when he was suddenly lifted up by his legs and arms and
stuffed into a narrow box. It was only wide enough for his body, as he quickly found out when he attempted to shift
inside. He felt a silky material along the sides and bottom, the softness of a pillow at the back of his head.
“What the hell is this?” Again, he heard muffled
laughter. Someone removed the earplugs.
“I told you we had a surprise for you,” said Tom.
“We’re going to bury you alive.”
Kevin had no time to consider the meaning of Tom’s
statement before he heard a loud creak, followed by a heavy thunk. He tore off his blindfold and reached to find that a thick, wooden lid had been placed over him.
“What the fuck, guys?!” said Kevin as he shuffled inside
• 72 •
FRIENDSHIp: DEAD AND BURIED
of what he now knew could only be a casket. With what little light shone through the hinges, he could make out its silky, white interior. “What’s going on?!”
“Surprise!” said Tom, his voice somewhat muffled
outside the box. “Dude, you’ve heard of Six Feet Under,
right? The burial simulator?”
Kevin had. He’d read about it on Ghastly Tales, a
horror blog he frequented. Six Feet Under was supposed
to recreate the sensation of an actual burial—from the
transport of the casket to getting planted in the ground.
Like a roller-coaster simulator, but with a macabre twist.
“We’re at FrightVille?” said Kevin, mentioning the
horror-themed amusement park a half-hour from their
hometown.
“Tomorrow’s your big day, man,” said Mickey. “We’re
pulling out all the stops for you, bro.”
“Gee, thanks, guys...” said Kevin, flatly. He felt the
casket move, as if it were being lifted by several men. His body shifted around as the box was jostled back and forth.
“Damn, this is pretty authentic.”
“Let us know when you can’t take it anymore,” said
Tom.
“Ha! Do you know who the hell you’re talking to? I fall asleep to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, dude. I bet you couldn’t handle two minutes in here, bitch.”
“Probably not,” replied Tom, dryly.
The casket continued to shimmy back and forth, up
and down, and Kevin settled in for the ride, relishing the opportunity to experience something so morbidly peculiar.
He had been in haunted houses and similar attractions,
but never anything so visceral. He grinned as he felt the
sensation of the casket being lowered and jolted as it hit what he assumed to be the bottom of a large hole, or at least
• 73 •
CORPSE COLD: NEW AMERICAN FOLKLORE
a simulated one. The thick scent of freshly dug dirt filled the enclosed space of the casket.
Kevin felt no sensations, heard nothing, for an
extended period. Nor did he hear his friends outside.
“What’s going on? Did it break down?”
Silence consumed and surrounded Kevin. He noticed
his heart beating in his chest and began concentrating on
the ragged tenor of his breathing.
“Guys? I’m falling a- asleep in here.” Kevin meant to
sound confident, but his voice broke mid-sentence.
He then heard his friends’ faint laughter.
“What are you guys laughing about?” he said.
“While we’ve got you in there, how about you get real
with us?” said Tom, a sudden callousness to his voice.
“Huh?” responded Kevin, who was not accustomed to
Tom talking with any kind of authority.
“We’ve got dirt on you. No pun intended,” said Mickey.
“Yeah, why don’t you fess up and then we’ll get on with
it,” added Tom, snickering.
“I have no idea what you guys are talking about. So,
cut the shit.” Kevin attempted to push up on the lid, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Not until you tell us what you’ve been keeping from
us,” said Tom.
“Asshole. I don’t know what you’re getting at. Let me the hell out of here so I can break your arm.”
“Have it your way,” said Tom. “We already know what
you did. We just want to hear it from your lips.”
Kevin heard shovels scooping dirt above him. The
casket gently quivered as the lid was repetitively buffeted, reproducing the sensation of dirt being cast upon it. A
heavier scent filled the box, and the little light afforded through the hinges had now given way to complete darkness.
• 74 •
FRIENDSHIp: DEAD AND BURIED
The sights, smells, and sensation of the experience were
almost too real to be part of some theme-park attraction,
thought Kevin. The smell inside the coffin really had an earthiness to it that was almost convincing. It had seemed playful at first, but with the malice and tone of his friends’
words and the claustrophobic nature of his “burial,” a new, unexpected fear had crept into the box with him.
“Guys, stop fucking around,” Kevin said, doing
nothing to conceal his panic. “Let me out of here!”
But there was no reply from Tom or Mickey. Kevin
felt utterly alone in the casket, accompanied only by the
continued sound of piling dirt, and the crackling of the
wood above him. He became acutely aware of the casket’s
stifling warmth, largely due to his heavy, rapid breathing.
As the coffin continued to tremble under the weight, Kevin flailed against the sides of his enclosure.
Where am I really? he thought. He imagined some field in the middle of rural Tompkins County, his old pals standing six feet above, shovels being put to use.
