Jerry decided to go for it. There was a choice, of sorts, and the way he saw it, he was better placed than the next man - in any direction - to achieve this particular goal. Thus far, his argument was sound, on the basis that all his immediate neighbours were dead, and he himself was buried to the conventional depth of six foot.

His mind, still in blue chip Managing Director mode, automatically moved onto risk assessment. Bad move. It was almost, not quite, but almost, laughable, and the one thing Jerry could ill afford at this point was sudden emotion that would involve excess expenditure of air. So, sane, sober thoughts only please, and focus. He must compose himself to the maximum, focus on something (or nothing) that would put him in a state of total resourcefulness to set to the task in hand.

Seventy-one, Jerry decided, would be a suitable mantra; home. It was impossible to decide on one or other of the faces that lived behind the door of seventy-one, each in its own unique way, reason enough to attempt this lunacy. Even allowing those faces inside his slowly asphyxiating head was toying with madness. And tears? His eyelids and lips were glued shut from what he could tell. Only God or an undertaker would know with what type of resin! He could wind up blind for fuck's sake! For all he knew, it was entirely possible that he could drown in his own tears! Jesus!

These tumbling, uninformed imaginings were exactly what he had to avoid. But how the hell do you not panic when you waken up in a box instead of a nice private room at King Edward VII, minus your tonsils and with some pretty, young nurse asking what your favourite flavour ice cream is?

They had explained, of course, that with adult tonsillectomy, it was a good deal more painful - or was that complicated? Who knew? He had been way too busy being charming, tapping the appointment into his palm-pilot, and being important. Too busy electronically scheduling his demise to listen to the medical spiel! And here he was; not just the lead, but the entire damn cast (for the moment anyway - other, more sinister players might yet wait in the wings between him and the world above) of some Friday night Hammer House of Horrors.

If there was a way out of this, Jerry forced himself back to constructive thought, then seventy-one was it. Four nice, clean cut syllables for his chain gang of one. Sev-en-ty-one-sev-en-ty-one-sev-en-ty-one.

He stopped himself.

'Hold it right there, Dr B., you're not playing some bloody GI Joe! Got to slow it right down. Sev-en-ty-one, sev-en-ty-one, sev-en-ty-one'�'�

Deprived of vision, Jerry allowed himself to become acutely aware of his major organs individually dropping gears. The sensation reminded him of that instant just after a hump-backed bridge when your insides seem to hang weightless and tingling. His heartbeat slowed to imperceptible, and yet he remained aware of it at a physical level: a cottonwool presence compressing faintly in his chest. He imagined his lungs, apparently deflated and motionless, but all the while doggedly calculating, rationing every last precious molecule of oxygen in deep banks of alveoli.

A swift inventory of his physical situation revealed several positives. The first, and psychologically the most important of these, was the realisation that the lid of the coffin did not make direct contact with his body at any point. Judging by the angle at which he could lift his head (though he had done this only once and found sudden smoothness of the satin against his forehead not just a little unsettling) there had to be at least three, maybe four inches. That would mean an even larger space at his feet, and he knew there were two more reservoirs to either side of him where his elbows, folded so that he should lie in that classic state of eternal repose, protruded beyond his torso.

The best discovery, in practical terms, was the twisted metal wire that the undertaker had used to bind his wedding ring to the signet ring on his right hand, thereby ensuring that the traditional, beatific pose of the dead was maintained. This undone and re-twisted in a more effective design would be his master tool, his palm-pick!

Catching one end of the coiled metal under his thumbnail, suddenly more aware of his circumstances than was desirable, he began to counter twist it away from its partner'� sev-en-ty-one, sev-en-ty-one, sev-en-ty-one'�

Arguably, he could use this subliminal chanting to greater effect by simply counting, trying to gauge the passage of time. But what good would that do? Nothing was to be gained by dredging through his rusty chemistry and mental arithmetic, making wild and probably grossly inaccurate stabs at how long the remaining air would last. 'Seventy-one!' It was his wife's voice that rang out in triumph inside his head as he felt the final coil of metal unwind and the two ends spring easily apart. Seventy-one, with its big, cheery, red door; sev-en-ty-one, would provide just the right amount of impetus and dogged concentration for the job in hand.

