six feet under
And the darkness is my only witness.
I feel the cold, heavy crush of the earth. Not on my chest, not really, but around me. Six feet of packed, indifferent soil pressing down on the lid a few inches above my face. It’s the world’s weight saying, You are done. But I’m not. I’m just… here.
The first stretch of time, I tried to scream. My throat tore raw, my chest hammered. I tried to claw at the wood, splintering my nails, but the sound was useless, swallowed instantly by the dirt. Then I listened. I listened for footsteps, for the faint, impossible rumble of traffic, for anything that whispered of the life I’d been severed from. Nothing. Just the muffled, dead silence of the subterranean.
Now, I don’t listen. I just breathe. That slow, shallow rhythm is the only proof I have of this miserable, endless existence. In. Out. A pointless exchange of air in a space that was meant to be the end of air.
My body is a stranger. I can’t move it. Not really. Maybe a twitch in the finger, a slight turn of the head before the muscles seize up in agony. So I just lie still, fixed in the pose of eternal rest, while my mind, this tireless, malicious thing, continues to run, run, run.
The numbness started long ago. First, the feet, then the legs, crawling up my torso like an icy tide. Now, my entire frame is a heavy, leaden statue, only the smallest parts retaining sensation. But the worst is the smell.
It’s me. The air is stagnant, heavy, and sweet-sour. I am rotting, yet I am not dying. My skin is slick and tacky. I know the wounds are opening, spreading, festering. This is the curse to undergo the process of decomposition while the core of consciousness remains bright, cold, and utterly untouched.
Then came the friends.
I remember the first time I felt the slight, almost imperceptible tickle on my wrist. I froze, horrified. Then the faint, chewing sound, so soft it felt like a vibration inside my own skull. A beetle, maybe. Or a maggot. I don’t know. I’ve never seen them. It’s too dark. I mean truly dark. Not just “lights-off” dark, but the fundamental absence of light, thick and palpable.
They come and they go. They work on me, my arms, my side, even my face. I feel the light, relentless pressure as they break the skin. It should hurt, shouldn’t it? But it doesn’t. It’s just a mild, distant sensation. A confirmation that something, anything, is interacting with this shell. They are eating me piece by piece, an ongoing, endless feast.
The strangest part is that the thing that makes the loneliness bearable. They never finish the job. They never take enough to truly incapacitate this trapped consciousness. They eat, they leave, and the wounds, the impossible wounds, heal. Slowly, messily, but they seal up, ready for the next round. It’s a cycle.
I weep sometimes, silent, hot tears that run into the decay on my neck. I think they know. I think they pause when I shake. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’ve started to believe they are the only ones who see the truth: that I am alive, that I suffer, and that they, in their horrible, busy way, are the only sign of company I will ever have. They are my clock, my conversation, my morbid caretakers.
Did I have a name? Did anyone miss me? I try to focus, to pull a single face, a single memory, a mother’s voice, a lover’s laugh, the color of a childhood room. Nothing. It’s a clean, perfect slate. It’s like the curse wiped my history, leaving only the present of the coffin.
Perhaps they never made a headstone. Perhaps the people above, the thriving, moving, dying people, just forgot. Or maybe, and this is the thought that truly chills me, maybe I never existed outside this box. Maybe I was simply born here, to suffer this specific, eternal darkness.
The world above me is living, breathing, forgetting. But down here, under the six feet of silence, I am simply waiting. Waiting for the bugs to come back, waiting for the wounds to close, waiting for a memory that never arrives. This isn’t living. I’m being held. Forever. And the darkness is my only witness.
