Suffocate.

His heart suddenly explodes with a dramatic and desperate thump. Blood violently begins pumping through his body again. Painful air begins filling his dry, collapsed lungs. He whimpers and begins clawing himself. Instinctual screams echo off cheap wood, muffled in a tight, airless vacuum. His body begins retraining itself to live. Toes wiggle. Knees pop the wooden lid. Elbows slam against dense oak. Finally, his eyes open. Blinking, straining, and wiping his eyes, he realizes that he is blind.

A rainfall of memories suddenly drown his mind. The doctor consistently and repeatedly telling him that he had no idea what was causing his sickness. The guilt of watching his children play in the fields, trampling flowers and lies in cheap shoes, blissfully ignorant of the difficulty that awaits them. Waking every other night to find his wife weeping, her muffled and choked tears haunting the walls of their crumbling cabin. He grinds his teeth and claws at the wood above him with bloody fingernails.

A week earlier he’d used what little strength he had left to dig his own grave. He remembers the family trip to pick out the cheapest coffin they could find, his wife and children following him like morbid young ducklings chasing their mother. He didn’t remember his heart finally giving up. He didn’t remember his mind suddenly blinking out of existence. He didn’t remember a stranger looking upon his family with pity. He didn’t remember that stranger donating a fine suit for him to be buried in. He didn’t remember the strange man lending them a wagon. The stranger helped his wife load his body as she lead him to the grave he’d dug.

He didn’t remember the stranger struggling to lump his body into his coffin. He didn’t remember the force with which he struck the bottom of the grave or the soft plops of dirt slowly covering the lid. Bloody fingers finally quit clawing and gently rest on his chest. Every breath is deafening as it echoes on wooden walls. He knows he’s not getting out of here. He remembers the adrenaline and anger that fueled the digging of the grave a couple of feet deeper than it probably needed to be. He’d never lived alone. He’d never worked alone. He’d never played alone or slept alone. He becomes very concerned that he has no idea how to die alone. “I suppose,” he says, “I’ll just give it a try and see how it goes.”

He takes a deep breath and starts to hum an old church hymn.