It was butcher work…the horrid screeching as the stake drove home, the plunging of writhing form, the lips of bloody foam…hardly had my knife severed the head of each, before the whole body began to melt away and crumble into its native dust, as though the death that should have come centuries ago had at last assert himself and say at once and loud, "I am here!"
– Bram Stoker
Dracula, Chapter 27. Having found the tombs of the three Brides of Dracula at the count’s castle, Van Helsing drives stakes through their hearts and decapitates them.