formed on the face of the reanimated corpse. Duncan winced as this action caused a ruined chunk of lip to dislodge itself from its owner’s face. “I wish I had been able to talk to you while I was still alive. We had so much in common.”
Duncan was confused. “Um…I don’t remember who you are.”
“Oh, I suppose I’m not very recognizable after all this,” the corpse replied, looking down at its visible skeleton and ragged outfit. “I’m Kyle Korver. Or, I was Kyle Korver, until you and your teammates came along and killed us.”
“Oh. Uh, I didn’t think we actually, you know, killed you. I thought you just, you know, went back to Milwaukee.”
“Nope. We’re all buried in different places around here after we died. You don’t remember doing that? I swear you were out here for four hours with a shovel, digging graves for our dead bodies.”
Duncan was pretty sure that the stress of the playoffs had brought on the collapse of his sanity. “Hmm, that’s not ringing a bell.”
Kyle was standing up now. His first attempt to lift himself out of the grave caused a bicep to detach and hang limply from his arm. His second attempt was successful. Now he was standing just a few feet away from Duncan. He brushed the dirt off his tattered clothes. As he did this, his left forearm fell off and landed in the grass with a soft thud. He barely glanced at this missing limb. Instead, he fixed Duncan’s gaze in his own. One eyeball was hanging out of its socket but was still moving and seeing.
“By breathing my death-miasma, my essence is merging with yours,” Kyle said. “Not that you need any of my essence to play well, you’ve been dominating teams with your shooting all season.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Duncan replied. He wasn’t sure if he was thanking Kyle for the compliment or for the donation of invisible basketball-playing essence. He was trying to think of something else to say when Kyle slowly turned and began to stumble away towards the path that Duncan had just been walking on. “Wait! Where are you going?”
“I have a feeling the Celtics are going to need this grave a lot more than I am. And you’re going to be the one who puts them in it.”
Just as Kyle said these words, Duncan could hear muffled screaming coming from a nearby building. He suddenly realized that his circuitous path through the NBA bubble complex had taken him right back to the arena. The screams became louder, more angry, and then there was the sound of heavy furniture being thrown. Swear words from multiple distinct voices could be made out in the din.
“Yeah, but they’re not all going to fit in just the one grave,” Duncan said with a smile. Suddenly, a shovel materialized in his hand. He looked up in shock at Kyle, who winked once before continuing on his way.
Duncan looked back down at the tool in his hand. “Guess I’d better start digging.”