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How to Amuse Yourself in a Coffin:

A Life Experience by The Finn

So there I was, buried alive.

"Fuck."

I said that, of course. Who else would have? Six feet of Earth separated me from everybody else. If you've never tried to hear something through six feet of Earth: It's quite difficult.

How was I to eat? How was I to drink? Worse of all, how could I avoid boredom?

Again: "Fuck."

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck." I sang a Ministry song. That was amusing for a total of twenty seconds.

I stayed silent. That was worse then hearing myself say "fuck" over and over again.

"Hmmmm." This hum was to signify this: I was hungry and thirsty.

I felt around myself and my surroundings, on the off chance that some mourner had perhaps dropped a piece of whatever they might have been eating while they were admiring my corpse and munching away, and were too tactful to retrieve it. Or perhaps someone left a morsal in the coffin for just such an occasion as this. At any rate, there was nothing. Not even a canteen.

"What kind of cheap burial did I have, anyway?" I asked six feet of Earth.

It didn't answer.

What did did come up with in my little search was this: a matchbox containing five matches, a piece of raw meat and a wet sponge in my pockets, and valour all around me.

Suddenly, an idea struck me.

I tore strips of the velour off and made a small pile in one corner of my little cubbyhole in the ground, as I now fondly call it. I scrunched up in the opposite corner, lit a match, and threw it on the pile of the flammable gift from the Gods. I soon had a modest, but blazing, bonfire. I held the piece of meat over the flames, and soon I had steak. I found it, to my delight, edible. I sucked the sponge, to wash down the food.

My belly full, I became bored again.

How did I get here?

I tried to remember.

I was at a party. I was drunk, and being so, making quite a fool of myself. This was back when there was nothing but oxygen to carry my words to the masses (my eyes get teary at the nostalgia). "Hey! Everybody," I said, jumping up onto a table. "Look, I'm dead."

To cut a long story short, the patrons of the gathering buried me.

You know how far people at a party will take a joke.

And now I am here, getting more bored by the minute.

The general concensus around the room was that it was going to be one hell of a party, and a wonderful idea for a surprise birthday. You know the old routine, bury a guy for dead, then dig up the coffin a few weeks later for the surprise of his life.

The crowd gathered around the table, upon which sat the punchbowl and munchies, and an oak coffin. The coffin was opened. Everyone yelled "Surprise!" and then silence fell upon them like wet concrete. The man inside, your narator, was not the young, healthy boy they were expecting, but an insane lunatic. They were puzzled.

Comments drifted about the room: "Fucking wet blanket", "Can't take a few days in a box.. What a wimp!", "Nothing ruins a good get-together then the birthday-boy going bonkers. Fucking shithead.", "Same thing happened to Mussilini, I heard", "We'll never hear the end of this." And so on.

The only thing left to do was drift off into the night, and maybe find a better party.

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