7.
Buried Alive
THE DARKNESS BURIED IN A BOX is absolute. If there were a planet, a star, corona, the cloud-reflection of a city below the horizon, or candlelight in the next crypt, just one errant particle of light, the pupil would seize it like it were the last post to hitch onto. But without it, over time, nothing can stop imagined terrors from sloughing out of the murk. The darkness first starts to orbit in rippling, swaddling fractals, in falling black curtains six feet to a pile. It becomes impossible to know if eyes are open or shut. Shortening periods of breath become willed, voluntary, sporadic. There’s a bass movement of tectonic sounds like the moan and swallow of dirt. The victim of being buried alive dares not move, because once she begins to work her feet against the sides of the box, or her elbows and fists of knuckles against the lid, claustrophobia kicks in. The sick, nauseating ache of being locked in place and time completely contingent upon someone’s rescue. It’s this abandonment that terrifies most. It’s at first an outrage: how have I come to this? Who will answer to this? And then the spirit decays to resignation under the staggering unfairness of it all. It’s always been put forth by polemics and in cocktail conversations that there’s no cosmic justice, but to have it confirmed, and so completely?
Even if you could appeal to someone to dig, where would they dig?
“That’s why we are going to give you an intercom down there,” said Doc. “Bells for dead ringers is so 1850.”
“No one knows what bells at night mean,” said Stuart. “Who wouldn’t now think they are battery-operated or remotely activated instead of tied to the wrist of a person alive in a grave? And besides, engines and other amplified noises this century are way too much competition for bells.”
“So that’s why we are going to amplify you — your direct appeals.”
“We really have forfeited all subtlety this century,” she said. “So I am going to be buried and have to yell for help.”
“You can make any appeal you like. You’ll be buried in loose dirt no more than two or three feet under in a dog park in Old Town, only about four blocks from King Street on a Thursday night. There will be plenty of people around to make your appeal, but not too many.”
“That’s the trick,” said Stuart. “Too many and no one will answer, they’ll attempt to laugh it off, and there are no heroes if there is any chance of embarrassment.”
“We will have to do something about your voice, though,” said Doc. “It attracts too much attention.”
She laughed. “What?”
“It does this thing,” said Doc, “it has this sort of musical humming quality that might too easily capture the attention of bystanders. It is better in this case that we amp up the creep factor and convert your voice to a more approximate call from the grave.”
“Doc wants to make you sound like a demon.”
“Really? It’s not enough that I am asking people to dig me up?” She looked at the intercom Stuart had on the desk in front of him. She drew an impish smile. “Let me hear it.”
Stuart turned on the intercom and plugged in one of the speakers. She brought it to her lips and intoned, “This man is not my father.” Amplified beyond what could now be called her signature hum and lavish voice, the speakers discharged a diabolical, electrified screech from some backwoods hollow or 80s budget devil film — a tinny, rasping, pitch-distorting, phase-shifting effect.
“Oh my god!” she laughed.
“We can tamp it down a little,” Stuart assured her.
“Yeah! Give me a chance!”
“We’ll dial it down, then, at least a bit.”
“Will I be able to hear it?
“We don’t think so. You’ll be in a tight box under a few feet of earth and sod. We’ll have three speakers scattered across the park, hidden in tree branches some distance from the grave, although you’ll be somewhere in the middle of that triangle. You’ll have to direct someone to the spot to dig.”
“With what, their bare hands?”
Doc laughed. “I think you overestimate people. Saving a life is one thing, but getting dirty is too much. No, Stuart, you can place a spade nearby. We’ll let you know where it is so you can direct people.”
“You’re just now considering the shovel?”
“No, we thought of a shovel,” said Stuart.
She looked at him. He was standing and adamant they’d thought of a shovel. At least he thought of a shovel. She looked back at Doc. “How long until breathing becomes a problem?”
“We asked around about that and made some calculations. The box is a little smaller than we wanted. The art students design more for aesthetics than utility, and they’ve fashioned something between the travel-coffin carried by Nosferatu and a cowboy’s pine box. It’s a meager affair of wood — but that means it should be porous enough to leach some oxygen from the loose dirt. It’s tough to tell, there are so many variables.”
