“This is not how you come to your loved one’s funeral,” an alarmed priest stops the ceremony when the deceased’s son Alex shows up in a bright green suit. Everyone is stunned by his vivid appearance. But nothing compares to the shock when Alex tells them his father is alive in the coffin.
“He was a devoted father. A loving brother. A cherished friend. And a wonderful human being. May his soul find eternal peace…and unite with his dear ones in heaven,” the priest’s voice echoed across the vestibule.
Draped in solemn black dresses, the guests occupied the pews to pay their respects to the late business tycoon, Mr. Sullivan. “Where is his son? Why hasn’t he appeared at his father’s funeral yet?” Murmurs and whispers circulated among them as they awaited the arrival of Alex, the deceased’s only son.
Suddenly, the church doors burst open with a heavy thud. Everyone turned around, only to be stunned at seeing 22-year-old Alex entering the church in a bright green suit, smiling.
How could Alex put on a happy face and dress to the nines at his Dad’s funeral? What son could be so overjoyed at seeing his deceased father in a coffin? The guests were haunted…so was the priest…
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“Ladies and gentlemen…as we gather here to pay our respects to Mr. Sullivan, we find ourselves taken aback,” the priest declared.
“While your presence is appreciated, Alex, your choice of attire goes against the solemnity of this gathering. I kindly request you to respect this somber occasion and the memory of your late father. This is not how you come to your loved one’s funeral. I kindly ask you to leave and return in a suitable outfit.”
The whispering among the guests grew thicker. They strangely stared at Alex with worried expressions. Some thought he was out of his mind. However, Alex would still not stop smiling. He approached closer to the casket and gestured at the priest.
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“Stop…stop!” he said, chuckling. “Father Johnson, I apologize for being late…and wearing a bright green suit to my Dad’s funeral today. But please, before jumping to conclusions about my attire, let me explain everything in detail. So everyone…are you ready?”
Rubbing his palms and eyeing all the guests in the front row, Alex broke the silence. “Most of you may think I came here as a Broadway performer!” he said. “But what I found over the past two days is nothing short of any Broadway performance, ladies and gentlemen!”
A wave of discomfort and confusion settled on everyone’s faces. “You will be shocked…but my beloved Dad here in the coffin…is a fraud and a big-time liar!” Alex declared, pointing at the casket.
“But what will shock you, even more, is that he is still…ALIVE!”
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“WHAT?” Father Johnson exclaimed on the mic. “Mr. Sullivan is alive?”
“Alex…what are you doing? Your father is dead…look for yourself…Stop making a scene at your father’s funeral…” An angry guest rose with a start.
“Oh God… what’s happening?” Shrieked another. “Is he out of his mind?”
“Wait…wait…I haven’t completed it yet! You heard it right, my dear friends,” Alex added. “My Dad is still alive…in that coffin. He is NOT dead.”
“But before we go anywhere near that coffin to confirm what I just told you, let me tell you a small story…or rather, what I was able to find over the past two days since my dear Daddy’s so-called death,” Alex bragged as he paced back and forth the hall.
“It all started during our family dinner…two days ago…on my Dad’s 50th birthday celebration. Everything was going so well…or that’s what I thought…we were happily enjoying the party…laughing and chatting…when Dad decided it was time to raise a toast….”
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The dining room was filled with laughter, accompanied by the clinking of glasses and the delightful aroma of a delicious meal. Friends and family were gathered to celebrate business tycoon Mr. Sullivan’s 50th birthday.
“Please join me in raising our glasses,” Mr. Sullivan announced, gracefully rising to his feet and lifting his glass of champagne. He seemed so happy that day.
“I want to express my deepest gratitude for your heartfelt words! I’m touched by your love and care. Thank you so much for all that you’ve ever done for me! And thank you, Jesus…for giving me a wonderful life and a lovely family. A wonderful son, Alex, who I wish only the best of everything and all success…Life is too short to worry so much, friends. So let us live this moment to the fullest.”
Mr. Sullivan’s words felt very strange to everyone, including Alex. He was puzzled why his Dad would suddenly talk as though he was going to part ways with everyone.
“…Lastly, I would like to say that I’m exhausted with this fast-paced life. My work has become more demanding. Everything around me feels so monotonous. The more I think about it, the more I feel stressed. I want to clear my head and be alone for a while. So if you permit me, I’d like to retreat to my office,” Mr. Sullivan chugged his drink and disappeared into his office upstairs.
