It wasn’t easy work, but he applied himself well to the task. Soon the hole was six feet long and four feet deep. He called to his friend.
“It’s about four feet, I reckon. That’s deep enough, isn’t it?”
Pete was sitting on a nearby tree stump and took a bite of one of the sandwiches that he’d brought with him, speaking with his mouth full. Crumbs sputtered out of his mouth as he spoke.
“Nah. A couple more feet, I reckon. We don’t want to make it too easy for animals to dig him up.”
Another half an hour, and the grave was completed. Barry wasn’t as daft as he might look and had fashioned a set of steps in the earth so that he could get out again.
Pete took a sip from a can of Red Bull. It was tiring overseeing Barry’s work.
“You done yet?”
“Not quite. I think I’ll dig a bit deeper. I’m not tired. Just another foot or so.”
Pete didn’t mind, as long as he didn’t have to do any of the digging.
“Alright. Do what you want. It’s your funeral.”
Twenty minutes later, Barry had disappeared from view; the sides of the grave were taller than he was. Pete called out again.
“You done?”
At first, there was no answer, but then Barry clambered out of the grave. He stood alongside Pete and admired his handiwork.
“That should do the trick.”
“It’s a bit deep isn’t it?”
“Better safe than sorry.”
The two of them rolled Arnold up in the black plastic sheet and tossed him into the grave. His body made a satisfying thump as it landed on the floor of the hole. Pete looked down into the newly occupied grave.
“You’ve done a good job there, Barry. All you have to do now is fill it in.”
Pete never felt the spade hitting the back of his head. He didn’t even hear the swoosh as the blade passed through the air before smashing the rear of his skull into several pieces.
Barry whistled as he shovelled the excavated earth back into the hole. It didn’t occur to him that he was risking somebody hearing him. All he knew was that Chuck was buried and the bully Pete was dead and buried with him.
The final sod thrown onto the grave, Barry looked solemn for a moment as if he was going to say a prayer for the recently deceased. But no such thought crossed his mind – he simply smiled.
“Actually, it’s your funeral, Pete.”
5
It was pitch black in the grave. Arnold was aware that he had been buried but didn’t realise at first that he had company in the grave.
His first thought was to panic, and try to claw his way out of his earthy tomb, but there was no point in even thinking about it – he hadn’t been able to physically move any part of his body for the last three weeks. He did some quick mental calculations and the results did nothing to improve his mood. Above him, there was probably upward of 3,000 lbs. of dirt plus the weight of Pete pressing down on his chest
Three thousand pounds! That’s a lot of soil. Even if I could move, I don’t know that I could reach the surface.
He was remarkably calm considering the situation he found himself in. He remembered his father telling him once that if there was nothing he could do himself to remedy a situation, then worrying about it wouldn’t help. So he wasn’t worried – yet.
It occurred to him that he should be having problems breathing. Surely, all that soil and a dead body weighing down on his chest meant that he shouldn’t be able to breathe. That frightened him.
When was the last time I took a breath?
His thoughts ran back to the hospital.
I was definitely breathing there. But then they turned off a machine. Was I breathing after that?
He honestly wasn’t sure. Breathing’s not something you think about normally. It just happens. It’s instinctive. Breathing is so automatic that you don’t notice if you’re breathing or not. Maybe he wasn’t breathing.
Am I dead?
He couldn’t be dead; he was still aware of things that happened around him. Had he dreamed the episode at the porn movie shoot? Perhaps he was dreaming.
Yes. That’s it. I must be dreaming. I’ll open my eyes and I’ll wake up from this nightmare.
But his eyes were already open.
He heard a gurgling sound.
Is that me? Or the guy on top of me?
The gurgling happened again. He tried to look confused but his expression stayed just as it had for the last three weeks or so.
I think it’s me.
It was indeed him. His body was digesting itself and had been doing so since shortly after the life support machine had been turned off.
He decided to approach his new circumstances logically. His body was no longer functioning properly but there seemed to be nothing wrong with his brain. Inexplicably, he still had all his mental faculties.
Hang on. What happened to my rigor mortis? I should have gone all stiff – if I was dead.
He replayed recent events through his mind again.
In the morgue? No rigor mortis. In the van? No rigor mortis. Filming the adult movie? No rigor mortis.
He wanted to grin.
Not even when Chantelle touched my bits.
Was he still flexible? He revisited the recent events again.
In the morgue, I was lying on the mortician’s slab. That’s no help – I could have been flexible then and not known it.
His mind fast-forwarded to the journey in the van.
I think I bent a little when I was being thrown around in the back of the van.
But he wasn’t sure.
How about at the film studio?
Again, I couldn’t move. But –
Suddenly Arnold felt encouraged.
I distinctly remember seeing a clock on the wall of the film set. What was the time? The doctor pronounced me dead at zero seven fifty-seven – though I’m clearly not. That’s three minutes to eight, in the morning. I must have spent at least three hours in the mortuary. Of course, I can’t be certain, but it certainly felt that long. That takes us to about eleven a.m. When we arrived at the warehouse the clock on the wall read midday. That’s a total of around four hours.
Arnold liked how his reminiscing was playing out. Rigor mortis typically sets in after two to six hours. He’d already counted up to four hours. That left two to go.
Now, the director filmed some other scenes with Chantelle’s stand-in, so what time was on the clock when Pete and Barry took me back to the van?
He dug into the recesses of his memory.
It was dark. What time was it?
If he could have, he’d have shouted out eureka! The clock had said six-thirty in the evening. They’d left for the woods at six-thirty.
Arnold could now account for the last ten and a half hours. Add to that, the journey to the woods which must have taken at least ninety minutes and the total came to twelve hours. Plenty of time for rigor mortis to have set in. And he remembered being slung over Pete’s shoulder on the way to the burial site. That couldn’t have happened if his body wasn’t malleable. And if he was still bendable, then rigor hadn’t happened.
Arnold concluded that he’d been correct all along. He was still alive.