Sweat dampened his hair and trickled down his temples
as he continued his futile attempt to escape the casket. He thought of Wendy, his bride to be, out with her girlfriends, oblivious. That he would never see her again. A corpse in
an unmarked grave.
In that moment, Kevin screamed so loudly that his
voice broke and his throat twinged. He attempted to kick
the lid, but what little force he could muster only resulted in a light knock upon the wood and a sharp, shooting pain
in his foot.
“Guys, you got me, okay?! You got me real good,” said
Kevin, hysterically.
“We’re not fucking around,” said Tom, viciously.
“This is your last chance. Tell us what you’ve been hiding
• 75 •
CORPSE COLD: NEW AMERICAN FOLKLORE
or you’ll stay buried in this hole.”
Kevin cried out, now weeping openly, loudly. He
pounded the wood in a frenzy as he heard the unmistakable
sound of dirt hitting the lid, the pressure of the soil above pushing the casket further into the earth.
“It’s too late,” said Tom. “We know about her. Wendy
knows, too.”
Kevin thrashed inside the box. He was in no shape to
• 76 •
FRIENDSHIp: DEAD AND BURIED
play guessing games, and had little clue which secret his
friends were aiming to uncover. On the day before his
wedding, what could they want? What could they know?
He finally put it all together.
“Okay, okay! I cheated on Wendy, alright?” He was hyperventilating, frantically trying to catch his breath.
“With the counter girl from Gilligan’s. It didn’t mean
anything, though. Please just let me out. I don’t want to
die!”
“What the fuck! ” yelled Tom. “Stop the ride!”
A sudden silence consumed the coffin. The sounds,
smells, and vibrations had ceased. Light again peeked
through the hinges. A beat later, the lid flew open, revealing Tom, scowling at his future brother-in-law.
Kevin scrambled out of the casket, nearly dragged
out by Tom. Kevin looked around and was surprised to
find himself inside of a trailer. A series of mechanisms—
pistons, wires, a hydraulic press, and other high-tech
looking equipment—were connected to the casket. He
stumbled out of the dimly lit trailer and into the light. As his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he found himself in a carnival-like setting, seeing dozens of people milling about; most in black horror T-shirts: Friday the 13th, The Walking Dead. Those that weren’t eating concessions were lined up outside attractions with names like Samara’s Well and The
Romero Experience. A large, neon sign above the area bore
the words FrightVille. The sour combination of fried dough, cotton candy, and hay, coupled with his manic episode in
the casket, caused him to vomit, to the audible disgust of several passersby.
“You cheated on my sister!? You fucking asshole,”
shouted Tom, who had followed him out of the trailer,
before punching Kevin in the stomach and sending him to
• 77 •
CORPSE COLD: NEW AMERICAN FOLKLORE
his knees.
Kevin, still shaken by his phony descent into darkness,
looked up at his friend. “You-you said you knew…”
Mickey, now caught between two conflicted would-be
brothers-in-law, separated the men. “Dude, we heard you
used to sleep with a blow-up doll.”
• 78 •
• VIII •
AUTOpLAY ‘ON’
My nightmare began after I fell asleep watching Russian
viral videos on Rutube. I lay in bed with my laptop,
playing dashcam footage of unbelievable street bike stunts, kids with GoPros climbing radio towers, only a gust of
wind away from certain death. It was normal for me, falling asleep during a playlist of videos on YouTube or one of the lesser-known video-sharing sites. But the difference this
time, which I only noticed when I awoke the next morning,
was that I hadn’t bothered switching from my Tor browser
(where I had made a purchase of a certain mind-altering
substance earlier in the evening.)
At first, I thought nothing of having left the browser
open, or of the fact that videos had been playing all night, but for the content of the video that was currently playing.
It was a compilation of Chechen beheadings and firing
squads. I looked back at a dozen of the previous videos that had played while I slept; they were nasty, to say the least.
Animal cruelty, stuff reminiscent of Three Guys, One
Hammer—the sort of videos I had only stumbled across in
gif form while trawling various grey areas of the Internet, and which I normally avoided.
I quickly closed the browser, and my laptop. It didn’t
sit well with me, that I had absorbed hours of true horror. I
• 79 •
CORPSE COLD: NEW AMERICAN FOLKLORE
got ready for work, and as I showered I tried to forget about the filth of humanity which could be pulled up on a playlist via common video sharing sites. To think that on some of
these sites, if you watched a fun playlist of people doing stunts and dangerous pranks long enough, you might end
up seeing Shovel Dog or some ISIS terror propaganda–well,
it was almost nauseating enough to make me reconsider
venturing from a sterile platform like YouTube for my
late-night entertainment.
