It was mid March, and Vermont had just gotten plastered with 18 inches of wet, heavy snow. The kind of stuff my dad always called "heart attack" snow, since it's not uncommon for someone to keel over shoveling it. I had spent the morning on the mountain taking advantage of the fresh conditions and a day off of school. My friend Ian had driven, and he had just dropped me in the driveway- I was still fifteen at the time.
I turned to approach the house when a heavy, sopping wet snowball plastered the side of my head. I wasn't overly surprised. The neighbor girl had taken to following me around- my little bro calls it stalking. She just happened to be outside when I got back. Two more snow balls grazed my shoulder and leg. It seemed that Katie had some friends over.
"Hunter! Come here!" Like a trained dog I mindlessly turned toward Katie's call. I dropped my board and trudged toward the edge of my parents' yard. As I approached the snow banks at the edge of Katie's driveway, I noticed that she and her friend had partially buried another girl in the snow.
The buried girl took a brief break from wiggling around in the snow, just long enough to say, "Hey, I'm Heather."
"Hey Heather," I said.
"And you know Jess," said Katie, pointing toward the third girl, who I recognized as the recent new arrival from another town. With a grunt, Heather sprang up from the snow. "Hey, that was too easy!" Katie giggled.
"That was a pretty pathetic attempt at burying someone," I pointed out. This turned out to be a big mistake. I usually know better to keep my mouth shut.
"Practice makes perfect!" snapped Heather. "And I think we should practice on YOU!"
I was as socially inept around girls back then as I am now. "Okay," I grunted.
"Get digging, boy!" spat Heather. She had a demonic glint in her eyes. "Dig your grave!" she commanded, pointing to the snow bank. I picked up the snow shovel and began digging a trench that would fit my body. Why? Why do fifteen year old guys do anything?
Heather shoved me toward the long but narrow trench. I laid down on my back and folded my arms across my chest. "No, on your stomach," Heather commanded. I flipped over and faced the ground. She quickly knelt down and grabbed my arms, crossing them behind my back. "This will work fine, cutie!" laughed Heather.
I glanced up at Katie. She shot me a wry smile. She had tied me up with a few jump ropes last year when I was helping her clean out her basement. I recalled the enthusiasm with which she cinched my hands and feet together in a tight hogtie. I can't say that I didn't enjoy it, and I think Katie had noticed.
The predicament that I was currently getting myself into didn't seem vastly different. "Don't move," Heather whispered to me as she climbed off of my back. "Let's bury this boy!"
I figured that I would humor them a bit, so I laid there motionless as the three girls set to work piling the heavy snow on top of my back and crossed arms. They were using shovels, and weren't wasting any time. After ten minutes or so, the girls paused to admire their handiwork. "Squirm!" spat Katie.
Even at fifteen, I was no weakling, but the walls of packed snow on either side of me pinned my upper arms at my sides, and the weight of the snow over my crossed forearms kept my torso firmly in place. My legs were still uncovered, and I thrashed them around wildly, trying to shake myself loose.
Just as I was starting to have some success, Heather shouted for me to stop. "Hey, we're not done with you!" she yelled. She began shoveling snow on top of the backs of my thighs, with Katie and Jess following her lead.
"Wait," said Katie. Jess and Heather stopped shoveling as Katie grabbed my boots and crossed my ankles. She then pushed my crossed boots toward my buried hands. Katie glanced up at Jess and pointed at my legs. "Sit on his feet so he can't move," she said.
With Jess dutifully sitting on my snowboarding boots, Katie and Heather worked feverishly to pile heavy, wet clumps of snow all around my legs. By the time Jess climbed off of me there was no way I could have put my legs back down. I was helplessly braced by nothing but snow in a remarkably tight hogtie position!
Just for good measure, the girls continued to shovel snow on top of my helplessly buried body. Heather was huffing and puffing after fifteen minutes of continuous work. "Try moving now, punk!" she yelled, laughing.
"Evil girls," I muttered under my breath. With every ounce of strength I could muster I flexed my muscles in a feeble attempt to create some space between my body and the snow tomb that the girls had built around me. I worked for five minutes, but only managed to make myself exhausted and work up a sweat.
"Awww, poor baby!" said Katie as she flung herself on top of the considerable mound they had created. The other girls did the same, effectively packing the snow even tighter around my body.
I was sweaty and tired, and now I had to pee to boot. "Okay, you got me," I said. "There's no way I could get out of this. Dig me out." All three girls began to laugh- maniacally.
"Time for some hot cocoa, girls?" Katie asked Jess and Heather. They nodded at each other and headed toward the house.
"HEY!" I yelled. "What the hell?"
"Oh, just sit tight and relax," quipped Katie as the girls shut the door behind them. I immediately began trying to rock side to side with all my might, but I couldn't move more than a half inch in any direction. The wet snow was like concrete, and I was totally encased with the exception of my head, which, by the way, was fully exposed to the powerful March sun.
After an hour I started to get pissed. I knew my face was starting to get sunburned, despite the 25 degree air. "KATIE!!" I shouted. "HEATHER, JESSICA! HELP! MRS. HARRINGTON! I was getting desperate.
Just as I hung my head in defeat I heard the door to the house open. Heather was jogging toward me with a backpack in her hand. She knelt down near my head and grabbed my hair, pulling my head up. "This is sooo much fun!" she whispered.
"Let me go!" I pleaded.
"Nooo," she said softly, almost to herself.
"HELP!" I screamed as she pulled a long black scarf from her bag, along with a single black cotton glove. Heather balled up the glove and held it near my mouth.
"Open," she said calmly, as if she were asking me to pass the ketchup.
"Bite me!" I spat.
"Aww, poor Hunter," Heather giggled. She pinched my nose with her fingers, and poked the glove into my mouth when I finally gasped for air. Without skipping a beat she wrapped the long scarf over my mouth and around my head. She circled my head once or twice more before knotting the scarf tightly. I screamed into the surprisingly effective gag. Heather messed up my hair. "Katie said you would like this. Is she right?"
I lifted my head to look at Heather and screamed into my gag once more. "Good boy!" laughed Heather. "Katie and Jess want to watch a movie. Bye!" she said, skipping back to the house.
Normally, this would have been a lot of fun, but I had to pee so badly, and I was boiling in my snowboarding gear, made worse by the sun beating down on my face. An hour or so later Katie's golden retriever came by to lick the salty sweat on my forehead. I'm not going to lie- I cried for a bit.
With a combination of relief and fear, I watched as the sun began to set behind Katie's house. My face had to be fried. The sky was growing darker as I heard a car approaching. "Oh, thank god." I thought. It was Katie's dad coming home from work! Surely he would help me.
Mr. Harrington glanced at me and laughed as he pulled into the garage. Surely he would help me when he got out of the car. He walked toward me with his briefcase in hand. I squealed into Heather's gag, looking at Mr. Harrington with pleading eyes. "Hunter, Hunter, Hunter," laughed Katie's dad. "When are you going learn? These girls are nothing but trouble."
He turned to walk away. "Oh my god, you've got to be kidding!" I thought desperately. I screamed into the gag more loudly than before. Mr. Harrington stopped and turned toward me.
"Now Hunter, you wouldn't want me to spoil the girls' fun, would you? He turned and I watched as the garage door closed with a thud.