Page 137 of Under the Lies

The cage unlocks enough for my eyes to search for the sound. To feel the vibrations from above.

Thunk

Thunk

Thunk.

Something coarse and grainy falls to my fingers. Dirt.

With desperate clawing, the cage fully opens, and my hands stretch out to the tufted lid. Scratching at the plush linen.

“Nonononononononononono,” escapes my lips as I desperately try to stop what’s happening from the outside. To break out and stop them from throwing dirt on me. Because if there’s one thing I hate more than heights, it’s the thought of being trapped in confined spaces. Of being buried alive.

Exhaustion soon takes over, laced with the feeling of my blood flow slowing down, frighteningly so. All I can think of as my hands start to lower is, “You’re not leaving this cemetery tonight, Sayer.”

Panic keeps me awake, but I might as well be asleep. No matter how much my head screams to move, I’m frozen in place, weighed down.

It’s more than hot under here, wondering how much oxygen I can really get with every breath. It’s like being a kid again when Harlow would throw a blanket over me.

Suffocating.

I’m suffocating.

How long has it been since I’ve been in here? Too long it feels and not long at all.

How much time do I have left? Mere minutes or is it seconds until I can’t breathe any longer? When all the oxygen is gone.

Nothing is visible, not even the limp hand I raise before my face.

Utter darkness is my only companion.

My eyes feel heavy, weighted sandbags that push and push farther down until I can’t fight to keep my lids open any longer.

Slowly they close—

Close

Close

Until I’m sinking farther down a spiral that has no exit.

The scenes from the art gallery play out with each step I take. The lights going off, the panic, bodies bumping into one and other.

Sayer’s hand slipping from mine…

When the lights flickered back on, restoring a calm tranquility to the crowd—like it never happened.

Except that it did, and with the lights back on I noticed Sayer wasn’t by my side…

My boots crunch on the brittle grass, running to the cemetery gates and the three huddled figures waiting for me outside it. The weather tonight is brutal, wind dipped in icicles try to pierce past my coat, but the chill in the air can’t make me feel any stiffer, any more numb, than I already do.

This shouldn’t have happened.

We shouldn’t be here right now.

Sayer and I should be back at my home, me peeling off her underwear with my teeth, our naked bodies sweaty and tangled in her sheets.

Instead I’m running toward a goddamn cemetery.

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