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If Alex was right, and for once he probably was, you’d have
about an hour and fifteen minutes before you ran out of
air. Now that’s the in-a-perfect-world scenario. If you
freaked out at all, and your heart raced even the slightest,
you’d be skying up much sooner. In the box, keeping your
knots tied was tricky. All it took was a minor tug on your
adrenaline and the whole damn sweater would unravel. I
don’t have to tell you what happens next.
This was my eleventh time. From the moment the first
shovelfuls pattered against the other side of the lid, I was
steel. Breathing softly through my nose. Exhaling steady
streams of carbon dioxide through my pursed lips. My
heartbeat a light tremor against my ribcage.
None of this was exact science. There probably was a
mathematical formula for how long it’d take a person to
asphyxiate, like if you multiplied the cubic inches of the
coffin by x and then divided the cubic inches of oxygen a
human needs to breathe by temperature and bodyweight. But
we weren’t mathematicians. An hour and fifteen minutes was
a guesstimate based on nothing more than it sounded legit
when Alex said it.
Alex was far from Einstein, but he was incredibly
convincing. He spoke so matter-of-fact that if he told you
that A.I.D.S was created by space aliens in order to combat
global warming you’d be sold. He’d flip the lock of hair
that always fell in front of his face to the side, squint
his crooked eyes, then spit some far-out idea and you’d feel
ashamed that you didn’t already know. So, even though nine
out of ten he was full of shit, when he told us an hour and
fifteen, it became textbook.
We all agreed that wearing a watch was cheating. You had to
rely on your internal clock, which was your own worst
enemy. Trapped in a dark, claustrophobic space, an hour and
fifteen minutes was a lifetime. But that was the point.
Knowing exactly how much time elapsed faded some of the
fear; the fear that maybe this time no one was going to dig
you up.
None of us went the whole hour and fifteen until around the
fourth try. As a precaution, the first night we buried
Eric, we dug him up after a half hour, thirty minutes he
described as “better than sex.” Eric’s scrunched up face
was usually scarred with a permanent scowl, but on that
night, I’d never seen a wider smile.
When Eric insisted on going first, we were floored and
didn’t protest. He was the least fearless of our group.
He’d always fabricate a million reasons why we shouldn’t
play whatever life-threatening game we invented. With this
he was different. After all, it was his idea.
Using wood from the shed behind his house we constructed the
box in under two hours. If it wasn’t for Eric’s relentless
barking, we might never have finished. While we were
screwing around, throwing nails at each other, he was
hammering. Usually Eric was the laziest, but this time he
was cocks down, the most determined.
He was also the tallest so when he lied down in the narrow
box he had to turn his ankles inwards to fit. I couldn’t
imagine having to deal with that, but he wasn’t concerned
with comfort. He was scared shitless.
Except for shadows, Eric’s face was two shades away from
being translucent. His red hair even lost some of its
color, as if terror had sucked all the vibrance out of it.
We gave him one last chance to back out. He cleared his
throat and stuttered, “Not a whore’s chance in hell.”
The last time I went under, life started slipping away
around the hour mark. The box stunk of my warm breath, bile
mixed with the chicken salad I had for lunch. A blanket of
death smothered my face. I slipped into a tunnel and dreamt
of floating on a raft in a lazy river. My skin tingled and
from the waist down I was numb. When I opened my eyes, I
was cowering in a bathtub with Gloria pressing a warm
washcloth to my back.
This time I was going under for the full hour and fifteen.
Normally that meant that in a little under an hour, the
three of them would start digging. But not this time.
Right now, the boys would be wandering into the woods and
Gloria would be stomping an American Spirit into the dirt
above me.
Gloria. She frightened me the most. I knew when she slept
with me that she was only trying to lash out at Alex. Not
that I hadn’t thought of that first. Out of all the ways I
could think of to make Alex hate me enough to consider
murder, sex with Gloria was the most appealing.
Gloria wasn’t pretty, but she carried a danger that made her
desirable. When we first met, she was just another bookish
misfit, with oversized glasses and stringy hair. She spoke
in poetry and doodled fairies on her wrists with colored
markers. Dirt stained her hands and she smelled like a poor
person. She wore chalk-dust instead of makeup and painted
her lips with dollar store chap-stick. When Alex brought
her into our circle I could never have imagined the
wickedness that boiled under the surface.
