Something is missing.
The murky toilet booth shimmers in the unsteady throbbing of the bare light bulb overhead. The greasy tiles gleam like so many slippery beetle backs, alive with an electric buzz from the old wiring.
And no matter how many times I look around the tiled cubicle, something is still missing.
Smooth grey walls. Flaking door, supposedly originally white. A roll of brownish toilet paper suspended from a rusty holder. The wet linoleum floor stretches from wall to wall, reminding me of my bursting bladder. But try as I may to convince myself otherwise, something is missing.
The pressure in my lower belly grows to a point where I can hardly stand. I grab the crooked door handle, and for some reason let myself out, unrelieved.
There it is- standing in line with the row of water stained aluminum sinks: the lost toilet bowel. Another one adorns a small pedestal in the middle of the room, this one baby pink and slightly leaning to the right. Or is it to the left? Something in the uncanny perspective of the room makes it impossible to point out what exactly is wrong with the bowel, but it definitely isn’t standing straight.
The room is full of people, so I opt for the less conspicuous one by the sinks. An array of blurry faces hones in on me, planting innumerable red dots on my chest.
Eyes fixed on the floor, I falter towards the pink monstrosity on gelatinous legs. I was aiming for the farther one, but the pedestal seems to posses some kind of bizarre magnetism. And there are too many people between me and the sinks. They barely bother to move a limb. They just stand there, staring. But they seem ready to spring at the slightest provocation. Every muscle in the room is as high strung as a mousetrap snapper arm.
When have I managed to sit down? My pants are still on.
They don’t laugh. Somehow it makes it even worse. The air itself is slimy. Do they have any features, invisible to me in my panic, or does my vision merely fail to grasp that which is not there?
The bowl leans farther left (or maybe it is right, after all). Inch by inch, it’s folding in under my weight until all that’s left is a pile of soggy cardboard. Collapse is inevitable. But what are these thumping sounds from the ceiling? Filthy water starts running down the sides of the pedestal as the world fades out into a pitch black cacophony of thumping and dripping.
A shrill ululating shriek pierces the dark. It plows its way into my unresponsive mind like a horde of deranged pickaxe-wielding goblins. By the time the ringing in my ears ceases, I realize the screaming was mine all along. It's the sore throat that tips me off. The shock kickstarts my brain back into action, and the data it comes up with is disturbing at best. I’m lying on my back on a hard surface, surrounded on all sides by what feels like wooden walls. A small space, probably airtight. Two words spring to mind next: oxygen deficiency. In this case, screaming myself sore did little to tilt the odds in my favor.
My prospects get even gloomier as I contemplate the customary use of rectangular, man-sized containers. My knuckles scream out in protest as my fist hits solid wood. Before I can order it to stop, my head bangs itself in frustration against the wooden floor. Twice.
I try to use the pain as some sort of a focal point to concentrate on, to get myself thinking. But pain provides no clarity. It just hurts. Stupid lying action novels.
My aching brain goes a-maundering, train of thought derailed. I wonder if it was your garden variety chloroform that got me here in the first place. It feels like my entire hard drive was deleted. Could chloroform fry your brain to a crisp? I make a mental note to Google it when I’m out of here. My inner search engine comes up with images of toast and crisp bacon. A small pang in my stomach sends a modest inquiry about the time of the next meal. I politely suggest it shuts the fuck up.
Some tiny sliver of grey matter must have survived, though. There’s definitely someone up there to get the signals from my bladder. The sleepy operator tells it to hold and goes back to its upside-down magazine. Something about bathroom decor, with a hideous pink toilet bowl on the cover.
I can smell damp earth, with mild undertones of decay. I can almost feel things crawling in the dark. If I listened, I know I could hear the worms whispering outside my coffin. I try very hard not to listen. But there it is, all the same. You’re never getting out of here, croaks a tiny metallic voice from somewhere deep inside my head. It must be one big fat worm. It’s a fat-worm voice. I can tell.
