At the head of it is a plate, and on the plate an apple, a slice of bread, and a hunk of hard cheese. Food. Beside it deep in the glass coffin sits a chilled metal tumbler of milk, beads of condensation clinging to its sides.
Nina looks around the space, one wall of the room a mirror; beyond it she is certain there will be more cameras. Or—she thinks with a shudder— actual people, because someone prepared this food. Someone is actually here watching this happen, right now, and not helping her.
Her stomach growls loudly but she ignores it and walks over to the mirrored wall, her own wild features reflecting back to her. When she reaches it she places both hands against its cool glass and tries to peer in, but of course the two-way glass does not permit that and all she sees are her own eyelashes and breath fogging the glass.
She pulls back. “I know you’re in there. You made the food,” she tells her reflection. “I don’t know how you knew my father but he wouldn’t have wanted this, I know that much. If he told you to do this then you have to tell me because I don’t believe he was like this, that he would do this to me. Did he do it to other people? Did he?”
Nina looks at the silent glass, a wellspring of sadness bubbling up inside her. He is gone and she is here and perhaps this is what he wanted; perhaps she never meant anything to him?
Silent tears spill down her face. She watches them but no one speaks, no answers come. She sucks up the emotion and clears her throat.
“Okay, you want me to experience these rooms, okay. And what then? What if I get through every one of them? What then? You just let me go? Why should I carry on? Tell me that.”
Nina jumps as Bathsheba’s voice interjects loudly behind her.
“Please collect your rations from the plinth. You have sixty seconds.”
Nina turns to the plinth, the coffin, and the food within. The food is right there, and unless someone comes in to take it away it will still be there after sixty seconds.
“Or what?” Nina retorts. “What, you come and get it? Good, I want to see your face. I want to see who you are.”
Nina stops abruptly, a thought occurring with crystal clarity for the first time, an idea of who could be doing this to her. The inscribed book upstairs, the rooms themed after sections of that poem, the fact her father never married again or even considered meeting another woman, and this house out here.
Nina looks back at the glass, a cold terrifying calm settling into her.
“Mum?” she says to the glass. The glass remains silent.
Bathsheba speaks again behind her: “Thirty seconds remaining.”
Nina turns to see that the glass coffin is now beginning to sink down into the plinth, the food with it.
Without a second thought she runs to it, leaping up onto the platform and jumping down into the retracting coffin. She quickly grabs as much of the food as she can and turns to jump out but to her absolute horror she can no longer reach up to the top lip of the coffin, it has sunk too low; she is trapped. She drops the food and tries to jump for the lip of the coffin above her but cannot reach. The coffin stops moving. She tries to wedge herself against the walls and shimmy up but the glass is too slippery against her wet clothes.
“Four minutes until game commencement. Please consume the rations provided,” Bathsheba echoes above her.
—
AFTER NINA HAS RAILED AT the coffin walls, yelled and flailed in protest, after her energy finally flags, she sits down exhausted on the coffin floor and begins to eat her food.
—
WHEN THE FOUR MINUTES ARE up Bathsheba speaks again. “Please lie flat and prepare for the game commencement.”
Nina swallows the chunk of cheese in her mouth hard and downs the last of her milk as she looks up at the coffin sides above her. She has no intention of lying down.
But as she watches, high above her a glass lid slowly begins to emerge from the lip of the platform and seal the coffin. Nina leaps to her feet ready for whatever might suddenly happen, visions of the coffin filling overtaking her thoughts.
But that does not happen. Instead the coffin floor begins to rise to meet the lid as it fully seals above her.
Through the sealed glass she hears a muffled Bathsheba: “Please lie flat and prepare for the game commencement.”
The coffin ceiling is fast approaching. Nina is forced to kneel, then sit and quickly swivel down to lie flat, narrowly avoiding making contact with the thick glass above her.
Now lying flat in the coffin, Nina sees that she has risen back up onto the platform. A screen is visible on the floor to her side.
Welcome, Nina, to The Burial of the Dead.
Your task is simple: lower your heartrate to 70 beats per
