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Desert
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TITLE (EDIT)
Desert |
DESCRIPTION
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[855 words] |
AUTHOR
Gabriel Campbell |
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
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[May 2007] |
Desert
Gabriel Campbell
Part I
My head felt heavy, much too heavy for my neck. My veins pumped lead and every step was weighted. My mouth tasted like dry copper, my nose stung with every breath. As I stumbled and slumped onto the scorched sand; I barely felt the pain. The senses blur in the heat of the desert sun. My vision frizzled and turned off, an icy blackness flooded my brain. An eery peace began to settle. Pain! All of the sudden my troubles returned; the sand, the sun, the heat, sharpened by a flush of cold.
Hands grasped me and I knew then that I had failed. It came to me in the same way a dream disappears, but a moment after waking. Escape had come so close, only to slip through my fingers like the desert sand.
I felt revitalized in the truck headed back toward the camp. Even so, the crushing of my soul and will was a terrible price to pay for the renewal of my body. To pass away on the sand seemed a wonderful paradise in comparison to my inevitable future. To undergo another torturous day of my melancholy life would drive me to madness. In the camp, the sole oasis of a vast desert, where food was plenty, shelter was strong and all the needs of a person were provided for, I could not survive. The iron fists of my oppressors choked me to a point where I could no longer breathe. The most unsettled, dreary, backbreaking freedom would be better than this, the most comfortable of enslavements. I drifted back to sleep.
I woke up back on my cot to the sound of the overseers. A cold message from steel lips emanated throughout my one-bedroom cell. The concrete floor, rough and strong, the iron bed frame, sagging yet clean, the solitary waterspout, a metaphor for my personality.
My efforts to doze off were in vain, for while I shuffled along the lower corridor the glares of my fellow slaves served as a constant reminder of my misery. Each and every one of them publicly loathed me to hide that they privately wanted to be me (A common balance). Someone who had escaped. Someone who had seen the outside in all its glory. Someone who, over a barren wasteland, viewed the horizon, through the scorched air, saw a blue sky, and in gnarled hands, held a high hope. If only for a moment, a moment they would never grasp, I had been free. This such feeling absorbed me.
To have every thought, and dream, and wish, and hope nearly realized has motivated me to excel, to rally the slaves, to throw off the chains that hold us, chains in which I found a broken link. I apologize, for the heat has made me ramble. My name is Yevan, and this is my world.
Part II
My head turned to catch a few slight movements in the corner of the cafeteria. Even the dull glare of concrete, steel, and florescent lights driving into my skull could not distract me today. It had been six long weeks since my escape attempt. The interrogation officers finally let me go after I was deemed “sufficiently docile” by a committee. I sat down with my tray, a delectable serving of protein mush, and pondered my means of escape. Forks began to rattle along the table. Then trays. The whole of the building was collapsing about me. The earthquake tossed the prison down like a house of cards. My train of thought derailed and burst into flame. I could see nothing. I grasped whatever I could and crawled to wherever I could. Heavy, concrete dust filled my sinuses. I managed to drag myself over the lip of a shattered window and collapse with a thud on the other side. A curtain closed upon my conscious.
I gasped when I woke up, the excitement carrying across a dreamless sleep. My joints were stiff with fear. A mixture of sand and dust laced the air. Limbs trembling, I staggered to my feet. I turned my head to see what had happened. Before looking, I thought that perhaps someone could be alive under the rubble. Afterward, I realized that it could not be so. The building had crumbled to a point where not one column was standing, not one brick lay on top of another. Unless someone else had managed to crawl out before the building had gone down, I was alone. I raised my chin towards the mountains in the east, the only break in the skyline. My course charted, I set out towards the rising sun.
My slave’s rags drooped low over my shoulders. Mountain wisps stung my skin and threw cold snow across my face. The memory of the trek across the desert began to fade as the last of the sand caught in my equipment blew away in the wind. The blood from my cracked lips froze. The suns rays glittered perfectly upon the sea below. A sleepy fishing village smiled up at me. I smiled back.
--Gabriel Campbell--
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 2007 Gabriel Campbell |
STORYMANIA PUBLICATION DATE
May 2007 |
NUMBER OF TIMES TITLE VIEWED
1834
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