I Am Sarah

Clunk...crunch…clunk…thump…thump…crunch…

The noise of thumping and crunching immediately startled me from my slumber. I tried to sit up, but my head bashed the ceiling of whatever I was in. I let out an audible “oof” and tried to turn my head to the right.

Though it was a squeeze, my head flipped to my right side, and I now stared at a black mass of darkness that I could barely make out to be the shape of a head. I flipped back to my left side and stared at what I could only make out to be a sheet by my side. I felt with my right hand over to a disembodied hand beside me, the hand of someone down in this container with me.

Thump…clunk…crunch…thump…

I unclenched their slightly warm hand, and felt the fingers shift in mine. I knew this individual was alive, but I could not see them. I grabbed onto this person’s hand and jerked, attempting to wake them up. After what I would assume to be about two minutes, I heard a gasp and another head bang.

“Whah—where?” they asked in a panic. The voice was male, and he let out a slightly audible yelp. I felt with my hand down to the small area between us and felt a soft fabric – likely a pillow.

Crunch…clump…thump…

“Who are you?” I asked them, trying to feel for the top of the container. The man gasped again, and I could feel him trying to shift his body.

“Marty,” he responded with a fearful sigh. “Who—who are you?”

Clump…crunch…

He let out a ghastly scream, “where are we!?”

“I…I feel sheets…” I muttered to him. I moved my right hand up to my chest and moved my hand behind my head to find that I was laying on a pillow. In this tight space, I tried to grab onto the pillow I was lying on and move it to give myself more room in the container.

Clump…clump…crunch…thump…

I continued to shift the pillow away from the back of my head, and managed to shift enough to the side to lay my head down onto the hard surface still covered by the sheet, as I could feel on my neck.

Clump… 

“Hello?” Marty asked. I responded by grunting to get myself in a more comfortable position. “Are we…are we…in…”

I paused for a moment and lifted my left arm up and felt the top of the container. It, was hard, cold wood above us. “We’re in…a box…or a coffin…or…or something,” I panted out through my panicked breath.

Clump…thump…thump…crump…

Marty began to bang his hands on the roof and screamed, “Let us out! Let us out please!”

I felt my hand to the top again and banged, too. However, I felt a strange indention at the top in the wood, and stopped banging. “Stop, stop!” I shouted to him.

Thump…thump…thump…

The thumps were beginning to fade. They were getting further and further away from us, and I just knew that we were being buried alive. I ran my fingers across the ceiling of this coffin into the indentions I felt.

“There’s something up here, the wood has scratches or something in it,” I said to Marty. I felt him reach into his pocket, and he nudged me. He placed into my hand a cell phone.

I felt for the power button on the side, and it clicked on with a bright light. I tilted it to see my fellow captive’s face to see that he had shaggy brown hair and was forming a beard. I seemed bruised, but this was all I could see from the angle of my head.

Thump…

I tilted the phone to the top of the coffin to see the indentions. I tilted the phone and followed the strange markings to find that I was seeing a scratched-in word in front of me. “I A M” was all it read, and I asked Marty to see if anything was written on his side.

I handed the phone back to him, but he dropped it from his hands. He felt for it for a moment and grabbed onto it after a brief moment, and he held it upward. “S A R…” he spelled out to me.

“I A M S A R…” I repeated back.

He shone it to his left and continued. “A H.”

I repeated to him again. “I A M S A R A H...” It took me a moment, but I muttered out the phrase “I AM SARAH”, and a chill ran through my body. I had no idea what this meant or what it could mean – but it scared me.

“I am Sarah?” Marty said to me, seemingly asking a question to me. “What’s your name?” he asked to me this time.

I replied to him, “Lara.”

Thump…thump….

“I can’t hear the person anymore…” Marty fearfully said to me. “Are we…are we dead? Are we going to die down here?”

I sighed and felt a tear emerge. I assumed that this experience had only taken around ten or fifteen minutes, and already we feared we would die in this…this coffin.

“Tell me about yourself,” I said to him as I reached for his hand. I clasped onto him and refused to let go.

“What?” he asked. I repeated myself, and he stuttered for a moment. “I—I’m twenty four. I have a girlfriend – her name is Jamie – and she’s a really sweet girl…”

“Uh huh,” I said to him, encouragingly.

“She told me she was pregnant about a week ago. I’m really excited for it – I can’t wait to be a daddy.”

Thump…crunch…

There was a small creak in the roof of the coffin, a creak that disturbed both of us. He frantically began to breathe and feel for the roof to make sure it was not caving in, but I continued to hold his hand.

“I’m nineteen,” I told him. “I work at Kohl’s, and I’m single. My birthday was a few days ago, but it wasn’t really anything special.”

We sat there in silence for a moment, listening for more thumps of what we could only assume to be dirt above us.

He shifted in his position and raised his leg to the roof of the coffin. I asked him, “What are you doing?”

“Kick…just kick! We have to try…if we can get this open we can get out!”

I wonder, why didn’t we think of this earlier? I lifted my legs up to the roof and began to shove at the cracking ceiling. “This coffin is cheap,” I commented as I continued to push against the ceiling. I continued to hear more cracks and thumps.

Exhausted, we stopped kicking and tried to catch our breath. Already, we were losing our oxygen and slowly killing ourselves by trying to escape. “It’s not cheap enough…” Marty said to me, beginning to sob.

I glanced down to his phone that rested on the floor. I clicked it on and briefly was able to see that it was six…something. I could only see the formation of the six that told me it was either six in the morning or six at night, with whatever time in between.

The ceiling cracked more, and I began to insert my hand into the crack near my waist as best as I could. I felt…wood. I felt more wood above us, and I also felt some amount of dirt. I pulled my hand out.

“Push more,” I told Marty. We worked together, again, to kick and push at the roof of the coffin. Marty’s right foot pushed through the roof after a few minutes this time, and he excitedly let out an exhausted sigh. He pushed apart pieces of wood with his right leg and continued beating at the coffin.

Suddenly, the roof began to cave in more and more until my face began to cover with dirt and wood crumbles. I gasped as I tried to brush the dirt off of my face, and succeeded enough to find that there was more wood above us, still with the dirt in between.

“What?” Marty asked as he felt the wood. I reached my hand up and felt for the wood above me. I felt a small hole in the wood, and snuck my hand inside.

This was another coffin above us. We were not the only ones here.

I screamed as I felt a lock of hair wrap around my finger. I felt around further to find that this body above us was also fighting to get out.

But they were facing downwards. I felt their mouth and their eyes – they were definitely facing my side of the coffin. I realized then what was happening.

The thumps and clumps we were hearing above us were not dirt. It was this person clawing out of their coffin…trying to get into ours.

I tried to reach my head up out of the dirt to see what was in the hole above me, in this mysterious new coffin. I had no idea what buried us down there, how we got down there, or why there was another coffin above us, and desperately wanted to find out.

I reached out my arm more into this hole and felt further on down into the coffin, onto this body that I assumed to be dead. I felt for more features on the body and began to feel strange, rocky and silky appendages on the body – this was not human.

And then the arm grabbed mine, and yanked. I screamed, only for it to cover my mouth through the hole above my head. I caught a glimpse of its green eyes staring down into mine, and witnessed its grey face peer closer into the hole to smile at me.

The phone clicked off, and it went completely dark. I heard a whisper in my left ear – “I AM SARAH.”