A very personal project. <3

**A little bit after my twenty-second birthday**
I paid this burnout kid
who used to hit on me in the food court
fifty dollars
to bury me alive.

I mean—
she didn’t know she was burying me alive.
But I doubt she would’ve cared too much
even if she did.

I bought a coffin.
I dug a hole.
I got inside,
and I closed the lid.

I said to myself,
*this is crazy.*
*What you’re doing is crazy.*

But another part of me knew
that it wasn’t.
That it was survival.
And that I didn’t have much time.
That what felt like years in this world
was actually just seconds.

---

**So I waited.**

---

And then finally,
the first spadeful of dirt
hit the top of the box.
And then another,
and then another.

I sang songs to myself.
I counted to ten thousand
without skipping any numbers.
I pissed and I shit my pants,
and I forced my mouth
to produce whatever saliva I could muster,
just so I’d have something to drink.

I screamed as loud as I could for help.
I apologized for the whole thing.
And I begged God
for someone to come along and save me.

I tried and tried
to claw my way out,
but that burnout chick
had packed the dirt in too tight.
Just like I’d asked her to do.

---

And then—
after I don’t know how long—
I felt myself
start to leave myself.

And it was like I was watching myself
on TV,
from across the room.

And I was moving
further and further away from the screen,
until the screen was so small
that I couldn’t even see myself anymore.

And then I was clawing my way up
out of the ground.

And then I was at the surface,
gasping for air,
rain pouring down on me,
thunder and lightning.

And I was finally back there.
Back at our old sleepaway camp.

And just like I was waking up
from a bad dream—
that whole life,
that whole reality
where I was *Augustus Baxter*—
drifted away,
like a brief hallucination
that I could hardly even remember.

And all those memories
that had felt so real
washed away with the rain
back at our old sleepaway camp.

---

And I was me.
I was finally me again.

And it was the Season 6 premiere.

I tried looking for you,
but Mr. Melancholy
had covered his tracks too well.

I knew you must be buried somewhere close by,
but I didn’t know where.

And your signal—
that signal that I used to be able to close my eyes
and feel so vividly—
was nowhere.

I wasn’t picking up anything
on the psychic plane.

I found my heart.
Hannah—oh my God—
I found yours too.

And it was still beating!
Stored indefinitely in a...
in an industrial freezer!

I left our hearts there
because I knew I wasn’t done yet.

And I found Mr. Melancholy’s cauldron.
I found the Luna Juice
he used to send us to the Midnight Realm.

Then I took a big sip
straight out of the ladle.

And I lay back down.
And I waited to fall back asleep.

I knew I needed to come back here.
I knew I needed to come back and save you.

So that the show can continue.
So that we can get to **Season 6.**

Wake Up (intro) {AI}

| 🇵🇸 | 🏳️‍⚧️ | 🏳️‍🌈 | ☭ | 🏴‍☠️ |

Wake Up (intro) {AI}

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