Silence

Silence
David Don

If you have any intention of becoming an escape artist at any point in your life (although this is a pursuit that I urge you strongly to drop if you do), and you wish to be successful and to live a life of reasonable length, you should abide by these three rules:

1. Throw yourself into it completely. Whether 'it' means a straight jacket, a washing machine or a triple-locked safe in the coldest of black lakes; whatever happens, devote yourself entirely.

2. Never let anybody else get involved. Be strong enough to do it all on your own, or just go home and forget about it.

3. Most importantly, give up drinking alcohol. Now. Just don't do it.

I broke Rule No. 3 a week ago. It was a Saturday night.

7 Days

“Y-yeah! Sure...I'll do it!” Everyone cheered. I hiccuped from the table on which I was standing. "I'll do it in a week! I'm not scared..yeee haa!” I fell backwards to the floor, seeing various smiling famous faces in the crowd.
I more or less just choose to not remember anything that happened from that point onwards.

6 Days

“Urgh...” I woke up on Sunday with a hangover that made sitting up in bed feel like I had been thrown repeatedly into wall the night before. I squinted at the afternoon, half-heartedly stretched out my arm and snatched up my phone from the floor by my second most expensive pair of Armani trousers. I phoned Tom.
“Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ri- Aw, morning party boy!”
I sighed. His 'party boy' voice was like being kicked in the ear. “Tom, look, I just don't want to fucking hear it, I need to ask you something.”
“Ha ha. Ask away, my out of control friend. Seriously, are you ok? I was expecting you to have trouble getting home last night.”
I looked around at the cheap hotel room I had slept in. It smelled like pennies. “Right, yeah... look. Last night... I feel like I said something really stupid.”
“You said many things that were really stupid, Warren. Pixie Lott asked you what the one thing you wouldn't be able to escape from was. Apparently you pulled her in close and whispered: 'Your pants.' My personal favourite."
There was a silence. I sighed again. Tom started to laugh, loudly. I held the phone away from my ear. I looked down at myself. I appeared to be mostly naked, save some underwear. I started to wonder how that even would've happened, any of the fragments of the last night still left in my memory featured me being so blitzed that I could barely function, never mind consider my own comfort before going to bed. Then it occurred to me that I had also somehow booked into a hotel in said state. I struggled to remember, and a vague, familiar face sort of drifted through my head.
Couldn't be. I shook the notion off. Hard.
Tom was still laughing.
“-and then you fell backwards into the pool, still singing! Ha ha ha, it's just as well you have no shame, you'd be screwed.”
“Yeah, yeah, right. Tom. Listen. Last night, did I say I would let them bury me alive?” His voice died down a little.
"Sorry?"
"Did I say they could bury me alive?"
He went quiet for a moment. No laughter any more. I felt like I could hear his face change.
“...you didn't seem that drunk when you said that-”
“Tom, please tell me I didn't. Please.”
“I thought you knew. You're telling me you don't remember?”
“No. No. I've always said I would never ever do that. That's where I draw my line - I've said that so many times. Come on, Tom. I didn't.”
“...Warren, you definitely said you would do it.”
“Please.”
“I'm sorry. I thought you knew what you were saying. I really did.”
More silence.
Escapology is a difficult art to be part of. Not only is the basic purpose of your job to tantalise people with the idea of your own death; but it is also founded on a strict set of rules and ideologies. There is one that takes priority over all else, however. We call it the Escapist's Word. It basically states that once you say you will perform some stunt, you have no choice but to follow through and stay true to your claim, right up to the end. No matter what happens, you will be infinitely more shunned and disrespected by the community if you give up and throw in the towel than if you try, but fail. It's supposed to show your true passion and dedication to the practice of escapology; these are qualities regarded with the absolute greatest esteem within our circle. I completely agree with this concept, that's where I get my own personal Rule No. 1 from.
“What am I gonna do, Tom?” Tom was part of the circle too. He was well-known, a solid but rather unadventurous figure in the art. Still, highly respected. I suddenly had a flash of a thought. “Who actually saw me say it?”
He was quiet again. Something in my stomach, which had been slowly but steadily dropping since I picked up the phone, sank even further. Quiet was the worst possible sign from Tom.
“Something like twenty A-listers. And about a dozen members of the paparazzi. I'm sorry Warren.”
I snatched the remote from the bedside cabinet and turned on the TV. There I was. I felt that something in my stomach tighten sharply. Channel One: “WARREN BATES - Youngest master escapist ever to be buried alive” My own smug face grinned back at me from images of last night, clearly oblivious to the moronic mess he was about to make of his life.
“Fuck.”
On the line, I heard a woman's outraged voice in the background.
“-I know, I KNOW! Right?! ...Warren, I'm really sorry but I have to go, man.
“Yeah yeah, cool. No problem. Thanks Tom. Bye.”
“Say hi to Rebecca from me.”
“What?”
All that answered me was that everlasting hum that comes after someone hangs up on you.
I sat up, rubbing at the side of my face. Rebecca? The name and its collection of memories made me feel bathed in something between dirt and shame. At one point she was, if I was to put any sort of label on it, my on-off girlfriend; although I only really ever kept her around to satisfy certain primal urges. As aesthetically pleasing as she was I found her extremely irritating and clingy as a person. But we had a routine: I hurt her, she cried, we had sex. It was like watching a really bad film with a reasonable ending that kind of makes you forget how awful it was, so you watch it again. A ridiculous love life on a loop. But the last time we spoke I made it clear that I'd had enough of all of that. I was sick of running around in circles with a girl for whom I had little to no interest. I made it simple. I was done with her, it was over. I was sure this time.
“Hey lazybones!” Her grinning makeup-less face and her perfect teeth burst in through the door of the room, streaming some painful daylight in behind her. She was carrying a tray of food and coffee. “I'm so glad we sorted things out last night, Warren. I brought you some breakfast!”
I groaned and fell backwards onto my pillow. Sometimes I feel like I've been buried alive already.

