Fire was a plain freckled girl with ginger hair. She was of medium height, skinny - the kind of girl they don't call beautiful. Her strange appearance was a source of amusement at school, she struggled to fit in with her peers, and when she encountered a kindred spirit, she clung to them like a treasure never to be lost.
In her last year at school, she discovered spiritual world and plunged head over heels into it. There she met people who accepted her, valued her, invited her to participate in spiritual practices - and finally she felt she belonged. Spiritual practices shifted like a kaleidoscope, and travels took her to various sacred places across Lithuania and all of Europe. Until eventually she fell in love with sacred dancing. She was curious about other practices as well, but it was this harmony of body and soul that touched her inner world the most.
Once, in a spiritual magazine, Fire came across something bizarre - a meditation of burying oneself in a grave. Fire would not be Fire (the name of the newborn child was chosen by her father on the basis of a fiery scream, and her mother did not object) - she immediately googled up Raymond, a healer with extrasensory powers, who lived in a village in the middle of Lithuania. The thought of burying herself from then on never left Fire - although the darkness and tightness of the grave frightened her, the unknown and potential spiritual awards beckoned her like a lighthouse on a dark night. She weighed both sides. She considered burial to be an extreme spiritual practice for the extraordinarily dedicated and most courageous ones, thus she both feared and longed for the experience.
Both at work and in spare time, she always remembered the meditation of burying herself underground. After all, she would find herself in a completely unprecedented space and condition, she would have to completely trust the man, Raymond, who would bury her, and after the agreed time - let's touch wood - dig her out. In her mind Fire laughed at herself: it's legal, it's publicly announced, it's written about, and some people have already tried it. She realised that fear was her biggest obstacle and enemy, so she had to face it. The grave hole would make a perfect opportunity to do so, albeit the fiercest of battles - either fear would win or her.
Fire lingered no more. A couple of phone calls, an agreed time, the coordinates of the area, and here she is, with her little Opel, on her way to the centre of Lithuania to meet Raymond the healer. Hordes of thoughts flashed through her mind: perhaps she doesn't know what else she wants from life? Perhaps it's her morbid kink? Perhaps she lives too well? She would be afraid to tell her family where she was going and what she was about to do. And they would probably call the emergency services for her. Thus never did she say a word to anyone about this.
On the road she saw an overriden fox. She was about to turn aside but in a moment of hesitation ran over the unfortunate animal with her own wheels as well. She felt nauseated and extremely guilty, as if she had shown disrespect to a whole stock of beasts. A thought dawned on her: wasn't this an ill omen of her meditation? She felt uneasy. She had been as determined as a rock, and now she was wavering again. If this man Raymond sees her fickle determination, he will probably laugh his ass off and tell her to go home. But she will not back down, she will go for her goal.
Her train of thoughts was interrupted as she had to turn onto a meandering gravel road and carefully follow the directions given by the owner of the place; pebbles rattled against the bottom of her car, and she worried whether they would cause any damage. So, swerving on rough roads and leaving a cloud of dust in her wake, the girl finally stopped at a solitary dilapidated farmhouse with a verdant garden, enclosed by a shabby fence.
"Hello! Raymond!" a middle-aged, pink-faced, broad-necked owner of the farmhouse introduced himself. ?Drive in here. Leave your car on this stone pavement!"
Following him into the house, Fire realised she had dressed too sumptuously for the occasion. The owner looked like he had just come back from the garden, in his dusty rubber boots, sweatpants tucked into them and a threadbare sweater. A whiff of cheap, illegal cigarettes reached her nostrils. Everything in his house looked similar to Fire's childhood place at her cousin's grandmother. She could smell old, mouldy fabrics.
"Could you please tell me more about the grave hole meditation?" Fire asked with a drop of uneasiness in her voice. After all, you have to find out about the person under whose spade you will be lying...
"Are you worried, little girl?" the owner replied. "No need to. Everybody is worried at first. I was also nervous when buried for the first time. You see, we have a group of spiritual seekers in this area. I've been involved there for some time. We get together at each other's houses to sing, to meditate, to do tai chi or chi gong. I have tried many practices".
"I have tried many practices too!" Fire was happy to find some common ground.
"Actually so many that it's hard to find something new".
