Black and White - Opening

S a n d a n d S i l e n c e

A glass shard cut my hand as I stumbled backwards. Hissing, I squeezed my eyes shut and threw up my arms to shield myself. From what, I did not know or care to think about. Nothing else seemed to happen. There only was the quiet and it was hard to say whether the storm had already come to pass or if it was yet to roll over me at any given moment. After a few more moments of nothing but silence, I dared to breath in again. Then, still ducking down, I suspiciously peaked forth. As it had been in the library, the ground was of an almost spotless pure white. A little scarlet rivulet caught my eye, as it carved its way through grains of sand like a river through mountains, branching off every now and then, flowing fast, then slow again. Its source became clear when I lowered my heavy arms and warm blood dripped from my palm. A soft breeze brushed over me. Trembling and feeling years I hadn't lived press down on my shoulders, I brushed of the pain, then struggled to get up. A lump formed inside my throat at the sight of the glimmering, never ending desert I found myself in.

The weather was... odd if one were to put a word on it. The air felt cold and blazingly hot at the same time, an insubstantial mist hanging over the miles and miles of sand, leaving me clammy. As I gazed upwards to try and make out the sky, I found a thick, grey blanket of clouds in its stead, ever moving and forming peculiar shapes. The expanse swallowed up every sound and left behind an unbearable silence. Even my normally roaring mind went completely blank. I wasn't grateful. Never before in my life had I felt so alone.

"Hello?" I asked into the void. As I should have expected, there was no one to pick up the question, and no answer reached my ears. I distinctly remembered hating this specific scene in each and every movie or book it occurred. Eddie would have made fun of me if he saw me now. A feeling of despair crept upon me, shivers running down my spine and my vision darkening despite the blinding sand. Nothing comparable had happened to me before in as long as I could remember. I had never lost all ties to reality, but here there was nothing to hold on. Not a slimmer... And there was nothing I could do about it.

"No... no, no, no..." Hugging myself, I tried to stifle the sob that threatened to escape my mouth.

My mind timidly spoke up in the quiet as it tried to determine whether it was now time to be scared, angry or both at once. Hand reaching up to forcefully brush away the strands of hair falling into my face, something bumped against my forehead. Through increasingly teary eyes, I took in the dainty lock neckless, its chain still wrapped around my shaking fingers. Feeling the cause of all my troubles staring back at me, I tore it off and threw it into the dunes. It stayed there, unmoving, glimmering like the grains it was lying on. In an attempt to put more distance between it and myself, I stumbled backwards, gaze ever locked on the beautiful piece of jewellery. Eventually, it only remained a phantom of a glint. I turned around and continued walking, trying to find my way out of this wretched desert. If only I had a compass...

Time is a funny thing. It does not wait for anyone, and you have to spent most of your life hurrying to keep up with it. But like a shadow, when you stop, it stops. Picture being on opposite ends of a circle. You can't catch up with Time and Time may not catch up with you if it chooses to do so, therefore remaining ever out of sight and power.

I had a feeling that in this place time wasn't even in the same circle as I was. It instead flew above my head, cackling, taunting me, while occasionally throwing one or the other cobblestone my way.

"I hate everything about this."

My level of energy had unfortunately dropped far too low for me to be making much of a snide or sarcastic comment when no one was even there to appreciate it. I found myself desperately wishing to hear anything but the crunching sound of my shoes' soles on the sand. My mother shouting at me for getting detention, my father monotonously rambling on about the latest football match even though I couldn't stand the sport, Leo being his usual annoying self and telling me to watch the knight... I would in an instant trade this for Mr Brown's history lesson. The desert was, to put it simple, dreadful. There was no way to tell how long I had been walking, the memories of every step I took blurring together. As far as I could tell, there was either no sun at all or, if there was one, it did neither rise nor fall. The clouds were still reshaping themselves, but would not give way to a single ray of sunlight. When I turned around, my own footprints were already fading in the sand, gone after a few breaths. I tried not to think about what I would do, if the desert never ended. About what I would do if I wouldn't snap out of it. Even after what was probably hours of walking, I didn't feel any hunger or thirst or the need to sleep. My initial exhaustion had faded from something physical to something that could only be described as a weariness of the mind. As if I had been solving equations for hours without break. This made me ponder... Could I ever go to sleep? Or was I doomed to walk the dunes forever?