Revelling in the slimy giggles of its less fortunate companions, it hisses, Will you break out before we break in? They know I won’t, and their gloating is the screech of rusty hinges on abandoned construction site gates. They surely have a better estimate of when their next meal should be served.
Noseless faces are sniffing at the wet ground, following the aroma of warm sweaty meat. Toothless mouths start gnawing on the coffin’s exterior, ready to penetrate the boards with sheer determination and corrosive saliva.
The proverbial clock is ticking and I am at the exact same spot where I began. And that’s when I start getting angry. Not just annoyed at my helplessness, not bitter or resentful, but outright furious. The blood boiling, seeing red type of angry. Pulsating-temple-vein angry. Woman-scorned angry. Hulk-O-Meter goes spinning angry. You get the gist. Green, buff and linguistically challenged.
Some maggot-infested smudge of primeval ooze just decided that he, or she, could merely slip me a Mickey, pull a Roderick Usher on me, and get away with it. And from where I stand, or rather from where I lie, it looks like said ooze smudge is getting away with it, indeed. Well, the hell they will! By Odin, I’m gonna get out of here and make them pay.
Now, resolve is good and fine, but one can’t go far on resolve alone. Hulked out or not, it doesn’t count till I go Smash. For all the smashing a 100-pounder with the musculature of a starved chicken can do. I make some calculations, and establish smashforce at approximately 0. I can hiss and bitch and slur obsenities like nobody’s business, but last time I checked these are of little value when it comes to crushing coffins. However, I am nothing if not circumspect. Just to make absolutely sure, I put this theory to the test once more. My attack causes serious damage to my air supply. And my morale gets some ricochets. But the walls around me remain intact.
I even try that cool thing Uma Thurman did with her fingers in ‘Kill Bill 2.’ No, not THAT thing. The other thing, the one with the banging. Oh, come on. You get the point.
The only alternative being despair, I struggle to hold on to my anger. I think of telemarketers, reality TV, hippies, morning people and spilled coffee. I think of strangers who want to talk to me about Jehovah, Jesus, Joseph Smith and Ron Hubbard. I think of strangers talking to me, in general. I think of anyone trying to talk to me when I’m reading.
It helps. So does the damned itch at my right ankle. I try to reach it with my hand, a tricky maneuver when you’re lying on your back in a tight space. The throbbing pain in my muscles makes it nearly impossible.
Something about that itch seems vaguely familiar, though. It’s almost as if some idiot stuck a small object in my sock. Like I do when I go jogging and don’t feel like taking a purse for my key…
I knew my stupid stubbornness would pay off some day. Had I given in to my friends and bought a pouch… I might have had a pouch with me right now. With a flashlight on my cellphone, and a cellphone, and maybe some water… Oh, shut up! You and your damned logic…
The thought of water makes my bladder whine.
Driven by newly found motivation, I manage to turn on my side and fold my right leg up in a contortionist-worthy series of jerky wriggles. A few minutes and a strained shoulder later, the key is in my hand. It’s small, but rather sharp and its pointed tip scars the wood easily. Luckily, the coffin is cheap and very simple, a mere cuboid made up of thin wooden panels. A custom-designed thick mahogany affair would have hardly been impressed with a tiny apartment key. Thank Marduk for thrifty douchebags.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the shower of tiny sharp splinters, but can do little to protect my face and bare arms. Armed with my little key and a surge of desperate determination, I embark on the battle for my life. No cheesy heroic montage ensues. Stupid lying action movies.
I keep scratching frantically at the panel above me until my shoulder is on fire. Then, carefully, I shake the dust off my face and reach out to feel the crack in the wood with my fingers. It’s so small and insignificant I want to howl with frustration. My breathing becomes labored and my skin is getting stickier by the moment. It takes all my limited mental resources to keep me from going into a panic attack. At this point, digging at the wood is a matter of keeping myself busy, holding on to the remnants of my sanity. Futile as it starts to seem, it’s still better than leaving myself at leisure to think. Or leaving my bladder at leisure to burst.
