Untimely #10 – City of Rocks

They left him for dead in the city of rocks, for the sun to kill him, or the heat, or the cold, or the wind, or the wound. The sun came up in a rusty red dawn, all mist and sand and wind. Then it was overhead and all around him sallow grey light too bright to look at. He pressed his head into the ground and shifting saw the blood thick and black and muddy where it pooled by his side and his shirt plastered down to his hip. His tongue felt like a block of wood between two stones. He lay on his side and closed his eyes and prayed that he would never open them. He held them shut a long time and thought of stories they used to tell of men buried up to their necks and covered in molasses and how the ants would clean the flesh off their bones, the vultures pluck out their eyes. OK, he thought, so it could be worse. It could always be worse. But still he kept his eyes shut and felt the tightening in his side and then there was a very great tightening and he thought that this might be it. When he awoke it was dark and there was a high moon and he was shivering. He couldn’t feel his legs and he tried to move them but he couldn’t see to tell whether they had moved. He was frozen all over and shuddering now and then he felt a surge of warm and then it was over.