My whole life dashed before my eyes in a short moment. Together with my last, weak heartbeat, my stiff body jerked and at last got limp, soaked in sticky, cold sweat. All the sonorous voices got muffled and receded, the whole world merged to an unclear motley spot. The spot twinkled and slowly faded, now everything was covered by some mild, soft darkness. Steadiness. Peace. Silence. No, not a real silence, there is some strange crackling. Hot wax melting... Timid, distant echoes of some woeful laments. Suffocating smell of flowers withering in stiffness... Can it really be true? Just to lift the eyelids, just a little crack... and you will see everything. Only to open the eyes... But... Where are the eyelids? They are so heavy, it is impossible to move them... And the hands... the hands are even heavier...
A sudden lift up, and the crackling of burning candles faded. A slow, slow drift in darkness. The thick blackness around is suddenly pierced by the sharp din of a hammer. And other lift up... and then - a soft rustle of ropes, and slow drowning into some depth, into even thicker darkness. A soft jolt - the wooden surface touched the rough, dry clay, or maybe some stones. The movement ceased.
Once more sorrowful laments and sobbing were heard. And then... Then a thundering sound of earth, lumps of clay and stones falling from above. I was being buried! But the scream born in my throat hit my unmoving stone lips and did not get out. I did my best to open my mouth, but all the efforts were in vain. I wanted to jump and throw away the suffocating coffin lid, but my body never moved. I only succeeded to stir my fingers. The noise above me quieted, now I was separated from the world by a thick layer of soil.
Time stopped in the thick stuffy darkness. Everywhere around silence and stagnancy fell. Everywhere, but not inside me.
Later, my heavy clothing fell tight to my writhed, diminishing body. The whole space around me was full of sharp, poisonous vapour of rotting meat. But all these things later disappeared. My ears became very keen, I could hear any little sound of any tiny worm or other being moving endlessly around me. Sometimes a mole, breathing heavily made its way by.
Little by little my hands and feet started obeying me again. They were so light, now having lost all the weight of muscles. Eyes were no more necessary, I could see the steady darkness everywhere around me even without them. I felt exhausted by this endless waiting of something unknown. This helpless floating in the tingling darkness went on and on into eternity... And nothing will change until it rots and fades... What must rot and fade? My soul?
So this is the rest, the peace that people exhausted by living are longing for so much... I was wheezing and tossing around and endlessly sucking the dust of darkness with my toothless mouth... Now and again I was swallowed up by attacks of weird depression. The attacks became longer and longer. The boredom brought me incredible suffering, everything around me was filled with it. And it went endlessly on and on.
I do not know when, but I felt for sure that the damp and mouldy planks of my coffin started to crackle under the pressure of tons of soil. Now, the endless stream of torturing, unchanging boredom was replaced by a maddening terror. The bones of my legs and arms shook, and yet I tried to push the curving lid of my coffin, I did my best to stop the inevitable. And failed. One plank broke noisily, then another. A stream of earth poured through the crack and drowned my empty eye-sockets, my mouth... everything.
I felt myself melting in a sea of trembling fear. It seemed as if I had made myself free from my skin with this icy terror of nonentity on my heels. And suddenly I noticed a distant spark of some light. I started rowing wildly towards it, pushing myself forward using my legs and hands. I felt myself incredibly light and free. The spark was getting nearer, bigger... And at last I was out, my whole body was damp and shaking. The enormous hands of some giant caught me, screaming overwhelmed with joy and lifted me up, to the sun. Then I heard the voice, a deep bass, ringing like an enormous bell: "Congratulations! You have a son!"
But what is this? What is happening? Everything around me started twinkling and changing with the unbearable speed. Human faces, castles, various beautiful places flashed one after another... Before I managed to understand anything I finished the school, graduated from the university, married and had five nice kids... And again I felt myself lying in a damp bed of agony, stinking with sweat and death. My whole life dashed before eyes in a short moment. Together with my last, weak heartbeat, my stiff body jerked and at last got limp...
* * *
The door opened with a silent squeak. Two men wearing long, fluttering overalls entered the room. One of them pointed to the middle of the room.
"So that's him. A unique case. He is hiding under his blanket all the time. But every twenty-four hours (we have even checked up the time!) he pokes his head out and looks around him. He does nothing more, he even does not understand anything about his environment. So we must use an artificial feeding..."
"That's interesting. But who could believe that this maniac buried three people alive in coffins fifteen years ago..."