Aliena Numina

3 - Desert

It was like I was left to burn in a boiler full of fire. It was like steam was rising on my face and I was getting drier and drier. Two burning stoves in my eyes and firewood on my cheeks burned me like I'd gone to hell. My hands were burning like they were on fire on the hot sand. Every time I turned my head, the stoves that were burning in my eyes were moving. My back was sweating and clinging to my clothes like I was in hot water on a toasted stone. The heat was rising in me like a volcano.

Even though I was struggling to open my eyes, I couldn't see anything. When I thought I was blind and touched my eyes in that panic for that, I realized they were closed. This fear began to go away rapidly while I tried to open them again with a new strength.

It was like a murky world. I held my head still and waited for the scene to come back. A cloudless blue-red sky and a large, angry, red Sun...

The air rising from the yellow-and-white sands seemed to point to a deserted ocean ahead. Or maybe there was really an ocean in the coolness up ahead. The overwhelming heat knocked me out, made me like a reptile.

And I couldn't go to that sea.

I could only gather all my strength and turn away. It was like the flames didn't go away on my face, which was still very hot. This time, a heat like from bricks was touching my face from the sand. I put my hands together on my forehead and stayed there for a while. My mind was a mess. Maybe I was out of my mind after all.

It was time to wake up from this horrible nightmare. With all the energy I've gathered, I thought it was time to get back to real life. I lifted my torso by pushing my hands into the hot sands. I was completely out of strength.

When I looked up and looked around, it was like I was in an even worse dream. This was supposed to be a nightmare. Dream in dream... Nightmare in a nightmare...

This time, I touched my face with my hands as if I wanted to wake up. My hot cheeks like fire, when my hands touched, it was like I was faced with cold water. As my fingers hovered over my face, my mind came back and the weakness in my body was replaced by pain, I realized that reality was just as bad as a dream.

You run out of air in the water and you want to get to the surface as soon as possible. There's air just up there. You start swimming up with all your strength. In fact, that path, known as just above, leads you to an even worse predicament. The strength in your arms is gone, and your struggles are at your fingertips only. There is no more energy in your body. A moment facing death...

And life goes out of your hands. That is where you try to die breathlessly under those stuffy waters. Because what you breathe is only salt water, and your lungs give you a torment from pain.

That was exactly my situation.

And all this was too complicated and incomprehensible to be true. Because that wouldn't really happen. In reality, everything would be clear enough to be explained logically. Even if not everything was really known, it could be explained. But here, in this world of delusions, the truth seemed even more deceptive than the deceptions in the mirrors. The truth was dust and ice between illusions or reflections.

The bodies I saw looking around, distraught, scared the hell out of me. Everyone was like a city that was obsolete left in the postwar years...

Old, paled dressed as if they belonged to someone long time ago, time seemed to have lost its concept in this view I saw.