I can feel myself groaning as I come round. My brain pounds inside my skull and my eyes ache. Confusion abounds.
Pain shoots up my arms and legs but I can’t move any of them. My arms are bound together in front of me, tethered to my waist, and my ankles are tied. I can’t tell if I’m blindfolded or not because it’s pitch black. I roll my head from side to side, trying to feel for a knot or something which could clarify that for me, but there’s nothing. It really is just pitch black.
I can’t remember the last time I heard a human voice. Isn’t it weird the way thoughts and realisations come to you like that? When my brain should be thinking things like Where am I? or even How did I get here? the best it can come up with is When was the last time I heard a human voice? Then again, my brain’s never been one that’s thought straight. It’s always reminded me of one of those cars in video games with a bit of front-end damage, which seems fine but veers dangerously to the left if you don’t concentrate on keeping it on track.
I’ve always been a panicker, and I know I should be panicking right now but it’s just not happening. I almost want it to happen; it’d be safe, familiar. This bizarre confident acceptance that I’m feeling is what’s actually worrying me.
It’s the not seeing which is the worst bit. I lift my head and the top of my torso up, trying to see how much height I’ve got in my new home. A searing pain shoots across my shoulders, the frozen muscles contracting and sending an agonising bolt right through me. I push through, though, and my face comes into contact with what I know immediately is wood. I can smell it now, the familiar acrid scent of fresh pine. It’s strong, cloying. I must’ve been able to smell it for a while, but it’s only just registered. The scent of the wood reassures me somehow, as does the feel of the grain against my face. It’s contact with something — something other than darkness. I yelp a little as I feel a splinter jab into my cheek. Fuck. That hurts. I’m in a box, bound and tied, yet what seems to hurt most is the splinter. It’s always the same. They say paper cuts are the worst.
I try to recall what happened, but it’s not coming to me. All I know is that I shouldn’t be here. It’s amazing how the human brain can completely forget everything but still know the important bits. Right now, I’d like it to furnish me with a little bit more information but it seems that’s not going to be forthcoming.
My brain’s doing a good job of protecting me, though, and I know why. It’s because I’ve been... No. I’m not going to even think it. I’ve had a desperate fear of death for as long as I can remember and the thought of being — confined — gives me panic attacks at the best of times. But now, even though I know instinctively I’m in a box underground, my brain is exuding a calm serenity.
Trying to feel the dimensions of the box, I move my legs from side to side. They shift as one, bound by whatever they’re bound with, the fabric of my socks catching and snagging on more splinters as my one conglomerate leg moves from side to side.
The splinters are unreal. Is this the sort of poor quality box we put people in these days? I chuckle a little at that thought. Nice to know my brain is protecting me with humour — my only defence mechanism — rather than accepting where I am and what’s happened to me. It’s a wooden box, it tells me. I can’t even recall the C-word I don’t like. It’s just a box. A wooden box. A wooden box slightly larger than a laid-out human being.
I try to roll onto my side but I don’t have the muscle strength. As I do so, I feel a hard lump in my right buttock. It’s vague and numb, my backside cold and deadened. It’s probably blue. I remember what the lump is: it’s a screwdriver. I know this instinctively before I know why.
I’ve been redecorating the front room recently. Imogen wanted it done before the wedding. ‘Something to come back to’, she’d said. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about six weeks before getting married. It had actually proved to be something of a welcome emotional distraction, but I didn’t tell her that.
When the knock at the door came, I’d been screwing the new display cabinet into the wall by the fireplace. We were going to put Imogen’s old ballet trophies in there. She hadn’t so much as done a plié or a pirouette for the best part of fifteen years, but she was still proud of them and I didn’t exactly have any commendations to my name that I could show off, so I left her to it. I’d been tightening the last screw when I heard the knock, so I put the screwdriver into my back pocket and went to answer the door. I’d learnt the hard way not to just put stuff down when doing DIY as I’d never find it again. I’m fairly sure there are a good few hundred screws, bolts and drill bits lying around the house somewhere, never to be seen again.
I remember walking to the door. I remember answering it. I vaguely remember three — no, four? — figures in black, but that’s the point at which things start to go hazy so I really can’t be sure. Then it’s darkness, blankness and fugue until I came round, what, five minutes ago? No, it can’t be that long. Actually, yes, longer. Surely longer. I’ve lost all sense of time. It’s a bizarre concept to explain when you’ve never felt it, but the passage of events is no longer linear. The tightening of that screw might just as well have been happening now, and me lying in this box might as well be a week last Wednesday. It’s all one and the same.
That’s when I hear the noise. At least I think it is, but for all I know I could have drifted in and out of consciousness another fifty times in between. I don’t know how long I’ve been down here and I’m not sure I want to. Somehow, not knowing makes it easier. The noise starts again. It sounds almost like scratching, but distant, growing closer. I can hear the bass notes of a man’s voice and what sounds like a chuckle. Then there’s a massive scrape against the lid of the box and it sounds like the whole thing’s going to cave in.
