I need some help here. I have arguably written myself into a corner by having all the characters killed off by the end of the first installment. At the same time, I am largely uninterested in doing a prequel, because so many of the titular Mysteries come from leaving the original situation largely unexplained.
I was thinking of setting off future installments down a somewhat Buddhist path. Maybe the next episode takes place the next day, with Father Robbie being reincarnated as, say, a weevil and Thomas as a single wheat grain. By continuing along this path, I can eventually map out the eternal cosmic journey of the personas of both Thomas and Father Robby. Maybe in the end, they both end up as bits of cotton, woven together in the cosmic cravat of Arby. Or maybe they can eventually end up as aliens, or more interestingly, as different, opposed species of fungal space spores that seed life throughout the universe, thus allowing the two conflicted spirits to reign eternal legacy on the cultures of emergent, rival alien races
Either that, or maybe it could be at the funerals of Thomas and Robby, three days after the events of the first story. Due to the timing of their deaths and the way the funerary industry works, it just so happens that they are being buried at the same time. Or maybe Robby is supposed to get cremated, but an alcoholic mortician accidentally cemates Thomas, leaving him in a sticky situation where he has to pass off Robby's corpse as Thomas's. This is what we call, in the industry, a recipe for wackiness. Maybe Norman Fell can be the mortician, and when he realizes that he's cremated the wrong corpse, he could look directly at the camera and mug.
Or maybe The Father Robby and Thomas FabIo Mysteries can be used as a jumping off point to explore the implications the original mysteries have on causality, centering on how the murder-suicide has changed the lives of the people that were driving under the overpass at the fateful moment on that strange, strange day. And maybe Robby and/or Thomas have sisters and/or mothers that are so hurt by the tragedy that they deal with it in the only way they know how: fucking. Each other, maybe.
And that brings me to what would be the most obvious sequel path: necrophilia. I've been toying with this idea for two days now, and even though it is kind of obvious, I think I can bring something we haven't seen before to the table. Like, maybe one of the altar boys that worked for Robby digs up his grave once every five years in order to have sex with Robby's corpse. In this way, we can document the life of this altar boy that Father Robby had a profound effect on during his all too brief life (by molesting the altar boy). The altar boy can maybe be 12 when the story starts, and in his 70s or 80s when it ends. From about year 10 to 20, Robby is in the sweet spot of decomposition, where the right body parts are hard, and the right body parts are soft. Of course, the altar boy has all sorts of mental and social problems throughout his life, but he refuses to tell anyone that the root cause is his ritualistic sex with the corpse of a priest that once molested him. Maybe at the end of the story he can die of some gross disease, in some way that allows his living family to discover his profoundly disgusting secrets. Maybe he can be a child molester, too. And the twist can be that his name is Thomas. Or David.
But I'm open to any other ideas right now. So many possibilities.
