Joe blew it, again.

He was having a great time at the bar but had to go blow his entire paycheck on Video Poker. It only took him a half hour to lose it all.

He felt so pathetic he decided he didn’t deserve a ride home from his friends so he told them that he was walking home. He left the bar downtown and headed for his house which was about a 10 mile walk.

It was late at night.

He headed up Taylors Ferry Road, telling himself what an idiot he was as he was kicking rocks. He glanced over at ‘Rose Meadows Mortuary and Cemetery’ up on his left and decided that cutting through there would be a huge shortcut.

There was a layer of fog blanketing the rolling lawns of the cemetery. Grave stones of all shapes and sizes rose from the mist, making him think of miniature skyscrapers like the ones downtown. He was reminded of the money he  just lost. He felt sick and doubled over with disgust and then heaved and gagged and vomited by a tree. He didn’t notice that he had vomited on a grave site.

He jumped over a rhododendron bush, then walked down a slope towards a large laurel hedge that he would have to somehow climb through in order to get out of the cemetery and back to the main road which would lead him home.

Joe heard some laughing and talking over to his right somewhere. He stopped and looked.

By the moonlight, he saw two people with shovels digging and laughing. They stopped and took drinks out of cans. Joe edged a little closer and hid behind a large oak tree for a better look.

They stopped digging and slapped hands with each other. One said:

“Fuck yeah, dog, we know this was a rich ass bitch so lets see what kinda goodies she has for us in there!”

They were going to dig up the corpse and strip it of valuables.

Joe was no angel in society but he was sickened by their plan so in his drunken state he decided he needed to intervene.

He stepped out from behind the oak tree and said, “Knock it off and get the fuck outta here or I’m gonna’ call the cops!”

One of them immediately started running towards him and lifted his shovel in the air. The other one jumped out of the hole in the ground and started running towards him as well. He turned around and ran, then grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 9 then dialed 1 and before he could dial the last 1 he felt a thud on the back of his head and everything went black.

He heard cards shuffling and realized he was passed out in his cozy bed at home. His friends were partying and playing cards in the living room. He smiled. The shuffling noise got louder. He opened his eyes, realizing he was not in his bed at home at all.

It was completely dark. He felt things poking into him all over the right side of his body. The realization hit him like a cold ocean wave. He was in a coffin with a decomposed body and was being buried alive. The shuffling cards noise was dirt, being tossed down on the coffin. The sound became more and more muffled. Joe figured that there was quite a bit of dirt above him now.

He had been stuffed into the coffin and there wasn’t much room to wiggle around with a skeleton next to him. Panic and claustrophobia enveloped him like a suffocating pillow. He couldn’t inhale very much air. He thrashed around and bumped his head against the top of the coffin. Hard. He put a hand on his head, feeling wet and sticky blood.

He pushed with every bit of strength he could muster. Tears were streaming down his face. He noticed he was screaming. He felt the panel above him move ever so slightly and gave it another push with everything he had. He pushed the panel up a bit more and felt dirt falling all over him as he managed to lift and open the panel fully and climb out. He noticed that the two men must have abandoned the re-filling of the hole because there wasn’t much dirt above the coffin. Joe thanked God for whatever happened to provoke them to leave. He let out a cry of joy at his glorious freedom.

His head was pounding so hard. It really hurt but he didn’t care, he ran over towards the big laurel bush on the perimeter of the cemetery and tore a path through it and ran down Terwilliger Boulevard towards home.

Joe got home and told his roommates his story. They didn’t believe him. They thought he just tripped and fell and hurt his head. They all laughed. Pretty soon Joe was laughing too. He played cards with them. Some attractive ladies Brian had brought back from the bar were there too. One of them started giving Joe a neck rub as he laid down a royal flush and took everyone’s money. He drank expensive cognac and smoked some fine herb then retired to his bed with the girl and had amazing sex. He passed out blissfully.

He woke up suddenly in the middle of the night and opened his eyes wide. Something was not right. His bed felt too hard. It was cold. He reached over towards the girl. Her arm felt too hard. Joe was still in the coffin. He realized he had passed out when he bumped his head in there and had just dreamed he had escaped. He cried out and tried to push the top panel. It did not budge. Tremors of reality washed all over him. He screamed as loudly as he could until his throat hurt so badly he couldn’t scream anymore. Then he just cried.

—
©2009 Jeff Mount

George was nervous. He had never played ’seven minutes in heaven’ before. He knew what it was. You got to do whatever you wanted with the other person in a dark closet for exactly seven minutes.