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Everyone was unsettled. The joyful birthday atmosphere became worrisome, and nobody could tell why Mr. Sullivan behaved so strangely.
“Is he alright?” One of the guests grew concerned.
“It’s not like him…should we go in and check on him? He seems worried….” added another.
“No…no…I don’t think it’s a good idea. Let’s not disturb him,” Mr. Sullivan’s brother Carter rose from his table. “Midlife crisis! I’ve been there myself… we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Let the old man have some time for himself…and think about life…his future…you know.”
Everyone, including Alex, agreed with his uncle. They thought Mr. Sullivan genuinely needed that time for himself and decided not to disturb him.
The party continued in full swing. The guests were in the middle of enjoying the celebration when they heard a loud crashing sound of a chair falling in Mr. Sullivan’s study around 20 minutes later. They dropped everything and rushed upstairs to check.
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“Oh my God…Dad??” Alex bolted to his Dad’s study, screaming.
When he burst into the room, he was in for a massive shock. Mr. Sullivan lay sprawled on the floor, his body trembling with labored breath as though he had seizures.
Alex was paralyzed with shock when he saw a vial with a liquid spilled around it near his father. His Dad’s speech a while ago kept ringing in his ears. Nothing made sense back then. But now, his worst fears were confirmed when he saw the vial.
“Dad…no, no…no. Why did you do this? Dad? Wake up…Dad? Please, don’t do this to me.” Alex burst into tears as he knelt beside his father. He felt a pulse and shouted, “Call an ambulance!…Please!…Somebody call an ambulance!”
“No… I’ll take him to the hospital where I work…we don’t have time…we need to make it fast…his pulse is dropping….” Alex’s uncle, Carter, who was a doctor in the local clinic, chimed in.
Carter scooped his brother up and rushed him to the hospital in his car.
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Alex raced behind his uncle and arrived at the hospital, hoping his Dad would be alright. But his hopes hit a brick wall when he saw his Uncle Carter outside the emergency ward, agony etched all over his face.
“Uncle Carter…how is Dad? Is he…is he alright?” Alex stuttered. “Please tell me he’s alright…Can I see him? Uncle Carter…please say something….”
Carter placed his hand on Alex’s shoulder and nodded disappointedly. Sighing a deep breath, he broke the bad news. “I’m sorry, Alex. We did everything to save him. But…My brother…your Dad, he passed away from Potassium cyanide poisoning.”
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It hit Alex like a ton of bricks. Whatever had caused his father to take his own life, that too on his birthday, haunted him. He could not come to terms with the news of his father’s untimely passing. He could not convince himself to believe it was real.
“As his brother, I feel it’s my responsibility to take charge of the funeral arrangements,” Carter’s voice trembled. “We’ll move him to the morgue in a while…and I’ll talk to the priest and make the arrangements immediately. Alex… I’m extremely sorry. I understand what you’re going through. Stay strong, son. I’ll go to the hall and inform everyone in the family.”
Carter’s words hung in the air as Alex painfully nodded, still unable to believe his father, who was alive and healthy half an hour ago, and now dead and headed to the morgue.
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Alex could not muster the courage to stand the heartbreak. He was confused why his Dad would do such a horrendous thing to himself. Nothing made any sense.
“Dad’s such a strong man…he would never do this to himself. Something’s not right,” Alex suspected and hurried back home to check his Dad’s study.
The house was eerily empty when he arrived. The housekeepers and all the guests were at the hospital and the funeral home, preparing for the late Mr. Sullivan’s last rites. So Alex was all by himself with their family dog, Pebbles.
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“There’s got to be something in here…” Alex muttered under his breath as he rummaged through the files, papers, and everything he could get his hands on in his Dad’s study. While doing so, he missed noticing the door behind him was slightly ajar, giving Pebbles enough space to enter the office.
Alex was so engrossed in checking the files when all of a sudden, he heard a slurping sound. His heart raced at seeing his dog lapping up the poison droplets spilled around the vial.
“Pebbles!…Oh my God! …Pebbles, stop! Pebbles…Oh no… what did you do?” Alex bolted to his dog to stop him. But it was too late. Pebbles had licked the poison to the last drop. Startled, Alex scooped up his dog and hurried to the veterinary clinic.
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“Hold on, Pebbles…Gosh…what did I do? I should’ve locked the door…Please don’t do this to me…hold on, boy…I won’t let anything happen to you….” Alex panted and raced faster when he saw his dog had passed out in the backseat of his car.
