Buried Alive!

As a member of the last generation to have survived total nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Cold War, there’s not much that freaks me out. Bushfires, earthquakes, faraway terrorist bombings, all pretty meh. But when I wake up in a dark space only slightly longer than I am tall, with no memory of how I got there, yeah that’s when I do tend to lose it.

“AAAARGH!” I scream, thrashing against the walls. “YEARGH!” I howl, before trying to bring my panicky breathing under control. It’s totally dark. I strain my eyes, but I can’t see anything.

So I try to lift my hands up to my face, but they bump and drag against the walls. Not rough planks of wood thank God, but is that really good news in these days of steel and carbon fibre and even aircraft-grade aluminium coffins? Oh God, don’t think the C-word. Not the C-word.

“YEEEARGH!” I scream again, and thrash some more. I try to sit up and immediately brain myself on the ceiling. I collapse back again. There’s a pillow under my head but it’s thin, hard, surely not the kind of pillow you’d use to sleep on… unless it was a very long sleep. THE long sleep, as Raymond Chandler once possibly said but I don’t really remember right now because I’m trying not to think of…

The screaming is actually starting to hurt my throat. I lift my hands up to my face, more gently now. If I wriggle around I can actually get onto my stomach, prop up on my elbows a bit. Wait… what’s this… there’s a sort of alcove in the wall here and… yes! Yes my mobile is here!

The dim light from the AMOLED display shows I’m inside a distinctly coffin-shaped… well, room is generous. It’s tiny. I look in the alcove. There’s my wallet, and my passport for some reason.

The phone light cuts out so I press the wake button again. I should unlock the phone and go to a blank web page or something… but then I get a better idea. I work the phone up to my face and then awkwardly tap 000 onto the virtual keypad. I can’t get the phone to my ear so I hit the speaker control.

There’s a single, desultory beep and the phone hangs up. What the hell? How deep do I have to be buried for there to be no connection to the emergency services? Or maybe… maybe I’m already dead. Maybe this is hell. Maybe I’m trapped in my own special, personal, private hell.

So I scream some more and then… oh God horror of horrors… I hear a THUMPING. A terrible, rhythmic thumping from nearby, off to the side. What is it? Giant graveyard rats? Some reanimated corpse, rattling against its own coffin, hoping to splinter its way out and claw into my own little bubble of air and warmth and feast on my juicy tissues? Will there be worms in its eyes? Will the worms go into MY eyes?

By this stage I’m hyperventilating so badly that I can’t get a scream out, and after I’ve lain there puffing like an epileptic locomotive for two or three minutes, the thumping stops. It brings me some measure of peace. I try to control my breathing. I’ve dropped my phone, so I’m blind, but I can somehow still feel there are black spots in front of my eyes.

Maybe I should just give in, let the darkness take me. How much air do I have left anyway? Half an hour? I feel all that dirt, a six-foot column of dirt, pushing down on me, smothering me. I think of dudes in this situation, hardened dudes who smash open the coffin and dig their way to the surface, go down into the town and exact bloody revenge on the people who did this to them… but I quickly realise I’m not one of those dudes.

This is happening. This is really happening. I’m buried alive. The last thing I remember is… the last thing I remember is playing Civilization V until five thirty in the morning. Did I DIE playing Civ V? Is this what’s going to be written on my tombstone, that I was such a no-hoper idiot that I didn’t even know how to put myself to bed but instead sat up all night playing computer games until I had some kind of aneurysm or something?

When the thumping starts up again, I realise I’m not just thinking this, I’m actually screaming it. “NO NO NO!” I’m screaming. “NOT DIED ON THE PC! ON THE TOILET! IN THE GUTTER! ANYTHING BUT ON THE PC!”

It sends me into the biggest panic-fit I’ve ever had. My muscles rage with the effort of it. I’m thrashing like the madman I’ve become, limbs bruising, fingernails cracking, blood flying from my nose.

At last, a final violent kick cracks the seal on the door and I’m tumbled out of my presumed prison to land with a crash in a clean and spartan anteroom. As I sit up and blink in the subdued early-morning mood lighting, that’s when I remember I’m not actually buried alive at all, but staying in a capsule hotel in Japan, in anticipation of attending the Tokyo Games Festival the next day.

“Geez,” says my crazy ex-third flatmate Victor Ninox, poking his head out from a capsule nearby, “you and your jetlag.”