I worked a twelve-hour shift at my job in IT that day,
and returned home with a pizza, having largely put my
morning unease out of mind. As I sat at my table, eating
my pizza alone, laptop open, checking my email, I passed
over a message with a few Cyrillic letters and part of my
last name—at first glance I assumed it was another cryptic offering of dick pills. I didn’t click on it, but caught
‘Rutube’ before the subject line of the message broke, and was interested enough to hover over it, revealing the first line of the message: Сэр Legg Rutube… You have seen your end and bargain. -Vitali V.
I opened the email, but it revealed no further
information. Still, I couldn’t help but take note that the message did seem to be written by a human, and directed
at me. The message had been sent from a mail.ru address,
which I knew was a common service among Russian speakers
that phishing scams would normally not bother using against western targets. I deleted the message and went about my
night in typical fashion: finishing my pizza, smoking a
little weed, rubbing one out, and playing some League of
Legends on my gaming PC.
While I was gaming, my phone pinged. I unlocked
the screen and saw that it was an email. It was, again, from Vitali V. with ‘No Subject.’ I clicked the message and it
• 80 •
AUTOpLAY ‘ON’
read: Legglas, we watched as you watched our very personal video. We must chat soon. Vitali V.
What had I watched? I thought back to the playlist that
I had looked back over briefly that morning. Were these
detection? Why would they care if I saw some of their terror propaganda?
I closed the email and started searching, looking for
a new variety of phishing scam out of Russia. I wasn’t sure how much they already knew about me, but could guess it
was enough that they could begin sending me threats and
demanding some sort of payment.
An hour later I received a more menacing email from
Vitali. It simply stated my full name and address, made
no demands. I knew I could only speed the process along,
gather some information to bring to the police. I didn’t
have enough family connections or money to really be
worried about some Russian con artist on the other side of the world. I messaged Vitali back: I don’t know what video I have seen that offends you, Vitali. What do you want from me?
I waited, and it was only minutes before I received his
chilling response: Your eyes, friend. I shivered, then thought about who could be playing a prank on me, maybe someone
who had been passed over when I received my recent work
promotion. I thought about what additional information
Vitali might be trying to get at to further destroy my already poor credit. But the monetary angle never made sense, as
Vitali continued to message me about what I had seen the
previous night, and how important it was to him and his
comrades that I answer for it.
It really was maddening, terrifying, absurd to me, that I could have watched something from a public server that
Vitali and his comrades deemed inappropriate for my eyes.
• 81 •
CORPSE COLD: NEW AMERICAN FOLKLORE
I had no idea which video he referred to, obliquely, in his emails—but he certainly seemed to be putting me on while
he gathered more information about me to make some
further request.
Days passed with this back-and-forth. Vitali wasn’t
always threatening, but he was insistent that he wanted
nothing from me financially. I knew
I had to get something out of him, beyond his vague and often laughable direct
threats to my person, if I wanted to be taken seriously by the sheriff’s department. I tried to remain silent for a full day, not returning any of Vitali’s emails or restricted text messages. But the following morning, my day off, a small
package containing only a human finger appeared on my
doorstep, unmarked by any type of delivery service or USPS
label. More than disturbed, sickened by my anxiety, I went directly to the authorities.
I presented the complete story of my harassment, how
it began when I left my Tor browser open playing videos, the emails and messages, the package with the withering finger.
(I didn’t mention my illegal purchase, since Vitali never
mentioned it. Nor did I divulge the fact that I often went to bed out of my mind on shrooms.) The sheriff’s deputies
took my statement and evidence of threats, and assured me
that this was some complicated phishing scam, and that a
demand for money or further financial information was
inevitable.
I returned home, relieved that law enforcement at least
knew I existed and where I lived, as opposed to my having
to face my online irritant alone. However, it continued to eat at me—the unknown; what had played on my laptop that
night as I slept soundly?
That weekend began relatively quietly. It was almost
like Vitali knew I had gone to the police for help, and he
• 82 •
AUTOpLAY ‘ON’
himself was lying low. On Sunday, another lonely, boring
afternoon, it hit me like a brick: Why hadn’t I attempted to re-watch the entire playlist? I knew the search terms I had used and the first video I had watched. Perhaps I could find the video I wasn’t supposed to see?
It was a slog of an evening. I recalled the first dozen
or so videos and was sure I was on the same path as on the night it all began. But it would likely be hours before I
found that unique moment that hadn’t already had tens of
thousands of views—I assumed so, anyway. After four hours
of half-watching Russian and various Eastern-European
viral videos, I spotted a blank thumbnail and a video that had been made private. I clicked the video; it had five views, couldn’t be played, and its title was in Russian: Ответ
Третьяка. I translated it on Google as Tretiak’s Answer.
I searched ‘Tretiak’ for an hour, mainly turning up