My winning essay!

Buried
The basement floor was cold and damp, the ceiling no different. His hands groped the air, looking for something to hold onto.
“Jim! You should turn on a light down there!” yelled a shrill voice.
“I would if I could find the damn switch!” Jim yelled back, grumbling obscenities as he stepped in a small pool of water. He heard the basement door swing open and he saw the lights flicker on signaling that his wife had broken down and had finally turned the lights on for him. Jim looked at the puddle below him and saw that it was very much akin to a small stream.
Jim followed the stream into the back room of the basement that held the sump pump. The horrid contraption was always flooding and he was getting sick of having to fix it every time the sky let out a drop of water. He located the sump pump and pulled out his screwdriver to disconnect the pipe below it. As his hands made contact with the water, a great shock of electricity shot through his body.
‘Aw, hell,’ was the only thing that Jim could think before slipping into unconsciousness. Jim opened his eyes after what seemed like only a few minutes. He stood up, slightly dazed. ‘How could I not have been killed?’ He shrugged off the incident and reached for his screwdriver on the floor, but he couldn’t grasp it. His hand slid right through it and into the floor. It was then that he noticed a hand next to the screwdriver… his hand. He quickly ran up the stairs into the kitchen and began screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Jim?” he heard his wife call. Thank god, he wasn’t dead.
“Marie!” he yelled, but she walked right through him and into the basement. After a few seconds, he heard her scream a blood curdling scream, she then raced up the stairs and picked up the phone and dialed 911. Jim sighed in frustration and waited with his wife as the paramedics came and took his body away, covering it with a white sheet.
“I knew that damn sump pump would be the end of me,” Jim growled, as he watched the ambulance leave his driveway. Great. He had to get back into his body, somehow. There had to be a way.
“Problem solve, Jim…you were pretty good at it during the war.” He mumbled to himself. “No use staying here…my body isn’t even here anymore.” He straightened his back. His wife had gone with the paramedics, leaving him alone in their house. He walked through the door, since he couldn’t open it, and began the long trek to King Edward the Martyr Hospital, which was a good hour away on foot. The hospital held many memories for both Jim and his wife. It had housed him when he had been sent home early from the war in Europe due to a severe injury. He hadn’t wanted to leave his fellow men in the hands of the Nazis, but he would have been more of a burden to them if he stayed. His wife had been born in that hospital and she had also worked there as a nurse. That was how they met; she was his attending nurse during his stay there.
He made it to the hospital in under an hour and walked through the various rooms, trying to find out where the morgue was. Eventually he found the morgue and saw his wife who was signing papers. But where was his body? He had to find it before it was sent to the mortician. ‘No way in hell was he going to stay here as a ghost if he couldn’t even figure out how to make contact with his wife’.
After what seemed like ages, Jim’s wife was led to where the bodies were kept, small compartments that looked like filing cabinets. Jim followed closely behind, hoping that he would get his chance to try to get back inside his body. After going through a dozen compartments, the coroner finally opened one that had Jim’s name on it. The sheet covering Jim’s body was removed and Jim saw his wife’s eyes brimming with tears.
“Mrs. Clark, is this your husband Jim?” the coroner asked. ‘It must’ve been regulation for them to have her identify his body, since it was obviously his’, thought Jim.
“Yes, that is my husband”, she said.
As the coroner began closing the cabinet, Jim, in a last ditch effort, jumped inside his body. He was alive again. By reasons he could not explain, he was alive again. He was overcome by joy. All he had to do now was kick at the cabinet and someone would come to let him out. Jim tried to kick his leg, but no sound would emit. ‘That was strange’ he thought. He knew he was definitely inside his body. He could see his chest rise and fall with each breath. He lifted his head up farther and kicked the metal cabinet again. To his dismay, he saw the source of his problems. He was paralyzed.
“NO!” he tried to yell, but nothing happened. He was totally paralyzed. “If it hadn’t rained, I wouldn’t be in this damn situation. I would be at home, with my wife, eating dinner. I almost died in France! And now I die, instead, by a damn malfunctioning sump pump! That can hardly be considered honorable,” he fumed.
Hours and days passed before Jim saw light again. He was starving and had soiled himself numerous times. If that wasn’t proof he was alive, he didn’t know what else was. No one seemed to notice, though, as he was taken to the mortician. The funeral home that he was being sent to was called the “Phenex Funeral Home: Purveyors of Coffins and Funerals”.
When he was wheeled in, he saw a man older than even he was. He had to be at least 100. He had a long, hooked nose and the skin on his face and jowls sagged more than it should have. He was wearing a suit of ancient cloth- at least from the 1800s, Jim figured- and he wore a dusty, black top hat and fingerless white gloves.
“Got another one for ya, Bill,” the paramedic that had transported Jim said. “Jumped right back in his body, he did. Guess he doesn’t wanna stay dead.”
“Good work, my dear fellow. You may leave,” said Bill.
‘What the hell is going on?’ thought Jim. ‘If they knew I was alive, why are they sending me here? If this guy knows what’s going on, why wouldn’t he stop it?’ He had so many questions and yet no one could hear him to answer them.
“Now, Jim, you know you aren’t supposed to be alive,” said Bill in a gentle voice. “Your case isn’t unique, but I’m afraid we can’t have you living. It’s not the way the world works. You’ve broken a very big rule: ‘No one is allowed to come back to life unless specifically sanctioned to’”, said Bill, pulling out a needle and thread. “Now, I have to comply with the rules, and so, I will prepare you for death,” he said, smiling. Bill tried to move, scream, anything to get away, nothing he did would work.
Bill threaded the needle carefully, missing the eye the first two times. When he had the needle threaded, he leaned over Jim and slowly closed one of his eyes.
“This may sting a bit,” he said. That was an understatement.
Jim’s eyes felt like they were being ripped out of his face. He could do nothing to stop the pain as Bill sewed each of his eyes shut, slowly and carefully. When it was done, Bill put Jim into a suit that had a horrific smell.
Jim didn’t know how long he had lain on that table, but he thought it had been at least a day, when suddenly he felt himself being placed in a soft, velvet coffin. ‘If he wasn’t the one who was “dead”, he’d have been envious of the lucky sucker who got to lie in this coffin’. He then heard a preacher who was droning on and on about how great a man Jim was. ‘The guy didn’t even know him’ thought Jim. Jim never went to church, his wife did. He was too busy for such nonsense. The service was so long that Jim fell asleep.
He awoke an hour later to his coffin being jostled violently. Then, he felt the coffin being picked up and moved, and then he was set on some sort of contraption. More words were spoken and then he felt the coffin being lowered into the ground. Jim panicked and began trying to break through his paralysis, desperately trying to get out of the coffin. His coffin made a loud thump as it hit the bottom of his very own six foot pit. Jim tried even harder to get out, but it was useless.
Outside Jim’s coffin, Jim’s wife, his brother, and Jim’s children were standing around the grave, silently praying for him. The first shovel of dirt was thrown onto the coffin, followed by another and then another. Jim screamed silently. Jim’s family left to go out to eat and to begin the work of finding Jim’s will and sorting out all his affairs. Jim screamed silently from his coffin, but was never heard.



Its far from perfect...but, i think its pretty good.
Long Live Franz Ferdinand and may they let us enjoy The Great Chicah!