My Short Stories

The Guilty, Pt. 3

Heathen had been walking for the better part of the last two hours, and it was the dead of night by then. During the day the land was lifeless and spanned as far as his eyes could see with seemingly no end in sight. With the township now far long behind him, there was no hint that civilization even existed to begin with. The trees were stripped bare of their leaves, dead or dying. A couple were snapped back as if pushed by the force of an explosion. The soil beneath his feet was a dull grey and cracked as it baked under the sun's heat day after day, not being helped by the fact that it hadn't rained in almost a year now. The only things that could be considered living were the small bushes that clung low to the ground, small insignificant clumps of worthless twigs not even worth the effort to turn into a proper fire for warmth. Some small lizards scurried about the ground, quickly trying to make their way to whatever shade could be found before they were baked alive under the heat of the sun.

All it needed was some sand so that it could be considered a desert. In fact, Heathen would have preferred it to be so. The sand would have given him something to occupy his mind with. He would've been able to draw patterns with his food or could have sat and watched it shift merely by the wind's force. The deadlands he found himself in, though, were boring. He wasn't expecting that anything would be interesting here, but he thought he'd find at least one little thing that could help. Anything. But it was all lifeless. It quickly dawned on Heathen that exile was a worse punishment than what he had figured it would be at first.

Nighttime, however, shifted the dynamic drastically. The temperature quickly plummeted from oven-like to a simulated arctic. The jacket he had on his back was nor nearly enough to provide him the warmth that would be necessary to get him through the night. Visibility dropped from miles to mere feet ahead of him. He pulled out a small torch from a pocket on his jacket but all it did was cast some light a few extra feet ahead of what he could already see. It didn't help much, but it brought some comfort from the moonless night.

Heathen held himself tightly, doing his best to keep the torch stable as his arms and hands trembled uncontrollably in an attempt to keep his body warm. There wasn't much else that he could do, except to keep walking. It was the one thing that he kept repeating to himself in his mind over and over again. Keep walking and don't stop. To where? Heathen didn't know. There was no destination that he could think of from the top of his head. He doubted that there was any other form of civilization except the one he had been exiled from. Only rumors of roving bandits and slavers, but even those were myths at best. From what he saw as the sun was setting over the horizon, Heathen was heading east.

But he had to keep walking. If he stopped, he'd freeze to death. He was an artist, not a survivalist. He hardly managed to scavenge a couple drops of water in his first hour out. He had no clue on how to start a fire. or where a good place to camp would even be. A part him said that rest would be good. He'd need rest if he wanted to continue on, but not wouldn't be the time. Perhaps in the morning when the sun still wasn't blazing, but was warm enough that he could afford to stop under some shaded spot. His feet ached and blistered, but despite the pain his droning mind forced him to keep going forward.

The night dragged on slowly. Without a watch to keep the time with, Heathen could only guess as to how much longer was left until the sun would finally come up again. By the time the first few rays of sunlight managed to peek over the horizon, his pace had slowed down considerably. Heathen walked with somewhat of a skewed hobble, his right foot stepping forwards a little too fast and hard on the ground, while his left took its time and almost dragged itself from the back to the front. The pain was gone by now only because his mind had finally managed to shut it off completely. His lips were dry and verged on cracking as he breathed in and out through his mouth. At the very least, he found himself thinking, he managed to keep himself warm enough throughout the night. The constant friction of his appendages moving back and forth combined with his clothing rubbing against his body was enough for him to survive. At least, that's how he saw it.