Everyone's seen the mummy, right? Where Brendan Fraser is on an archaeological dig in an ancient city and awakens a mummy; and it's all running around in sand while sweating as everyone is looking sexy and ripped and perfect? If for some reason you've been hiding in a cabin in the woods, shitting behind rocks with the bears- no TV in sight for lord knows how long- you should go rent it and watch it so you can understand my predicament.

Because unlike our dearest Brendon, I am not attractive while I sweat nor am I ripped to the perfection of a god. In fact, if I'm being perfectly honest with myself (which I'm finding out tends to happen when you can see your death in front of your eyes) I'm quite…Soft. I'm not proud of my insane love for ice cream but it's there, and no matter how many breaks we've taken from one another we always find our way back.

I'm losing focus.

Heat does that.

I should actually back track so you know what I'm talking about. Because I don't remember any off topic ramblings in the Mummy, which actually has nothing to do with me, besides these key things- sand, heat, and sweat.

The desert is not a place for an out of shape art student who spends most of her time pounding down espressos with her face hidden behind a lens of a camera. Definitely not the place for one who sweats when the shower is left running too hot. But here I am, on an archaeological excavation watching the masters at work while I hide behind my camera and snap away. Photojournalism at its finest. My hair is sopped against my forehead, my shirt sticking to my chest. I swear the sun is so close I could reach out and get third degree burns. I'm living the dream, truly.

When I reached out to my friends for ideas on my final I had no idea I'd get sucked into the idea of rolling around the desert where sand gets shoved up any crack and crevice on your body- and sweating out about 6 gallons of fluid a day. But when Tyler told me he was going on the dig and "It wasn't even hot this time of year" I said yes. Because what if they did uncover something amazing and I could have been the one to take the first shots? I couldn't pass it up.

It wasn't bad at first, we came around 6, the cooling off period. Which I didn't know kept going until it felt like I was in a sandy Antarctica. And still I thought I could handle it if I just got used to it. But two weeks later I'm still that huffing mess of body odor that's falling all over the place trying to follow these seasoned professionals. So when I was asked if I wanted to follow along two others who were going off site to look and got to ride in a car- well I jumped at the chance.

And now the car broke down. We have no idea how long it will take us to walk and no one is answering their walkie talkies. Probably because they don't reach this far.

"Should we start walking, Miles?" Jenna, a petite blonde with the body of Twiggy asked. "We could at least make it some of the way before the sun goes down."

"We wouldn't be able to carry all the water we need. Besides, what would we do once the sun sets? Take shelter behind a cactus?" I liked Miles. He was snarky- a big bold checkmark in my book. He was older, around forty with salt and pepper hair that wasn't ever brushed and fell over his thick dark glasses. Think Harry Potter's dad if he had lived that long.

"I just think it'd do us good to try to make some progress."

"Jenna, you know as well as I do that walking around this area is dangerous. What if we got caught in a sand storm? Ran out of water? This isn't LA, we can't hop a cab to the next gas station for a bottle of water and air conditioning." Jenna crossed her arms and turned her head away. She was a new recruit, and apparently didn't get the memo that her profession of choice wasn't movie style glamorous either. Sucks to be us.

"Well what are we going to do? Because I've got a bladder full enough to fill a camels hump and I'm not going where you can hear me." I cut in. "I can't even handle public bathrooms." I'm not being dramatic either, there's just something unnervingly disgusting about hearing each other go that I could never get over. Even after 23 years.

Miles looked around, pointing to the right of the covered Jeep we took out today. There are a couple cacti over there where we were digging. Just be careful and come right back." I gave a salute and started trudging my way through the sand, the tall boots I wore to tuck my pants in weighing me down in the heat beating on my back.

I'm not proud to say it took me about 20 minutes to reach the dig site. The only thing distinguishing it from any other part of the desert was the short poles with rope around it to lay out the perimeter. The white rope hung there, glaringly bright in the midday sun contrasting greatly with the equally bright golden sand that stretched on for eons. I went over to the cacti and did the business. Then went over and stared at the site some more. It wasn't large, about the size of a wrestling arena. Though there were an uncharacteristically large amount of cacti around almost like they were hiding the site. It was the one thing that gave them enough interest to think to look there. They hadn't found anything promising all day, and I was ready to call it a bust, because at least at the original sight they were finding interesting sediments that whispered promises of something greater buried below.

I was just about to turn back after taking a drink from my water bottle when I caught a glimpse of something. It was blinding for a split second as the light reflected out and into my peripheral, not the normal glare of the sand that I'd become accustomed to in the few weeks I'd been there. Something else, something different. So, against my better judgment I slipped under the hot white rope and waded over to where the glare had come from. Something was jutting out of the sand, probably uncovered by the half hour of wind we had gotten earlier. Bending down I brushed away more sand and pulled it out.

It was huge and white, bigger than my fist and glittered miraculously- prisms within it shedding rainbows whenever it was moved. It was heavy, a gem like nothing I'd ever seen before. I stepped on the heel of my foot, ready to turn and yell towards Jenna and Miles that there had in fact been something here when my hands suddenly felt alight with fire. I screamed and tried to drop the gem, but my hands wouldn't move. I shook my arms, trying to get the smell of melting flesh out of my nose, trying to cool them off and let go of the damn gem but to no avail.

Then suddenly, the burning stopped, and I could faintly hear Jenna and Miles yelling at me as I was engulfed in a giant tornado of sand. The sharp pellets shooting in my mouth burning my throat, scratching my eyes and filling my ears. Along with the pain of being ripped apart by the sand I felt a surprising weightlessness, as if I were being lifted into the air before the pain became too unbearable, and my lungs too full of the foreign substance to keep conscious any longer.