“You don’t know?”
“Between one to seven hours, we think.”
“You’d fall asleep before anything else,” Stuart added.
“And what if the coffin implodes?”
“Stuart sat on it. I sat on it. We both sat on it.”
“Well, I’m glad you tested it.”
“It’s pretty solid. But you do have some points we need to consider. It’s terrifying!”
“Yes,” she said. They all paused.
“My niece’s birthday is Saturday,” she said. “I’d like to be there.”
Doc nodded. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
She looked at Stuart. He was fiddling with some wiring now, trying to look busy. “What do you think, Stu?”
“It should be fine,” he said. He was rolling the wire around his finger.
“Okay. I can say whatever I wish?”
“Whatever you wish.”
..
The sod was rolled over a cover of plywood to a carpet finish. Underneath was a cool clay trench of 110 cubic feet yawning in earthworm darkness, with spade-severed roots shanked off like butchered bones across the ribbed sides of the pit. “Good work, Stuart!” she said when he allowed her a peek underneath the temporary board. “How many nights did this take you?”
“Two. The art students helped me. They couldn’t stop giggling.”
An old stone pedestrian tunnel leads out of, or into, the northern edge of Windmill Park. Limestone water leaks through the confederate stone walls into dripping locks of moss. Stuart and Veronica had towed the coffin through on a wheeled kayak rack. Pedestrians grinned furtively on the chance of an inside joke they did not know. Freaks.
Before they dragged the coffin up to the site of the rumpled sod, Stuart stopped by the volleyball courts along S. Union Street. He wanted to show her inside. “The space,” he said.
“My crib?”
“Yes, your digs.”
She crinkled her nose and shook her head, but allowed a smile for the effort.
He lifted the lid and shined his headlamp into the space. Creased into the body-length groove was a red-and-white-checkered blanket. “From home.” The pillow was pink and small, a little larger than a pin-cushion. “It’s a camp pillow with a double-wrapped pillowcase.”
“Pink!” she exclaimed.
“I’ve included some other things in here for you.” Under the side of the blanket he showed her an array of items meant to cozy up the place. “A little fan. I replaced the batteries last night. I don’t think it should get too warm — the ground is cool, but I’m not sure how much body heat will radiate in there.” The night was still humid for September. She wore salmon gym shorts and a black sleeveless Slaves UK band shirt with two stick figures sharing the same skull.
“All of these we’ll place near your hands. The switch is right here.”
“Thanks!” she said, looking at the next item in his palm. A small plastic dome. He switched it on.
“A light?” she asked.
“A light.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Doc doesn’t know. He doesn’t need to know.” He fiddled with a button on the side. “I don’t know why it’s stuck on purple. It is supposed to rotate through different colors.”
“Groovy! Thank you, Stuart.”
“And this!” It was a shim of plastic loosely connected to a white honeycomb cylinder. “An old MP3 player with a little speaker. I thought you could listen to music while I bury you. Maybe you could use it to tell time before you start using the intercom.” She glanced down at her wristwatch. “I’ll need about five songs to drag up the big trash cans of dirt and topple them into the grave.”
“Five. Got it,” she said. “Doc doesn’t know about this, too?”
“No. He has terrible taste in music. Listens to Genesis. I loaded this with The Spectres, a psychobilly band from Seattle. I thought your sense of humor would appreciate it. The first track is ‘Scratchin’ at Coffin Lids.’”
“Yes!”
“Do you know the band?”
“I know psychobilly. I should have worn my Cramps shirt.”
Stuart beamed.
“Okay, now the most important piece of equipment of all.” He brought out the cube of yellowed plastic that looked like an old baby monitor. “The intercom. I’ve been worried about this part. You won’t be able to reach it if it slips down toward your feet. So I’ve attached to the bottom of it a long piece of red cord that we can drape around your stomach, chest and legs. And in addition, I’m going to tape the unit to your hand with surgical tape.” He placed the receiver in her hand. “Try it. Make sure to press the button before you talk.”