5 Days/4 Days

My escapes are some of the most famous in history. I have been given so many titles, and been compared with the likes of Houdini himself. I am renowned for my creativity and sheer skill, and I have (according to TIME) re-ignited the lost flame of Escapology as a commonly followed art.
I'm claustrophobic.
All of my escapes, while drastically daring and dangerous, take place either underwater, or in the sky, or on top of a building or something. They involve handcuffs and chains and padlocks. I generally avoid safes and cupboards and enclosed space escapes. Sometimes I find myself in situations where I don't really have a choice, and I train for weeks and weeks to overcome this fear for just that couple of hours I need to perform the stunt. However, I have never ever done an escape where I was buried alive. I draw the line there. I can't cope, any time I have even stepped into the hole they dig in the ground I just started panicking and losing all focus; I want to just claw at the sides and smash the prison up. The idea of being alone, deep in the earth, trapped in such a tiny space with nothing but darkness and silence all round just crushes my instincts and courage and makes me feel tiny and terrified. This is why I have never allowed myself to even consider this. I couldn't possibly be successful with it, I would be, rather wholly and simply, done.
I follow my Rule No. 3 because, as human beings, we all have limits. As escapists, it is of crucial importance that we understand this fact, as it means we can perform stunts that push the boundaries of human ability, while not pressing on the lines between what we as individuals should and should not do. When drinking, these lines, like the shapes that make up the room around us, become vague and less defined, and we say or do stupid things that lead us to the place where I was now. Trapped.
Monday and Tuesday didn't stay around for very long. I spent most of the hours pacing, drawing up plans, contemplating and being generally scared of time's rapid passing. And the result? Nothing. Nothing at all. I was still going to be just a man in a box, buried six feet under the ground. I saw my own stupid face on television from time to time, felt nothing but regret and self-loathing, and thought that maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

