The panic that Winston felt now was far greater than what he had experienced so far. In bleak comparison, he felt that the desperate call of a woman he loved was far more terrifying than falling in a black hole. Hell, he was even happier a moment ago when there was a stake up his arse, so at this point, he was losing it.
"Lydia! Knock three times, please!" He called out, and got more desperate to find her. "Why am I not hearing any knocks?"
Winston put his ear near every casket that was close by. Regardless if the casket was set up right, or flat on the ground, he got close to them, and put his ears on the board.
He knew he didn't have time to smash, and destroy all seventeen caskets around him, because he was sure that Lydia was running out of air, just like he almost did. He couldn't afford to waste a single second.
After checking out three caskets, he began to cry, involuntarily. He was almost sure that Lydia was dead now, as every casket he put his ear to showed no sign of life!
"Lydia…" He repeated, his voice heavy. "This is Hell, isn't it? Why bother stuffing my brain with random memories if your whole damn purpose is to torture me?"
Despite the overall realism of his surroundings, he'd still much rather believe that he was in Hell. It would be lighter on his conscience compared to losing Lydia for the second time. He was close to snapping, and going manic!
Before he broke down, and went down a path that he just knew he couldn't recover from, he heard three faint knocks. The knocks were not rhythmic, they were slow, oddly spaced, clearly belonging to a tired soul, or in this case, a nearly suffocated body.
Winston was prompted to rush, but he did not want to go to the wrong casket again, so he gave himself a few seconds, trying to figure out where the sound came from. He wanted to be absolutely sure that he got the right casket this time, otherwise Lydia may be losing her last chance at survival.
After a moment, he looked at a coffin that was five meters, or sixteen feet away, and rushed towards it. He had to jump over two caskets to get to this one, but once he put his ear over the board, he was absolutely sure that he found the right one.
Well, he could hear someone rustling in there, struggling to stay alive. He either found Lydia, or some other random human who needed help. Either way, he was willing to take those odds, because this was the best option he could work with right now!
Winston dug his fingers on the edge of the board, and started pulling on it. The darn thing was nailed shut, so he ended up moving the whole casket rather than the top side. He was nowhere close to breaking in.
"Fuck!" He exclaimed, and his fingers started bleeding. "Aah! Damn!"
It went without saying that he put too much force in as he tried to open the casket. He hurt his fingers badly, and apart from his thumbs, which were mostly unscathed, each and every one of his other fingers were bleeding, but he did not give up! The adrenaline started numbing his pain.
Desperate for a solution, he started bare knuckling the top of the casket. He was trying to break through four inches, or ten centimeters of hard boards with his fists! It was no easy task, but he kept going.
Thankfully, he didn't hurt his fists too much. After the fourth punch, he felt a sort of unexplainable energy overwhelming him, and channeling itself towards his right fist. He had felt the same sensation when he broke free of his own casket a moment ago, but then again he was distracted, so he paid no mind to it.
On the fifth punch, when the casket basically fell apart after his hit, he realized that he had done something odd, unnatural. Even in the midst of the chaos, he understood that the casket shouldn't have broken up that easily.
"Odd…" He grunted.
Wasting no time, he then started flickering the broken, wooden board pieces away. He couldn't hold anything in his hands, so he bare knuckled, and palmed everything out of the way, until he discovered the naked body of a dark-haired, one woman that he did not recognize.
"You're not Lydia," He held his head, ready to cry, and shout.
"And you're not Winston…" She said, her voice hoarse.
The situation the two of them were in was confusing, without a doubt, but then Winston remembered something. He recalled being overflown with the memories of another man earlier on, and so, things started to make a little bit more sense to him.
"You are Lydia, right?" He pressured her, "I'm Winston, but it looks like I'm in another man's body, a much younger man's, judging from my arm strength. Please tell me I broke through the right casket…"
"Yeah, you did. I am Lydia." She took another deep breath, and finally got the strength to sit up, rising from the destroyed casket as if she was a vampire. "What is this? Were we reborn or some shit?"
Winston immediately went for a hug. Tears ran down his eyes, and half of the stress he was feeling went away. He saved the life of the one person, the one woman he cared about, and in his eyes, this was the best thing about the horrible situation the two of them were in. It was a fragment of hope.
"I'm happy to see you too…" Her voice shook as she tried not to get emotional, "But seriously, Winnie, where the Hell are we?"
Winston finally let go of her, wiped a few tears away, and then said. "I don't know, but my best guess is that our souls hijacked the bodies of these poor bastards. It looks like we both recovered from slit throats too, so I don't really know what to tell you."
"I thought that we were reborn, but we don't look like babies… so, yeah this doesn't make any sense." She sighed, "I had to pull a stake out of my throat, I don't even know how a human is supposed to recover from that, but look at me, I'm breathing just fine."
"I had to pull the stick from the other end, so count yourself lucky." He chuckled, "A rare case of poetic justice, perhaps? Even the Universe wanted you to stop talking sometimes, and wanted me to pull the stick out of my ass. Maybe the Universe is sending us a message?"
"I guess I could've been nicer to you," She sighed. "Sorry."
"No worries," He smiled.
Afterwards, the two of them stood up. Winston helped her stand up straight, and slid his arm below hers, holding on to her back so she wouldn't fall down. The lack of oxygen had nearly killed her, so it was no surprise that she had lost most of her energy, and was disoriented.
"Know a way out?" She asked, "I don't want to be around these damned caskets any longer, and we both need some clothes. You look cuter now, I must admit, but I don't want to look at your junk all day."
"Same," He chuckled, "But be quiet, we don't know where we are, and we sure as hell don't know who put all those bodies in caskets. It can't be a friend."
The two of them slowly crawled out of the ditch, sinking their legs a couple of feet in the mud in the process, but they did make it to the top of the ditch nonetheless. Once they made it up there, they realized that they were in a cavern of some sort. They were underground, at the very least.
Moments later, they saw these two men patrolling the area, on the other side of the cavern, twenty meters, or sixty five feet away. They almost missed them, because the nearly primal looking torches mounted on the cavern walls did not provide enough illumination to their surroundings, but nevertheless, now that they spotted these men, they held their breaths, and tried to decide how to approach them.
"They can't be our friends…" Winston whispered.
"They haven't seen us yet," Lydia kept her voice down, and then crouched, as to avoid being detected. "Go back down there and grab the stakes. If we play our cards right, we'll be shoving the stakes up their asses this time…"
"I can't hold shi-" He tried to answer, but got interrupted by a thunderous voice.
"Hey, you!" One of the men suddenly yelled out, "How the Hell are you still alive?!"