“I know, I know.”
“I’m serious! There’s a sequence to this. Press the button, do a little nod, then talk, nod once more, then let go of the button.”
“Can I try it?”
“Yeah! But not too much. Someone might spot us in the dark, think it’s a trick, and that would be one less savior.”
She lifted the receiver to her chin. The oak-leaf tattoo on her forearm fluttered a little as she squeezed the button. She nodded at Stuart and closed her eyes in the dark. She spoke softly, “Someone want to get up here —” but before she finished the sentence, she gaped with laughter, her eyes the size of casters, and even her laughter sizzled off in the tin wash of the voice effect. “That’s awful!” she yelled, and the fizzy trail of ‘awful’ reverberated with a hiss.
Stuart laughed and grabbed at the intercom. “Shh! You have to let go of the button!” Her thumb popped up between the nest of his fingers and released the button.
“That just sounds wicked!”
“I dialed the effect down as much as I could. There’s not much of a range.”
“Stuart, no one’s going to come.”
He looked down into the coffin for an answer but couldn’t find anything. He was still holding her hand over the intercom and the second had passed for a natural letting go. He needed to grab something else, so he used the red cord lashed to the receiver for a swap. “Someone will come.”
He looked at her. She was still smiling at him in inquiry. She bit her bottom lip.
“I can change the pitch a little remotely. I’ll make it better. I think someone will come.”
She pursed her lips, dropped her head an angle. “Mm.” Her chin crinkled.
“There are so many people walking around here, Veronica,” he nodded. “You just have to talk to them. Call them to you.”
“Okay,” she squinted in suspicion. She didn’t look away. She wanted something more. Stuart worked at the cord in his hands, looping it loose and free.
“Ready?” she asked.
Stuart positioned the coffin in the trench and turned on the little dome camping light. The space illumined in purple glow. He pulled at the middle of the blanket to smooth out the folds for her back. He switched on the little cicada-wing fan and placed it next to the MP3 player on one side. The lining of the blanket curled over, the space was so tight, and this he folded back upon itself. The intercom was placed on the other side, with rings of red cord wedged between it and the coffin wall. The little camper pillow was placed at the top, pink and smooth as taffeta.
“My bed for the night,” she said. He looked up at her. She crouched down, put her palms on the edge of the sides and swung into the coffin as if it were a kayak. Stuart pulled at the sides of the blanket to keep it from folding over again. She was as tight as a pike. She looked like a figurine in the light, a purple cherrywood santos, her legs straight and kissed together.
“Now everything is within touch, right?”
She looked into the sky and felt for the fan and then the radio at her side, and for the intercom on her left hip.
“Oh!” Stuart disappeared from the arrow-slit of open sky, and after rifling around a duffel bag, returned to grab her hand. The stretch of skin between her thumb and finger was so smooth. He wrapped a strip of surgical tape around the back of her wrist and the base of the intercom. “Now, if this gets loose,” he was saying as he poured the red cord over her midsection, waist and hips and up and down her left arm, “just use your fingers to pull back the receiver.”
“You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?” she asked.
“It’s just the most important piece. That’s why I think you should keep the light on.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Okay.” He surveyed the space. He remembered to check the bracelets. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Let me try the intercom one more time.” He grabbed her hand and pushed down on her thumb. A blip of breathy static issued across the park. A bead of sweat dropped off his nose and splashed on the inside of her elbow. He quickly smeared it dry with his fingertips. “Okay, can you feel the fan?”
“Yes, Stu!” she laughed. “Let’s do this!” Three feet in the hole, her teeth and big eyes looked infrared in the purple light.
“Okay.” He remembered to check the bracelets. “You’re comfortable?”
“Yes!”
“The blanket’s not folding up beneath your back, is it? Nice and flat?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He looked up and down the space of the coffin. “Okay. I’ll be out here. I’ll do something about the effect.”
“You’re not being very scary, Stuart.”
“I know, just making sure the experiment goes as planned.”
“Close the coffin lid, Stuart. I’m getting hungry.”
“I can go get you—”
“No, Stu, I was just kidding.”