"Are you eager to try out more practices?!" the grey-haired uncle smiled, as if jokingly, as if seriously.
"Pardon me?" Fire raised an eyebrow.
"Of course," Raymond continued to himself. "It's not as bad as it seems. I've been in the grave hole many times - one of my group members helps me wave a spade if needed. I've been underground for three, four and even six hours..."
"Wow!" Fire marvelled.
"That's nothing. The longest I'd been buried was nine hours. From morning to evening," the man said. "The most important thing is not to think that you are in a grave, that you are helpless, that you are underground, or even more so that you are buried alive. These are just words, concepts that terrify us. Rather, think of it this way, little girl: you will be locked in a room with little space, you will not be able to do anything except meditate, rest, lie down, pray, dream - to be with yourself and with your thoughts. The main thing is to know you are safe in there and that you will leave after an agreed period of time. So you'll be kind of locked in a dark room..."
Fire began to waver, to hesitate, to worry, and this man speaks as if she had already signed her consent to be buried.
"Girl, are you in doubt?" the man wrinkled his brow when he saw the change on his client's face.
"No, I just want you to tell me more about the practice!" Fire swallowed her frustration at being suspected of doubts like a little girlie.
"So I'm telling you," the man continued. "The longest I had been underground, as I said, was nine hours. In that time I trembled, prayed, later calmed down and even dozed off. It turned out that the mate who had buried me started having fun with alcohol and completely forgot about me! I was not angry. I accepted it as a gift of fate. Nine hours later, bleary-eyed after his binge and pallid, he grabbed a spade and dug, dug, dug, until he dug me out and opened the lid. You know, we villagers are simple people. Who does not enjoy alcohol? I wasn't harmed. After all, in that box under the ground there is an air pipe and a cushion for minimum comfort. There's even a bell tied to a string, and when you pull it, a tinkle rings out. So there's no chance of dying - except from fear and panic!" Raymond laughed. "You're just expected to stay underground for a set period. I don't even set it. It's up to you. Assess your capabilities and I will keep you buried as long as you say."
It all sounded so macabre that Fire felt as if she had come to a pervert's den for some dangerous BDSM play. However, this is a SPIRITUAL practice, so she should get rid of such thoughts.
"Ah... There's a bell... Like in ancient cemeteries..." Fire pondered.
"A good invention from those times, isn't it?" Raymond grinned with a cigarette in his teeth, taking a puff right there in the room.
"Oh... And you perhaps don't let... take my phone in there with me?" said Fire, and then she burst out laughing nervously at an absurdity of her own question.
"Who are you gonna call from there, girl?!" Raymond laughed no less. "Your friends? Gonna say you're buried under the ground, sitting in the dark? Have mercy on me - I'll be thrown in prison after this!" said the man, holding back laughter and blowing out smoke.
"No... I would call you..." Fire wheezed out, wiping nervous laughter tears from her eyes.
"Heaven forbid anyone would call me from six feet under!" Raymond shouted and they had a laugh again for a while. "In that case, I would be on the line non-stop, soothing and comforting those inside the grave..."
When Raymond finished smoking, Fire suddenly became quiet. She realised that by talking she is procrastinating time and masking her anxiety. It is still possible to change her mind. No! She is a determined woman.
"So, let's stop chatting and get down to business," Raymond stood up from a chair.
"Yes, bury me," said Fire as firmly as she could, even though she sounded to herself completely abnormal.
"Leave your phone and handbag in this locker. Put the key in your pocket..."
As they crossed the threshold, Raymond with his blackened fingers grabbed a rusty garden spade. Fire even felt chills down her back. You can't help it - that's the practice. They went deeper into the garden close to an apple tree. In the distance, a pile of freshly dug out soil looked yellow, like a grave excavated in advance of a funeral.
"I prepared it in the morning. You won't have to wait to dig it," Raymond said as if in excuse.
Fire looked at him like a killer maniac. With a trembling heart she stared at the unusually wide grave hole, covered with a lid of wooden planks... dug out for her.
"Can't the neighbours see us?" she asked fearfully.
"No. It's a solitary farmstead, there are no neighbours close by. They don't know about it. You see, not everybody would approve of this..."
Fire felt the cold in her face again.
