If I wandered in this desert for forty days and nights, no one would record what I'd said in a book to be remembered and studied for all time. No one, save perhaps those few I knew personally, would rush to the place where my bleached bones were found scattered on the ground and erect a monument. But here I am, wandering through this desert, pen and paper and .22 caliber pistol in hand, searching for a something I can't even define. The mirages of heat water, the cactus that thirst for nothing, the excitable lizards that run forever for fear of scorched feet; these things I know to be real. Even the mirages are real. My dry and cracked lips are very real and never let me forget how very thirsty I am. The other day, a large crevice opened in my lower lip and blood, salty and coppery, dripped down out of the wound. My tongue snaked out and licked it up in an unconscious gesture of desperation and it was the first fluid that had trickled down my throat in days. No, weeks. Perhaps a lifetime.
I only started keeping track of the days in my notebook after a great deal of time had passed. Initially, I expected to wake up from the dream and then perhaps to be rescued, but when it finally dawned on me that I was on my own, I decided to begin keeping a record of the days and nights. And this place, this thing I thought was a dream, is more real to me now than anything else ever was. My thirst has made me more aware of my living status, of my fragile mortality. Yes, maybe I am dying. But that is of no consequence, because I am living with my death and that is something I have never done before. It makes me feel ironic.
Now the sun is sinking. Such a contradiction, this place. During the day it is scorching hot, arid, dry. Then night traipses along and shatters heats' grip on the land and you freeze. It is a dry freeze, but a freeze nonetheless. I have nothing but the clothes I am wearing and they are little protection against a desert night. I had never been to the desert before this. How could I have known what to prepare for besides what I might have seen in movies?
There is a whole new stash of words to be discovered in this place, a whole new language of adjectives and nouns, of emotions and landscapes. If I'm not careful, I'll fill my notebook before my time here in through, and then what should I do? I could always scrawl something into an unsuspecting cactus with my pen or perhaps use my own blood to stain the rocks and leave a morbid tale of my own demise. Would anyone find it? Will anyone find me? Then again, I suppose the only one I should count on to get me out of here is myself. I have no responsibility here: no bills to pay, meetings to attend, candidates to vote for, and no global threats to worry about. Before I came here I led an average life, had a family, a job, goals and aspirations, and now I have miles and miles of white-gold sand. It is beautiful in its' savagery and I have no real intentions of leaving until I "shuffle off this mortal coil".
This desire to stay forever and never return to my normal life pulls at me like dehydration pulls at my body. My stomach is shrinking and caving in on itself and my skin has gone a deep shade of golden-brown then red, peeling and blistering in violent protest against the abuse it is receiving from the relentless sun. I don't feel the pain much, just this dull ache deep in my guts. And I imagine what will happen when I do finally give into that ache and my body returns to the earth by the gruesome process of decomposition. Will vultures make of me their midday meal? Or perhaps I will melt away into the sands and be nothing but bone and marrow by the time the scavengers happen across my carcass. I imagine my corpse being stumbled across one day by some intrepid explorer out to conquer this wasteland, and then my remains carefully being extracted, cataloged, and then shipped off to the morgue as an anonymous Doe. Or some museum (if it far enough in the future) where what is left of me will be examined and puzzled over by curious grade-schoolers who leave greasy smudge marks on my glass tomb with their fidgety little hands. Either fate would not displease me. I would almost prefer the museum, but that is just my ego lasciviously rearing its' head in the direction of fame. I've just laughed out loud at the thought and the sound, amazingly vibrant, is echoing off of the dunes that surround my now reclining form. I wonder, will tonight be the night I finally slip into oblivion? Now I'm just trying to be poetic, as anyone might, about my own death. It gives one a certain sort of comfort to lighten the sometimes dreadfully dismal mood that tends to accompany one's final demise. And look at that alliteration! Perhaps I will make a decent writer after all.
The odd thing is that since coming here I have not slept a wink. I haven't figured out why this is, but even stranger is that I'm not physically tired. Mentally tired, sure, but I have no desire to sleep.
Certainly if you had asked me before if I should like to go somewhere that had no responsibilities, no pressures or stress, no trappings of the everyday world, I would have answered with a resounding yes. So perhaps I am still alive somewhere but just not functioning in that plane of existence. Perhaps I've totally retreated into this world of my own making. Again, that seems like nonsense, a product of my scrambled brains. After all, I have not slept in quite a long while. They always said that sleep deprivation will make a person quite insane. If this is insanity, it's really not so bad.
