Conversations

He awoke.

He opened his eyes.

He sucked in; his nostrils became full of air.

The smell of the room was like wood, rotting wood.

The ceiling was white but filthy.

He turned his head to the side and saw that he was lying in some sort of wooden sided box with no lid.

The old man leaned over and smiled.
“Don’t worry young Sir; you are awake just in time for the funeral. You will enjoy it, as it is after all your funeral young Sir.”

The man’s eyes were dull, wrinkled skin around them. Then he was gone suddenly moving away.
He tried to raise himself – but could not move. His head would turn only slightly but everything below the neck was rigid.

He could not feel anything against his body but by moving his eyes could see that he was dressed in his best Sunday suit. Even the gold pocket watch chain was there. But he did not know if the pocket watch itself was there. And if it was, was the time correct? What time was it anyway?
He opened his mouth to speak but the jaw would not move. The tongue could not feel the teeth either.

The wooden lid suddenly appeared, the hands of the old man on either side of it. Quickly it covered the box entirely.

The sound of the hammering of nails around the lid was deafening.

Then the box started to move after a few minutes. He could hear the sounds of two men laughing and talking.

Inside the box it was now completely dark. The sounds of the men were muffled.

Fear gripped him now as he tried to open his mouth to shout again, but nothing.

An hour passed that felt like ten hours.

It became a little difficult to hear anything after the box dropped suddenly down. His body rose by an inch and then thudded against the bottom of the box as the box hit the ground.

The sound of something hitting the top of the box: thud, thud, thud.

The noise of each thud became quieter as all sound seemed to come to a stop.

Time passed and the air became harder to breath.
And then he could move. He raised his hand to the box top and tried to bang. The sound was so muffled as though there was a great weight on top of the box.

After a few hours his air ran out and he died.
The worms began to eat away at him. Eventually all that was left was the memory in the mind of an old insane man. Who very soon in his mind could not even remember the young well dressed body of the man he had poisoned and put in the coffin.

Meanwhile the body he had removed from the coffin sat and rotted in his sitting room. And he had a conversation about the weather and the TV programs that he watched with his old friend, the coffin carrier.