Deep Dark

 It was funny, for a few seconds. But it’s amazing how funny can turn to fear in a matter of moments. Like when, as a joke, your friends close you up inside a sofa bed and then sit on it, laughing the whole time. It was funny, when they sat there, and I could feel their weight in the darkness that was so complete I could not see my own hand in front of my face, if I could move enough to put it there. It was funny when I told them to let me out and they said not yet. It was funny when they finally agreed and started pulling on the bed. I could feel them pulling, my whole world shaking and moving, the clinking of the springs muffled by the mattress surrounding my body, but I could also tell that I wasn’t getting anywhere.

 It stopped being funny when they swore, because I knew there was a problem. It wasn’t funny when they said “we’ll be right back,” and I could hear the worry in their voice as they ran upstairs. It wasn’t funny when it sank in that I was alone. It wasn’t funny as I felt the bed get tighter, or when I started to wonder how air tight a mattress can be. In the movies you see people suffocated by pillows, and a mattress is so much thicker than a pillow. I began to thrash a bit, moving myself as much as I could, kept turning my head even though I could feel the mattress material hard against my cheeks like sand paper. I had to keep moving my head, I had to keep breathing. I could feel the air getting thin. I could feel the pressure on my chest getting heavier, crushing me. Did I black out?  How do you know if you’ve blacked out when there was no light to begin with? Is there a darkness deeper than your tomb?

 I was going to die, trapped in this mattress. I couldn’t think anymore, all I knew was that I was going to die. They wouldn’t come back in time from wherever they went. I’d be buried in this sofa. I just gave up. I gave up struggling, I gave up moving my body, I gave up moving my head side to side. I just laid there and breathed, waiting to die, feeling the darkness fill my body.

 I didn’t hear them come down the stairs. I didn’t hear if they called my name. I don’t know how long I was inside the sofa bed. The first thing that registered was movement, ascension, upward and outward.  Then the weight was gone, and light appeared, bright and wondrous.  I didn’t jump and flee from my prison. I sat up and looked around, then climbed off the mattress. It may have been shock that made me seem so cool about the whole thing. I laughed it off with the guys. I played it off as no big deal. They said I must have fallen asleep or something and I didn’t deny it. We went outside and walked to the store.

 This was many years ago, but there are still times, as I lay motionless in my bed, when I close my eyes and plunge myself into that deep darkness and feel the weight pressing against my body as the world wraps itself around me tightly. I hold my eyes shut as long as I can, the air getting thinner in my mind and my lungs, the darkness behind my eyelids fading into something deeper and darker still, something that beckons to me. Then panic from lack of breath forces me to open my eyes and expel the nightmare I had placed myself in.  As I stare at the ceiling until that deep darkness fades, I wonder if I was really asleep and, if so, how much longer before I would never have woken up, before that deep dark that calls to me would have called me home.