The Mallard God Complex (5)

5. Sit Still

            Dark. Where ever I am, it is dark. There is a caterpillar inching by my face. Or at least it looks like a caterpillar, it’s really too dark to tell. My head throbs incessantly and the air is musty and cold. The caterpillar continues its slow waltz across my vision, stopping every so often to check and make sure no one is following it. They really are a suspicious breed. Caterpillars are one of the many banes of my existence and cause me nothing but strife. Until they become butterflies I would appreciate it if they kindly inched off somewhere far away from me. Whimsy comes at a price I suppose.

            Panic is sitting at the edges of my mind, doing its best to seep into my conscious state and terrify me. My brain has a way of doing that when it’s most needed not to. I think of the butterfly that the caterpillar in front of me will one day become and it momentarily calms me. However, the moment doesn’t last long and I’m hyperventilating. Wherever I am I know two things: It is difficult to move, and very dark. The caterpillar is fortunate enough to have adapted and learned to glow dimly, presumably to light the area in front of him. The direction that these facts point is not one to my liking. I shift focus.

When I used to live on the outskirts of Midway my family and I would take trips to a forest. The forest is long gone now, replaced by the desert which all too often accompanies industrial advancement. Nothing has grown there in a great many years. One reactor leak too many, and suddenly the flowers stopped popping up. That never stopped my family. On those Sunday afternoons me, my sister, and my parents would my sister, my parents and I would load into the old station wagon and head out late in the afternoon. I’ve had a multitude of doctors assure me that these trips probably only took 2-15 years off of my life, so at least that’s reassuring.

            The forest was large beyond measuring. There, in the trees, were thousands of butterflies. They glided around the air effortlessly, covering the branches with their variety of colors.  It turned the clearing into something out of a painting. The colors were astounding, and I thought then that everything ugly always had a beautiful ending. The sentiment was a nice one, but one which was unfortunately untrue about the rest of the world. It takes a while, but no matter what, the world will turn every optimist into a realist.

            Remembering the butterflies calms me, until I hear rumbling earth above me. I move my arms and try to stretch. Instead, I smack my hand on wood above me and the caterpillar falls squirming onto my face. I try to flick it away and my finger comes back slimy. That’s not a caterpillar. In the brief pause before realization I hope desperately to be struck by ignorance, so that I may believe I am simply asleep in a dark room. That’s a grave worm. Well, so much for that.

            The scream that comes out of me is nothing short of primal, and in any other situation would be impressive, but my mouth is gagged and as it turns out, I’m in a grave. I reach to remove it and find a small note tied to my right hand. The gloom is far too dark to read, but I attempt it anyway. When the note opens, a faint greenish glow comes from inside. The words have been written in glowing ink. It’s not very long. The message is succinct and simple: Dear Michael, don’t make a sound and try not to freak out.

The earth rumbles from above me once again. Keeping calm when being buried alive is the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest with toothpicks for crampons. To not freak out is to ignore the basest aspect of my nature, which is to overreact to even the slightest of provocations.  First I remove the gag from my mouth. I breathe in and then breathe out, trying to keep my breaths short as much like on Everest, oxygen is a commodity. I resent the grave worm for taking his share of my precious air. Nasty little fucker.

This can only be the doing of that man. The note is small and contains maddeningly unhelpful advice. All signs point to the intruder from my apartment. The rumbles from above have grown quieter, but I remain silent, following instructions. He’s not coming for me. Why do I even trust this man?! I should be trying to get out.  I pound furiously on the lid of the coffin, but find it only makes a dull thud as it has been packed down by dirt.

            I continue to pound, hoping that someone above can hear me. “Help! I’ve been trapped in here by a madman masquerading as a plot device!” The sound is hollow inside of the small wooden box.  My voice is swallowed up by the dirt-filled cracks in the wood and fed to the darkness. “Can anyone hear me?! Look, this has all been some big misunderstanding! I’m not dead, and I’m most certainly not someone worth being buried alive! I don’t owe anyone any money, my family isn’t rich, I haven’t got anything!”

            My voice reverberates back at me. The grave worm is probably deafened. The thudding of new dirt has stopped from up above. I’m either too deep to hear them or they’ve stopped.  I’m about to shout again when I realize that my time may be short. I do quick mental calculation in my head and find that I should’ve paid better attention in math class. Figuring out how much oxygen I have left is impossible, and I can only assume it to be very little.

            I have seen a movie about a man buried alive before. It was two hours of a man sitting in a dim box, talking to the authorities on his cellphone. They tried to find him for the entire two hour duration of the film (two hours I will never get back) and when they finally dug up the grave, they found that it was the wrong one. Probably not the best thoughts to be having when I’m buried alive, but it passes time. I am going to die down here, all because I had to follow the crazy stranger to tea. It sounds just as strange in my head.

            Still breathing.  Boredom sets in. Time passes very slowly. Suddenly I find that even the presence of the grave worm has become interesting. I watch as it makes little circles around the box, no doubt waiting for me to die so that it may feast upon my flesh. I’m not angry about it, it’s the way of the world, and the world can be cruel.  I rationalize.  It could be worse, I could be stuck in a coffin with a damned caterpillar, and then I would be truly up a creek.  

            As I begin to ponder the hopelessness of my situation and the existential quandaries of the universe there is a tiny thunk directly above my head. A tiny pipe bursts through the lid of the coffin and spews dirt onto my face. It stings my eyes. My immediate reaction is to jolt forward from the shock. I run my head into the pipe and create a new goose-egg to go with the others. Stars flash before my eyes, providing the first light I have seen in hours. Blood trickles from the wound on my forehead, down my cheek, and onto the bottom of the coffin, where the grave worm is waiting, hungrily.

            “Glad I could help friend.” I say to the worm.

            “What? Who are you talking to down there? Don’t tell me twenty minutes of premature burial were enough to send you off the deep end. I mean really, I thought you were made of stronger stuff than that.” The voice is familiar. It echoes through the whole coffin as if it is the voice of God itself. I look back up at the pipe and see that there is a light shining down it. The brightness makes me squint, but  I remain fairly still, avoiding any further head injuries.

            “Are you still down there? Or did I just imagine a voice? Please tell me all of that yelling didn’t cause you to asphyxiate. I’ve already got two bodies to dispose of and I don’t want to add a third. Three is the magic number where it all seems to go wrong. So would you kindly be alive?”

            “Yes, I’m here!”

            “No need to shout, you must be going half deaf down there if that’s your normal volume. Did you know that an enclosed space can magnify your voice by a factor of five, potentially causing permanent hearing… Oh never mind. Hold tight, I’m coming to get you. I imagine these two will have fun digging their own grave!”

            Such a cheerful disposition for a deed which sounds so foul. He’s kidding right? Why would he kill anyone? Then again why would he bury me alive? It all begins to come back. I see my apartment engulfed in flames, precious record player being thrown out a window by an explosion indifferent to prized possessions and  window size. I guess there are things in life that truly can’t be planned for.

            Above me the thumping starts again.