Death

The sun beat down on the tar road, blue sky above writhing with heat as the desert sands warped with the mirage of unbearable summer afternoon. Somewhere on the horizon, lost in the burning air, a city might exist.

I place my foot in front of me again, though it hurts to remember the last step just as much as it aches to take this next one. Sweat cuts through my pores, each drop turning my welting skin further into a withering and rotting corpse, shambling from moment to moment, forever on the brink of a final collapse. My eyes squint, and my brow crashes down upon my sockets, my head dipping into submission before a neck catches it. I plant my leg, and shift my weight, because there is only one way for me to go.

With no truth in my mind, no self in my body, I step. My chest rocks forwards, a wave of vertigo surging from my stomach to my throat, into my ears and roaring around my brain in my blood. I can see nothing beyond the suffering, there is no happiness, no novelty, no tangible emotion except the rage of millions of nerves desperately resisting a choral death cry, igniting my cortex with agonizing tempest, every shred of my cognition devoted to etching the pain of this moment into my skin and bones so that I may never forget it. Somewhere in my collapsing labyrinth of one hundred billion decaying neurons, a certain series fires in a thousandth of a thousandth of a second, and my brain and spine ignite into what resembles a prayer.

There is someone walking besides me.

I cannot tell how long they have been besides me, for when I turn towards the desert behind us, we have left no prints. In fact, there is nothing at all behind us, just as there is nothing ahead of us. The footsteps are in sync with mine, yet their tempo abandons pain for patience. The figure speaks no words, it doesn’t look in my direction, and it doesn’t react when the boils covering me begin to burst, filling the dry air with a foul and wafting minge. The figure simply continues forwards.

 I am not sure either of us really exist. I cannot see beyond the red pain that has stained my eyes deep pitiful crimson, and yet I know the figure is walking besides me still. Our paces trudge onwards together, sharing only time.

The figure seems to be standing upright, or at least it does not share my hunch. Even on this baren remote hellscape it commands authority, the air seems to cool around it, and the shimmer of mirage is absent from its form. Despite my impending death, the figure persists. I cannot even question whether it is real, for in the few paces we have taken together I have felt such kinship in our suffering that the loss would finally destroy me. We are not alike, yet there is nothing else; I see no city, I smell no water, I no longer taste the dried blood on my tongue, there is only the vision of the figure and what comes after.

The figure is certainly walking, I can see clearly the sway of its legs and the movement in its arms. It seems to be looking towards the horizon, but I cannot see towards what. The shimmering barrier where blue and orange wait is stoic and silent.

The sands crunch beneath our feet, the smell of the dry air burns my nostrils, all the while we keep pace with one another.

Perhaps there is a city ahead.