I recon how this dark caped figure looked at me with bright red eyes and said with a raspy voice:
The cities will burn. The skies will turn dark, while the life that rumbles upon our existence disappears, and slowly you’ll smell the flesh of many as it burns and turns into ashes and sand - He took his cigar and let it slowly burn his clothes, while the rest of the horizon burned into a bright red which converged with the sunset.
The existence of that figure still itches my mind every once in a while. I´m not sure if it was even real. Walking through a desert for days without water can make you imagine things, especially after so many months. It’s been a while since I felt any type of humidity in my mouth, and I’m sure every time I throw up the only thing coming out is sand. Every time I throw up, I’m just giving myself away to any animal that might find my bony body appetizing.
Leaving a trace serves no purpose, even if I leave them, the ships that travel the skies still won’t notice my presence here. No. Not in the middle of a revolution. Not when sandstorms cover everything for miles. Not when they're trying to eliminate your people.
Surprisingly, when I lived in a populated city everyone expected that the heat would eat us up. That climate change would eat us up. That famine would kill us. It did. It killed us after all of the Longers started to eliminate all the poor, so they would survive in times of famine. That paranoia started it all.
The Longers, the rich families and government members, started to kill all of those families with sick, poor members. Families without resources: money, food, house… They thought those families were a waste of air. So, they were killed. Climate change did kill us, but human paranoia killed us quicker.
Most of the families near Namibia were killed. The few that survived became runaways or fought against the military to protect their pride and honor. Useless, in my opinion. I ran away. We were a small group, and we started to walk through the desert together, but most were killed or separated in the middle of the Namibian Battles.
Even after being far from the city of conflict, the Longers found a way to send military members with weapons to kill some groups that were trying to run away. They tried to fight back, but it was slaughter. A type of slaughter with gunshots, cries of help and fire. Fire everywhere. A type of fire that would burn everything in its way. One that would continue for miles and miles, until sand extinguished the fire and covered every bit of ash from the bodies burned by the military.
You can only keep walking, and hope that one day you’ll reach a place where the Longers won't try to kill you, or where you won’t see how your family is burned to ashes.
I kept walking, no course, no map. Just walking towards the horizon that seemed to not end. From afar I saw a figure, a dark caped figure. I could see how it would come closer every second, but the shadow wasn’t alone. I could see the clouds of sand behind it. Hovering and making everything in their way dark and warm. I could see how the shadow’s eyes glimmered as the sunset started to end and night saluted the desert. I had hopes. Hopes of my people coming to rescue me. Me and my bright red eyes.
Soon, I was surrounded by cars, ships and people. People dressed like my people, but they weren’t my people. I turned my torch on, and tried to make them go away. As if they were lions, scared of fire. They roamed around me, as if I was already a corpse ready to eat.
That dark figure with bright red eyes approached me, with a handful of sand in hand. He threw it towards me and the torch went out. My vision started to blur. I felt the heat of the desert running through my body, I felt the sand scratching my thin skin and the fire burning my dark cape.
I laid on the ground, as I heard the last words my ears would ever hear “Fire and sand don’t mix, but even if you die, the cities will burn. The skies will turn dark, while the life that rumbles upon our existence disappears, you’ll smell your flesh burn to ashes and sand. Because, that’s how little and unimportant you are. You and all your people”
By Natalia Pérez S., Step 11
