Near Death Experience

A near death experience, was it an accident or did Johnnie try to kill me?!  I will let you be the judge.


Back in the day I want to say that I was twelve, and my little sister Johnnie was ten, but I could be wrong maybe we were eighteen and twenty.  We had this old couch (the kind with the hide away bed inside) out in our garage, not really sure why but it was there.  But there it was calling to us to come and play.  Johnnie and I decided it would be sort of fun to be folded up in this thing.  Quickly we decided that I would go first.  I am not sure if it was because I was older and braver; or if it was because Johnnie was younger and more intelligent. 


First remove couch cushions, and then unfold the bed from its cozy home.  I climbed in and laid flat like I was in a coffin (should have been the first red flag).  Johnnie folded the end of the couch up and over me very slowly causing the mattress to slowly squeeze me.  The mattress started getting tighter and tighter around me as the bed total enveloped me.  I told Johnnie to slow down, as she started to lower the Angela burrito into the dark, lonely abyss that was the center of the couch.  I was traveling where no man, woman or child had ever gone before. 


All of the sudden I began to panic, really panic!  John… ummm, I think I am done I don’t want to be in here anymore, can you go ahead and pull me out?!  At that moment I have that stomach dropping feeling, and I hear Johnnie say oops as I slid completely into the couch.  If you put the cushions back on the couch you would never have known I was in there, except for high pitched screaming coming from the inside.  I really started to panic, John I want out of here, get me out!  Johnnie was on the outside tugging, pulling, and mustarding up all the strength she could from her little ten year old body.  JOHN!  I can’t breathe in here!!!  In the middle of her pulling she looked to see a large three to four inch gap above where my head and below my feet.  Calmly she tells me about the gap and I should be getting enough air.  What does she know; I am the one suffocating in here?!  Then she proceeds to tell me that she is leaving to go get our brother.  WHAT?!  Don’t leave me; I don’t want to die alone! 


She rolls up her sleeves, at least that is what I would have pictured in my head had I not already been busy watching my short life flash before me. She gives that stupid couch bed another hard pull, and out came the bed with a half crazed sister rolling from it.  Johnnie crumbled to the floor, tearing streaming down her face.  I started toward her, but my legs feeling like jelly beneath me I felt like I was walking in quick sand.  Wiping her hand across her face, she looked at me with pain in her eyes, if… I would have killed you dad would have killed me…