“Son of a bitch! I can’t believe they did this to me.”

My shouts and curses were muffled by the— was that velvet?

The inky void is filled with the sound of the friction of my fingers attempting to gain purchase on the soft luxurious fabric, trying and failing to tear through the padding, the first in what will be an arduous journey to exact revenge on the people who have left me in this state.

At last, I find a seam, the scrabbling clawing racket giving way to the satisfying sound of fabric tearing. The velvet rent from the lining makes way for a sudden avalanche of polyester padding to fall into my face. Tucking it off to the side as well as I can, my fingers continue to explore what lies above me and discover a wooden surface so highly polished that the dense grain of the wood was nearly entirely hidden within its slick surface.

I strike the wood with the palm of my hand as hard as the six inches of clearance will allow. There is not even a hint of give to the wood. For all the good it did me, I might as well have been hitting solid stone.

“Hardwood, really? What is this mahogany?”

I relax into the absurdly comfortable bed of my casket fuming over the situation that I found myself in. The slow exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide in this dark hole in the ground leaves me with precious little breath left to call out my dying lament.

“How dare you waste all this money on a box for me to rot in. You could have cremated me and stuck me in a plastic bag. At least burning alive would have been cheap!”

With the last choking breath in my lungs, I managed to cough out, “I’m going to haunt every last one of you for this!”

Stop me if you've heard this one...

How is life like toilet paper?

....wait. Give me a sec. Can't really focus.

Is it...spread yourself too thin and end up covered with...no.

People don't care unless you're not around...? That can't be right...

Wait.

You're either on a roll or taking shit from someone!

Yeah, that's it...

Heh...I'll tell that one to Papa..

Looks like I’m boxed in. The ghosts on my left and right are laughing. Is this what they call paranormal parking? How’d he die? Tragically he died boxing. He couldn't think outside of the box. No laughs jeez. This is a really dead crowd. I thought this mausoleum would be better than the shit hole I was in. Maybe I should go back to my roots? Hey so what’s the dating scene like for ghosts? Is it just a STDless plasma free for all or what? Up until the 80’s and then protection became a thing? Is monogamy still a thing? Or is Casper and Co. just ghosting naïve bed sheets on the reg? Are white sheets the only option? Stains must be a big deal. Hey that’s my time. You’ve been a great audience. Patrick Swayze & The Soul Survivor's are up next. See you on the dance floor. Finally no two left feet."

I knew I shouldn't have chewed my nails. Maybe if I'd let them grow out, I'd be able to claw my way out of this wooden prison. Alas, short nails are the price of anxiety. A toll that I happily paid. And now here I am. Suffocating. Dying. Buried alive.

They used to have bells that you could ring. You'd pay a ludicrous amount of money just to get a bell that you could pull if you needed to be dug up. But in this modern age, those bells became obsolete. After all, with all the medical technology we have, it's pretty easy to confirm that someone is dead. Really, truly, permanently dead. Not a lot of false alarms these days.

Except, of course, me. Guess I'm always the exception.

It's funny, really. It doesn't feel that different from a panic attack. Lungs tightening, breath rattling, eyes rolling wildly in my head, searching for oxygen that doesn't exist.

Anxiety and death really ain't that different. It's all just more of the same. As above, so below.

Maybe if I'd listened to my therapist I wouldn't be here. If I'd stopped fearing the worst. If I'd just allowed myself to take one large gulp of real air.

Who knew that biting my nails would be the nail in my coffin?

An aroma from childhood

snikerdoodles

mom’s secret recipe

baking in her checkered apron

the fragrance so strong

this must be heaven

I see myself as a child

coming home from school

opening the door

running toward the scent

before me

her special fresh baked golden cookies

sparkling with cinnamon and sugar

on the open window sill

I reach to grab one

a metal spatula smacks my hand hard

I look up and see my mother

she is angry

yelling at me,

”Stay out of those

I baked them for the funeral”

Buried alive in the coffin, my life flashed before my eyes. I thought about all the things I wouldn't get to do now, like entering that challenge on Prose. Being stuck in here did remind me of a funny joke from my childhood in the 90s. I think I had read it in the "Boy's Life" magazine during my Scouting days. Hmmmm.... I had no idea who the kid was that submitted the joke, and I wasn't thinking straight with my air running out, but why not? I'll tell the joke to the best of my memory....

So Dracula was pushing his coffin up a road when it came loose and slid down. He chased it desperately but could not catch it. As the coffin sped further out of reach, he passed a pharmacy and took the chance that they might be able to assist. So Dracula ran in and called out to the pharmacist "Excuse me, do you have anything that can help me stop my coffin!"

Well, the joke wasn't quite written like that when I read it back in the day, but I chuckled all the same. Decent final memory to hold onto, and who knows? Maybe someone else will think about this dumb joke in their final moments too. Maybe I could even come back as a vampire and chase this coffin I'm trapped in down a street.... or maybe the lack of oxygen is just messing with my head....

Suprise!

It is my first day as a sarcophagus and I awake and start coughing cause within this coffin is all this dust, but perhaps I should have expected that. Pondering the etymology of that common modern word for casket...

Wonder if coffin started out as a verb phrase? Guess they couldn't call it a Body Basket.

But I die I guess... I mean... I digress.

-Fin-

*Farts*

"Haha... oh man. If people heard that fart, they'd be like... 'wow, that fart sounded like a special effects fart!', and if like, all the fart sound effects on keyboards, and in the movies, all disappeared, they'd be like, 'Hadrianus' butt. He'll save the day. Hahaha, man, then they'd be like 'Hay-dree-ahn-us', more like Hay-dree-A-nuhss! Can you please fart into the mic?! haha get it because- oh fuck. OH SHIT! NO! AH! AH IT'S SO BAD AND ITS CONSUMING THE REST OF THE OXYGEN! AHHHHHH! OH FUCK, I'M DYING, I DON'T WANNA DIE BY FART! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

inspiration

have i none

no in, no spiri, not an atom of ation

Melusine sound to me octopus with cold hard

what

the

hell

should i write about, out, tout, mout

gave me bed, gave me food i never had, gave smiles, never sincere

to be

herre

as poems can ordered be

as verse can fried be

as conjunction can fired be

im une, im one, im eno, im ano, im endo.....

fire

lethating all

fire

asnwer to me all

fire

is mine