Prologue:

Dying of a stab wound was painful and as I was stabbed in the abdomen I knew it would take a few hours from me to be gone for good.

A fun fact about the abdomen is that depending on where you were stabbed determines the length of your lifespan, this could be from a matter of minutes to days, the main reason for this is that you have a lot of organs there and while all are important at keeping you alive you can last for a little while without the non essential organs. A general rule though is that the more blood vessels cut the quicker you die. I was stabbed in the spleen that's the place your old red blood cells are replaced with new ones and the platelets are stored and those are the cells that scab areas over so that you can heal.

With where I was stabbed based on how deep it was I knew that I would have a couple hours to live at the very most, not that it mattered much. I was alone in the middle of a dessert and wouldn't be found until long after I was dead. But that's not the point for the first half hour the wound burned before slowly going numb, finally giving me time to think about something other than the amount of pain I was in as my dark red blood pooled in the sand around me.

The desert itself wasn't that hot and that was most likely because of how close to night it was so at least I would be able to die comfortably in the unbearable heat that would have been 5 hours earlier. The sky mostly clear and a beautiful blue stretched out above me as I gazed into its depths. As I gazed my thoughts slowly, sluggishly drifted towards the events that had led me here to this dusty, desolate desert…

Why I had decided to spend my break from studying my medical classes in a desert of all places was beyond me and I could only think of the common phrase that 'it seemed a good idea at the time'. The small town whose name I didn't know was in the middle of nowhere about 3 hours away from any civilisation and only had a population of about 2,000 people, was boring. It was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and while there were a lot of people around nothing interesting was happening, so with me not wanting to endure the long car ride back to my flat, I picked a direction and started walking.

After an hour or so, in which I gained many strange looks, walking I had reached the outskirts of the town and for a moment I stood on the edge of the small and dreadfully boring place before I noticed something on a hill fairly far in the distance reflecting light.

The light didn't seem to be any type of code Morse or otherwise that I had ever heard of so after shrugging my shoulders I headed onward towards the hill curious about what could be upon a hill with no road going towards it several miles away from the most boring town in existence.

As I drew closer to the hill the I began to feel apprehensive for no apparent reason and even within about a mile I still couldn't quite make out what was on top of the hill but the closer and closer I got the stronger the feeling got but I ignored it in favour of finding out what was on the hill.

As I got to the top of the hill I let out a shocked gasp as I could see what could only be described as a group of extremely dodgy people wearing dark red robes were walking around and chanting altogether in a language I couldn't even place waving knives around before each would stab ritualistically what I hoped was a large bundle of clothes but I was probably being optimistic.

My gasp of shock had alerted the strange cultists and I stayed in place too shocked to move before two big burly bald men grabbed me and dragged me to the opposite side of the top overlooking a jagged hillside.

I tried to fight back against the two but their grips were tight on me not allowing much moment at all and a third skinny guy unkempt with long dark hair surged forward stabbing me in the abdomen.

The only thing I could think about was how much it hurt as the man stepped away and while I would have fallen to the floor from how much it hurt I was still being held up by the burly guys as my life's blood escaped the wound even though the knife hadn't been removed. The third guy moved towards me again and with a powerful kick to the chest I was thrown backwards off the fairly high hill before after a while that was probably only a few short seconds but felt like an eternity of pain to me I came to a stop at the base of the hill on my back.

My whole body hurt but that was completely overshadowed by the pain in my abdomen as I tried to diagnose myself as best as I could.

As i thought back on it logically without the pain clouding my mind I couldn't understand why they hadn't tried to talk to me and had instantly gone for violence, it made no sense at all but I didn't focus on it too long as I could feel my thoughts slowing down and I knew I didn't have long.

I focused back on the sky that was slowly becoming a darker shade of blue and mixing with oranges as the sun started to set slowly in the distance and I started to think back on all of the good times, all of the bad and everything in between, anything to distract myself from my thoughts. I had long ago stopped feeling the wounds and the various places my body had hit on the way down the jagged hillside.

My thoughts just kept slowing down and so I focused on the darkening sky as I thought of family and all of my friends that I would leave behind barely managing to pull my face into something resembling a smile.

I could feel it. I was going... going... going... Gone.