He was to go in there with Angie. He didn’t know much about her but she was better than average looking for a freshman. He had seen her around the hallways at school and had thought about her before.

She didn’t seem as nervous, as she smiled, grabbed his hand and pulled him into the large pitch black closet. The door clicked shut and all was silent except for the muffled hoots and hollers of the party-goers on the other side of the door.

Angie giggled and grabbed both of George’s sweaty hands, then pulled him closer so that their bodies were touching. He could feel himself growing against her abdomen and he began to kiss her.

The kiss was fine at first. Her lips were soft and their tongues danced about playfully; teasing each other. Then, she bit his tongue. Hard.

“Ow, what the fuck?” George grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away, then touched his fingertips to his tongue and felt blood gushing out. She had ripped his tongue open with her teeth.

Angie giggled again. Louder this time. “Sorry about that cowboy, I just can’t help myself sometimes. It just tastes so good!”

“Crazy fucking bitch!” George reached for the door but Angie’s hand grabbed his arm and twisted it back her direction. Her grip was more powerful than George could have ever conceived. In one swift motion, she kicked his legs out from under him and pinned him to the ground with her hands and knees.

Blood continued to pour from the fresh wound. George felt it trickling down his face and he began to gag  as it bubbled in his throat. Angie greedily slurped up the blood from his mouth and face then took a large bite out of his cheek and chewed ravenously on his flesh; giggling and slurping.

George screamed in terror at the top of his lungs. Blood splattered out of his ravaged mouth as the scream escaped it. He thrashed about, managed to get a leg free and kneed Angie in the side. She rocked to one side of his body so that his arm was free and he punched her in the chin with all the strength he could muster. She yelped and retreated towards the back of the closet.

George jumped up, bewildered, and grabbed the handle of the door. He twisted the handle and pushed, but was met with resistance. The party-goers were holding the door shut.

Someone whooped with laughter. “Aw shit, someone is tryin’ to get out before their time is up! You got about 4 minutes left there, lovey-birds!”

Several people were laughing wildly now.

“Let me the fuck out of here this bitch is crazy she’s gonna kill me!” George yelled as loud as he could.

“Pussy!” Someone teased from the other side of the door.

“Yeah, nut up Georgy-boy! Whattaya a homo?!”

More laughter. George panicked and backed up a step with the intent of slamming the door open by forcefully kicking it. When he backed up he felt two cold hands grip his shoulders. Angie giggled and bit into his left shoulder, tearing away a large chunk of skin and ligaments. He could hear a disgusting tearing noise as the flesh was separating from his body. His eyes bugged open with shock and his body began to convulse violently. He kicked at the door as hard as he could but it didn’t budge.

“Whoa, nelly! George is totally pussin’ out!” Someone shrieked with glee. “Help me keep him in there!”

George twisted away from Angie’s grip and heaved his body towards the closet door with every ounce of his waning strength he could draw upon. It was no use; there had to be at least three people on the other side helping to keep the door shut. He slumped to the floor and put a hand over his shoulder to try and slow the bleeding. Angie grabbed his leg and bit hard into George’s Achilles heel. He heard a crunch and felt something snap, followed by the most excruciating pain he had ever experienced. He let out a high pitched scream.

Someone opened the door and George looked up. Adam Randall was there looking down at him. Adam looked different. George tried to stand but the pain was too severe. He started crawling away from the closet towards the front door.

“Keep that fucking bitch away from me!” George pleaded as he scurried hopefully towards the exit. The words gurgled out from his bloody throat.

Several people approached George and grabbed him, then held him in place. The people all looked different than they had before. They almost looked like zombies from a horror movie. George wondered if he was dreaming, or in hell.

“She was gonna kill me!” George managed to say. Nobody seemed to hear what he said so he said it again.

“Not sweet Angie.” Adam said as he approached George. “She just wants to finish the game with you.”

“What?” George was astonished. Did they not see what she had done to him? “Look at me! Look at what she did to me!” He had trouble speaking with his mangled mouth. He was losing a lot of blood and the pain was very bad.

Adam grabbed George off the floor and brought him over towards the closet. “You can’t come out until your time is up.” Adam said in a monotone voice.

Angie slowly opened her eyes and turned her head toward George.

“You owe me 3 minutes.” She said, then giggled. The deranged party-goers eased George back into the dark closet.

—
© 2009 Jeff Mount