“Doctor! Nurse!” Alex bolted into the hospital with Pebbles cradled in his arms. “My dog…he accidentally lapped up Potassium cyanide! Please do something…Please, save him!”
The doctor examined the dog and looked at Alex suspiciously. “Are you sure your dog lapped up Potassium cyanide?” the doctor said. “Because Potassium cyanide is highly toxic. Even a few grams is lethal…and your dog could’ve died immediately on the spot post-consumption. But he seems to be breathing…and everything seems normal.”
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Alex was quite stunned. He looked down at Pebbles on the gurney and saw the dog was still breathing. He looked perfectly alright, except that he was unconscious. There were no visible signs of poisoning, not the sort Alex knew of.
“What…wait…I don’t understand…how is this possible?” Alex grew unsettled. When things did not add up, he insisted the doctor test the dog’s blood.
The results that arrived two hours later were nothing short of shocking to Alex. There were no traces of Potassium cyanide in his dog’s blood.
But more unbelievable was when the doctor said, “We only found traces of sleeping pills. That’s why your dog is unconscious. He should be fine in a few hours. You may take him home.”
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“Sleeping pills?” Alex whispered.
He left the clinic with his dog, and on his way home, he got a call from the local police station. “Is this Alex Sullivan?” the cop asked.
“Yes,” Alex worriedly pulled over to the roadside.
“Mr. Sullivan, this is Officer Hudson from the police department. We assume that your father’s death is a premeditated suicide…because of tax evasion.”
“What…suicide?” Alex was unnerved.
“I understand this comes as a shock. We discovered some concerning information during our investigation. Your father was recently implicated in a tax evasion case…and was expected to go on trial in a few weeks. It turns out he sold the company tax-free for around $10 million.”
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“Well, we’re now focusing on locating the missing money. Any information you can provide on your father’s financial dealings would be helpful, Mr. Sullivan.”
“I…I honestly don’t know anything about this, officer,” Alex said. “My father never told me about this deal or the tax evasion. This is all so sudden…and shocking.”
Alex hung up and found himself running in a maze. Before one shock could settle, another surfaced. He did not understand what was happening.
He looked at his dog, and suddenly, a strange thought struck him. “If it’s not Potassium cyanide poisoning…then why is he declared dead? Is my Dad really dead…or is there something I’m still missing?” Alex wondered.
After leaving his dog at home, Alex immediately drove to the hospital, where Mr. Sullivan’s body was kept in the morgue.
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When nobody noticed, Alex approached the morgue when suddenly, somebody tapped on his shoulder from behind, startling him.
“Who are you? What are you doing outside the morgue?” a nurse asked Alex.
“Nothing…I…er… I’m an intern. I recently joined,” Alex lied. “The doctor asked me to fetch some details from a person’s body in there…so I’m just going to the morgue to check.”
“Alright…go ahead,” the nurse nodded and left.
Alex sighed as he crept into the morgue and began searching for his Dad’s body. The chilliness in the morgue haunted Alex as he marched across the racks, looking for the tag with his Dad’s details.
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After a tedious search, he found the body. But something seemed strange when Alex lifted the white sheet. Instead of his Dad’s body, there was a corpse of an unknown man bearing a tag with his father’s details:
Name: Sullivan
First Name: David
Date of Birth: August 8, 1970
Date of Death: August 8, 2020
“Jesus Christ…what’s happening? And who is this man with my Dad’s tag?” Alex froze with shock. He could not help but suspect if his uncle had anything to do with this.
“Something doesn’t feel right…when Dad said he wanted to be alone in his study and we were all worried, Uncle Carter was so calm,” Alex pondered. “He told us to leave Dad alone…and didn’t allow anybody to call the ambulance when we found Dad unconscious…he drove Dad to the hospital instead.”
When several bizarre theories started building up in his mind, Alex decided to drive back home and look for answers.
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With only 24 hours left before his Dad’s funeral, Alex was racing against time, looking for clues to connect the dots. He slipped on a pair of gloves and hurried to his Dad’s study to check again.
Alex scoured every nook and cranny of the room, looking for the $10 million. He knew that if his suspicions were correct, then the money would be somewhere in the house. He even checked his Dad’s bedroom. But the money was nowhere to be found. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
When hours of searching arrived at another dead end, Alex was so disheartened. However, he knew there was still one place left to check—his Dad’s car.
