Casket

Arms tied behind my back, I’m escorted to a lonely … box … it seems. It’s a room, but literally just an empty, cubed structure already built deep into the ground. A lonely candle sits in the center, already lit. They untie my aching arms, and then I’m thrown into this box-room that will be shut airtight in the immediate future. My feet hit so hard I practically feel the splinters of the wood enter my feet. They throw another piece of plywood over the opening that I was thrown through and quickly nail it shut.

I’d heard of this fate . . . but it’s not exactly something you come to believe.

Is this what one gets for trying to help in a society that’s meant to already be perfect? I’m the only scientist still alive, and I will be until the end of my time here. I was whisked away from my home by the authorities and sentenced to death penalty by asphyxiation. The infamous Casket.

I was simply a fellow citizen trying to concoct a cure for the illnesses the poor or the old couldn’t get over. But that’s not how things are here:

Overpopulation is the biggest threat in this society. You are to work to the bone until you can’t work anymore, then, you are to be discontinued forthwith.

My only intention was to help.

Now, I’ve been shut in this already-splintering box. I can hear the workers’ shovels piercing into the ground, one-by-one. They start shoveling the dirt on top of this room I’m in. Each drop of dirt was accompanied by the sound of it thudding against this unforgiving plywood.

Underground. Alone. Nothing but me and this wood . . . and a damn candle. At least they had the decency to sit it in the middle of the room and light it for me. But, let’s get literal, this tiny flame isn’t going to last the rest of my life. Fire needs oxygen to burn, right? Where will it come from?

. . .

Thirty minutes pass, and I feel a headache coming. Side effects have already started and I just got here. The flame on this candle is still burning, however. I sit watching it.

Amazing how nature works, huh? What is a flame, exactly? And how does it have no shadow? Who cares. This flame is the light source. You’re a scientist. You know that.

It flickers occasionally, but usually, the flame shoots straight up. Why or how can it flicker, though?

. . .

I have to have been sitting here for several hours, watching as the same flame dims down a little more, and the candle shortens as time goes on. My stomach hurts, my head hurts more, and I feel fatigue coming as things become discombobulating. A fluttery feeling in my chest makes me feel sick, a tickling at my throat. Clamminess overtakes me. I just try to watch that flame, but my focus is drawn away occasionally with thoughts racing through my head. It’s quiet except for the times I can hear the unlucky sap actively being sapped of his sanity in his Casket. Sometimes he simply beats on the walls. Sometimes I can hear them screaming . . . actually, I haven’t heard him in about an hour. I can’t tell. How the hell could you tell time in this thing?

. . . The sweet sounds of silence . . .

I’ve been in this thing forever. The flame shortens along with its candle. I can’t watch that stupid flame anymore. I’ll puke if I do. Memories replay in my head as I communicate with the people in it. Mostly memories of my wife, who also met her fate in one of these rooms long before now. She’d gotten sick … and I couldn’t help her. She’s sitting next to me now. This makes me . . . happy? Contempt.

“You tried to help your people. You shouldn’t be ashamed.” She sat next to me. I’d longed to hear her voice for so long

“I’m rotting because of it. Desiccating. How am I supposed to feel? I’ve violated the moral code,” I replied, a dryness in my throat that makes you crave the one thing you’ve probably taken for granted in life: water.

“Listen. This is either a prison, or a death home. I came here to die. But you won’t, will you?”

“I tried to save you … but right now, I don’t think I could save myself.”

I couldn’t make out her next words as they faded away as she did. She’d left me again.

A frustration overwhelms my psyche. The idea that I was imprisoned in this boxed to lower the population count in means of dishonoring the society's policies:

Come on! How long can it really take to die?! Why is it such a process when you want it to happen! These days, lives are taken away so fast, but I just can’t croak right here in the middle of this floor! I can barely breathe, so it’s coming, but jeez, can we speed up the process here?!

I begin coughing my lungs out, hoping maybe one of said lungs actually will pop out so I can finish suffering. I’d like to just stare at this wall until I expire. The flame isn’t one I’d call a full flame anymore, it’s a faint blue color. The candle has become about as long as one of my fingernails. Good. I’m sick of watching it.

. . . I’m ready. I have been . . .

It has to have been a full twenty-four hours already … I can’t move. I can barely think. And there’s this candle, the flame barely surviving … hmm … sounds familiar. Ow. It hurts to think now. I might just have to extinguish this flame, for I think I know what it means now . . .

I need to shut my eyes, but I can't help but wonder: Will I see a light or more flames? I fall asleep. I soon wake up on the living room floor of my house. My wife comes to help me up off the floor and hugs me. We start to dance. She loved dancing to that old-style music. She’d always had this classy look about her. “I failed you,” I admit.

She disappears from my arms and reappears into another man’s who is standing in front of a glaring light glaring into my eyes. The light and the man flow through the doorway of what was once my home. But it hadn't been since she left me.

The man has long brown hair a bushy beard, he wears a, seemingly, luminescent white cloak. I can’t see his face. I walk towards this light to my wife. My legs creak and ache, as I’m still not used to this freedom. I reach her finally, yet still unable to see the man’s face. I grab my wife’s hand, and she grabs the man’s with her other as we all walk into a new world.

. . . A true utopia . . .

I’m out. And, mutually, so is that candle.

That’s all it was … a timer for my life. That's all it had ever been. It's reason of existence. All that remains in this Casket: my soon-to-be desiccating body, and a heart-shaped locket where the candle had once been. A picture of my wife on one side, clean and clear, and a picture of me on the other, scorched and soiled.

. . . I'm finally home . . .