3 Days

My Rules 1 and 3 - complete devotion and sobriety - are mainly just self-clarified derivatives of those general laws that dictate the world of escapology. However, Rule No. 2 is my own. The reason I am so successful is Rule 2: not allowing others to become involved. I don't let the views or the feelings of others affect what I do, because, quite simply, I know best. It's my job, and I am very, very good at it. If I can keep clear in my head what I think is the best course of action, then I will succeed; because my instincts and skills have been developed to a point where no second opinion can surpass mine. I might sound arrogant, but I believe I have that right. I have become rich and famous following this belief, and I have never once failed in all 93 of my public stunts. For this reason, I have never hired a 'team' or any kind of support. I correspond with people like Tom who do follow what I do, but I refuse to listen to any ideas or suggestions from them. I have an agent, Lise, who I selected because when I gave her a trial, she didn't get involved directly in my act, and instead just used all of her effort to make sure everything I had planned ran flawlessly. Lise is a bit of a bitch, if I'm being totally honest. But she does the job that I want her to do. That's all that matters to me. I want an agent, not a friend. I don't have any friends. When I act, I act alone. That way nobody else will be responsible for anything bad that happens.
At about 10AM, I stepped down into the basement of my house. I flicked the light switch and suddenly the black danced and flickered into white, highlighting the grey stone floor's usual cold harshness. The basement stretches the length and width of the whole building (which is essentially an extremely modernised 19th Century country manor) and is about three times the height of an average sized man. I do most of my planning and construction in the basement, and as such several unused or prototype props lie dotted around, among blueprints and tools. I walked over to the far right of the room, and looked towards the wall, at the velvet red cover that surrounded the trap. The one trap I had never planned to use. It was given to me by an old friend who passed away shortly afterward. I pulled back the sheet.
Dark rosewood finish. And padlocks. That's all I could see when I looked at the coffin. It still made me shiver. A dead man's bed.
It was designed so that it locked from the inside, then whichever man lent himself to its clutches was placed, in a straight jacket, into the box from an opening on the left, at which point a side panel was placed over it and screwed on. The coffin was hoisted into the ground, and then on top of it, barely wider and longer than the coffin door, an exit tunnel was constructed. The escapist was to writhe out of the jacket, undo the padlocks from the inside, push open the coffin, clamber up the tunnel using only the earth around them, and then pick the lock of the trapdoor that sealed off the tunnel from the world above. Of course, this was only the plan devised by the box's creator, and had never been realised. Not until now.
I climbed in and lay down. The side was still open. Even so, my head started thumping. I saw light and dark, stars soaring into my vision and the coffin's blackness; my breathing became more and more laboured, the door of the coffin was only inches from my nose and I placed my hands against it, bracing, willing it to just give me the tiniest amount of extra space. It didn't budge and I rolled back out, gulping deep breaths of the basement's air.
Looking at the situation positively: I was affected by this trap, at least. I took this as a good thing. I had not felt at all excited or fulfilled by an escape in years. Or by anything, really.

2 Days

The press kept coming to my door. I barely left the house. I just stood by that fucking coffin all day and stared at it. At rare times when I was upstairs, I heard endless reporters from Random Bullshit Weekly demanding to have an exclusive, wanting to know my story, how I had gotten to where I was. I had no problem ignoring them. I have cut many, many people out of my life - friends, family and lovers alike. There wasn't really anybody left now. I had reached a point where if I were to just vanish, it would cause very little disturbance to anyone's life. That's exactly where I wanted to be. Journalists were a new and increasingly frequent addition to the list ever since I gained my fame. While I completely disregarded the fact that they were even there that day, the snippets of their questions that drifted through my subconscious caused me to think a little about how this did all come about.
I was fifteen, I think. I was staying at my grandfather's house.
He was an exponentially kind old man, and I was always his favourite in the family. We had that special connection that only men from different generations can be part of. We used to build things together out of wood, like boats and just talk all the while. While it all sounds like part of a cheesy movie and, as such, it does indeed makes me cringe a little to think about, that's the way I choose to look back on it. That's how it feels when I remember it. I went on to become rich, famous and very successful in a number of ways, but I never once felt happy and content like I did when I remembered those times with my grandfather. They were the greatest days of my life.
My grandfather taught me a great deal about people and life, and provided me with the skills and mental tools that would later be necessary for my career. He was a carpenter by trade, but in his old age he had long since retired. One particular thing I loved in his house was an old wooden box that he had made during his working years that was never put to use. When I was a lot younger I used to climb inside it, close the lid and just lie there in silence. It brought me so much peace. He told me that when I was more grown up I could have it. I lost interest in hiding in the box after a while, and one day just forgot about it.
This particular time I was staying over, I came into his living room that night and he told me he had a surprise for me. I wasn't really very excited, not being a little boy any more, but I was still pleased and curious. He walked me through to the drawing room, and there it was, lying in the middle of the carpet- the box. He said the time had come, that I could have it. I lived in a big house, so this wouldn't be difficult to store. To be honest I was a little underwhelmed. I loved my grandfather and everything he had done for me, but I felt I had outgrown the box. Regardless, I was touched that he had remembered and said thank you. We went to bed.
I woke up. It was 3:36 in the morning according to the old clock on the wall. I heard a bang and a shout. I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs, into the living room. It was empty. I heard more shouting and ran to the drawing room. There he was, a weak old man, fearless and enraged as he blocked the path of two bigger, younger, fitter men, who smirked menacingly at his feeble attempt to stop them from advancing any further. They were dressed in black and were wearing balaclavas and gloves. One was holding a baseball bat.
“We've come for money and we're leaving with money, old man.”
“You're taking nothing! You are disgusting...” My grandfather's voice trailed off as he saw me in the doorway. The two men turned, their smiles fading. One ran for me; my grandfather screamed in protest and ran for me too, but was stopped by the second burglar. The first one grabbed me and lifted me up. I screamed and punched and hit out at his arms and chest and face, but I was too scrawny and weak. He constrained me. He looked around, and then saw the box. He opened it and shoved me inside, to the sound of my grandfather crying and shouting until his voice cracked. He slammed the door shut. Everything was black. There was a crash and I felt the box shake. He had pulled the bookshelf down on top of the lid of the box. I struggled and pushed but to no avail. I went limp.
For the next twenty minutes, I listened as they ripped the old man apart. He refused to back down , so utterly furious at what they had done to his grandson to submit to them. I heard them bash his frail, ancient bones in with the bat and their fists, and he screamed and screamed behind cracks and squelches of blood as they pulverised him, until, all of a sudden, he didn't scream any more. My childhood and my faith in humanity died with that final scream. With him.
The men spoke in panicked hushed voices and shuffled out of the room, and out of the front door.
I pounded on the inside of that box with every atom of my existence. I wept and I yelled for him, but I knew he wasn't in the room any more.
The box was a coffin with a rosewood finish.
After that day I became so terrified of what I felt that night, the sickening feeling not being able to get out when I needed to, of causing other people suffering because of my own inability to escape, that I trained constantly to be able to unfasten myself from the world, to become completely unbound by anything. I could never shake off that fear of the coffin however, and I tried so hard to. It would be my ultimate victory. I turned it into the trap that I uncovered in my basement, and kept it there for years with the sincere intention that one day, I would master it and overcome the sickening guilt that still followed me from that night. I would be able to feel like I was worthy of my grandfather once more. Until then I could never truly climb out of the box, and I could never escape the disgusting world that dragged him away from me.

