You wake up in complete darkness, lying in a cramped and suffocatingly small space of some sort. After a few moments, you’re able to fidget a lighter out of your vintage New Edition fanny pack and flick it to life. A taunting note is tacked mere inches above your face. “I buried you alive! Ha!” it reads.
You’re not able to make out the handwriting, so it’s anyone’s guess who might have put you in this pickle. You’ve made a lot of enemies during your stint as a world-class DanceSport competitor. Anyway, you can worry about who buried you alive later. Now is the time for action!
Luckily, in your spare time, you’ve been working on a new spiritual discipline that combines Buddhist meditation techniques, the latest advances in quantum physics, and good old American Can-Do Spirit. A few deep breaths and hillbilly shouts later, and you’ve transubstantiated yourself right out of the buried coffin and onto the cemetery lawn. Sadly, you left your clothes and priceless fanny pack behind. You lie naked on the cemetery green, staring up into the moonlit sky and quietly running through your Enemies List with an eye toward those with access to coffins, diggers, and knock-out drops.
Of course! It must be Constance “The Mortician” Bakerschmidt, the local mortician! She had been going around town for a couple of weeks bragging about how she was going to bury you alive “in a fortnight,” but you had thought that was all just bluster and formaldehyde talking. Besides, everybody knew that a fortnight was about a year and a half. You thought you had plenty of time. Plenty of time.
“Plenty of time?” someone asks as they shake you back awake.
“What?” you stammer insensibly.
“You were standing here saying ‘Plenty of time’ over and over for about eighty-three minutes,” says this unknown person. Oh wait, you do know who it is. It’s television’s Ryan Seacrest, and you’ve never seen him more concerned. Or cleaner!
You detail your burial alive by Constance Bakerschmidt and your unlikely escape from death’s clutches, Seacrest hanging on your every word like a low-hanging macrame basket in a hanger full of hanging planters. Eventually he convinces you to sign the rights to your story over to his production company, Desilu Studios. Seacrest hires a Percy Bysshe Shelley impersonator to write the screenplay, which he calls The Hunt for Red October II: Submarine Sandwich.
The night of the premiere finally arrives! Your limousine is supposed to pick you up in front of Cerritos Auto Square, but an hour passes and you’re still standing on the street corner waiting. It’s a good thing you planned to get there early, because even with this delay, you still have plenty of time. Plenty of time.
“Plenty of time?” someone asks as they shake you back awake.
“What?” you stammer insensibly.
“You were lying here in the cemetery naked saying ‘Plenty of time’ over and over for about three minutes. Then you went on this bit about Ryan Seacrest. I woke you when you cycled back to ‘Plenty of time’,” says this unknown person. Oh wait, you do know who it is. It’s Constance “The Mortician” Bakerschmidt, and she’s holding a large bottle labeled ‘Human Poison’!
“But if you buried me alive, why even come back here with a bottle of human poison?” you ask.
“This isn’t for the likes of you,” she says with a laugh. “This is for my erstwhile paramour, Constantine McBortleson, the heir to the Tyson Chicken fortune! I shall poison him anon, which will be a just comeuppance for his tawdry trysts with that SoundCloud rapper!”
“Ok,” you reply, “but why would you tell me, one of your sworn nemesi, which is the plural of nemesis, why would you tell me about your plans to murder your lover?”
The Mortician sighs, “Because I’m just going to bury you alive again in a fortnight, but this time without your precious brain and its troublesome thoughts!”
As she stumbles off on her mission of mayhem, you relax back into the lawn. There’s no way she’ll get the jump on you again, not with a year and a half to plan! You’ve got plenty of time. Plenty of time.
Never trust someone named Constance
I trusted your father with my penis and he gave me erectile disfunction