Desert Storms

Pain!

Alistair pulled the thorn out of his bloody heel. He wondered briefly if he should just leave it in. Maybe the pain would distract him from the dryness in his throat. He laughed quietly to himself, “thank goodness I got blisters on my back to distract me from the thorn!” He laughed again a little louder. This time the laugh was colored with desperation and a hint of madness. Alistair collapsed to his knees. A story from his childhood rambled through his mind – something about a lady swallowing a spider. “Why would someone swallow a spider?” he thought, “unless you’re crazy.” Somewhere in the pit of a gut, his empty stomach growled its argument that there were some very good reasons to swallow a spider. With the last vestiges of will power, he pulled one leg up and then the other. Then, he began to walk.
Hours later, Alistair’s body stopped. Feeling a growing separation with reality, he glanced down at his bare feet. They were a strange mixture of dirty brown dust over a red burn he didn’t feel any more. Sand grains bounced off his ankles and swirled in little funnels at his feet. Overhead, a bright yellow sun burned the life out of the desert dunes.
Despair rose up and covered Alistair with a smothering tide of hopelessness. The horizon stretched forever in a sea of marching sand dunes. All the same. Each dune crafted from hell’s cookie cutter. Alistair felt the ghost of a tear roll down his cheek.
Without warning, a deep throbbing built up in his chest. Alistair screamed in pain and crumpled over. Heat that put the sun to shame built up and demanded release. Alistair needed release. He raised his hands in the air, every muscle straining against an invisible weight. One hand thrust towards the sun. Darkness created a glow around his outthrust hand. It began to grow until it covered his body. The pains of exposure and dehydration faded as Alistair felt power build in his chest. At some queue known to his body but hidden to his mind, Alistair let go. A brilliant beam burst from his hand and shot into the air in a pillar of brightness. The light and pain faded within seconds.
Alistair let his hand drop to his lap. He had fallen to his knees when the power left him. He no longer stood on sand. The heat had melted quartz sand grains into smooth glass in a circle fifteen feet around him. Somehow, his pants seemed fine. His brain accepted that the same way it accepted what just happened. It didn’t. Alistair felt his mind go blissfully blank and he surrendered to the darkness.


The shadow was a relief. The sun had come back with all its heat and misery. Alistair had been trying to die for the last thirty minutes, but for some reason his body was fighting back. Didn’t it learn its lesson? How much punishment could one man take. The shadow moved and allowed the sun to continue its sadistic torture of Alistair’s eyelids. Alistair decided to give in the fight and he opened his eyes.
Black oxfords stood before him on the glass that he had created. Tan slacks with a sharp crease connected to a black belt and a tucked-in polo shirt. The Hollywood smile reflected more light than the mirror finish of the aviator sunglasses.
“hey, dad.” Alistair forced a hint of cheer into his voice “took you long enough.”