He strode out. Two steps at a time. The hard packed sand-dirt scraped under his feet. There was no sound. A soundless place, with burning heat.
No thoughts except the sound of the dirt under his feet, and not even that after a while.
This was a place without roads. Who needed trails when the land stretched flat and hard in every direction? The Romans had marched this desert. The Persians. The Egyptians. Empires had made this desert their straight path and had marched across it to bring death and justice to the world.
But there were no armies here today.
He could not tell whether it was eternity or an instant (because how do you measure time when everything is the same), but he came up to the edge.
It looked as if God had stepped in the wet earth and left his footprint. The desert dropped off and there was no desert any more but mountains and a wide valley with a sea in the middle filled with the greenest water he’d ever seen.
He smiled calmly as he headed towards the edge. He desired it. Wanted it. He wanted to feel it's coolness around him, surrounding him. He wanted to feel the hand of the sea cradle him.
He stood one-thousand feet above the Sea all alone. He lay his pack down and stared at the water silently.
He took off his shirt, and trousers. And with a motionless face, he jumped down the cliff, into the green waves of the sea.
Never had he felt that much alive. That much freedom and happiness. He was relieved from the desert's suffocating heat, and its deceiving lies.
I opened his eyes, and saw the current of the water flow, the fishes, the animals. The reef, the coral. The beauty of the undersea world.
He laughed...
Suddenly, he felt a splitting headache, and opened his eyes. His vision was blurry, and his hearing was weak. He felt pain everywhere in his body, leaving him paralyzed on the sand.
Sand.
Everywhere was sand. No green sea to be found anywhere.
It was another one of the Desert's tricks, the Fata Morgana. But it felt so real. Was it a glimpse of heaven? Maybe he was dying.
There were men, talking in Arabic or Hebrew. He raised his head. He saw that his body was naked and completely bruised and wounded. Sand was building on top of him. The men left, leaving him there dying in front of the hungry eyes of the vultures.
A few weeks later, a woman got a telegram from the War Office.
"Josh Wavesburry found dead in Algeria stop deserted from camp stop."
((I am a very bad writer when it comes to contests,mcuz it's kind of like, writing on commando. I wanted to try it out, and I hope this 'story' is not confusing or something...))
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