Nobody Puts Graham in a Coffin

Originally Published in The Pulpateers (Schlock Anthology) Shock Publishing 2013.

By James Rhodes

I watched the sunlight narrowing without the power to so much as raise my legs in resistance. The feel of velvet against my back felt glorious, I can honestly never remember such a sensation of total and complete serenity. Even when the lid to the coffin closed fully and I began to hear the hammering that would fasten me forever in a state of what the Catholics call perpetual rest.

One of the priests was talking over the coffin, I can believe the fuckers were actually giving me funereal rights when they knew damn well I was alive, if not necessarily kicking. I'm not sure if it was the effect of the drugs or, the sheer bloody darkness. As my eyes struggled to adjust to the lack of light I swore I could see the face of my niece crying. Her dark skin shined in the darkness, her slender face stretched in to an expression of forgiveness and acceptance that I had never known in life. It was my sins that had lead to this, my actions. And Maria forgave me.

“Maria.”

The voice sounded in my head but I could not bring it to my lips, whatever it was that had been injected into me had done a number on me. I felt the dizzying slide of motion sickness crashing into a breathless finality. I was aware that I had been cast into the Atlantic for a split second before my consciousness became as dark as my coffin.

When I began to dream, it was of Maria crying. I wasn't sure if she was crying because I was dead or because of the events that had lead to me being drugged and cast into the sea. I felt the drip of her salt tears trickling over my cheeks and for a moment I couldn't tell if she was really crying or if I were weeping myself. I lifted my hand to wipe my cheeks clean and felt it bang against the lid of the coffin. With the ability to move returning, I realised that the water was not tears but seawater. From the constancy of motion I knew I was still floating in the wooden box. I pushed upwards with both hands and feet and I felt the nails loosen, Encouraged by the sense of reprieve I pushed again, Again there was the slightest give in the nails. Determined to get out of the box and to use it as a raft, I inhaled and threw every ounce of strength into the effort to open the coffin lid.

At the exact moment that I shifted all my bodyweight into the effort of escape from the a wave caught the side of the box and I capsized. My nose broke as it smashed into the oak lid of what I assumed was to be my final resting place. I didn't have time to register the pain before the horrible sting of gelid water struck my skin. I felt the box upend with the weight of the accumulating water. Then the pull of gravity sink the box and its tender contents. In sheer blind panic I pushed. I have bench pressed as much as 140 kilograms in the gym but the strength of my arms was no match for wood and iron. I took the last breath of available air in the box and closed my eyes. The pressure on my lungs was insurmountable. I remembered Maria's face and my sober mind pieced together the last few moments of my waking life:

It was my brother who had hired me to find Maria which, in real terms, meant that I was doing the job for love. I was not much of a detective but I had a way of persuading people to tell me what they know. My approach had always worked well when dealing with street gangs and nonces. I had found more than twenty lost children in the last decade and I always felt that anything else I had done was cancelled out by that good. The protection of the innocence of others, that was my code. Anyone I didn't consider innocent was pretty much fair game. With Maria there was the additional element that someone had messed with my family. From the beginning I had anticipated that it was going to be a brutal affair. I was going to enjoy myself, let a few of the krypteian urges in my head out of their chains. The church of Everlasting Peace didn't know what it had coming. Religion is just a gang that uses words instead of guns and low self-esteem instead of narcotics, I always said it and I always meant it. However, when it came down to it, they couldn't have been more different to a criminal gang.