Secret Secret

"Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin

Okay.  So if you have a secret, you should keep it to yourself.  Simple enough.  Right?

But there's always the option that you can tell two dead people.  Which would be nice.  I can imagine myself going to a visitation and kneeling down next to the coffin and whispering in the ear of a corpse a particularly juicy secret about myself.  For me, I have to tell someone.  I have to tell my secrets or my news to someone.  So telling a corpse?  Might work.  But then I'd have to find a second corpse.  So I'd have to go all the way to the cemetery and find a name that I like and talk to the gravestone.  Which I wouldn't have too many qualms about, if it was light out.  That would be fine.  Dark and I are not friends.  Not usually.
So two people are dead, and they know.  Easy as pie.  Simple as that.  Problem solved.

But what if you tell two living people?  Is Benjamin Franklin suggesting that I kill those two people so my secret's safe?  This doesn't sound very generous on the part of that founding father of ours.  Well, one of the founding fathers.  Anyway.  Killing people doesn't sound like a very good way of keeping a secret, especially considering murder becomes a second secret.  And then I have to tell someone about that, and then it's just a long chain of murder and death and secrets and complications, and that's just messy.  And irritating, I'm sure.  Not that I've ever killed anyone before, but I would imagine it's both difficult and annoying.

Then there's the issue of the undead.  What if the people that I told secrets to (and then killed) or the corpses I confided in became zombies?  Or vampires?  What if these people could speak again?!  What then?!  Granted, zombies probably wouldn't be as articulate as vampires, and vampires probably wouldn't care about my trivial secrets when they have their own bloodthirsty vices to conceal, but what IF these people did care?  What if they rose from the dead with the express desire of sharing my secrets with the world?  What would happen then?  Well, if I follow Benjamin Franklin's advice, I should probably kill them.  And then there's another cycle of killing and death and secrets!

What I'm getting from this?  Either don't have secrets or don't tell them to anyone.  Good to know.  Thanks, Franklin!

"Secrets, secrets are no fun, unless they're shared with everyone!"