The dirt and chanting continued until I couldn’t hear either anymore. The ground vibrated slightly with short bursts—they must have been pounding their shovels into the dirt. So much elaboration for a silly ritual, as if anything she was doing would appease the Voodoo Gods.
I needed a plan and I needed one fast. Her devotion to tradition was the only thing that was buying me time and saving me from my imminent slavery. But it was hard to make plans when you were trapped in a musty-smelling box, no bigger than your body, with the air slowly running out. My only plan was to get out of the f**king ground, but I could barely move my arms. If it were any other circumstance, I could have probably pulled a Hulk Dex maneuver and punched my way out of the grave. It actually would have been pretty awesome. But I was still weak, and I was losing time.
And maybe a little bit of my sanity. It was one thing to find yourself buried underground—fully alive and conscious with three feet of hard-packed dirt between the surface and you. It was another thing to realize you weren’t alone in the coffin.
The area beneath my bare feet, what I thought was the damp, gross sides of the box, just moved.
There was something beneath my feet, moving very slowly, like it was just waking up. Scales brushing against my soles.
Oh f**kity f**k f**k.
I knew exactly who I’d been buried alive with.
Her partner in crime, Li Grand Zombi.
The python continued to coil around at my feet, seeming to go in circles. I cursed myself for being 5’9” and having the extra space at the end of the coffin, although I suppose the alternative would have been to have the snake packed on top of me like sardines.
Now I had to think faster but the presence of the great serpent did nothing to get me into gear. All it did was put my already strained heart into overdrive, turn my tired brain into mush. I thought I’d run out of things to fear already, but it turns out there was a lot more.
I could only hope that it didn’t have the head of my mother this time.
Ignore the snake, it’s just sleeping, ignore the snake, I thought to myself. I hoped Rose was faring better than I was. I had been so happy to be myself again, to be alive, but now the alternative didn’t seem so bad.
The snake didn’t care what I was thinking. Perhaps it was feeding on my fear. I could feel it pressing its body up against my feet, pushing at them until my knees shot up a few inches and rammed into the top of the coffin. I’m sure I would have noticed it hurt, but all I could feel was the snake’s tongue skittering along the cut on my inner thigh, perhaps licking where the blood was. It headed up my legs and I immediately put my hands down over my junk, remembering what Ambrosia had said.
The python paid my hands no attention. It came up over them, over my pelvis, heading for my stomach. It paused there momentarily and I could hear it breathing, the sounds amplified in the darkness. It was watching me, sensing me, deciding what to do next. I wondered how much of the snake was just an animal acting on animal instincts and how much was someone else, a demonic spirit from the other world.
I was still trying to wonder that when the giant serpent resumed its movement. It came up all the way to my head and started coiling itself around my head and throat, forcing its body underneath me and the box, and looping back around again. It did this, winding around me, until it held me from head to toe.
And then it began to slowly, systematically, squeeze me to death.
My hands flailed, trying to pry it off of me, but there was no use. It was far too strong, its body made to choke the life out of its prey, to break their bones. My ribs began to crack.
Dex! I heard Perry’s voice in my head. Dex! I’m here, I’m here!
At least I thought it was in my head. It was hard to tell when I was losing consciousness again.
The snake stopped squeezing for a few moments, as if it had heard Perry as well. Then came the scraping sound of a shovel going into dirt, muffled and distant, but it was there.
“Dex!” I heard her voice again, this time it wasn’t in my head. Oh god, please let that be her, please let that be her.
I opened my mouth to yell. As if on cue, the snake began constricting again, choking the words from me.
The sound above the coffin intensified. I knew she was there, I knew she was coming to save me. I didn’t know how, but there she was. I just hoped I could hold on long enough. I could feel myself turning blue, my lungs burning for air they couldn’t get.
I also hoped that Ambrosia wasn’t within earshot, because things would get ugly for Perry, very fast. Unless my baby had the upper hand and already kicked that bitch’s ass.
Suddenly the coffin lid was hit, struck by the shovel and I heard Perry gasp, clear as day. The top of the box began to move, cracks of dim light coming in followed by dirt that fell on my body.
I looked straight up at her as she removed the lid. Though it was probably the middle of the night and dark as sin, I could see the glow of a flashlight nearby. After being in that box, everything outside of it was much clearer.
I saw her beautiful, sweet eyes staring at me, threatening to spill over with tears, so much longing in them, her dark, wet hair spilling around her. Then her eyes flashed with horror once she realized what she was staring at: a giant black python wrapped around me, trying to take my last breath.
“Oh God, Dex, no!” she cried out. Her tiny hands flew to the snake, trying to pull it off of me to no avail. The snake squeezed harder. If I could have gasped, I would have at the pain of my lower rib breaking.
This couldn’t be the way I was going to go, after all of this, to die in front of Perry’s eyes. I tried hard to hold on, to stay awake, to stay alive but everything was in her hands. I was helpless. Only she had the ability to save me, to save me from death, from myself, from everything.
I love you, I thought.
She smiled as if she heard it, tears streaming down her face and falling onto me. Then she straightened up, grabbed the shovel, and said, “If this hurts you, I’m really, really sorry.”
She raised the shovel in the air, looking like a divine warrior princess, perhaps of the gardening variety, and brought it down.
I shut my eyes and the edge of the shovel pummeled into the snake, pressing hard into me but not breaking my skin. I opened my eyes to see her bringing the shovel back out of the snake, guts and blood dripping from the edge of it, raining down on me. The snake was still holding on, not fully severed, but it had loosened enough that I could get a small amount of air into my lungs.