Raymond removed the massive lid and Fire could see that the walls of the pit were lined with planks, and the bottom too - like a reusable, quite spacious coffin built into the ground.
"Go ahead!" Raymond shouted unceremoniously, leaning on an ominous rusty spade.
Like a captured sheep, Fire climbed down the ladder with shaky step until she reached the bottom and lay down, her heart pounding.
"As you requested, I will come over and get you out in four hours. All right! Four hours is yours!"
"Wait a minute!" whined Fire.
But Raymond didn't listen anymore. He seized the lid made of planks with both hands and threw it thunderously onto the pit.
In a second, Fire's world darkened as if the sky had fallen on her. A hope giving rays of daylight filtered in through gaps between planks as well as through a larger hole in the corner. In no time the healer pushed an air pipe through the hole. A string hung down from the tube, to which a bell was tied. Fire could barely hear its tinkling.
The last drops of light penetrating through various crevices were taken away from Fire by the inexorable earthquake on the roof. Never had she experienced such an inner horror in her entire life, not even when she was hit by a car as a child. The ground started crumbling and bumping overhead, the sand was running through the cracks onto her hair and shoulders - she thought to be drowning in sand. Then, deafeningly, the clods of earth began thudding against the planks. She was no longer aware of what was going on. She sat up, then knelt down. She tried to reach up and push the lid off, but in horror she found that the weight of the earth above had caused the planks of the lid to curve inwards like a hump.
Fire screamed wildly. And the earth kept falling and falling, though the thud grew quieter and quieter. The world receded further than if she had flown into space. She caught the string and started pulling it frantically, screaming:
"Help me! Dig me out! I've changed my mind!"
There was a soft chime. Like a mocking chuckle, a man's voice came through the cavity of the tube that connected Fire to the world of the living:
"Calm down and get a grip! That bell is only for comfort and calming your nerves! Use the four hours properly! Remember, you have not been buried, but you have retreated from the hustle and bustle for contemplation! I will return at the appointed time!"
Fire heard nothing more from the maniac called Raymond. It looked like she had parachuted from a plane or bungee-jumped from the TV tower. She is falling, and the fall lasts forever, until pitch black night arrives. At first she did nothing but kneel and gasp in terror in thick darkness, not hearing her breathing, as if the viscous murk absorbed all the sounds into itself.
At first, Fire felt like a mummy walled up in an Egyptian tomb. Then she began to think of herself as a foolish victim - a trapped necromaniac. A necrophile Raymond would putrefy her for a while, then all horny dig her out and give her rotting corpse a good bang. After that another thought occurred: being buried underground is not much different from the experience of being trapped in the storeroom with a new member of the group a few months ago. That time, she even stayed locked longer than four hours. But now no 911 will come to rescue. She cursed herself for agreeing to leave her phone in the locker as that bastard demanded, throwing accusations at herself like Molotov cocktails, gnawing at herself like a cancerous growth.
What a naive, foolish, childish idiot of me, gullible as a baby. People had taken advantage of me before, but not so cruelly. I always found excuses. But now I have put my head into the trap voluntarily. What was I missing?! You imbecile! Why didn't you treasure your life? I'd rather have gone skydiving a hundred times or walked across the abyss on a glass bridge! Now there's no help for you. It's a country house. And you are sitting in a tomb! Perhaps from the darkness of the grave, not even prayers can reach God... Except through that tube, with the exhaled CO2...
Thick blackness was driving Fire up the wall. She started tumbling around in her coffin: she kicked the planks with her feet, knocked the sides of the box with her fists, pushed the ceiling with her hands, as if trying to lift the lid with a ton of earth on it. She bruised her fingers, stubbed her toes and scraped her knuckles. Seemed there was nothing left to lose. She thrashed about like a bird in a tiny cage. She screamed from the very depths of her being, cried out all the fright she had accumulated in her life and even more. The only thing that stopped her was a cracking sound above her head - she collapsed helplessly on the planks, and did not try to raise the roof any more.
The heart was pounding madly - it looked like it was going to break the ribs and explode. She was breathing heavily, but still no air. She felt weak and faint, but her sight couldn't get any darker. She yelled, cried for help, said prayers, apologised to everyone she had ever met in life, shedding tears of terror and continuing to blame herself. Will God forgive her soul for this?
