Page 28 of Inbetweeners
5
Emmett hurt. A lot. All over. He didn’t want to open his eyes because he suspected that would hurt too, so for a moment, he just lay there with his eyes closed. Then his head began to race.
I have a brother and sister.
My parents are still alive.
I can’t remember their names but they live in Caterham in Surrey.
What the fuck?
His eyes sprang open and he jerked upright in darkness only to immediately slam his head against something hard.Ouch!Then he remembered the part he’d expected to recall. He’d been hit by a car, tossed in the air like a Frisbee. It hadn’t been an accident. Whoever had been driving had aimed for him.The shit.
Was he in hospital? Emmett reached up to feel a smooth, cold metal surface less than a foot above his head. Not a hospital bed, nor a coffin, but… He felt around his body and determined he was in some sort of narrow metal container and he was on a section that didn’t seem to be attached to the sides or the top. His clothes were gone, but he was covered by a sheet and there was something tied around his big toe.Oh fuck.Plenty of clues there. He was in a mortuary.Which meant he’d just used up one of his lives.
“Help!” he yelled. “I’m not dead. Let me out.”
He tried to kick at the box, but only stubbed his toes. He couldn’t think of any way he could get free. He squirmed over onto his front and pushed at the end of the container with his feet, then at the other end with his hands, but nothing moved. He yelled again. Hammered with his fists. Yelled until he was hoarse. Beat against the metal with his heels. Screamed until he finally accepted that he’d have to wait until someone was in the room. Until then, he was trapped.
Good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic, except being in the equivalent of a metal coffin made him feel very closed in, and breathless, and anxious, and—oh Christ–- claustrophobic. He rolled onto his back. He was also exhausted. Well, that was dying for you. Not only did it hurt, it was apparently extremely draining. A thought that led to a moment of acute panic that perhaps he’d already been autopsied and was maybe on his way to a crematorium’s furnace. His heart, that had just managed to calm itself into a steady beat, flipped into a frenzy. He wrenched back the sheet, sweeping his hands over his pecs and neck, but there was no Y-shaped incision. When he laid his hand flat on his chest, he could feel his heart racing. Too fast, but he was alive. In a way.
He lay still and thought back to what he’d remembered about his parents, because that had been a miracle of resurrection and there might be more memories in his head. His parents were still alive! At least they had been. They lived on Stancliffe Road in Caterham in Surrey. The house was called Braemar. Emmett had lived there until he was eighteen when he went to university. His parents had never moved. He waited to remember more, but nothing else came into his head.
When he heard the sound of someone in the room, he called, “I don’t want to freak you out, but I’m not dead. Can you pull open the drawer, please?”
A moment later, he slid into the light and found himself blinking up at Phoenix.
“I bet you’ve been dying to see me.” Phoenix grinned.
“Hilarious. Did you bring clothes?”
He held up a carrier bag.
“Thanks.” Emmett swung his legs over the side of the pull-out metal shelf he’d been lying on, wrapped the covering cloth around his waist and dropped to the floor. The rest of him almost followed his legs. He barely stayed on his feet.
“There’s a hose over there. You should clean yourself up.”
“Are you going to look the other way?” Emmett asked.
“Hell no.”
Emmetthmphedand strode over to the hose. He sucked in a breath as he let the freezing water fall over his head. The moment it ran clear, he turned off the hose and dried himself with the cloth he’d been wrapped in. Phoenix threw the bag of clothes over and Emmett emptied it out. “No underwear?”
“Oops.”
“Oops, my arse.”
Phoenix laughed. “I’ll be able to think of nothing else all day.”
Emmett yanked his jeans over his backside, carefully zipped himself up, because—hey, that zip could hurt—and someone wolf-whistled. He spun round. Not Phoenix.
“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention there was a dead guy in the corner,” Phoenix said.
Emmett shoved his feet into his shoes and pulled on the T-shirt Phoenix had brought. Not from Emmett’s drawer. “Grateful Dead?” Emmett gaped at him.
“Well, we are, aren’t we? I saw it and bought it. I couldn’t resist. You look…” Phoenix pressed his lips together.
“What were you going to say? Dead? Good? Dead good?”
