"In a Field Somewhere" by Daniel Paton

There’s a box in the ground. It’s about five and a half feet long, three feet wide, and one foot deep. I’m in it.

You walk overhead. I can feel the slight tremors through the mud. You can’t hear my screams and the pounding of my fists against the wood. Or at least, I assume you can’t.

Maybe you can hear something; a muffled beat, a tiny shudder. But whatever you hear, it doesn’t make you want to hang around. So you go on. Your pace quickens. It’s ok, I understand. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. Still, I give another cry for help as your tremors become more and more faint and then nothing.

My voice is almost deafening. The noise gets bounced around the space and sucked back into me. I’ve become extra sensitive to sound since being in here; every vibration from up there, every creature scurrying around the dirt, every drip that makes it through, I hear and feel it all.

My touch is more sensitive too. I’ve mapped out every rough contour of this wooden prison as best as its restrictive shape will allow.

I’ve fainted three times at least. I did surprisingly well before the first time. But the minutes between faintings are fast decreasing. The air is heavy and hot like an earthy sauna.
I muster up the strength to hit my ceiling a few times more. But the dull thuds give no sign that I’m getting anywhere. Someone needs to get me out. I heard that in times of crisis, some people are capable of physical feats that are otherwise impossible. Some survival instinct gives us momentary superpowers. Well, I didn’t have that when I woke up and I certainly don’t now. I need help. Morse code crosses my mind, but if no-one can hear the thumps, then how would they notice the rhythm?

Then I hear the tiniest of scrapes to the left of my head. I swivel my neck a little. Another scrape. Slightly louder. The flick of a leg? There’s definitely something there. If there’s a gap for a bug then there’s a place to aim for. I can’t quite roll onto my front, my shoulder hits the roof at a 45 degree angle, but I turn to search in the darkness better.

There is a pinprick of a hole. And something tickles my fingertip. A tiny leg or bug’s antenna. A pang of hope. This is the place to aim for with the metal zip on my jeans. This will be how I exert my last remaining energy before I pass out again.

I pull my trousers down to my knees and then use my feet to shimmy them down the rest of the way. The movement is making my breaths deeper and the thick air feels like liquid seeping into my lungs. Sweat trickles down my forehead. I desperately start jamming the small metal point of the zipper into the corner, praying to a God I’ve never believed in to let the wood give way. I shove and stab and scrape with wild desperation, more sweat pouring from me.

I think I’m getting somewhere; the hole has widened to about a centimetre. Whatever was wiggling there has gone. Whatever saviour that was.

I stick the zip into the gap and saw back and forth, stopping every few seconds to clean the mud away. It widens to an inch, and I fervently continue until the zip wears down to the denim. I scratch and pull as best I can with my fingers. I barely feel the blood but I can smell it.

The gap in the box is now a gash and I suck in air through my nose, scared to open my mouth to the mud. I get my palms through but now I’m drowning in mud and my eyes are closing against my will and I know I’m about to faint, possibly for the last time. A last reserve of adrenaline rushes through me and I think that I’m getting that moment of superhuman power. There’s a loud crunch as some of the wood snaps, but the mud is the new wall I’m fighting against, a crushing wave that’s all around me. It makes me think that the God I never believed doesn’t want me to get out of here. I shove my face through the hole and embrace the mud piling against me.

Some new strange movement within the compacting dirt gives me cause for renewed fear as I continue pushing against the boards to get my shoulders out. Trying to breathe lightly through my nose so as not to eat any dirt, I swivel slightly and get an arm free of the wood; I push a hand up to my face to find the source of the movement that is getting closer and closer. I touch something that moves, a thick bulbous body half the size of my palm and eight flailing legs.

I scream a silent scream and the relentlessly compacting dirt shifts like concrete and forces the spider into my mouth and its legs fight desperately to climb over my sodden tongue and luckily I start to pass out for the final time before I taste it too much and I know that the God I never believed in sent me here for one reason and there’s no time left for redemption. 

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Daniel Paton has had short fiction published in multiple anthologies and online literary journals and also writes screenplays and stage plays. Having completed his Creative Writing MA, he looks to work on new projects including a debut novel. 
 
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B09QQMH3Z
Instagram Account: @danielpaton96

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