Tonight she was wearing the same tattered, eye-sore yellow
dress as she always did. It hung sloppily off her shoulders
and was covered in cigarette burns and coffee stains. A wad
of tissues stuck out from both front pockets. The left was
for new, the right was for used. We were in the middle of
nowhere and she was adamant against littering.
Despite all this, Gloria brought a fever to the bedroom that
no girl could match. She’d shout out the wrong name and
then paralyze your limbs with a psychotic stare. She had a
bear-trap between her legs and knew the right moment to snap
it shut. The two of us fought a relentless battle for
control and it was always a massacre. Afterwards, while I’d
struggle to catch my breath, she’d exhale smoke in my face.
I was thankful it wasn’t fire.
After sleeping with me failed to shove Alex off the ledge,
Gloria moved on to Eric. I heard second hand that the three
of them were on the subway coming home from a party when it
happened. Alex was telling another one of his exaggerated
stories and before he could give up the climax, Gloria
unbuttoned Eric’s jeans and went to work on his piece. Alex
dragged Eric into the next car and slammed his face into a
row of seats.
Eric fell hard for Gloria. When I warned him he was already
in her web with her fangs deep in his jugular. She’d show
up places on his arm, knowing that Alex and I would already
be there. After a week she went back to me, then to Eric,
then back to Alex, completing the slut circle and giving
everyone’s rage a focus. She became the villain. I have to
admit, it was brilliant.
Gloria sleeping with Eric infuriated Alex. Alex and Eric
had been inseparable since the fourth grade. I was always
on the outside with them so Eric’s betrayal stung more than
mine ever could. This meant I had to up the ante. Sleeping
with Gloria wasn’t enough. I needed Alex to catch us in the
act.
One day Gloria and I snuck into his apartment while he was
working. When his car pulled into the driveway we
immediately engaged in the most hardcore of acts on his
bed. He entered and there we were, violating his
sanctuary. He screamed and threw everything he could wrap
his hands around. Gloria and I continued unfazed until an
ashtray slammed into the back of my head.
If my turn were next, this would’ve been perfect. But it
wasn’t. It was Gloria’s and she couldn’t have Alex be
angrier with me. She needed his rage focused solely on
her. If I was the enemy and he chose to leave me buried too
long, then the game was over. The three of them would have
to find a new game and this one was too much fun.
The way we had it timed, it’d take all three of the players
above ground to dig up the buried before it was too late.
If one person refused to help, you were out of luck. So far
I’d had several arguments with both Alex and Eric in order
to persuade them to help me unearth Gloria. It was only a
matter of time before I stopped wasting my breath.
We all had different ways of playing the game, our own set
of personal rules that we followed. Alex meditated. He
said he transcended the human form and became a spirit, but
to me, his method was cheating. It wasn’t real unless you
were experiencing death. You had to truly believe you were
going to die. That was the rush. The fear that this was
it; that your clock was ticking to zero. You couldn’t hit
the snooze button and have ten more minutes. When the
buzzer sounded, it was time to go.
If you knew deep down that you were going to be saved, then
this was child’s play. To play correctly you had to be
hangman sure that you were buried alive and your friends
would never dig you up in time. Your mom was going to clean
out your room and find your porn-stash, and not just the
tame stuff, she was going to find it all, the real
disturbing shit that everyone has but no one will admit to.
If you were one of those glass-half-full types you could
comfort yourself by believing that your friends were honest
and that even if you cashed in, they would notify the police
about what happened. Then you’d get a proper burial and a
funeral director would throw a suit on you and cake some
makeup on your face. Your relatives would cry and people
would make speeches about how wonderful you were.
But your friends weren’t honest. Your friends were
sociopaths who could feed children poison candy and still
sleep like babies. If you were already dead when they dug
you up, your friends were the types that’d throw you back in
the hole and forget all about your pathetic existence. Nine
out of ten you were going to be worm food and no one would
ever know.
For me that was the pull and it hooked me hardcore. I was a
fear junkie. Most type A’s jump out of planes or dive in
shark cages to feel alive. That macho masturbation was too
safe for me. I craved real danger. I couldn’t have metal
bars between me and a Great White’s jaws or a licensed
instructor tandemed to my back making sure I pulled the
ripcord.
