25
Hot wind on my cheeks. Bright naked sun in my eyes. Burning sand and salt digging up between my bare toes.
A world of merciless white light, throbbing above and reflected below. The sirocco air swirled about my body and clawed at my face.
I stood and swayed, half-conscious, limp fingers brushing the skin of my abdomen. My lidded eyes blinked furiously. Greasy blond fronds of hair swished and fluttered about my mouth and nostrils.
Alkali flats stretched on and out until a liquid horizon. Here and there, the black hulks of basalt monoliths jutted like rotten teeth from the lifeless earth. One of them stood beside me, jagged and listing drunkenly to the left. On its grainy surface were carved cryptic symbols and twisting, inscrutable faces.
I tilted my numb face to the sky. Nothing but empty, cruel blue. At the center of it all, the pounding sun. Wastelands both above and below. Caught in the middle.
My exposed flesh felt like it might blister and slough off at any moment.
In the distance, a phantom form fluttered through the world-mirage. High above the parched reaches of hard white salt, something soared through the scorching air. Small and shining black now . . . then tilting, the sun shimmering hot vermilion in its wake. Coming into focus. Parting the curtain of rippling illusion; emerging triumphant. I could hear the beat of its immense wings as it gracefully rode the desert thermals. Its scales shone red on black; its raptor's eyes glittered; its rapier talons flexed and shuddered.
And still it grew closer.
I squinted against the sun.
A sound: Like someone tearing a sheet of paper in half across a hallway. Like a power transformer snapping angrily in the distance.
A smell: Like hot ashes and ozone.
A sensation: Of freefall; vertigo; staring over a cliff side at night.
The harsh, brilliant light grew until it consumed me.
When I awoke in bed, I swear that I had to rise sleepily and brush grains of sand from between my toes. The next morning, they were gone.