The next thing I know, It feels like I’m swaying around on the sea, my frozen muscles screaming inside every part of my body. It feels like they’re bleeding from inside as the blood fights to get through my constricted veins. Then it stops with a sudden thud. Silence for a few moments, then I hear more scratching and a small creak. That’s when the light assaults my eyes, searing in through the gaps between my eyelids as I try to turn my head to stop the pain. Every tiny flash of light feels like a lightning bolt through my brain. I feel dizzy.
I feel myself being hauled up into a seated position as my spine creaks and groans its reluctance. The muscles in my lower back stretch to the point where I’m sure they’re about to snap, warmth flooding into them as the bloodflow reacquaints itself with old friends. The sharp light has retracted back to semi-darkness now, barely lighter than the inside of the box, and I gradually open my eyes to peer at the source of the laughter that I’ve only just realised has been going on since the box was opened. The laughs become familiar as I recognise some of the voices.
The first one I recognise is Gavin. ‘Welcome back to the land of the living, sunshine!’
‘How’s your head?’ comes another familiar voice. It’s Lee. ‘You went down like a sack of shit, mate!’
Hearing their voices again brings more memories flooding back. I remember the sensation of a wet rag being clamped over my nose and mouth as I struggled to breathe. I can remember Gavin’s voice. It’s taking ages! I thought this was meant to be instant? and another, third, voice telling him he’d always said it’d take a few minutes.
‘Are you going to help him out of there or what?’ the third voice asks now. I recognise it immediately as Rob. Oddly, I’m still finding it difficult to place the voices and the names with the faces, but it’s coming back to me gradually.
‘How are you feeling, Noel? You went down quicker than I thought,’ the third voice, Rob, says. Noel. That just feels weird. You know how sometimes when you say a word over and over, it becomes so familiar that it’s no longer the same word. Noel. Weird.
Rob and one of the others help me out of the box and sit me down on the damp ground. Rob tells the other two to put the box in the back of the van. He uses that C-word.
I snap back and register what he’d said a moment before. You went down quicker than I thought. The rag. The wet rag.
‘What was it?’ I ask, my throat rasping and sticking as I try to force the words out. It’s red raw.
‘The rag? Chloroform,’ he says, looking at Lee and Gavin as they manhandle my box off into the distance. ‘Those two geniuses reckoned it’d be an instant thing, like they’ve seen in the movies. Takes a couple of minutes at least, usually, but you went down pretty quickly.’
The paint fumes. I’d been painting shelves and woodwork in the living room earlier that day — was it today? — and had been feeling a bit dizzy anyway. The rag must’ve just been a handy top-up.
‘What? How? Why?’ I ask, pushing the words out through my sticky throat.
‘Don’t ask why,’ he says. ‘Even I don’t know why. Piece of piss to make, though.’
‘But the box,’ I say.
‘You know what those dicks are like,’ he says. ‘They thought it’d be funny. A stag prank. Get the weekend off to a dramatic start. I told them it was dangerous. I said they couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t kill you, but they weren’t having any of it.’
I nod, not wanting to say anything else for fear that my throat would rupture.
‘Come on,’ Rob says, lifting me to my feet. The blood flowing back through my muscles has helped a little, but I still feel stiff as a board. He watches me as I try to find my balance, but I’m alright. He places a hand on my shoulder and says, ‘We’ll go and get you cleaned up and have a drink. I think it’s time we got this weekend started properly after all that, don’t you?’
I nod again and start to walk a couple of steps behind him. His hair flaps in the breeze and I remember where I’ve seen that before. I can feel the cold breeze that rushed in through the front door when I opened it, the lock of hair that flailed from the gap in his balaclava as he stepped towards me.
It was him. For all that bullshit about not wanting them to go through with it, and he’d been the ringleader while the other two stood behind and watched.
The pain shoots up my calves with every step I take, my muscles cold and dead. I reach round to the back pocket of my jeans and feel that hard plastic handle of the screwdriver, solid and reassuring. Before I can convince myself otherwise, I pull it out and swing my arm round, my shoulder screaming in agony as I jam the screwdriver into the side of Rob’s neck.
He hits the ground like a sack of shit. I stand and stare at him, willing him to move but knowing full well he won’t. There’s a low gurgling sound, and then silence. I look up and see the van hidden behind the streets, with Lee and Gavin sliding my coffin into it. I break into something that’s a cross between a stagger and a sprint.
‘Hey. Guys. Wait up,’ I call as I gradually catch up with them.
‘Where’s Rob?’ Gavin says, looking back towards my grave but unable to see Rob’s body in the darkness against the damp earth.
‘He’s not coming,’ I say, swallowing.
‘Blimey, bit fucked off is he?’ Lee says. ‘You must’ve given it him right in the neck.’
I smile. ‘You could say that.’