“Okay.”
“I’m ready. Let’s do this. I want to see how it goes. I thought about what I’m going to say last night.”
“Good. Music on?”
She hit play. The first chords of “Scratchin’ at Coffin Lids” tested the tiny speaker and the train-beat snare filled the narrow confines.
“Leave the light on?” he asked.
“Lights off,” she said, and clicked off the switch. It was impossibly dark. Not even a hallucinated afterglow. Buried me down in the ground so deep, the band played.
Stuart disappeared once more. A skinny trapezoid of wood preceded his return.
“You’re good?”
“Yep.”
“Want to say anything?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, I’ll see you soon.”
He could see her teeth again.
He took the leading edge of the lid and lined it up on the side. Nobody can hear the sound as I’m six feet underground, and he shut her in with an unintended clap as the cover fell to the other side. Trapped inside within, with the darkness closing in. The music was muffled. The lid hadn’t cleared the rim at the top. He formed a fist out of his shaking hand, held it a second over the pinewood and popped the lid into place harder than he wanted. The music stopped at Good Lord it’s getting hard to — He evaluated the stillness of the coffin. A car horn in the distance. The low bass wobble of a loose sedan on S. Union Street. He stood up and wiped his dirty hands on his black shorts.
The first trash can of dirt was under the dogwood trees between the park and the bike path. He dragged its caught wheels over the grass and tipped it over into the grave. A doughy pile of dark wet loam fell in on itself across the foot of the coffin, rolling into the black creases at the sides. The three-quarter moon lit the edges of torn paper clouds, and he could see his work. He knelt down and pushed the fibrous, twiggy dirt into the creases like a potted plant.
“They Won’t Stay Dead” was the next song, and after that “Howlin’.” The songs aren’t long, but the coffin was as still as a beam and silent. Why was it completely silent? The foot of the coffin was tucked in and buried with the first trash bin and Stuart rose from the shallow grave and peered across the meadow. At the far end of the dog park a woman followed her loping yellow Labrador. It coughed as much as it barked. Stuart could see his work, which meant he could be seen. He had considered erecting a construction light and donning a municipal yellow vest in the overt covert methodology of vandals. In the 21st-century men and women have learned to take their crimes out into the light because with surveillance the dark had become too risky, and the tedium of everyone’s daily toil was a far better cover.
Stuart wondered if being shut down would be such a terrible advent. He looked out to the street below. Couples followed each other silently along S. Lee and S. Union in the automation of date night, swinging their arms on some invisible axel. He watched a man on a bike sprint into the tunnel, and from the side it looked like he had passed through the wall.
The doctor didn’t know what his assistant was doing. In the backseat of his car through the tinted back windows he watched through stage binoculars. “What are you doing?” Doc popped out, issued a sharp whistle. His assistant bent over to clutch the shovel and grabbed the handle of the empty first bin and dragged it back down the slope as loudly as morning. He estimated she was already listening to “I’m Your Zombie.” Stuart had to hurry.
He pulled up the second bin, tipped it over and filled in the sides with less dirt. “This is stupid,” he thought, sweating into the grave. He rose from the diminishing trench with the shovel, and wheeled the second empty bin down the slope, staking the shovel into the pebbled sand next to the bike path as percussively as a knife strike. He yanked hard on the third bin and zigzagged with its broken wheel back up to finish the grave. He spread the dirt over the head of the inert coffin.
The doctor ran up behind him with the shovel. “What are you doing? First you’re too slow and now you’re throwing everything around.” The doctor knelt down. “Help me.” They spread the dirt evenly to a flat soft finish and rolled the ready sod back over the fill. The doctor paced out 15 steps toward the waterfront and sheathed the blade in the grass, its handle vertical as a signpost. “Gravedigger” was the last track. They hurried back to the car. Doc sat in the back with his phone and laptop behind the tinted window and Stuart took the driver’s seat with the window open.
All was quiet. Couples marched in lockstep. Stuart could see the woman with the white dog, ticking back up S. Lee. They looked as if they were on a tabletop horse race, mechanized.