I shut my eyes, hoping to shut off my brain with them, and get back to work. I try to keep breathing and thinking to a minimum and use my arms alternately, letting each arm rest until the other one starts screaming with agony. I don’t know how long I have until I run out of air, but it doesn’t matter, since I have no watch to mark the passage of time. I don’t dare to slow down, but my cramping muscles won’t go any faster.
When the first grains of soil start tumbling, the key slips from my sweaty numb fingers with a wave of uncontrollable excitement. Excitement momentarily turns into terror as I grasp the possibility of getting buried in earth inside my coffin. I try to widen the chasm with my fingers, only to get them adorned with a glorious array of scratches, a reward for my stupidity. After a terrifying minute of fumbling blindly in the dark, the key is back in my hand. I start another chasm, parallel to the first one and about half an inch apart.
The idea of suffocating, my mouth and nose filling with earth, my eyelids straining under the pressure of millions of tiny particles, gets me scratching at the wood with maniacal speed. Before long, the thin trickle of earth is split in two.
I tell myself there are no white slimy maggots among the specks of soil, but all of a sudden my world is swarming with tiny living grains of soggy rice. The insides of my ears and my nostrils start to itch with phantom crawlers.
They’re in your lungs now, love, croaks the fat worm as my throat tightens with revulsion.
The next two grooves I manage to dig are too shallow to let in any soil, and I’m nearly out of time. I’m growing increasingly lightheaded and my throat is hot and dry. If I don’t act now, I’ll pass out. Or worse, I’ll remain conscious as my body runs out of air, helplessly feeling myself suffocate.
I push with my knees against the lid with all my might, to no avail. The thin stretches of wood between the grooves remain intact. I pull my knees against my belly, lifting both feet off the floor but holding them as far as I can from the lid. I contract my leg muscles, mentally focusing on an image of a tightly pressed spring. Gathering up the pitiful remains of my energy, I propel my feet upwards. The mild crunching sound induced by the impact is Scandinavian folk metal to my ears.
I kick at the lid again and again, ignoring the hail of wood slivers and crumbling soil. I’m not sure when I notice that one of my feet had driven through the lid. The pumping adrenaline drives away the pain and it’s not until much later that I discover the bloody scratches and torn patches of skin on my ankle. For now, there is only the kicking, and the splinting wood, and the falling earth.
Call it instinct, intuition, or divine intervention, but suddenly I know it’s time. I take in one last breath, as deep as the remaining air permits, shut my eyes, mouth and nose as best I can, twist my entire body and push myself, headfirst, towards the gaping hole in the lid. Directed by touch only, I pray I will fit through the narrow opening.
For one panicked second my left shoulder hits the edge of the hole. My head squeezed between layers of loosened soil, parted for mere seconds with my right hand as I dig my way through, I can’t gasp or scream. Desperately thrashing with all my free limbs like a stranded fish, it’s all I can do to keep from inhaling. I pull up with all my might, pushing at the coffin’s floor with my feet. The protruding board gives with a snap and a sudden wave of violent pain washes through my injured shoulder. I keep digging blindly and frantically, oblivious to the jagged shards of wood tearing into my flesh.
The next few minutes go by in a dazed blur. Gnarled fingers of dislocated roots and small rocks cling to my hair and torn cloths. My ears ring with whispering voices seeping through the soil, but I can no longer discern the words. Flashes of violent color flare beneath my weary eyelids.
I don’t know when my overstrained stomach muscles finally give in, but my pant legs suddenly grow wet and hot. And then cold.
Don’t breathe, don’t open your eyes, don’t think. I cling to the mantra like a priest to a rosary, savoring the touch of its beads, meditating on each section in a desperate effort to save my immortal soul. Don’t breathe, the beads click against one another, don’t open your eyes, don’t think... click… don’t breath… click click...don’t open your eyes...chink... don’t think… click…
The clicking beads, and the ticking clock, and the whispering worms become one. A ghastly symphony, tempoed by the beating of my heart. It reaches a crescendo with a flare of crimson pain, as a fingernail breaks. Then another. When my cheek is torn by a protruding rock, it’s but another minor discomfort to add to the list.
