tabula rasa
The human mind is incredibly good rewriting things too horrible to be remembered.
Vincent is in a coffin. He hasn't been there long.
Self-preservation is key.
He pounds desperately on the silk-lined lid, but the light is already gone and there isn't enough room to make anything more than the smallest of dents. His harsh, hyperventilating breaths fill what little space there is, echoing in the confines of a two-meter prison. His hands weaken; he can't breathe, can't take in enough air.
The human mind, when unable to process such significant trauma, will scab over the imagery and leave nothing but a hollow white space.
He wrests his legs to move, and his ankles collide with the sides of the coffin. He can't get the leverage to force the lid off, and he can't quell the overwhelming terror of complete darkness, of staggering claustrophobia.
He tries to yell, to call out for help he knows isn't coming, but he can't draw the breath to subside the growing dizziness, much less scream. His eyes are wide, terrified, unseeing.
Soon he'll pass out from the lack of air. Science will explain his blank memory with his oxygen-starved brain.
In twenty-five years, he'll open his eyes. He'll slice off the feet of curling hair and nails, shed the rotted blue suit for scraps left behind, and sleep for five more years before he can even begin to question it.
When he wakes again, he will have filled this blank space with etchings of his own guilt. She is dead, it is his fault, and he lives for revenge. With enough sanding, like ancient, brittle sanskrit, it can be erased and rewritten.
For now, however, it's dark. The white blankness hasn't yet formed, and he drowns.
He suffers.