“Why is she not saying anything?”
“Did you test the intercom?”
“Yes, we tested the intercom.”
“I know. I heard you.”
Minutes passed by in silence. A man stood at the entrance to the tunnel.
“Why is she not saying anything?”
“Relax,” urged Doc, “She has at least five hours of breathing space.”
“One to seven. You said one to seven hours.”
“It’s at least five. We want her to express fear, recall?” Doc turned in his seat to look back through the rear window. “What took you so long?”
“We had to get the blanket right.”
The man at the entrance to the tunnel stood still. His silhouette against the light of the tunnel blotted out any distinguishing features, any mark of recognition or personal significance, just a human post at the entrance of a tunnel at the north end of a park in which the shining teeth of a woman and her narrowly confined body were buried and sodded over in a trench.
He was an insignificant man.
Some don’t know it. Most don’t know it. Someone depends on them, a little, the salt of them electrifies their part of the great daisy chain of a self-important species, or they serve some transient essential function in the subroutine of a larger system, economic or political, the last remaining systems of any regard. Someone has to key in the data for someone to project to a team of concurring others before the enterprise succumbs to its own gestating irrelevance. This insignificant man was well on his way for a double latte and a box of moisturizing tissues, when in the tunnel he saw it: the unmistakable, nerve-pinching sensation of a glance allotted to him. Eye contact. That it was from a young woman should have invigorated him — such a glance can gussy up the spirit to whole new dynamics of body circulation. He could purchase from a single look a couple more years to tack onto his life span. Such a look will sustain a man for days, will haunt him pleasingly at night as he assures himself she must have seen something. Such a look will yolk the fodder of a long and wistful conversation at a bar with old chums. But this look had snapped from an animal sense of a perceived threat. She stepped out of the way. He could have luxuriated in the idea of being a dangerous man, some tough nugget or real hard case of a man treading the dark alleys of his share of Gotham. But he didn’t feel like it. She had no reason to fear him. He was on a path to a warm cup of coffee and box of tissues. He couldn’t hurt a fly. She had no reason to fear, or to acknowledge him at all. He was an insignificant man on a shopping trip, and he resented her for trivializing his Thursday evening. He stopped in the middle of the path outside of the tunnel. The most he could claim is a minutes-long, two-foot-square reservation in the time-space continuum. A cyclist passed through. He only swerved a little from the man in the middle.
The binoculars paused on the man before Stuart dropped them to his lap. “She’s not saying anything.”
They heard a voice, or the simulacrum of one.
“Stu…” It issued with a long, trailing vowel, pitch-bending and phase-shifting.
“Stu…”
Doc was bemused. “What is she doing?” Stuart scanned the park.
“Ahem,” the voice continued. “There are two men sitting in a car on South Union Street who like to conduct strange, sick experiments on young ladies.”
“Jesus!”
“They’re probably slumping in their seats right now.” This was true. “Isn’t that so, Doctor?” The pitch of her voice rose a half octave.
The man standing at the entrance of the tunnel looked to the dog park. The effect on the voice occluded the validity of its contents. It was a car stereo, nothing more, a music he did not recognize or seek to understand.
Still, Stuart noticed, “That man remains.”
The man at the entrance to the tunnel had lost all inertia on the hook of a reckoning. The swapped-out barista would not notice if an insignificant man failed to appear in line. Every box of tissues, every shelved item in every store sits in an eternity of motionless circulation. In the photographic stills of a security cam, purchased boxes never leave.
He could actually hurt a fly, he thought. The next person that approaches his entrance of the tunnel he could lunge for. That’ll give them something to swerve. He could give her something to look at. He should start wearing black denim. Big shit-kicking boots. His footprint should be bigger. He has the cash. He should buy that big honkin’ pickup. Modify the engine. Split the muffler. Conceal and carry with a bulge. Raise your right hand — I solemnly swear. But he’s past the age. He remains, standing there, inert and irrelevant, listening to a voice that passes through him.
“Stu…”
“What’s her heart rate?”
“It’s fine. Flat and steady. She’s having fun with this.”
