Buried Alive in a Coffin

It’s night-time, although I’m unsure of what time it is. I’m wearing the gray shorts and t-shirt that I and the other kids always wear. My hair is knotted and hangs over my face. I stare at my bare feet as I’m let outside to the back of the building. My hands are bound behind me in some kind of loose leather cuffs, and I feel like I’ve been drugged. I look up just enough to see one of the little girls from inside bound and laying on the ground next to a wood coffin. In my head I believe she is dead and I’m envious of her for having escaped. It’s quiet and hot out, must be summer in Michigan. I hear faint sounds of distant traffic beyond the tall cement walls. The man next to me touching my upper arm stops and I instinctively stopped to. I feel so small next to this man who towers over me. I remember this man from inside, he’s the man who locks us in cages naked. If I’m good, I get a small, pink blanket to sleep with. Another man’s voice, “Listen!” Listen means a command is coming. “Look up child,” the man says. I know not to look at his face, I look up just enough to see a plain, child-sized, wooden coffin in front of me and a hole next to it. I feel a huge relief knowing that I will die tonight too, except I was wrong. The man next to me takes off the leather cuffs and start sticking the electroshock pads on my muscles again, and I feel a chill run through me. I already know what’s coming. The man next to me holds out his enormous hand and I place my tiny one in his. There’s no point in fighting back, I learned that a long time ago.

He gently guides me into the coffin and touches my cheek softly with his hand, but I’m not stupid. He does stuff like this to make the other kids and I think he cares. He just does this to play games with us. I lay down, stop moving, and close my eyes. The last thought in my head is that I hope it doesn’t hurt too bad before I die.

They put the lid on top of the coffin and it instantly gets dark and suffocatingly hot. I feel myself being picked up, moved, and dropped into the hole, free-falling down and hitting the bottom with a painful thunk. Silence, nothing happens….. and then I hear the crash of a scoop of dirt and rocks raining down on the top. A few seconds go by and another loud crash. Silence again and then the man’s voice plays over speaker next to my ear. “Your dead and everyone else is dead.” A full body jolt, this time in the back. I remember overhearing a man once say that they can shock a child’s entire body, but they have to either shock the back or the stomach because if they hit both at the same time it would break our spine. It always feels like an eternity when they shock us, as if time has no meaning, but it probably only lasted a few minutes. I hear the voice again say “your dead, and everyone else is dead.” This time nothing and I’ve already figured out what they want. It pays to figure out what they want because they enjoy torturing us for not knowing what to do. I lay extremely still taking very shallow breaths. Another eternal moment. A voice says “congratulations child,” and the lid is removed. A twinge of excitement when I see lights and I think I’m getting out. Wrong again. The cage man throws a heavy metal cross on my chest that hits my ribs so hard I cry out. “Bless you my child,” he says. The voice man throws snakes, spiders, millipedes, and other unspeakable disgusting things into the coffin and quickly puts the lid back on. Legs brush against my arm and I yelp. Another shock, so long and intense than my stomach hits the top of the coffin when my back arches. A snake touches my foot and I gasp. The last shock I remember that night, so bad I beg a god I don’t believe in to break my spine and let me die, then darkness.

I’m awake now, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside the big room next to the little boy, the one that looks like he’s dead. I feel nothing, like I’ve been drugged even more this time. The voice man drops a pile of wooden blocks in front of us and we both build our 13 level pyramid. The voice man says again “you’re dead, and everyone else is dead,” and walks away.