He’d guessed that there was about four inches of space above his face. To each side of him perhaps another five or six. That’s it. Use your brain for something other than this stream of pointless and harmful thoughts. Control yourself. Focus. The first thing to do to escape the coffin was to raise the lid. But if you’re buried then there’s six feet of earth on top of the lid, dummy. Even if you could lift the lid how the hell are you going to get through all that dirt? ‘Shut up,’ he snapped, banishing the voice as effectively as he could. If he’d been buried recently (and every logical thought pointed to the fact that he had) then the earth would still be relatively loose. It wouldn’t be as hard-packed as if he’d been in there for days. It wouldn’t have settled. There was a chance that, once free of the box, he could push his way upwards through the dirt. A chance. Just a slim chance but that was all he needed. One single ray of hope in this blackness. One tiny fragment of belief to cling to that he hadn’t had before.