Every day people get off on the illusion of near-death
experience. They brag to their coworkers and bartenders
about how they lived on the edge. Those people were full of
it. They didn’t know the first thing about death. They
spent their days safe in cubicles and fortified SUVs,
reading the warning labels on medications and looking both
ways before they crossed the street.
True danger was cutting holes in the safety net and still
jumping. Real death was lying in the box under two yards of
dirt and placing your life in the hands of your enemies.
That was the reason I vandalized Alex’s shiny new sports
car. That was why I made that anonymous phone call to the
police about the drugs I planted in Eric’s kitchen. That
was why I fed Gloria’s schnauzer rat poison. (Unfortunately
she was more grateful than annoyed since she that thing
never stopped yipping.) If bungee jumping was enough to
race my pulse than I never would’ve tied Alex to a chair and
pliered out four of his teeth
Some people’s idea of living on the edge was driving without
a seat belt. For Alex it was attacking my sister with a
crowbar and leaving her crippled from the waist down. For
Eric it was harassing my landlord and having me evicted.
Gloria, of course, used her talents to ball my stepfather
which drove my mom to swallow a blister-pack of valiums.
The four of us spent sleepless night after sleepless night
plotting the worst possible revenge against each other, and
every Thursday we took our turn in the box.
Eric’s mother was still in a coma after someone shoved her
down a flight of stairs. Both Alex and I took credit for
that, even though I was the one who crouched in her hallway
for an hour, waiting for the old hag to investigate the
noises I was making. I had taken all the risk, but he beat
me to the punch, confessing before the ambulance dumped her
off at the hospital.
But even if he believed Alex over me, I still had racked up
enough bad karma to make him want to leave me buried. I
was, after all, the one who set fire to his studio
apartment. Right now, Eric would be mentally going over the
list of reasons not to dig. But right now Gloria would also
be using her seduction to convince him otherwise. She was
always one step ahead. If I was weaker I would’ve threw
down my shovel the last time she went underground. But I
wasn’t going to let her win. I needed to play one more
round.
The last time I went under I was so close. I was dizzy and
the box spun like a merry-go-round. It was pitch black but
colors danced before my eyes. I vomited all over myself and
panicked. Death wasn’t gentle and cathartic like I thought
it’d be. It was violent and agonizing. My fingers were
still raw from clawing at the lid. Only two of my nails had
begun to grow back since then.
A
thick splinter dug into my back. I writhed on top of it,
the pain the only thing reminding me that I was still
alive. Gloria hovered over me like a dust cloud. The scent
of beggars rose off her clothes. I held on to her bony hips
and clutched handfuls of her thrift store dress. She threw
her head back and cackled. Then I heard the swishing sounds
of digging. Then the thud of metal against the coffin lid.
Tonight, it was going to be different. They wouldn’t dare
save me. Not after all the damage done. Gloria was sick,
demented, but even someone as twisted as her couldn’t
possibly forgive my sins. Her scars were never going to
heal. She was going to spend the rest of her life
explaining to the world how some lunatic took a blowtorch to
the right side of her face.
Even if she craved one more round, she had nothing left to
bargain with. There wasn’t anything she could offer Alex or
Eric, no depraved sexual act, no promise of ever-lasting
love that they weren’t already bored with. The last words I
heard where Eric mumbling “Fuck him,” under his breath. He
was definitely finished playing.
Right now Gloria would be rubbing ointment on her cheek.
She’d be gazing into her plastic pink mirror at the hideous
monster I created as ooze dripped from her blisters. Eric
would be staring at his cell phone, anxiously waiting for
news on his mother’s condition. Alex would be pressing his
tongue to his sore gums and tasting blood. His hands would
be curling into tiny, pathetic fists.
I
waited patiently for the panic to sink in and repeated to
myself that this was it, that the game was over. My body
was going to rot inside the box that I helped build and
there was nothing I could do to prevent it.
Right now Gloria would be wrapping her chapped lips around a
fresh American Spirit. She would exhale and hum that same
song that drove every one of us mental. Last night it took
every ounce of restraint not to smother her as she snored
next to me. Her sweat silhouette still fresh on my pillow;
tiny beads of sulfur on the tip of my tongue. Bed-sheets
soaked with her cancer in a crumpled mess on the floor.
Gloria. My breath swirled hot and stale over my lips. It
tasted like sour milk. |
