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Casey Novak groaned as she woke up from a sleep she did not remember starting. The last thing she remembered was leaving her office and starting to walk home to her apartment. She had not been anywhere that would be in line with her taking a nap. It was then that she realized she was not waking up. She was coming to.
From the pain in her head, Casey knew she must have a concussion. That would also explain why she had no idea what had happened, or where she was. She had been knocked out.
Her pounding headache kept her from opening her eyes. Also, part of her did not want to know where she was. She realized she must have been attacked. Wherever she was, there was absolutely no noise, so she was not in a hospital. She was alone, at the mercy of some random person.
Still scrunching her eyes shut, Casey gingerly tried to move different parts of her body to see whether she had any further injuries. Everything seemed in order until she got to her arms. She tried to move her left arm and felt a shooting pain so powerful that she was left gasping for breath. She did not know for sure, but she guessed that she had a compound fracture in her forearm. Now that she thought about it, she felt like her left hand was sitting in a pool of blood.
Casey then attempted to move her right arm. She found it to be uninjured, but before she had moved it more than two inches to the right, it came into contact with a wall. Confused, she stretched out the fingers of her left hand as far as she could without jarring her arm, and she felt a wall there too.
Her heart started pounding. She willed herself not to panic until she knew for sure what was going on. Biting her lip, she pointed her toes and felt a wall beyond them as well.
She started getting dizzy. Using her right hand, she slowly brought it in front of her face and moved it straight up until it came into contact with a barrier not five inches away from the tip of her nose.
She could not take it any longer. Dreading what she was about to see, but already knowing the position she was in, Casey's eyes shot open.
It was just as dark as it had been before she opened her eyes. She had never been in a more complete darkness. And she was freezing.
Her breaths became labored and shallow. She was in a coffin.
"Oh my God," she whispered, absolutely frozen with horror. She was trapped. She knocked on the lid, feeling and hearing that she was not in the open air. "Oh God," she said again, her head pounding and her arm throbbing and her mind threatening to throw her over the edge, into insanity. She was in a coffin…which was perfect since she would die there. There was no way out.
"Oh God oh God oh God," she cried, feeling tears start rolling down her face and into her hair. All thoughts of staying strong were gone from her head. There was no way she could stay strong, there was no way she would not panic. There was no way she would survive.
"I can't do this," she said aloud, her sobbing making the words almost impossible to understand…which did not matter, since there was no one there to hear them anyway. "Oh no…no…oh my God."
She closed her eyes again, trying desperately to shut out the knowledge that she was buried in the ground and had nothing to do, could do nothing at all, but wait for her death by suffocation. She wondered how much longer she had, and that drove her deeper into panic.
Her uninjured hand crept up toward her throat. It would be easier to just end it. She would die the same way, but at least she would not have to wait another agonizing minute. It would be over. And maybe someone would find her someday, but they probably would not. It would be ridiculous to prolong her suffering based on the slight possibility that someone would happen to come by, dig a hole, and decide to open a coffin. That is, if someone found her within the next few hours. Otherwise, she would be dead, and conveniently already in a coffin. No matter what, it was over.
Her fingers tightened slightly, and she felt herself losing her grip on life. It was horrible, but infinitely better than waiting for the inevitable. It would be over soon.
When Casey was very close to her last seconds, her left arm twitched in response to her impending death. Her fingers knocked against something, but not the side of the coffin. It was something small and mobile.
She released her grip on her throat, her head spinning as life returned to her. She tried to reach over her body with her right arm, but there was no room. She tried several times, twisting her arm in ways she never had previously, before she realized it was no use. And that was the point. Whoever put her there wanted her to use her left arm. He wanted her to be in excruciating pain.
Casey bit her lip and grasped the object with her left hand. With an enormous effort, losing her breath from the pain of it all, she managed to heave the object onto her stomach. Her injured arm would not have allowed any more. It fell limply back beside her, as painful as if she had been stabbed.
Willing herself not to pass out from the agony of her left arm, Casey reached for the box with her right hand. Resting it on her chest, her fingers flew over it, trying to determine what its purpose was. It was some sort of plastic with texturing in a circle on one side. At one end of the box was a flexible rod some four inches long. There was a switch along one side, and Casey moved it, hearing a crackling sound and seeing a small red light appear next to the rod.
It was a walkie-talkie.
Casey let out a deep, shuddering breath. She held it to her mouth and, praying that someone would answer her, said, "Hello?"
A/N: Does anyone have any idea how long air in a coffin would last? If no one knows, then I'm just going to have to invent, and if I'm completely scientifically inaccurate, I apologize.