When Isaac next woke up, everything was different.

  His lungs pleaded with him for breath, his chest radiating with pressure as if a grown man were kneeling on him. The air was musty and stale and the heat came with a ragged stench of his own breath wandering into his nostrils. Everything felt heavy and foreign.

  Opening his eyes proved difficult at first; they seemed to have crusted over and sealed themselves shut. He hadn’t experienced this sensation since he was a young boy. His mother had this home remedy where she’d lay a hot washcloth against his crusted eyes. A minute or two later, he’d be good as new.

  He wished he could smell the lavender scent his mother always exuded. Instead, he was met with the harsh smell of decay.

  Isaac went to lift his hand to his face to wipe his eyes but found he couldn’t.

  The space was far too cramped to allow any movement, his hand smacking against the rough wood overhead.

  That was unexpected.

  Where was he?

  The last thing he remembered was the hospital.

  The memory came back in pieces rather than a complete image.

  White ceilings. Way too bright. The rhythmic chirp of a monitor that never quite faded into the background no matter how hard he tried to ignore it. Voices continually floated in and out—muffled, distorted, as though spoken through water. Someone had said his name, but they’d said it wrong. Not Isaac. Something close, but not quite him. Then again, his hearing was awfully muffled.

  He remembered the weight of blankets being tucked around him, the way the fabric pressed gently against his chest. He remembered thinking it was strange how heavy they felt. Comforting, but heavy.

  Had he signed something?

  The thought surfaced uninvited, sharp and unsettling. A clipboard. A pen placed carefully between his fingers. A question he hadn’t fully heard, only nodded along to because he was tired. Because breathing already felt like work.

  He tried to remember pain, or fear—but what lingered instead was a deep sense of resignation. A quiet moment where he’d wondered if letting go might be easier than fighting anymore.

  That was the last clear thought he could recall.

  Panic.

  Chaos.

  Dying.

  Surely he wasn’t dead, though. This pain felt all too real. Sweat rolled into his eyes, the burning sensation mixing with his crusted eyelids and causing more panic to rush over him.

  His chest rumbled as a roaring cough erupted, sounding more like a barking sea lion than a human cough.

  A wheezy rattle echoed throughout his little room as he inhaled.

  Even breathing felt like something he had to work for.

  Dead men don’t cough, he thought.

  Isaac wouldn’t have considered himself claustrophobic—but then again, he had never really been trapped in a tight space like this before.

  He could faintly hear the sound of rain, but it was muffled, like being on the lower floor of a house and just vaguely making out the pitter-patter a floor above.

  His body ached, as if he hadn’t moved in quite some time. Every one of his joints felt stiff and locked tight. Each muscle felt overly fatigued, carrying a constant dull pain.

  Beyond the smell of his own body odor, there was an earthy aroma just beyond wherever he was.

  He moved his feet, trying to feel around and get a better idea of his surroundings.

  The texture against his skin was wood—above, below, and to the sides of him. The container seemed to taper, growing more narrow toward his feet.

  “Faaaaaack!” a much lower voice growled as his unfortunate pinky toe dragged along the grain of the wood, peeling back a thin splinter no larger than a needle and wedging it beneath the edge of his toenail.

  That was his sign to quit moving his feet.

  Against all possible logic, here he was—and all evidence pointed to the one place he didn’t want to be. He actually couldn’t think of a single place on Earth worse than his current situation.

  He was in a coffin.

  The word echoed in his mind, heavy and absolute.

  Coffin.

  He tried to force his breathing to slow, though each inhale scraped painfully through his throat. Panic would only waste what little air he had left. He needed to think—really think.

  How deep were graves, usually?

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Six feet, wasn’t it? That sounded right. It had to be. He tried to picture it—six feet of dirt pressing down, compacted by rain and time. How long would oxygen last in a sealed box like this? Minutes? An hour? Less? He really had no idea.

  He attempted to count his breaths, but lost track somewhere after twelve. His chest burned, his heartbeat pounding loudly in his ears. Every calculation collapsed under the weight of fear, replaced by the same looping conclusion.

  There wasn’t enough air.

  Cold sweat rolled down his face as Isaac brought his hands up to meet the top of the wooden coffin. His fingers scratched hazardously against his prison.

  He completely forgot or perhaps no longer cared—about the foreign object invading his littlest pig.

  Panic set in as he realized whatever had been done back at the hospital had inevitably failed. Why else would he be here?

  Given modern technology and the medical advancements of the 21st century, these mistakes just didn’t happen anymore. People were not buried alive.

  Isaac felt one of his fingernails slide backward, cracking down the middle as it caught against uneven, splintered wood. The familiar smell of iron reached him as warm liquid slid down his hands and fell into his open mouth.

  This didn’t stop him. Missing a fingernail or two was the least of his worries. Who knew how much longer he would remain conscious—how much air was left?

  His hands moved faster, with more intensity, scratching, ripping, and pulling at flakes of wood.

  Blood splattered back against his face, spraying the coffin walls around him.

  Somehow, this fueled him—excited him even more. He wouldn’t stop now. He was close.

  His eyes continued to fail him in the pitch-blackness. Crusties or not, his vision was utterly useless.