Panting, coughing and gagging, she threw herself to the place where the air pipe with a string was and started tugging on it like a lunatic. Far away, from across the seven skies came a low tinkling sound. Fire pulled at the string with all her might until finally it broke and the bell fell silent forever.
Invisible in the darkness, but surely existing a host of demons unlike anything Buddha had seen before his enlightenment were looming before Fire: monsters of death, fear, panic, foolishness, guilt, recklessness, distrust, suffocation, headache, disbelief, the terrible end of life. And her - defenceless, with two square metres of floor space and not much in height - how could she defend herself against them all? She felt lost - the lid of the tomb would never rise again. And if it did, it would not matter, just as a lifted lid of a pot no longer matters to a cooked turkey.
A weird rustling sound came through the air pipe. A few drops fell onto Fire's hand - the rain started. So the water is not just dripping into her coffin - it will seep through the ground and right through the cracks in the planks will flood her coffin! Agreed to be buried alive, she will suffocate and drown at the same time - a triple death for the one who is defiantly toying with Her.
The girl squealed and moaned. Never ever she felt so helpless. No scoundrel in her life had ever treated her as she had treated herself. Let all those who found her ugly, who found her strange, rejoice. Only in spiritual communities did she find happiness, and with it a curse. Fire was mortified.
She recovered after an uncertain period of time. There was still a thick gloom in her eyes, but she felt clearly back to her black, narrow existence. She breathed as she rested, even putting her hand on her chest to make sure. For a split second after the Big Bang, the whole Universe must have been this tight.
The demon army was gone. It was as it was, she realised, and she would have to accept it. She wiped her sore forehead. The planks were damp. The chill sent shivers down her spine, even though it had been as hot and stuffy as a furnace before.
Death is a natural part of the life cycle. I will not run away from what is natural. I am not superstitious and I do not believe that such games bring about real death. I am as good as dead even now. What should I do?
She leaned her back against the planks, the bones of her spine painfully feeling the hardness. She grabbed a soft cushion and sat down on it.
I'm so arrogant, I think so highly of myself, I belittle others and praise myself. I have no restraint. I look down on those who need me most, who rely on me, who I see at work. Because of my conceit, my dear ones do not see me at all. I make all sorts of demands of them that I do not express. I want and expect so much from everyone. I am a princess. And now I might as well meditate. What is most important to me?..
Fire sat with her legs crossed, the epitome of calm compared to earlier madness. She no longer felt buried six feet under. She felt like the first sentient being in the open space... She heard strange noises above her.
A man was working with a spade. A blade of iron hit the planks. Sweeping away the muddy earth, Raymond removed the lid. Underneath, he saw a bruised girl sitting on a cushion.
"Four hours have passed! - said the healer as if it were business as usual. "Take the ladder. Climb it and give me your hand..."
Fire climbed out of the pit by herself. Just now did Raimond see her damp clothes, her wounded forehead, her bloody fingers.
"Sorry, it was raining. Fortunately, it didn't rain long..." he murmured.
Fire didn't utter a word. She looked different - not the way she got in. Raymond could no longer call her a girl. Her face was calm, serene, her gaze not as before. A puzzling hint of smile played on her lips. She seemed to have learned a secret she would never share. The man only scratched the back of his head. After such an extraordinary experience, the customer seemed too calm, as if she hadn't experienced a myriad of emotions. She felt no urge to recount her experiences, but only thanked him in one word. She thanked, said goodbye and walked towards her car.
The healer had the feeling that a completely different person emerged from the meditation grave hole:
"So, won't you tell me?! After all, everyone's story is different!" he said to her. "At least phone me afterwards, or text me!"
Fire walked up to the little Opel car and grasped the handle. The door was locked.
"That's right, madam, your handbag and phone!" Raymond reminded her, took the key from Fire and headed towards the house in a bear-like fashion. He returned with the "client's" belongings in his hands.
Fire thanked him again, got into the car and immediately started the engine.
She did not remember how she got home, but it seemed that her hands were driving the car, not herself, and her eyes were watching the road signs, not herself. Back in her flat, she immediately found a notebook with the list of members of the sacred dance group and called Tomas, whom she had never dared phone before.