A maniacal laughter fills my brain, threatening to escape through my clenched teeth. Will I come out of it a vegetable? Seems to befit the situation, sprouting from the ground as I am. I better not be a reddish, then. I hate reddish. It’s a bad joke. Don’t laugh. But the lunatic inside my skull just can’t help it. My jaws hurt with the effort of holding it in.
Truly gone fishing, chants the big fat worm.
They must have taken her marbles away, a choir of its diligent minions promptly intones in reply.
Up yours, Worm, your honor, I mentally spit back. The madman in my head stomps its feet in merriment, the peals of its laughter agonizingly resonating from the walls of my skull. Crazy prick.
Is this six feet? Were my captors exceptionally assiduous, deciding to go for more? I beg The Forces That Be to let the bastards’ indolence match their parsimony. And all the time I keep clawing at the ground like a rabbid mole. Can moles even get rabies?
Do cats eat bats? Asks the Master Worm in return. My skull nearly explodes with its demented inhabitant’s burst of laughter. Now all the worms are chanting, repeatedly. Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?
Their voices become the rustle of leathery wings and the world turns upside down, and then right side up, and suddenly I don’t even know if I’m digging in the right direction. What if I’m just going deeper and deeper in? What if I die not even knowing I was my own undertaker? Come to think about it, I’m not sure I’d want to know I was my own undertaker. Overflowing with terror as I am, there’s still some space left for good old dejection. the earth beneath my closed eyes is getting moist.
My fingers have lost all sensation by now. If I broke any more of my nails, I’m not aware of the fact. Mechanically, unthinkingly, they just go on repeating the same set of motions over and over again. As for my legs, I don’t even know where they are.
Suddenly, the fingertips of one hand meet no resistance. At first, I think they have just gone even number. Maybe some particularly sharp rock merely severed them, with me being none the wiser. Perhaps the worms are feasting on them as I think these very words. My conjectures are answered with total silence, no less unnerving than the sniggering voices. The stains before my eyes lighten up slightly and a chill goes through my scalp.
I am not going mad, more a prayer than a statement, really. With equal parts of self-loathing and self pity, I sense the clots of dust clinging to my snot and tears. I am not going mad…
My face is cold. And my hair is moving around it in the light breeze. The air smells of soot and sewage. And I can breathe it into my grateful lungs. Only a small gulp in a time, swallowing grains of salty earth with each breath. But breathing nonetheless. I slowly open my eyes. The world is gray and filthy. And lovelier than ever. I have passed out still buried in the dirt up to my chest. Ten minutes earlier, and I’d have never come to.
As I dig myself out the rest of the way I get a chance to observe my surroundings. These globules of wild boar diarrhea never even bothered to take me to an actual cemetery. I was buried in an empty lot outside the city between a dump and a bunch of crumbling building whose construction had never been completed. The gray cement skeletons sprout out of the gray ground to loom against the equally gray sky- silent, ungainly living dead mammoths, slowly but surely giving in to erosive desperation. Their battle against the elements was lost before it even started.
In lieu of a headstone, a wooden plaque is crookedly protruding from the ground marking what until very recently was my final resting place. A silent scream contorts my filth encrusted features as I read the epitaph. In childish block letters wrought with a simple black sharpie, it reads:
HERE LIES MS. LYVE LEIGH CORPS
SHE WAS A GENUINE PUN IN THE ASS
I read it over and over again as I lie on the ground in front of it, seesawing in and out of consciousness. Which one of them? Which of my acquaintances has finally had one too many of my notorious puns?
They leave me no choice. I’ll have to hunt down every single person I know. No better way to learn what true fear of the dark feels like than when your eyelids are sewn together. I make a mental note to buy some extra string.
