(1)
The first thing that you notice is that you're alive.
You don't remember what happened, but it...
(1)
The first thing that you notice is that you’re alive.
You don’t remember what happened, but it must not have been good: the realization that you’re alive comes as a surprise. Well, that can’t be a good sign.
It’s dark. Like, perfectly dark. You are lying on your back on a hard flat surface and you cannot even tell if your eyes are open, it’s so dark. Everything hurts. Your head, your legs. There is something very close above your face. You can hear your own shallow breath filling the air around you.
Look, it isn’t hard to figure this out.
You’re awake. You’re alive. You’re in a coffin.
You have the worst headache of your life. Something like a really bad hangover mixed with a migraine. You’re thirsty and hungry. And you’re trapped in a fucking coffin.
There’s nothing in your pockets, which isn’t surprising. It’s difficult just to get your hands to them in the narrow confines of the box, your elbows banging against the thinly-lined sides, but your pockets are flat and empty. No lighter, no multitool, no cell phone or Escape From Coffin kit. Of course.
So you’ve been buried alive, or you’re a zombie, or you’ve been miraculously resurrected. And you’ll just go ahead and die in here, anyway. Fantastic.
You work to bring your hands up to your chest and bang weakly on the lid of the coffin, expecting maybe a slim ribbon of earth to trickle in from above. Instead there is a distant and muffled echoing sound— not even a sound, really, but the wood of the lid reverberates in a way that indicates empty air around it. You bang again with both balled-up fists and the lid above you in the darkness budges slightly and closes again immediately and you roll onto your side and use what leverage you can muster to work your elbow upward and crack open the lid and you snake your fingers out of the opening and let the lid rest on your knuckles which hurts to some degree but you can feel cool damp air outside on your fingertips.
Are you— a vampire?
Channel your best Nosferatu. Push up against the lid as hard as you can. You feel weak and pathetic and the lid only rises about four inches and smacks woodenly against something unseen above it but you manage to squeeze an entire arm out of the opening and the flat of your hand presses against something cool and flat and hard. Marble, maybe. Stone, certainly. A mausoleum.
Well it’s better than six feet of wet dirt. Maybe.
You’re low on energy. You have been since you woke up, or since forever, really. Your sister calls it your recuperative disorder, a term which she would always say quickly as if to establish its medical legitimacy and then pause and cock her head to one side and say with a thin trace of a smile, ‘Laziness.’
Something about your sister…? You remember being in the car with her. Driving down to Grand Rapids, taking her to some meeting or conference or something like that. She always made you drive. It’s not even enough of anything to be considered a memory but it feels important somehow.
Oh god, what if Danni is hurt, too? Or fake-dead, like you?
After fighting against the coffin and the cold marble wall for a while you shuffle your way down to the bottom of the coffin and get your foot out— you’re wearing shoes that feel unfamiliar and you wonder briefly if it’s customary to dress corpses up in new shoes— and you kick out, hoping to make a sound and bring help or to propel the coffin forward and maybe smash it to smithereens somehow magically but instead there is a different sound, the sound of thick metal threaded bolts dragging through stripped stone.
You kick again and the sound repeats. The little plaque or cap or whatever they call the things that they put over the open holes in a mausoleum to seal up the coffin. A few more times and there is a brilliant smashing sound as the cap falls to the ground inside the open chamber behind you. The merest whisper of soft grey light is visible from beyond your feet and the cracked-open coffin lid.
Rest for a while. It’s not like anyone’s expecting you anytime soon.
The air in here is very dry and your eyes feel sore and dusty and your lips are chapped and you are altogether extremely uncomfortable. What now? There’s not enough room to get out of the coffin in here, in this little mailbox slot thing that your coffin is stuck in. You jerk your weight down toward your feet and feel the coffin slide maybe a millimeter or so on hard marble.
And so.
It’s another hour or more before you are out, finally, somehow, standing in a small room lined with unmarked marble caps to coffin slots, your own coffin spilled open on the pulverized remains of your own cap, little windows along the top of the mausoleum letting on to wavering hints of some kind of tree that you do not recognize whatsoever. You are exhausted and spent and the door of the mausoleum is unlocked and you get outside and there is grass, sunlight filtered through a layer of cloud, no birdsong that you can hear, grass and air and weird-looking trees and you are out and possibly undead but you are out.
You have no idea where you are.
DO YOU:
• Find a phone to call your sister.
