When I died

Chapter 1

My eyes opened, I gasped as I drew a breath into lungs that felt like they hadn't been used in years. I was in complete darkness there wasn't even a sliver of light. I start feeling around hoping to find a knob or something to grab onto and open. I lift my hand up and it immediately makes contact with cool wood less than a foot above my head. I then scoot down a bit because perhaps it is open at the end, but I realize as my feet make contact with cool wood, that its not. That's when I start panicking. I start feeling all around me in the hopes that there will be an opening somewhere, there's not.

I panic for quite awhile. I start beating on the top of the wooden box over and over again until I can feel my knuckles start to bleed. That doesn't stop me, I keep going no matter the pain I'm feeling. Eventually after beating on it quite awhile I feel it crack. At first I think finally, I'm going to get out! but then I feel it. Cold dirt pouring down on my face. Then the one singular thought, one thought that had been nagging at me since I opened my eyes. I'm in a wooden box with no light. I've been... buried alive!

I stop for a moment pondering that thought with growing horror. No, I think, there's no way that I am, I mean I can't be. I start to try to remember what happened before this, but all I can feel is a sharp pain in my stomach. The feeling as if I had a knife that cut through the soft tissue there. I feel, but there is no blood so I must have imagined that. I try to continue to remember, but it's like my mind is blank, there's nothing there. Not what happened to get me here, or even... my name. How did I forget everything? I reach up and feel my head, but there's nothing there no a wound or anything so my memory loss can't be due to head trauma. 

Stop, I tell myself. I can figure that out later. Once I've gotten myself out of the ground. I make up my mind with grim determination. I'm going to have to make a larger hole in the lid and then dig myself out of here. I start hitting the lid, but I notice the pain now more because I'm not in panic mode. The previous hole I made gets bigger and bigger until I realize that I can probably fit through. Lucky for me the dirt isn't falling down onto me so bad. Wait, why isn't it? It's almost like the dirt is packed down above me, but it couldn't be. I mean dirt will pack down as you pile it layer on top of layer, but this is more packed than that. This could only be caused by time lots of it, like weeks or even months, but I can't have been down here that long. I need to breath, I would have ran out of air a long time ago if that was the case.

I start digging my way out. Digging and digging until dirt is caked under my fingernails. My arms quickly grow tired, but I can feel the thinness of the air. I took too much of it when I was panicking. If I didn't get out soon I would suffocate. With that realization I started digging faster knowing that I needed to get out quick. 2 ft gone, 3, 4, finally I hit 5. And I saw light for a second before dirt fell back and covered it again. I lifted my hand as high as I could go then I braced my feet against the lid of the box and pushed hard.

My hand went through the top layer of dirt into the air. I grabbed the edges of the small hole I made and pulled myself up and out of the cold hard dirt. Once I got myself fully out I stopped and sat there for a couple minutes just catching my breath. After I could breath in and out easily I looked around at my surroundings. What the? I'm in a cemetery, but that's not right. I look at the tombstones around me and then I turn around. There, right behind the hole I dug myself out of, I saw it. A tombstone with the name Sophie Jones with the numbers December 7th, 2003 - February 14th, 2020. Then my eyes close as memories flash through my head, family, friends, birthdays, Christmases, all the memories I had forgotten came racing back. My eyes flew back open after the memories stopped.

I sit there and comprehend it all. How? How could this all be possible? I sit there and stare at the stone numbly. Trying to think through it all. Its says I died in February? There must have been a mistake, maybe I still had a pulse. A small one that they couldn't find, but one that had to have been there. Then I start to feel the weather, it's a little chilly, sure, but I can still feel the leaving of summer. It can't be February. Its September or early October at the latest, but then how could they have said I died on February. From February till sometime around now would have been sometime between 8-9 months, my air definitely wouldn't have lasted that long.