Lying on his back like this, with his senses all but closed down, it would not be difficult to believe that the space above him was infinite. He remembered summer afternoons, stretched on a towel in seventy-one's straggling garden, eyes voluntarily closed, imagining what the first obstacle in his path might be if he were to float directly upwards: aircraft? space junk? third star to the right? In an attempt not to succumb to the awful loneliness that underlay this reverie, Jerry permitted the glorious sensation to continue for just a few seconds, savouring it, absorbing it so that he would be able to summon it again should either hope or air finally expire.

He slid the metal free of his rings with difficulty. He could feel his frozen finger-joints jar in their sockets as he forced them to the task of rewinding the two sharp ends together to form a 'tool' that resembled a slightly outsized toothpick. Thus equipped, he poked tentatively into the satin lining above him. The implement quickly met with more solid resistance as it found wood. Ripping at the hole in the lining before panic could set in Jerry checked the quality of his confinement. The rough, uneven texture told him that Anthea had at least half respected his wishes for an environmentally friendly interment. The casket was chipboard. Had his wife been able to bring herself to adhere to the letter rather than the spirit of his thinking, the chances were a cardboard coffin would already have collapsed and he would be dead. Chipboard, however, was possibly the best he could have hoped for given his current circumstances.

The plan came complete and all by itself. It was simply this: do a little initial damage with his gizmo to loosen the fibres, and then take over with his fingernails which were long and tough enough to pick out individual chips of the various wood shavings. At a steady pace, Jerry reckoned he should be able to produce a hole roughly the size of a fifty pence piece in under an hour. He figured that would be sufficient to create a regular trickle of earth, manageable enough to divert onto the satin that he planned to use as a temporary holding bay if necessary. The tricky bit would be redistributing the earth from his chest, down one side and eventually beneath him, angling his body to the slope of the rising mound so that he was gradually turning through 180o onto his stomach for maximum leverage. At some point in his gyratory, the critical mass of pressure exerted should start to crack the board.

He was not sure he had stuck to the timetable, but he was still managing to shallow breathe when he heard the first splintering cr-r-r-ack close above him. He arched his spine as far as possible, his hands twisted unnaturally above his head; palms up, fingers, damp and slimy, scuttled through incoming rivers of soil like demented cousins of the indigenous population, struggling to direct the shifting earth and its inhabitants, intent on preserving the pathetic little pockets of air about his body.

Something wet and oozy slapped suddenly onto the nape of his neck causing him to flinch violently and crack his head hard against the chipboard. A small gasp of revulsion cost him both oxygen and time. The thing, whatever it was, remained in position momentarily and then, yeu-u-cck, started a determined, horizontal trajectory, propelled it seemed, obscenely, by a series of gentle kissing motions. In spite of himself, Jerry found himself wondering just how in hell it knew where it was headed. SHIT! The lump in his throat was excruciating and the backs of his eyelids burned as he fought to steer his oxygen-starved brain back to seventy-one again.

Quite suddenly, the lid yielded to his resolve, settling into a squat caricature of a tent that crested in a shallow peak just above his shoulder blades. In his head, where oxygen and space were infinite, another Jerry punched the air in triumph: 'Yes!'�. Beneath the freshly dug earth, the muddy, scratched man, blind and tearless as his subterranean companions, resumed his silent refrain: sev-en-ty-one, sev-en-ty-one, sev-en-ty-one'�

Progress from beneath his chipboard plough was slower now (too slow?) as he adjusted his redistribution technique to slope his body upwards. The leaden cannonball in his chest told him time was short. Seventy-one, sev-en-ty-one, sev-en-ty-one'� There would be no fat lady singing while he had his own tune to follow. No bloody scratch marks that would remain undiscovered by the lit world because he had failed. Seventy-one, sev-en-ty-one, sev-en-ty'�

The family could not go back the next day, or even the day after that. Their pain was too great. It was exactly a week and a day later when Anthea, no longer able to bear the thought of the mountain of flowers that would be withered and rotting, returned to her husband's graveside.

The glint of metal caught her attention almost at once, her tears causing it to explode into a tiny golden sun lying there amongst the damp mulch of browning leaves and petals. Only when she bent down close did the small creatures of the earth scatter to reveal the remains of Jerry's wedding finger.

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