Sand Red

21

I cried out from the shock and suffering of it, then immediately disintegrated into white hot, razor sharp pain. I tried to struggle out of their grip, but Aida sat heavily on my legs and Yul held my hands down with all his might. There was nothing I could do but try my hardest not to scream. The pain was blinding. At that moment, I would have given anything at all to make it stop. Aida dug inside me and twisted her fingers, as if intentionally to cause me hurt and I could not help but cry out. And again my brain flared with pain and I couldn't move from the shock of it. And still she pushed and twisted and went deeper and deeper, until I could not breathe and unconsciousness wouldn't take me and I could not make a sound without breath and I could move not an inch because they wouldn't let me and I hated them. I hated them with all my will and I wished them to leave and leave me alone so my pain would go away and I could finish life in peace if not comfort. My back hurt. My very bones hurt and then she pulled her hand out and my body collapsed into an orgy of torture, but she sat triumphant upon the thorn, the bullet in her hands.

I struggled for breath as waves and waves of purple lapped at me and the sky glowed with what I believed would be my last sunset ever. Yul's hands left mine and my palms seemed to sigh with relief as the pressure left them. Thirst was killing me. We would all die of thirst or thirsty and I was thirsty.

'We did it!' Yul's voice broke through the sea of burning I was floating in. 'We bandage it and he'll be alright, right?' he asked someone anxiously. I suppose he really did care, the bastard.

Aida's face appeared above me, still grave. 'Bandaging you,' she said softly.

I felt patches of dripping heat being laid across my midriff. I whimpered as Yul lifted me, presumably on her command. The world lurched and suddenly I could no longer see the beautiful evening sky. My head flopped lifelessly to the thorn instead. I struggled as she tightened the wetness across my ribcage. I wanted the sky. Nobody would want to go seeing the alien thorn. Even as I thought this, my thoughts did not believe it anymore. It was not the fact that the bullet was outside of me and I was being bandaged and lifted and fretted over. It was the wetness. It was that water was being wasted upon me. My belly was warm from the warm water dripping off of the bandaging. It dripped onto my trousers and across my whole back and in a circle back to my belly. Water was not wasted on dying men. I did not believe I was a dying man. I stopped resisting Yul's grip on my shoulders as my mind processed this logic. I was not a dying man. I allowed myself to be laid back on the thorn though it hurt my back and one of my best friends in the world sat down at my side and Aida collapsed beside him and the two of them couldn't stop smiling because they had done it. I was not a dying man, I marvelled at it once again. I was not a dying man.

I must have fallen asleep for when I awoke it was still dusk. My throat was so dry it was difficult to swallow. I tried to lift myself to a sitting position before remembering the previous day's events. I looked down at my bandaging, which was now dry. The dull throb was a bother. I turned my head to check on my friends. Yul and Aida lay close beside me, entangled in a single sandy hollow. Somehow, I didn't like seeing that.

I moved my arm to Yul next to me. 'Wake up.' It hurt to speak. He didn't stir. I tried again, speaking louder. This time he jerked up and then relaxed, seeing it was me.

'Water,' I begged.

'Aye, aye.' He moved quickly to the water sack and brought me a drink. He helped me sit up and I sipped it slowly, my stomach rebelling as my muscles contracted to send it down. I could barely drink half a cup before the ache was so intense I had to give up. Yul lowered me back onto the sand, gentle as my mother. 'How do you feel?'

'Alright,' I whispered, the pain from my locomotion washed over me in waves. He looked me over with worry in his eyes before he turned back to wake Aida.