1 Day

I lay in bed all of Friday. I just wanted quiet. I tried to decide how I would cope with this escape, but I just couldn't think about it the way I thought about all of those 93 others. I was able to plan them out coldly and in a calculated, meticulous manner. Like a puzzle in a newspaper. This was completely different. Every time I thought about it, I was scared. I tried to consider strategically how I would get out of the jacket, climb the tunnel, pick the locks. However, my brain could not compute these ideas and string them together into a sustainable plan. Every time I envisioned myself in that coffin, those feelings from that night came back to me. I heard him screaming in my head and I felt it happen over and over again. I just lay in bed.
Was this what my life had amounted to? Everything I had done, sacrifices I had made, and all I could do was lie here and feel sad? I wish I could say I didn't feel this way very often, but in fact I experienced it nearly every day in my life.
Was that my answer?

Next Saturday

I knew what I was doing now. It was so simple. The most obvious plan ever created. I think I had it worked out from the start without even realising it. I had danced around the solution, drifting closer and closer, almost touching it, then moving off in another direction; until at last, that final act of gravity pulled me in. And here I was. The final day had come.
I smiled at the hundreds of cameras all around; I gave a token wave to the random girls with banners proclaiming their everlasting love for me. They screamed and jumped up and down on the spot. I spoke to the host and I discussed what was happening with the entire crew that were running the stunt. Then it began. I put on the jacket.
They placed me in the box. They fastened the side on.
They hoisted me into the ground.
In a short half hour, my exit tunnel was built. I heard, through a headset I was wearing, that the trapdoor was done. It was time to start.
“Talk us through what you're doing, Warren.”
“I'm taking off the jacket.”
“Ok, ok. How's it going?”
“It's going fine. It's off now.” I grabbed the headset from my ear, threw it to the bottom of the box, and smashed it with my foot repeatedly.
I think I was heading here all along. It didn't matter how much I avoided Rule 3, or stated I would never ever do this, or confirmed with so many psychiatrists that I was indeed a claustrophobe; one day, this was always going to happen. It's like Tom said; I wasn't even that drunk when I agreed to do it. I knew what I was saying.
Before being placed in the ground, I had a quick chat with the paramedics and the safety crew. I convinced them that, whatever happened, they would leave me down here for a good deal longer than an average human could survive with so little oxygen. This was actually fairly easy. I'm the most famous and successful man in my career. They outright trusted that I was not an average human, and that I had some secret means of sustaining my own life beyond the point that anyone else could. I told them also that my planned method was rather physical, and that if they lost headset contact with me they should not worry, I know what I'm doing and that it would not be worth calling off the entire event when I can assure them there would be nothing wrong.
Of course they were convinced. I'm Warren Bates, the greatest escapist to ever live. At least I think so. They did too.
I lay back and relaxed. My final escape was coming soon.
Time was passing again, this time just slowly enough. I could gather my thoughts. I thought of my grandfather, and how he would be proud that I was finally able to escape to him. I would leave the coffin this time and see him again when I did. I waited for that. It kept me calm. I was happy. I had achieved everything I had ever wanted to, and now my final prize would be gained. There was nothing left to prove.
I was Warren Bates. I escaped 94 times in my life.
I just lay in the dark and enjoyed the silence.