They buried me in a coffin; the smell of fresh wood all there was to keep me company for the years I spent in there. And earth, the smell of earth piled on top of it, seeping through. My hands folded atop my chest, eyes closed to the horror as I slept.

Waking up in the dark, little box surrounding me, the smell of pine and earth from which we all are born and most return to. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. From which we are made, we shall return. And return I had though soon I wager. A soon that may never come.

Panic. Oh horror of horrors. Scratch my fingernails off on the lid only to have them grow back minutes later. In a coffin so tight I can hardly move myself, adjust my arms, turn my hips. Oh Lord above rescue me! Eternal damnation! Scream until my lings give out. I used up my air in days, lungs burning as they died and were resurrected cell by cell, oh God let me die at least!

The pine and earth smell gave way soon to wet rot and excretion. Unbearable but without air to breathe it only came at times. Splinters under my fingernails, then pushed out with the power only to have me digging again at the coffin lid.

I grew numb. I gave up moving. I folded my hands once again on my chest and waited. And waited. You can't imagine the things that go through your mind when you're buried in the earth for years and years, not being able to suffocate nor starve nor age. Is there even a God? Every word anyone has ever spoken to me. What would the Spanish Armada done had there not been a storm the day Elizabeth and England resisted? What the perfect woman would look like and how long a man could search for her. Three years trying to remember the name of that sonnet I heard as a boy and the words. Why do I suffer so? Is there such thing as time as man perceives it or just some fluid dream we live out? What color was my hair? What was my mother's name? Am I dead yet? Is this death?

And suddenly I raged, scratching, fighting with hellfire as I left my prison. Hell, yes it was. I had done my time in hell. And I spent months digging myself out of that coffin, mere days once I had myself a hole wide enough to escape; mere days before I broke the surface and took a breath for the first time in sixty seven years.

I cannot die. How I wished to for so long and the decadence I live in now. I will die someday, though not a mortal death. I have deduced that someday I will be so bored of this world, so numb to its pleasures and every thought or idea toyed with many times over. There will come a time when I will have done everything there is to do, said everything there is to say, and then I will sleep. I will cease thought. I will lie in my final resting place until the world ends. Bury me again, I don't care. I've been in hell before.

I still wonder though, if there is enough beauty in this world to keep me alive forever. Sometimes I condemn God. Sometimes I have hope. Doesn't matter though. I have all the time I need to think about it.

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