A Final Resting Place

The sharp sound of spades on dirt echoed through the emptiness of the night air. The prisoner lay still inside the body bag, and used his mind’s eye to imagine the scene outside.

The two jailers were likely finishing their digging project, measuring the hole with the length of their shovels to verify that they had fulfilled the six-foot requirement. The prisoner could smell the awful stench of the corpse beside him; even through the thick grey wool of the bag he lay inside.

The digging stopped, and the prisoner heard the sound of the shovels being thrown to the ground. The two men grunted softly as they lifted the heavy wooden frame of the coffin and threw it into the hole.

The prisoner’s leg jerked involuntarily. He had been lying still for awhile, and it was beginning to have its effect on him.

“Did you see that?” yelled one of the men.
“See what?” said the other.
“I could ‘o sworn the body just moved!”
“Which one?” said the second man incredulously.
“The grey one righ’ there,” said the first man.
“You idiot!” screamed the second man. “What in the world are you talkin' about? You just wanna get outta work!”
“That’s not true- I swear I-"
“Spare me!”
There was a loud smack.
“Keep your stupid fantasies to yourself! Help me with this one ‘ear.”

The prisoner heard scuffling feet as they picked up the heavy body that lay beside him.

The prisoner’s plan was working flawlessly. After fifteen years of prison on this nightmarish island, it was about time something went his way. He smiled in the darkness of the bag. He had finally done it.

The prisoner had been meticulously planning his escape for years, but it was only recently that its execution had become feasible. He had thought of his idea some time before, but he needed another element that he did not have access to. He needed an accomplice. He had figured that a common event could be used to his advantage, and provide the means of escape, and nothing was more common in jail than death. Faking his own death, he knew, was the easy part. After a week or so of untouched meals at the doorstep, the jailers assumed that the cell occupant had finally succumbed to the cruel conditions.

The prisoner had several cell mates over the years who had given up the ghost after a long illness, or in one case, suicide (always an appealing prospect). After many years of careful observation, the prisoner was well aware that the jailers never checked the vitals of those presumed dead before carting them off to be buried. Yes, some jailers were simply careless, but others knew that the prison was quickly becoming over-crowded. In their minds, the more quickly inmates died, the better. If men weren’t really dead, the jailers reasoned, they soon would be following their burial. To the jailers, this gave them an easy and inexpensive method of effective population control.

So for the prisoner, the problem was not in leaving the prison cell, it was in leaving the island. How could he dig himself out of a six-foot hole in the ground? Even if he was able to do that, how was he to find a boat unnoticed by the legions of guards that patrolled the beaches, all with specific orders to shoot on sight? Then, navigating the vast ocean alone was an impossibility, no matter how fortunate he was up to that point. For years, the prisoner wrestled with these questions, searching for another way. But there was simply no way around them. He needed help to escape.

It was then that he met the undertaker. For many years, the undertaker built coffins for the dead. The country required a coffin and burial for all the dead from the prison, and the undertaker personally satisfied this law with his day-long labor. It was not a pleasant life, but it was all he had. One day, the prisoner he conversed with the undertaker. The rough, bearded man clearly had no company, for he relished the rare opportunity to converse with the prisoner. The prisoner came to discover how empty the undertaker’s heart was; how he longed for a better life.

Recognizing his opportunity, the prisoner told the undertaker of his escape plan, detailing the intricacies of what needed to take place, and convincing him of the necessity of a second party's involvement. The prisoner remembered how the undertaker’s eyes had widened when the prisoner told him of the piles of treasure that awaited the two of them on an island not far from the one they were on. All that he needed to do, the prisoner told him, was dig the prisoner out of the coffin, and then purchase a passage off the island.

The undertaker apparently never wondered whether or not the treasure was real. The hope of a better life was evidently too strong to warrant a doubt or second thought. The undertaker agreed to the plan, and a date of execution was set.

It was all falling together now, the prisoner thought. A renewed life lay at the end of the road.

The prisoner felt the sensation of being lifted in the air as the two men picked his bag up from the bag. He was thrown into the coffin, and his body slammed painfully on the bottom as he rolled beside the other body in the grave. The lid was placed on the coffin, and the prisoner once again heard the sound of shovels at work.

Time passed; hours maybe. The prisoner had long since heard the last sound of dirt raining down on the top of the wooden casket. He reached stiffly into his pocket for the knife the undertaker had given him, and cut open the bag around him. Stretching his partly-freed legs and arms as much as he could in the small space, the prisoner yawned in the oppressive darkness. He reached inside his pocket again and pulled out a small matchbox (another gift from the undertaker to pass the time), and lit one of the matches. The small space was instantly filled with light from the small match, but the illumination did not last long. As the light was extinguished by virtue of the reduced fuel, the prisoner knew that he would hear the muffled sounds of the undertaker’s digging any moment now.

A thought crossed his mind in the eerie darkness. After years of captivity, the prisoner knew every face that lived within the walls of the eternal penitentiary; every dream that had been crushed beneath the cruel hammer of repression. Who was in the other bag? he thought. The curiosity overwhelmed him. As he lit another match and sliced open the body bag beside him, he guessed that the body would belong to the frail, old man who should have died five years before. When he illuminated the face, he nearly dropped the match in horror. Lying beside him, in the quiet, deathly air was the unmistakable bearded face of the undertaker.