Beneath the Polished Wood

I opened my eyes, but it stayed dark. I didn't realize how dark it was until I reached for it. Like swimming in ink. My arms pressed against smooth wood on either side. It felt polished and expensive. My chest tightened. Maybe I was dreaming? I scratched myself, I’m awake.

“Hello?” I slammed my hands upward. Once, twice, wood again. My throat closed. I pressed my palms to the ceiling, trembling. It wouldn’t move.

Not happening. Couldn’t be.

I kicked my legs, my knees slammed into more wood. I’m not here. I’m not here. I squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn’t help. The dark was still there, and now it was alive. It crawled down my throat and choked me, making me scream.

It didn’t help.

Louder. Longer. Someone had to hear me. Somebody had to dig me out. Someone. The only one that answered was silence. My hands dropped, I stared with my chest heaving, waiting for something to happen, waiting for something that wouldn’t. My wedding ring clinked against the wood. “Fuck you.” The words burned my throat. I whispered them again. Louder. Over and over until my voice died. Fuck whoever did this. Fuck their cowardice, their cruelty. Fuck the dirt that probably surrounded me. Fuck-

“I’ll do anything.” My voice cracked. I curled my fingers against the wood, pleading. “Anything. Just let me out. Please.” Tears slid into my ears. “I’ll be better. I’ll…I don’t know. I’ll fix it. Whatever it was. I’ll fix everything.” I curled into myself as I stared into the black. Just me. I’m tired. So fucking tired. The effort to keep breathing was alot. My fingers traced splinters in the ceiling. I imagined the sky and closed my eyes. It’s better this way. Quiet.

Though it made no difference, I waited.

A sound that was faint at first, like rain on leaves, got closer. *Scratch, scratch*. Something moving above me? My heart kickstarted. *Scratch. Scratch. Thump.* “Hey!” My voice came out hoarse, barely there. I swallowed hard, tried again. “HEY! I’M HERE!” The scratching stopped. No. No, don’t fucking go. Come back.

*Scratch. Scratch.* Lower now, by my feet. Moving along the side, like it was circling me. The scratching reached my head, I pressed myself against the opposite side. The sound followed. “What are you?” I whispered.

It answered with a laugh. High and thin, like breaking glass.

I tried to think back. Was there something I could have done differently? “Why?” The question slipped from my lips. “Why me?” No answer. Just that damn laughter again, filling the void with a cruel empty. I pressed my hands against the wood once more, feeling the grain beneath my fingertips. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure who I was apologizing to. The world? The people I might have hurt? *Scratch*. “Please,” I begged. “I just want to go home.” I thought of my front door, but it did not exist.

The laughter stopped but not the scratching, it moved in fits and starts, circling like it was thinking and watching, while waiting. “Talk to me, say something, anything.” The scratching stopped. Maybe it was gone. I tried to remember the last thing before this. Something real. There had been...a meeting? There were faces of all kind that showed anger, coldness, and fear. Some guy in a suit though his name didn’t matter, would say things I didn’t like, he’d drone on until I stood up, shoved the chair back too hard. “What do you expect me to do?” I snapped. “Apologize? For what, exactly?” I remember the way they’d flinched, how they’d looked away.

I remember Emily. “You expect us to clean up after you?” she’d always say, her voice would be quiet, but firm. “You always do this.” I’d laughed at her, mock her. She’d stared at me unblinking as I walked out. I leaned my head back now, pressing into the wood. It felt colder than before. The splinters were biting into my scalp, little pinpricks of pain that kept me here, wherever here was. The scratching started again. My voice in response was cracked, dry and weak. “I’ll find you. I’ll-” My words choked off. It was Emily again. She slid papers across the table. “You didn’t have to ruin him. You didn’t have to ruin us.” I didn’t even look at the papers. Didn’t need to. I’d smiled instead, wide and toothy. “You’ll be back,” I said, standing up. “Maybe not now. Maybe not soon. But you’ll be back”. The scratching grew louder, faster, like it was feeding off me, because of it, I snapped back to reality. The scratching stopped again. Silence. “I’ll fix it,” I whispered. My voice was barely a breath. “I’ll fix everything. Please. Just let me try.” The scratching resumed, this time behind me, impossibly close.

I whipped around, or at least tried to, but there was no space. My shoulders slammed into the wood, my head cracked painfully against the ceiling, but I didn’t really care. Impossible I thought. Something scraped along my calf, I recoiled, and yanked my legs up into my chest as best I could. The walls crushed me from every side now, pressing closer. It was *inside me*. It soaked into my skin, clawed its way up my throat and down into my lungs, filling me up like water in a sinking ship. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could do was listen. *Scratch. Scratch. Laugh.* The laugh was smaller now, yet somehow worse. It sank inside my head, bouncing off the walls of my mind. Thin, cutting, and *familiar*. Closing my eyes no longer helped. “I’m sorry,” I whispered again, this time to no one. To the dark. To god, if he still gave a fuck. To Emily. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

*Didn’t you, though?* The voice came from everywhere at once and nowhere at all. It was around me like smoke, the laugh came again. It settled at the base of my skull, vibrating through the bones. “No,” it mocked, soft and nurturing. Almost kind, if cruelty could be kind. “You just didn’t care.” The words hit me like a punch to the gut. My mouth opened and closed, but I couldn’t argue. Couldn’t deny it. I pressed myself harder into the corner, not that there *was* a corner, and shoved my hands against my ears. The voice slithered its way into me whether I wanted it or not. The scratching started again, inside.

“You had all the chances in the world, you could have tried then, when it mattered.” the voice said, louder now and with more clarity. “But you chose to look away.”

“I said I’d fucking fix it!”

The voice didn’t laugh this time. Instead, it sighed inaudibly.

“No.” Cold, absolute, and final. “No, you won’t.”

And then the scratching wasn’t scratching anymore, it was ripping and tearing. I screamed as splinters rained into my hair, my face, my mouth. I clawed at the coffin walls, trying to push back the shapes, no, not shapes, *hands*, too many hands, that came from the wood itself, pale, each one reaching for me.

“It’s too late,” The first hand wrapped around my wrist. Another snagged my ankle. Another, my neck. I coughed, it pulled me down, pulled me in, closer to the wood.

I screamed, bit, and thrashed, but they simply did not let go. I lashed at the wood, but even that gave me nothing. Soon the wood beneath me splintered and cracked. Then the bottom fell out entirely, and I was falling, with the hands dragging me into every direction. My actions were here, in the grain, pressed deep into the varnish. They wouldn’t let me go, I reached out for something but there was nothing to grab and truly nowhere to go, and yet, somehow, that same laugh chased me all the way down.

It was still laughing as I was falling.

And it was laughing when I hit the bottom.

**And then I realized, with an awful certainty, that I’d always been here.**