“She’s not going to get anybody to…”
Doc brought up the telescopic lens of his camera. “Look at that.”
Stuart brought up the binoculars.
“Up by the tunnel.”
“He hasn’t moved for ten minutes.”
A neck tattoo, thought the man at the entrance to the tunnel. The moon had dissolved into a thick orange chowder of city light. Something flashed in the west. I could blow shit up, thought the man. Vigilante style. The Texaco tanks off route 29. The circuit court. Thunder.
“Are you kidding me?” asked Stuart. Doc looked at his watch. “It’s going to storm on our buried victim? This night?”
“35% chance,” said Doc.
“Doc, no one’s going to come if it’s pouring. No one’s going to be… entreated to dig up a buried woman with the voice of Damien.”
“Stu…” the voice persisted. The effect dispersed any intended tone into a horror of trailing static. He couldn’t tell if she was having good fun or desperately pleading.
“How’s her heart rate?”
“It’s fine.”
“Can I look?”
“It’s fine!” the professor laughed, pulling the monitor away.
A crack sounded over the speakers. Another. They were hits, distorted and pinched into high treble by the condenser.
“Those are hits, or kicks,” said Stuart. Thuds of exploratory kicks on the close inner walls and low ceiling. The streets, S. Lee and S. Union, were dead. “I’m turning the converter off.”
“Look —” Doc had his lens trained on the entrance of the tunnel.
The man was facing the speakers.
“Come for me.”
Stuart swiped off the effect.
“Rescue me.” It was pure again, no longer squealing and tinny and strafing the block with cutting metal. This was a voice alive, a musical one, no giddy pop song, but a deep, exotic, provincial score.
“I will tell you where I am.”
The speakers vibrated in subbass intimation, those big discs throttling behind the mesh with a voice near midnight, disembodied, speaking unwittingly to someone close.
“I am in the middle of the park.”
A prank, the man thought. He looked around him. Couples ran from King Street as lightbulbs of raindrops plummeted from the lowered sky and singly exploded across the park. The first volley of an impending storm stopped as quickly. Leaves were left stirring in the hush of a warning.
Doc and Stuart pushed their lenses out of the windows. It became still again. The interval between flash and rumble was still long and diffuse.
“If anyone is listening,” said the voice. The speakers exploded with three sharp reports of kicks, hard kicks. “I am trapped in the middle of the park. I need your help.” The man turned his head from street to park and back again. He wondered, Is anyone hearing this? Am I the mark?
“In the center. I’m here in the grassy middle,” said the voice. “This is part of a cruel and twisted experiment to see if anyone will help a stranger in distress, and I have been put in distress.”
The man watched a dog walker and two wolfhounds walking quickly down S. Union. The leashed man looked toward the trees containing the speakers, but he and eight legs of dog centipeded off in a scurry. The insignificant man looked back to the middle of the park. The voice spoke to him. Its vibrating hum timed perfectly with his standing there. He looked up to the speakers hanging in the tree.
“I will tell you where I am. Please come.” The words held long, the diaphragm of the speakers trembling in the warble. The man looked to the middle of the park, straining to see in the dark.
“I am in the middle of the slope. You will find a wooden post in the grass.”
The man took two demonstrative steps into the open meadow to convince and commit himself. Stuart fixed the binoculars on the edge of the half-opened window, sweating into the eye cups. Doc checked the weather and they didn’t dare one hexing word between them. The man took out his phone. “Shit,” they said. He pressed for the time. When the numbers faded he stared into the black glass. This was a definite thing happening, and it was happening to him. So much of his adult life had been burnt in the circuitry of adjunct entertainment. He was always a part of a national audience; he belonged to million-strong events — and for all the drubbing in fly-swarm pixelation he had been convinced like everyone else that all small, anomalous experiences alone are meaningless. In this backwards state all these years he had been dying on the inside.
But this was speaking to him, and to him alone.
“There is a post, a stick in the middle of the slope,” the voice intoned. He walked toward the middle.
“I am held captive. It is all part of an experiment,” the voice repeated, “to see if a stranger will help someone in distress. It is perfectly safe to rescue me. I am in the center of the park. In the middle is a post.”
