It was strange for Jeffrey Grey, the respected archeologist, to find himself excavating a site in Jerseyford, the town of his birth. However, oddly enough, he did not find it as odd as it was, because he was absorbed in his work. He gently turned the earth, emptying the ground before him in a restless search for the past. The past was his present. He tossed the luscious blonde fringe from his face and adjusted his spectacles. The site was once a Roman village, or so he believed, but all he had found thus far was litter, and a fragment of a pot looking dangerously contemporary. It was his fortieth birthday. The scope of his life shrunk to just work. His childless marriage had disintegrated three years ago and he sought no emotional replacement.

One of his assistants, Kate, wore dungarees and brushed the dirt from a bone but eight feet from him. She looked at him through her round rimmed glasses much more frequently than he looked at her. He had noticed her attention, and liked it, but was afraid to engage in even the mildest flirtation. His shovel hit a stone and it made a ?ching? sound. Tonight however, on his birthday, he would pay this lovely young woman the attention she clearly craved. The other two boys on the dig half-heartedly dug with shovels. The afternoon sun faded, the evening arrived and some floodlights were lit. Lack of light no longer stopped work at a Jeffrey Grey dig. Then one of the boys said, "Oh! Oh, Jeff, what's...Jeff over here!"

The others descended on the nameless assistant to see what he had uncovered: A patch of skin from a body strangely preserved under the ground. "It's animal," said the boy scientifically. It was, in fact, clearly human. The thrill of work chanted in Jeffrey's empty heart. "Yes it is!" he said emphatically. What a find! He took over from the boy and with disciplined, painfully slow precision, begun brushing dirt from the buried body. Over the next hour he uncovered two whole legs. The others watched, holding themselves and rubbing their upper-arms in the cold. The boys became bored and cold.

?Jeff, we're going to the pub." They said pointing to a nearby tavern. "Yes yes," he said. "I'll be there soon".

Just he and Kate then worked for the next hour. A torso appeared; the remarkably fresh hairy chest of a man. Kate felt the slightly bent birthday card in her back pocket. He hadn't looked at her to share in the excitement of the find. He had detached himself from her.

"It is your birthday," she said.

"You go on," he replied. "I'll finish here in a minute." He didn't look up. But now, slighted by her loved mentor, she slipped off. The light from the pub windows fluttered with human activity.

The arm of the body he was uncovering seemed to twitch. Jeffrey though it was simply a trick of the light. Sounds from the pub wafted to him through the night air. Happy voices, the chinking of glass, the crash of a dropped bottle of wine followed by laughter. They went in one ear and out the other. The whole body of a man now lay before him: only the head was still buried. Jeffrey carefully excavated a healthy mop of hair. It seemed fair, though in that light, who could be sure? He gently teased the earth from the face of the body with his horse hair brush. He uncovered glasses similar to his. Actually, they were exactly the same as his. He cleared more earth. That face seemed so familiar. Hadn't he seen a face just like it in the mirror every morning? He knew it's resemblance to him was uncanny: impossible even. Jeffrey looked through his spectacles and through the body's spectacles at its closed eyes. They opened.

"Argggghhhhh.....!" cried Jeffrey. The body sat up.

"So there you are," it said "at last!" Jeffrey bit his index finger, speechless with fear. The body stood and looked around. "Ah! The old home town. How apt for it to happen here." It said.

"For.....what to happen?" said Jeffrey.

"You've finally excavated yourself. I'm you. The buried version." It said brushing the remaining dirt from its body.

"Then who am I?" said Jeffrey, shaking somewhat. The body rested its hands on the handle of a shovel, stuck in the ground.

"You Jeffrey," it said "are the work obsessed, boring, lonely, selfish, stupid, unburied version that runs around the planet wasting his time on bits and bobs of old junk that are not important to anyone."

"Oh." said Jeffrey.

"You've taken far too long getting over your divorce. You've got that lovely Kate hanging on every word you say, and you know you could be happy with her, but you just can't give in to a bit of fun and a bit of happiness. Look at you, digging me up on your own. This is the night of your fortieth birthday for heaven's sake!"

Jeffrey looked up the stars. It hit him like a meteorite. Yes, he was wasting his life.

"Thank you," Jeffrey said to the dirty, naked version of himself. "I can see that you're right. Now you've so dramatically brought it to my attention, I can change! I'm going to live!" And with that he threw his arms around the body and laughed with joy. But the body didn't join in the embrace. It seized Jeffrey and threw him roughly to the ground.

"No," it said. "It's too late for that." The body towered over the cowering archeologist. "I'm taking over," it said, raising the shovel over its head. It swung the tool down on Jeffrey.

"Argggggghhhhhhh....CLANG"

The excavated body undressed the corpse of Jeffrey Grey and put on his clothes. It buried Jeffrey Grey and took his identity, the identity it had waited to claim for forty years. Every impulse Jeffrey had suppressed had nourished his underground twin, and brought the day of their meeting closer. The new Jeffrey Grey patted the earth and looked over to the inviting tavern. He checked his watch, an hour to closing time.

"Happy birthday to me," he said tossing back that blonde mop of hair. He hung his jacket on his index finger, threw it over his shoulder and scrambled out of the dirt towards a fuller, happier life.