Buried Alive - Part 3

hat night, we held hands around the altar we'd built. Sebastian's was rigid, held up to his chest, and trembling. Katharine looked exceedingly dour. People were scared; they were actually scared. But our holes were almost like teepees, they were so sweet. With the fern sticking out of the dirt at their edges, they were pretty. I had borrowed a sleeping bag from Bharat, and had a fit of giggles thinking, "I will piss in it."

Bharat said it was time to get in. I lifted the piece of fabric covering the entry hole, and a swarm of tiny flies flew out. They were recently hatched, from the fern. I got down in my grave, and lay looking up at the sky. I sneaked a picture. Bharat came around. He said, "Do whatever you need to do: Sing, cry, chant, talk…" He lowered the poles over my head, then placed the ferns over those, and began to shovel dirt onto my grave.

"Close your eyes," he said.

When I reopened them, it was done.

"Do you see light at all?"

"Over here a little."

"Where? Which side?"

"Up by my head, on the left. Here, I'll put my fingers through. Do you see?"

I reached my fingers up through the ground and wiggled them.

"Wait, do it again."

I reached up again, pressing my fingers through the ground.

"Oh, okay, got it."

He shoveled dirt over the holes.

I had about three inches between myself and the roof. I had a few inches on either side of my body. There was room enough to lie on my side, and room enough to take my pants off, which I did, because it was hot. I could see light through my airhole. It was not enough to illuminate my hole. It was uncomfortable physically. The root that came up between my legs, I should have cut it more down to the base, and I noticed my legs were higher than my head. I put my bag under my head as a pillow. My shoulders, when I lay on my side, folded over, almost one on top of the other. But everything seemed all right.

Trying to get in the spirit, I lay on my back, and crossed my arms over myself like a corpse, and envisioned my face rotting, my nails splitting, my tongue swelling out of my face green, and slime coming out of my lower orifices. Then I turned on my right side, where it was pitch black, and thought about this boy I love. Neither of these thoughts inspired anything in me. They weren’t entertaining. They didn’t make passion. I felt bored. And alive, and everything seemed funny. I took off my sweater, and I waited. I started to rub my neck, and suddenly had a view of myself as the most vulnerable little creature. It seemed like somebody—me—should be looking out for this rodent. I reached back and scratched my back, and it was like seeing a rat in an aquarium, when they arch their heads back and scratch an ear, and their long, yellow teeth poke out, and they look so vulnerable and lost. It was me. But I don’t think this is the kind of thing you can talk about.

Bharat, up above, began to sing again, some kind of Native American rhythm, low and without words. It was pretty. It came through the ground warped and magical. He seemed at that moment like a profoundly good and generous individual, and I myself, such an unbelievable asshole. Then I snapped out of it, and more time passed.

I dozed. I had dreamed I was walking with two of my coworkers, Thomas and Amy, and we saw a storm coming from three blocks away. “We need to run,” I said. We ran into a diner, and everyone was screaming: “Go down, go down.” I went down one floor, down to a second, and down to the third, where a waitress in a diner uniform served customers, who were in tables, and stacked naked in bunk beds along the wall, and they told me to go down further, but I said I was far down enough, and the storm above washed away the city. An old man lay naked at eye level, clutching a life-sized rag doll. One of its legs was tucked near his anus, which resembled a condom. I said to a waitress, “We should take that from him.” She said, “He’s gotten to this age. Let’s just let him cuddle his doll.” I woke up. I knew where I was.

It started raining. Bharat came around and lay a tarp over my grave. The light from the fire, filtering through plastic folds of the tarp, was lambent, wavering gently. I tried to take a picture, but my God! The sounds my camera made, it was like a disco. A red light at the camera’s back illuminated my grave. The green auto-focus light flashed out of the airhole. I put the camera up.

Time passed. Birds cried. Someone snored lustily in his hole. I heard motion at the surface of mine. I turned onto my stomach and closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the dirt in the morning light was an outrageous vision. It was totally wild. I could have stared at the square of dirt for a long time, but it was time to get out.

hat afternoon, after I’d showered, I overheard Bharat speaking to the goat-cheese seller.

“There’s no theory to it,” he said. “No, there’s no theory to it at all. It’s just, somehow, they get in touch with the softness of the earth, and it softens them.”

I was on my way out the door. He caught me in the hall.

“This is something I wrote,” he said. “I’m giving it to you so you know what you did.” He made a move to hug goodbye. I went with it. He was so tiny and small, in my arms. Rat-like. I loved him in that moment. And then, it ended, completely, and I drove away. And that afternoon on the train from Foix to Toulouse, I felt something crawl out of my hair, and down my back. Ten minutes passed, and I felt it moving again, this time unmistakably. I reached back and took it in my fingers: a spider the size of a fly. I threw it down onto the aisle. I looked at the people around me, but they’d missed it.

BURIED ALIVE!

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