• Find a person to ask for help.
• Find out where the hell you are.
The first thing that you notice is that you’re alive.
You don’t remember what happened, but it must not have been good: the realization that you’re alive comes as a surprise. Well, that can’t be a good sign.
It’s dark. Like, perfectly dark. You are lying on your back on a hard flat surface and you cannot even tell if your eyes are open, it’s so dark. Everything hurts. Your head, your legs. There is something very close above your face. You can hear your own shallow breath filling the air around you.
Look, it isn’t hard to figure this out.
You’re awake. You’re alive. You’re in a coffin.
You have the worst headache of your life. Something like a really bad hangover mixed with a migraine. You’re thirsty and hungry. And you’re trapped in a fucking coffin.
There’s nothing in your pockets, which isn’t surprising. It’s difficult just to get your hands to them in the narrow confines of the box, your elbows banging against the thinly-lined sides, but your pockets are flat and empty. No lighter, no multitool, no cell phone or Escape From Coffin kit. Of course.
So you’ve been buried alive, or you’re a zombie, or you’ve been miraculously resurrected. And you’ll just go ahead and die in here, anyway. Fantastic.
You work to bring your hands up to your chest and bang weakly on the lid of the coffin, expecting maybe a slim ribbon of earth to trickle in from above. Instead there is a distant and muffled echoing sound— not even a sound, really, but the wood of the lid reverberates in a way that indicates empty air around it. You bang again with both balled-up fists and the lid above you in the darkness budges slightly and closes again immediately and you roll onto your side and use what leverage you can muster to work your elbow upward and crack open the lid and you snake your fingers out of the opening and let the lid rest on your knuckles which hurts to some degree but you can feel cool damp air outside on your fingertips.
Are you— a vampire?
Channel your best Nosferatu. Push up against the lid as hard as you can. You feel weak and pathetic and the lid only rises about four inches and smacks woodenly against something unseen above it but you manage to squeeze an entire arm out of the opening and the flat of your hand presses against something cool and flat and hard. Marble, maybe. Stone, certainly. A mausoleum.
Well it’s better than six feet of wet dirt. Maybe.
You’re low on energy. You have been since you woke up, or since forever, really. Your sister calls it your recuperative disorder, a term which she would always say quickly as if to establish its medical legitimacy and then pause and cock her head to one side and say with a thin trace of a smile, ‘Laziness.’
Something about your sister…? You remember being in the car with her. Driving down to Grand Rapids, taking her to some meeting or conference or something like that. She always made you drive. It’s not even enough of anything to be considered a memory but it feels important somehow.
Oh god, what if Danni is hurt, too? Or fake-dead, like you?
After fighting against the coffin and the cold marble wall for a while you shuffle your way down to the bottom of the coffin and get your foot out— you’re wearing shoes that feel unfamiliar and you wonder briefly if it’s customary to dress corpses up in new shoes— and you kick out, hoping to make a sound and bring help or to propel the coffin forward and maybe smash it to smithereens somehow magically but instead there is a different sound, the sound of thick metal threaded bolts dragging through stripped stone.
You kick again and the sound repeats. The little plaque or cap or whatever they call the things that they put over the open holes in a mausoleum to seal up the coffin. A few more times and there is a brilliant smashing sound as the cap falls to the ground inside the open chamber behind you. The merest whisper of soft grey light is visible from beyond your feet and the cracked-open coffin lid.
Rest for a while. It’s not like anyone’s expecting you anytime soon.
The air in here is very dry and your eyes feel sore and dusty and your lips are chapped and you are altogether extremely uncomfortable. What now? There’s not enough room to get out of the coffin in here, in this little mailbox slot thing that your coffin is stuck in. You jerk your weight down toward your feet and feel the coffin slide maybe a millimeter or so on hard marble.
And so.
It’s another hour or more before you are out, finally, somehow, standing in a small room lined with unmarked marble caps to coffin slots, your own coffin spilled open on the pulverized remains of your own cap, little windows along the top of the mausoleum letting on to wavering hints of some kind of tree that you do not recognize whatsoever. You are exhausted and spent and the door of the mausoleum is unlocked and you get outside and there is grass, sunlight filtered through a layer of cloud, no birdsong that you can hear, grass and air and weird-looking trees and you are out and possibly undead but you are out.
You have no idea where you are.
DO YOU:
• Find a phone to call your sister.
• Find a person to ask for help.
• Find out where the hell you are.
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