I think we give too much attention to the question of who’s gonna be in the “two graves” that you dig “before embarking on a journey of revenge”

and not enough to the question of why you’re digging them both before leaving home

…

List of attempts at plausible reasons to dig two graves BEFORE embarking on a journey of revenge.

(Many of these ideas allow for the possibility that you will take revenge on multiple enemies, and you yourself won’t be in either of the graves. All they are required to explain is the strange timing and location of the grave-digging.)

…..

1. You are planning to drag your enemy’s dead body all the way back home with you. (perhaps he’s so notorious that everyone in your hometown wants a body as proof that the evil is defeated).

2. You are planning to kidnap and bring the enemy back home before you do any killing.

3. Your revenge is expected to have collateral damage near home before you even get to your enemy.

4. The “journey” doesn’t even take you outside your hometown. The enemy’s actually your neighbor, whose grave could reasonably be expected to be dug somewhere near yours.

5. You expect to die out there and take your enemy out with you–and you also expect that this will annoy everyone else in the vicinity so much that they won’t want to keep either of your dead bodies, and will insist on going to the trouble to ship them both back to where you came from, just to have that shit out of their neighborhood forever.

6. Your planned revenge involves getting pregnant by your enemy, going back home, giving birth, and then burying his offspring.

7. You’re going to bring at least one of these freshly dug graves WITH YOU on the journey. It’s a bigass shipping container full of dirt from home, with a coffin inside. I guess you’re planning to turn your enemy into a vampire?

8. The graves are for two other people in your own hometown, perhaps family members, who are so reliant on you for survival that they’re sure to die if you don’t come back from the journey of revenge.

9. Digging two graves is simply symbolic, a gesture to let your neighbors know what you’ve gone off to do. The graves may or may not end up ever getting filled with anyone or anything.

And finally my personal favorite:

10. Your planned “revenge” is just to finally tell your enemy how you really feel about… whatever he did. You expect that he will be devastated, beg for forgiveness, and then, once granted it, will beg for your hand in marriage.

(The graves are a family plot with a shared headstone already bought and paid for… death-dates still un-engraved, with room for several new family members to be added before the two of you finally succumb to happy old age together.)