The dreams had been quite terrible; broken and fleeting with bits and pieces of the memories of her life combining into settings that had seemed both ludicrous and terrifying. But they were fading now, and Zoey knew from the past that in a few moments they would be gone. On her days off from work, this was often her most treasured moment. That blissful feeling when you first wake up but have nowhere to be, nor any reason to push yourself to get immediately out of bed.
Is this one of those days?
She tried to remember what, if any, plans she had, but it was then that the fading memories of a terrible headache came back, a pulsing throb in her right temple…but it was almost gone now and seemed more like a dull pain.
Her headache…the painful throbbing…it tried to bring back a memory, but she wasn’t sure if it was a memory or a shadow from her dreams.
She should remember…why couldn’t she. What day was today?
“Alexa,” she finally whispered, realizing her throat was so dry she could barely speak, “what day is today?”
When her bedroom AI didn’t respond, she wondered if she had spoken too softly, so she tried again. Her voice sounded flat and hollow…muffled.
Why can’t I remember what day it is? She wondered, causing her headache to creep back again. I know I was home…I’m almost always home since I moved here.
She finally opened her eyes to pitch blackness, and blinked a few times, waiting for them to adjust, but they never did.
“Alexa?” she asked again, louder, expecting the blue glow to come from the other side of their bedroom, and immediately winced worried that she would have woken her wife. But there was only silent darkness.
She held her breath for a moment to listen for the sounds that should have been there but weren’t…her wife’s gentle snore, movements from the dog…nothing. Then she stretched out her fingers and didn’t feel the usual softness of their microfiber sheets, these were slippery like silk. She felt her leg and realized that she was dressed…she never went to sleep in her clothes.
Her growing headache dragged a memory out, bringing her back to a moment in her home office, the pounding had come so suddenly that she had tried to stand up and call for her wife…but then blackness. That could explain why she was in a strange bed in the dark in her clothes.
But none of their furniture had this silky feeling either, and hospitals were never this dark. She lay motionless for a moment, a seed of fear starting to form in her stomach, then she finally forced herself to stretch out both hands sideways, quickly coming to padded silken walls to either side.
Her breath started to get quicker, and she reached up, feeling the soft padded roof a half foot above her face. Her seed quickly grew to a panic as she frantically felt all around her enclosed space, then her own body, realizing she was not only dressed, but dressed formally in a work suit.
Claustrophobia set in and gripped her heart as she tried to shove the roof up and away from herself, but no matter how much she struggled, it didn’t budge.
“No, no, no,” she half cried as she pounded her fists against the top of what she now realized was a coffin.
“I’m still dreaming, must be.”
She and her wife both shared this terror of being buried alive. It had been long ingrained by her parents which was why she always intended to be cremated the same as them…that was until she had found love abroad and had moved from her luxury condo in the States to France to be with her new wife, Mireille. In the remote village where she had joined her, they didn’t cremate, didn’t even embalm. But no, the body was left in the coffin in the home or church for days, someone would have realized I was still alive…
She pounded again on the lid above her, and screamed, screamed as loudly as she could. When she finally stopped, she realized that it had…at least…stopped her hyperventilation. A fear of how much oxygen she had used up began to replace her blind panic and she forced her breathing to slow down. It was then that she felt a lump in her jacket pocket, she slipped her hand inside and felt a smooth flat object and let out a half-relieved laugh.
“Thank you, my love!” she exclaimed as she pulled the object out of her jacket and felt all over it…it was her phone. She quickly pressed the power button on the side and let out a low breath of relief as the apple symbol lit up.
It had only been in passing, years ago, but when she had told Mireille about this fear of hers, and she had shared that it scared her as well, they jokingly agreed they should bury the other with their smartphone, fully charged, just in case.
But she had really done it, bless her.
As the phone lit up, she held it up so the facial recognition would kick in, then stared at the backdrop that appeared. She had used a picture of the two of them as her background, but now it was gone, along with all her icons. Only a picture of their Livingroom was there, with a simple wooden coffin in the center. No family…just the coffin.
Was this a morbid joke so that if she did wake up, she’d know it was real?
Using the light of the smartphone, she got her first real look at inside of her coffin but there wasn’t much to see that she hadn’t already felt.
No worries, she knew rescue was just a phone call away.
That’s when a black dialog box popped up on the screen. “No SIM card installed”.
She stared at the message for a few minutes in shock, she always had a SIM in her phone.
The confusion started to morph into anger and fear…why would Mireille remove the SIM?
“Just dial 112,” she remembered aloud. Back in the States she knew that just about any phone could dial 911 even without a SIM card, and she was pretty sure it worked the same in Europe, except with a different number.
That’s when the low battery warning flashed that the phone was at 2%. She registered that in shock. She couldn’t have been under that long or she’d have already run out of air. Didn’t Mireille make sure the phone was fully charged?
As she tapped on the screen, she accidentally swiped left, and a second screen appeared. There was only one icon there, a photo icon, making her wonder again why all her apps had been erased. Momentarily derailed by this thought, she tapped the photo icon, expecting to see the many albums of all her pictures appearing…but there was only one album…Zoey felt her throat tighten as she saw the title…
Secrets.
She numbly tapped it with her finger and saw a half dozen pictures of Mireille. They were obviously selfies she took of herself and some stranger in their bed together…no, not a stranger, the town doctor…both nude…passionate pictures. She felt a sting of cold flush through her as reality sank in. It was then she noticed that the last picture was a snapshot of some paper. She tapped it and it opened to a picture of a handwritten note, and she recognized Mireille’s handwriting.
My dear Zoey…I said no prenup, but you insisted. I’d have been fine with half your money and sending you back to the States. Wish you had listened.
She stared at the note for a few moments, barely noticing when the battery indicator slipped to 1%.
Quickly activating the phone program, she dialed “112” and waited for a few seconds as it rang.
“Allo, service d’urgence 112.”
“Oui…Yes, do you speak English?”
The phone went black, and she heard three beeps, then then battery low symbol lit for a second on the black screen, then faded away.
“No no no NOOOO!” her whimper turned into a guttural scream that was long and loud, echoing in the small blackness that surrounded her at an almost deafening level.
***
Mireille listened to the faint sound coming from below the freshly laid dirt of her wife’s grave. For a moment she glanced around the empty graveyard in the fading light of the day. There was no smile or tear on her face, she just took a deep breath and walked slowly back to her car. Maybe she’d come back tomorrow to see if the sound would comeback, but she highly doubted it…in fact she was pretty sure she imagined it in the first place.
This story previously appeared in Crystal Lake Press – Shallow Waters
Edited by Marie Ginga
Nicholas Samuel Stember is an expat writer who relocated from the US to the Faroe Islands. He writes Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror and his works can be found in anthologies and an upcoming novel. For more information check out his website at Nicholas Samuel Stember or on Facebook.