And now, lying here on a bed of billions of grains of sand, my head on a pillow of air, I can feel some small creature scurrying up my leg. My guess is that it's a scorpion because I have seen many of the little buggers out here. I had a run-in with what appeared to be a very young version of this animal some days ago. I found it perched on my knee, seemingly using the elevated ground as a vantage point as it looked out at the land. I lay very still, sweat beading up en masse on my forehead, hoping that the thing would scurry away without doing any damage to me. When it finally did, I had sat up, shaking quite badly, and wiped the sweat from my brow. I had been scared of that tiny thing, terrified that it might sting me and steal my life away without my consent. I thought, how strange that something so small and insignificant should have the ability to rob me of my time on this earth! And again one of these mini harbingers of death is using my body as a lookout post. Only this time I am not afraid, even as I feel its' tiny stinger pierce the soft skin of my stomach, just under the bellybutton. There is a shooting, white-hot pain that travels through my torso from the sting but it is nighttime and the air is cool and for once, for the first time since coming here, I have physical exhaustion to accompany my usual mental exhaustion. I want to sleep, to dream of my life that seems so long ago now. Strange! I actually yearn for the life that I once lamented with all my heart! I know now that it was cowardice that drove me to this madness. A stronger, braver person would have gracefully accepted the life which they were given (and it is a gift, I see that now), would have made the most of their time on the planet. They would have taken the challenges presented and learned from them, conquered them, felt pain and joy and taken it all in stride. Here I am, however, being engulfed by the shifting sands of this desert, remotely aware of something that pulls at me to remain, to wake up.
To stop being so melodramatic and get it over with already! Yes, I can feel the poison sliding through my veins and into my heart. The scorpion has moved off to my side where I see now that I've made my bed directly next to its' brood of young. I'm reminded, on a tangent, of a story I once read, an old tale about a swan and a scorpion. The scorpion needs to get to the other side of a lake and the swan, being kind, offers to give it a ride. The scorpion crawls onto the back of the bird and then, when they are halfway across, stings it. The swan, in its' last moments before dying and sinking beneath the waves, asks the scorpion, "Why did you sting me when I was doing you the favor of carrying you across the lake?" The scorpion replies, saying, "It is my nature, it’s what I do."
I'm not sure why the memory of this story is relevant to me now, though I'm sure it probably should be. It would add to the poetic nature of the moment. I'm struck by another thought though, my eyes still trained on the scorpion and its' children. I realize something that had never occurred to me before regarding the tale; the scorpion must have drowned as well.
But now my vision is blurred and there is a creeping numbness in my limbs. I feel the enticing approach of sleep, not at all worried that it could very well be the beginnings of my death. Everything is as it should be. This is an ideal death, I assure myself. If only some great storyteller was here to witness this, they could surely weave a moving tale from my final moments. The desert, a perfect setting that might symbolize the eternal wandering of a soul, dissatisfied with their lot in life and doomed to walk forever across the dry and unforgiving dunes. The cool night that descends at death, possibly representative of my final acceptance of this end and the life that led up to it. The scorpion, oh how perfect! My own personal angel of death, killing me to protect its' offspring though in actuality I posed no threat. Do I fancy myself to be the swan then? The creature that, for all its’ good intentions and compassion, is in the end killed by the very thing it tried to help? The scorpion had to kill me, because that is its' nature. "It's what I do." And there you have it! The tale fits into the greater scheme of things, doesn't it? This all means something, yes. It is apart of the great cycle of life, my death, and should not be a thing to fear. No, I embrace this conclusion to my story! There is meaning, there is reason to this all....
I know when my mouth pushes out the final breath. I am aware of my system's inability to ward off the effects of the poison any longer. Things are shutting down? It feels as though I am being pulled towards something. No light at the end of the tunnel here, though. I don't see dead relatives rushing forth to greet me. Perhaps those who have attested to these "telltale signs of death" were lying, or perhaps I am not dying. I can still feel the breeze on my skin. I can still taste the dryness of my mouth and the film that lines it. The scorpion is still here beside me, and I am still lying beneath the canopy of stars, listening to the Earth as it spins gently through space. Where am I? And then I hear a voice, far-off and quiet but full of desperation. It is pleading for me--yes it calls me by name--to come back. Back where? I don't even know where I am and someone thinks I could find my way back? But the voice persists and calls to me. It remains faint, but I can hear it. Familiar, yes, but I can't place it. No, it's fading now. I don't want it to though. It was soothing to hear. It reminded me of something, of someone.