Confessions

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I'm sorry. Am I boring you? You seem suddenly disinterested. Just nod if you're awake and listening. Nod if you care for me to continue....Oh, that's right. I forget myself. I'll go on.
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Most people have never experienced a desert first hand. I've had both the pleasure and misfortune of finding myself in either kind. In one, through blazing hot sand, threatening to melt itself and you into glass by day and take you with it to a netherworld of crystallization. By night, this same abyss looming portentously with no solace granted by a black canvas of eternity ahead; a freeze straight through to your bones. In another desert, you find yourself battling geography and the impending loss of sanity. Exposure a constant threat, just trying to keep the blood in the tips of your fingers leaves you feeling numb from head to heart. Like nothing is possible, and the plight of humanity becomes overbearing. I suppose you really face these issues in both regions, but, for some reason, I always found the tundra the less pleasant of the two. Something not even water could cure.

But my challenge this day planted me in some Middle Eastern bad lands. I wish I could tell you where I was, but that would require me telling myself, as well. And I'm interested not in the least in possessing that knowledge. It's a place I'd like to forget. I can't. Some large bird of prey gliding patiently over me all through the day. Just waiting. He knew it was but a matter of time, and the feasting would be ripe. The gorging, the gouging of the eyes, stupendous. I had no options but to keep walking. Gone too far now and headed toward no civilization. Lost. The raptorial creature plodding along on his feet now with intermittent bursts of flight, grown weary from the effort. Confused as to why I had not grown weary with the walk. I'm worn. Weary of life. I hear that familiar grumbling. My stomach? No. That low laughter reverberating round me. An echo....re-echo, echo. They're all expecting me to die here. Soon. Now. I hit the sand, displacing it into my mouth and eyes. I can't feel the taste on my tongue. Just penetrating hotness. Arid and lashing through my gums. And now I'm blind. I wanted to bathe myself in this useless bath salt of nothing, of Hell, of discomfort and discord. I'm fading quickly. But a vision comes; presumably, my last.

From behind me two great angelic wings expand upward, straight into the sky. The feathers ruffle, and I can feel them begin to embrace me. I'm being sheltered and granted reprieve from this harsh fate. The deadly sun no longer tearing cancers in my flesh. My father had talked of angels before, but mostly he spoke of his god. The god of war. Be it Tyr, Odin, Mars, Enlil, or Ares. It mattered not. The prayers and petitions were always well-received. In every conflict raging, his god was there. He could feel the presence of some omniscient being. Quasi-omniscience. All-seeing tunnel vision. Betrayed by the lack of the peripheral. Never even saw an alternative coming. Never even knew it could exist. The voice of some celestial being begins calling out to me. But my ears, already severely handicapped in the execution of this task, being but mortal and badly injured, are unable to clearly discern the modulation proceeding forth from these celestial lips right before me. No mortally comprehensible voice or pitch. So, this is the end. He's come to greet me, and I can go to heaven after all....He caws in response.

I don't know why I didn't know then. Demons I had seen, had heard and felt. Sweeping past me, jeering all the while. Of angels, there were none. Not here. Not in this barren wasteland of my soul. A swarm of hatred sweeping over me, touching and gnashing its teeth and talons into me. Tearing at what little bit is left. A synthesized collection of demonic visages enveloping me. This was my lot. This was my plague.

Consciousness greeted me with a sharp stab to the calf. Another caw as I lunged forward instinctively and grasped the feathery wing of my assailant. It was my raptor. My angel-deliverer, afterall. Come to carry me to death. He must have been young, too. The attack came far too prematurely. My hand caught hold of his arched wing and with all the force left in my body, I threw myself backward, breaking bone and sinew. But it was all I could do. Although I left him badly injured, I was still no match while unconscious. Which is exactly what I was headed straight back to. Darkness sinking in. The edges of my vision blackening slowly. A bird of prey skulking laboriously over to my body. Pitch black.

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Are you afraid? Can you feel this? Can you imagine what I felt like? Giving in to this creature. Affording it certain victory. Not even dying in my own land....I didn't have a land. The vagabond versus the scavenger. I gave up that day. It was the first time ever. It was also the last. My father's god of war descended from the heavens. And his righteous indignation brought about my deliverance. Favors such as these aren't granted liberally.
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A thud right next to my head. Jolting awake once more, I see the rock still stirring up dust from its fall. The creature lying stunned right next to me. Not dead. A congregation of these unholy predators had assembled above, and they fell quickly upon the body of their brother. He cried out in agony. But his gods could be nothing greater than himself. Just as merciless and ravenously stricken with insatiable hunger. For blood. The flock soon turned to me.

A deep-throated scream in a language incomprehensible to me momentarily frightened them away. Looking up, a man. On a horse. A camel? I couldn't discern. Far too dehydrated and exasperated to focus on anything other than the blazing sun and the rustle of black closing in around me. A cloth bundle thrown to the ground by this man atop the beast of burden. The agitable scavengers jumping backwards briefly. Then circling round the package. I was hoisted up in front of this man then. He told me his name as he instructed his friend to run, quickly. It was a camel. I couldn't tell you anything else about it. How it felt, the sounds it made. It was all I could do to hold on....and thank the man. Thank my father's god.

I heard cries as we raced away. Terrifying wails. Looking back to my place of salvation, the cloth bundle now torn open and exposed. I saw something inside moving. And heard the cries of a baby begging the heavens for some miracle. I winced. Vertigo taking over. Wind piercing into my eyes as I turned forward again. The whines of the child silenced, dead now....The child....

I would have cried then, but there was nothing left to give. That day, all emotion faded in me. Every bit of justice silenced. Dead now.

We raced onward. Presumably to some encampment or oasis. So this is all it takes to get to paradise. This is all it takes to be delivered from the salivating jaws of Hell. I fell asleep.

And later awoke to find ashes in the place of paradise.