Goosebumps raised on her arms, as though a cold breeze had blown over her. It was really the first time she had been afraid since The Digger had kidnapped her, and she sank to her knees, bowing her head into the soft, cool earth wall of the grave. Her bloody hands lay useless in her lap, her arms too tired to support them.
Of course those other women had wanted to escape. Of course, they’d wanted to live, to get revenge. They had been motivated by the same riotous anger that had propelled her into digging her own grave. And they had all perished, suffocated.
Hearing a noise, she glanced up at the edge of the hole. It seemed to be miles away from her. The Digger was standing there, towering over her like some wicked giant in a fairy tale. In his left hand, he held the huge cardboard box. In his right, he pointed the shotgun at her.
“You did a good job,” he said. “A nice squared grave. Now, it’s time.”
Pooling all of her resolve, she grunted back at him, “You’ll have to come down here and get me, you bastard. I’m not fucking helping you anymore.” He laughed, and shot her through her left leg. The buckshot sprayed, penetrating her flesh in more than a dozen areas, more than a dozen receptacles of pain. She cried out, falling backwards, and she heard the shotgun go off again, heard his high-pitched laughing. Although she didn’t feel anymore pain this time, she still felt something dig into her other leg. Then, there was only merciful blackness.
She awoke with a scream of agony, and the realization that some time had passed. Blinded by darkness, she pushed her hands against the walls of her coffin, felt the smoothness of the cardboard beneath her fingers. She choked back a cry, tried to move her legs. Lightning pain shot through her right leg, and she knew that it was broken, useless. Her left leg hurt like a motherfucker, but it moved with relative ease compared to her right one. Shoving with that foot, she felt the barrier of the box and the solidness of the dirt behind it. There was a sticky wet pool beneath her entire body, and she knew that she was lying in her own blood.
How long had she been there? How much blood had she lost? How much air remained for her to attempt her escape?
Moving around, she discovered that the box was a very tight fit. He’d had to bend her legs to fit her inside of it, and she kicked a bit with her good leg to see just how solid the walls were with the dirt piled around her. It seemed like she was kicking rock, not loose soil.
The darkness was almost overwhelming. It made her want to scream out, to curse at the total lack of any kind of light.
She thought she felt something move on her arm, insects or worms, and she imagined her entire body covered with crawling bugs. She brushed at her arms, feeling a piece of skin tear away from the palm of her right hand. The hand was so numb that she wasn’t sure if she felt something on her or not. It would be just like The Digger to toss in a bagful of maggots when he buried her.
She hoped he had blisters the size of quarters on his hands from the shoveling he would have had to do to bury her.
She hoped that his truck would be spotted by the police, and that they would haul him in, and that he would be sentenced to life in prison with a serial rapist for a cellmate.
She hoped that he would howl in agony as he was repeatedly penetrated by the imaginary cellmate, the tissue of his anus torn and bloody.
And she suddenly remembered that she had to escape, to claw her way out of this cardboard prison so that she could stand and accuse the bastard in court. She had to be the one to put him away before he did this to another woman.
All those years working out in the gym...the personal trainer...
Choking on sobs, she pushed her fingernails at the cardboard until they punched through the top of the box. She changed the angle of the fingernails and mentally thanked her manicurist, who had suggested coating them with a strengthening liquid. Pulling towards herself, she stripped away a few small teardrops of the box. Loose dirt fell into her mouth and eyes, and she spat, sobbed some more.
She thought that she heard something, a noise from above her. Was it The Digger? Was he still lurking around, waiting for her last breath to die on her lips?
She’d have to take the chance that it was someone else, someone who’d spotted them or had seen the freshly-dug grave site. She screamed, “Hey! I’m in here! I’m still alive!”
She felt a fingernail break as she tore more of the cardboard away. Dirt was sifting into the box at a fairly steady rate now. She stopped for a moment, heard the noise again...a very distinct digging sound.
Someone was digging their way down.