Alex combed through the car in search of something—anything that could provide a clue or lead him to the whereabouts of the money. “There has to be something…where did he keep the money?” Alex was frustrated until his gaze shifted to the car navigator.
Desperate for answers, Alex checked the navigator and found an unknown address on the outskirts of the town his Dad had frequented a couple of times.
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“Weird…this place looks deserted. Why would Dad go here?” Alex wondered as he looked up at the map. “He’s been there several times. What is this place?” With slim hopes of finding a clue, Alex immediately drove to the address to check.
When he arrived at the spot half an hour later, he found himself outside an eerie, abandoned mansion surrounded by a haunting cluster of dilapidated houses.
Garbage and litter sprawled on the property, disgusting Alex. The place looked like it was being used as a dump yard by the locals. And it did not make any sense what a rich businessman like Mr. Sullivan was doing in this place.
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“Why would Dad come here?” Alex was constantly haunted by the same question. He effortlessly broke open a rusty lock and crept into the mansion.
Nothing seemed shady inside until Alex found a hatch on the floor, hidden under a pile of trash. What bewildered Alex was the non-rusty lock on the hatch. It looked new, as though somebody had been there only recently.
With suspicion brewing in his mind, he broke the lock with a stone. He opened the hatch, and what he found in there confirmed his worst fears.
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“Oh my God…is this the $10 million the cops were looking for?” Alex held his mouth in shock when he found two bags full of money stashed in what looked like a little cellar.
As Alex rummaged through the bags to see if there was anything else besides the money, he discovered two passports, only to realize one was fake. It had his Dad’s photo, but he noticed the name on it read: Alan Parker.
“Linda Parker? Who is she?” Alex grew tense at seeing the photograph of an unknown woman on the other passport. “Why is Dad faking his identity? What’s his connection with this Linda?”
The puzzle was pieced together when Alex found two plane tickets to Miami in his Dad’s passport.
“Date of departure…August 10, 2020??” Alex was stunned. It was the day of his Dad’s funeral, and the flight was scheduled five hours after the ceremony.
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“…And that’s how I unraveled the mystery!” Alex finished narrating the story with a chuckle. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you still don’t believe me, then check this out!”
Alex approached his Dad’s coffin with a hand mirror and placed it near his mouth as everyone watched in disbelief. Several seconds later, he showed the mirror to the guests and the priest.
“What? Jesus… it’s unbelievable!” The priest gasped at seeing tiny vapor droplets on the mirror.
“Now, do you believe me? How can a dead person breathe? Unless…you know…he’s alive?! My Dad’s still alive… he’s breathing!” Alex declared. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s wake the sleeping beauty up!”
Alex administered a syringe of adrenaline into his Dad’s body, and minutes later, Mr. Sullivan woke up from his coffin, breathing heavily.
“Good morning, Dad!” Alex laughed as Mr. Sullivan looked around, disbelief and horror etched on his face.
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An hour later, Mr. Sullivan and his brother Carter sat in the interrogation room, handcuffed. They realized there was no point in running away and decided to come clean.
“I planned on replacing the vial in my brother’s study with real Potassium cyanide…to distract the forensics department…And on the way to the cemetery, I had to fix the hearse…and tell everyone I called the funeral services company…and that another hearse was on the way,” confessed Carter.
“We already arranged for the second hearse…it was a fake…with my mistress Linda hiding in it. According to our plan, she was supposed to carry an adrenaline shot. And in the crematorium, we planned on burning the body of an unidentified male from the morgue,” Mr. Sullivan disclosed as he stared at his handcuffs.
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What can we learn from this story?
- The truth always finds its way to the surface. Mr. Sullivan and his brother Carter thought they would get away with faking Mr. Sullivan’s death and escaping with the $10 million. But Alex connected the dots to his father’s mysterious ‘fake’ death, bringing the truth to light. Ultimately, Mr. Sullivan and his accomplice, Carter, were arrested.
- Appearances can be deceiving. What you seek may be hidden in plain sight. When everybody believed Mr. Sullivan had died of potassium cyanide poisoning, only Alex discovered that the vial in his dad’s study was a concoction of sleeping pills and nothing lethal.
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When Liam cleans his Grandpa’s overgrown grave, he finds cryptic coordinates etched on the tombstone that lead him to his father’s long-held awful secrets and an unsuspecting legacy from his grandfather. Click here to read the full story.
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