The man was holding the post. It was a shovel. He tilted it toward him until it fell into his other hand. He took it up.
“The post in the middle of the field marks where I am. Just walk up the slope a little, find the bed of uneven grass, pull up the sod, and dig. The soil is loose. I am down here.”
..
Once the last song had elapsed, Veronica had turned on the little purple light. Above her she could see a little split in the bottom of the lid, a crack, little chevrons of flaking wood unclasping like little jagged fingers. She raised her forehead to the lid and peered down the length of her purple shirt, purple shorts, and purple legs. She inspected. Just the one crack above her face. She switched off the light. She reasoned that the lid had sustained the heaviest of the pressure and held. She thought to lie there in repose for a while. She thought in sensory deprivation and in such a state she would be tremendously introspective. She thought of the nine-piece puzzle she had bought her little niece. She thought of the construction of coffins. Are there any shaped like tubes or torpedoes or little space pods? She thought that would be something to look into down the road. She wondered if now would be the time of recalling memories lost in the wash of repeating years, Tuesdays and Wednesdays that always stayed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, filling in for themselves. This is the perfect time for life passing before one’s eyes, but nothing surprising came to mind. The sawdust made her sneeze, and she hit her head against the crack, cried, “oh!” and laughed at the smarting pain.
She thought it would be fun to mess with Stuart. She turned the intercom toward her and pressed the button. She smiled at the thought of Doc freaking out at the mention of their names. She wondered if Stuart had turned off the voice modification.
She felt a quick run of sweat or water race across her forehead. She wondered if the lid was leaking. She turned on the light, carefully slid her right arm up her chest and slid her fingers across the surface of her forehead. In the purple light, with her fingers so close to her eyes, it was tough to tell if it was water or blood. Maybe she had cut herself. She tapped one of her fingers on the tip of her tongue. Yep, she cut herself.
She thought it was as good a time as any to start making her appeals. Stuart better have turned off the stupid effect. She heard the tectonic rumble of the closest thunder coming for her through the ground. She turned off the light to listen. In abject darkness a rolling bead raced into her right eye and she closed them both — and why not? There’s nothing to see. She wrinkled her nose and tried to squeeze the glob from her eye.
She kept making appeals, giving directions. She decided to reveal it was part of an experiment, just to piss Doc off a little, and because it really was a cruel and twisted experiment, but also because she was getting hot and she thought it might help. She redirected the fan a little to blow a stream of air up the side of her shirt. She gave more directions to anyone who would listen. She heard rumbles, deep sonic earth adjustments, and cracks of wood.
She recalled an article about avalanche victims trying to figure out which way to dig. Opposite the spit on their cheeks: clever. The blood ran on her forehead in all directions. Please. This is so stupid.
She had heard a rumble or thumps or hits above her. She had thought to keep her eyes closed. Strikes of a shovel. She thought now it was getting really hot, and she could hear the wood was splitting. The loudening shovel had sensitized her. The last twenty minutes of a transcontinental trip is the longest.
She had thought, This is it, when the point of the shovel hit the lid. She anticipated the figure of her savior.
Doc was busy recording vital signs when Stuart launched from the car. The storm held, and couples were doggedly returning to King Street in single file. Stuart swerved into a passing cyclist, and she caromed into the side mirror of a pickup. He automatically apologized and reached for her arm, but she sprinted like a racer down the street, elbows up. He ran up the slope to the grave.
She had waited long enough. The sounds of the city were obviously just outside the door. She kicked the lid. She thumped it with the heels of her palms. It budged. She hit it hard and the lid sprung off and a flush of dirt fell into her just before the lid snapped back on again. Now she really couldn’t breathe, the force of the breaking point seized her and she felt herself ejecting from the box. Her torso sprung out, and she laid back in the dirt. She wiped the blood from her face, peering up through the narrow frame of roots and overhanging sod and into the city-orange clouds silently passing above her. No one was there. The space above her was vacant. She watched the clouds.
She heard running footsteps. Stuart peered over the edge on all fours.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”