Buried Alive

It’s dark and smells of dirt. Me, the juicy and fat earthworm.

This magic trick, it’s supposed to last ten minutes. Ten minutes and poof and awe and free from my premature grave.

The slight of hand – the trick – the thing behind the thing you see – it’s that the magician never actually is buried alive.

It’s all an illusion.

Until that magician decides to actually bury himself alive. Then it’s headline suicide.

It’s dark and the world is small and none-existent. My breath, as it bounces back to me after hitting the wooden lid, is silent. Down here, ten feet under the wet Earth, the fat, juicy earthworm, I hear nothing, and think I finally made it to Space.

Sensory deprivation with T-minus ten minutes before the oxygen runs out.

I’m an astronaut and I’m making one final revolution around the Earth and down below are all the people I’ve never met and I wonder if they even exist.

This thing, it’s one big game.

Ten feet above, with his feet planted on the ground, is my Assistant. He believes I’ll appear across the street. He believes that in ten minutes I’ll walk out of that Starbucks with a Grande Latte and a smile.

Me, I’m drowning, and unlike that statue, I can’t hold the Earth on my back.

Down here in the quiet, cold, coffin, I envision the things I’ve lost and never will get back. Me, I’m that character in the Sci-Fi movie who enters half way through the film from that parallel universe where things just weren’t quite right. I’m that dart next to the board stuck awkwardly in the cork.

Me, missing the mark.

But now, in my Space, in my sensory-deprived reprieve, I hear banging. I hear shouting. I hear the Bulldozer.

My Assistant – that impromptu Hero – might be trying to save my life.

And just keep walking down the sidewalk and try not to step on the cracks.

But he can’t be?

And the pictures floating on the coffin lid are golden and smell of rosemary.

And the sounds, like banging in my ears, gasp for oxygen. And that bulldozer, with its shovel of life, doesn’t exist. And I’m a guy draping a handkerchief over my face trying to make myself disappear.

My Assistant, he’s probably saying something like, “Don’t worry folks, it’s all a part of the act.” He saying, "This is all an illusion."

 

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