  He had always heard that blind or deaf people developed heightened senses, but he’d honestly thought that was something people made up to make the gimps feel better.

  Despite that belief, a different kind of awareness began to emerge.

  Some kind of progress bar popped up seemingly out of nowhere. Surrounded by darkness, Isaac wasn’t sure if he was actually seeing it or if his brain was filling in the blanks.

  Hallucinations, maybe—probably due to the lack of oxygen reaching his brain.

  The text flickered.

  Not like a solid image, but like something struggling to stay in focus. He blinked hard, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again, half-expecting it to disappear.

  It didn’t.

  If anything, it sharpened.

  Health: ███???????

  Condition: Unstable

  Stamina: ██????????

  Breath: Failing

  The word Failing pulsed faintly, each flicker seeming to coincide with the shallow, panicked drag of his breath. His attention locked onto it despite himself—and immediately, his chest spasmed, breath hitching as though his body had taken the word as instruction rather than observation.

  “Stop,” he rasped, though he wasn’t sure who he was talking to.

  The bars didn’t move. They didn’t care.

  He didn’t know what to make of the information, so he focused on the task at hand.

  Getting out of his death box.

  “I’m not about to die after coming back to life!” he shouted, though to anyone else it would have sounded more like a wild animal.

  The gurgling jumble of words that escaped made him realize he needed to calm down, or he’d pass out before he broke through.

  Against all natural instincts, Isaac took a long, deliberate breath.

  He regretted it immediately.

  The air felt wrong. In the short time he’d been awake, he could feel something changing.

  His throat screamed in pain—dry, raw, blistering heat burning through his neck.

  The smell around him had changed too. Something strange about it. He tried desperately to place it, but his mind continued to draw blanks.

  His attention wavered back and forth like one of those wacky inflatable tube men.

  Slower now, but with more deliberate attacks, his fingers continued to chip away, peeling back pieces of wood. More blood rolled down his arms as he applied increasing pressure.

  Some sixth sense told him he was close to a breakthrough.

  The smell intensified.

  It wasn’t just earth.

  His mind scrambled for a familiar reference of something safe, something explainable. It took a few moments before the mememory clicked. Cooked eggs left on the stove too long. Wet stone after a summer rain.

  A sharp, chemical tang that stung the back of his throat.

  Wrong.

  The smell didn’t belong underground. It felt active, aggressive, like it was waiting.

  His stomach twisted as understanding crept closer, just out of reach.

  That knowledge powered his arms as he shoved hard against the most damaged section of the coffin.

  His tiny, isolated world wove in and out.

  His breaths grew shallow.

  The smell intensified.

  Isaac realized what it reminded him of just as dirt began to pour in.

  Hard-boiled eggs.

  He didn’t understand what that meant as the coffin moaned under the pressure and cracked.

  He braced for impact—but instead of heavy chunks of dirt and clay, he was met with immense pressure as a fine stream of suffocating, gritty soil poured through the cracks before giving way entirely.

  The soil was strangely warm—a detail Isaac wouldn’t connect until later.

  Right now, his mouth was filling with the soot-like substance.

  His eyes burned as he choked violently, his nostrils sucking in the strange material.

  His body’s natural response was to gasp for air, a reflex that proved devastating as he only inhaled more soil.

  His lungs burned violently as the material clung to them, making them heavier.

  Twitching, his body contorted as he pushed against the crushing weight.

  He knew this was his last chance.

  With one final grunt and exertion of effort, a hand burst free from the soil.

  A moment later, another followed.

  The ground churned as both hands pressed down, a groan erupting into a sputtering cough as a head broke through the surface.

  The ground gave way much easier now that the initial eruption had happened.

  Blood and dirt flew from his mouth as he leaned forward, barking aggressively into the sky.

  It took far longer than he would have liked for his lungs to finally rid themselves of that tarry substance.

  Coughing up so much of it had made him realize what it was—a mixture of dirt and ash.

  This realization made sense as he could still feel warmth radiating from the soil as he wriggled upward until only his lower half remained submerged.

  He could see slightly better now. The moonlight was extraordinarily bright, and he used it to his advantage as he continued pushing his body free.

  Exhausted, his feet finally came loose. The momentum knocked him backward—and he now saw why the moonlight was so bright.

  The moon was gigantic.

  Or perhaps it was extremely close.

  Maybe both.

  He tried to tell himself it was an illusion. A trick of perspective. Smoke in the air, ash clinging to his eyes, distorting everything he saw.

  But the longer he stared, the more wrong it felt.

  The moon wasn’t just large—it dominated the sky, its presence oppressive rather than comforting. Its red hue bled into everything, washing the world in dark wine and shadow. He couldn’t see many stars behind it. Maybe none at all.

  For the first time since waking, a quieter fear settled in his chest.

  This wasn’t just somewhere unfamiliar.

  This was somewhere else entirely.

  He lay there completely motionless for several minutes as his heart rate slowed and his coughing regulated, still sputtering out tarry ash that clung to him once it mixed with his saliva.

  The air around him was heavy and damp. The faint chirping of crickets lined the night, and he could make out the occasional critter scuttling past.

  Isaac was far too exhausted to think about anything else besides the beautiful red moon.

  This was how he fell asleep.

  Are you afraid of being buried alive?